Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Escape velocity, noun [astronomy] – the speed an object needs to reach to escape the gravitational pull of a planet or moon and move out into space

—35.08, Earth, Arizona

Fucking hysterical. That’s what this is. 

Lance is staring at the invite in front of him. It’s not really an invite, the tone of it makes it pretty clear, more of a summoning. More of a, if Earth doesn’t send a diplomat, we’re going to blow this fucking planet right up type thing. 

And his boss thought it would be a great idea to send Lance. 

That’s what he’s going to pretend happened at least. Because he can very clearly see his own name on top of the invite. This invitation was addressed to him, and was very much asking for him. 

Still, he needs someone to blame. And that might as well be the person who called him into this office.

“I’m not sure I’m the perfect candidate for this,” Lance mutters as he skims the text. 

New leadership generation, new peace treaty – all alliance representatives and potential new trading partners have to be present for the two-day long conference. 

Margaret smiles. “You’re the only candidate for this,” she says. 

“I don’t think I want to be.”

“I’m afraid the matter is already out of your hands,” Margaret answers with a shrug. She’s tapping her pencil against her desk. Something that Lance does all the time, but never even considered it to be annoying until right now that it’s not him that’s doing it. 

Tap tap tap. 

Lance’s eyes stay glued to the page. 

“They’re really going to pull out all the stops to make for a convincing alliance partner.”

“Not doing a great job with the phrasing in here,” he says, vaguely gesturing at the somewhat threatening words on the data pad. “I feel like I’m being held at gunpoint, Margaret.”

She doesn’t laugh. “They’ve been led by warlords for millennia. Some of that is bound to reflect in their language.” If anything, she seems a bit impatient now, just wanting to get this over with. “View it as a four-week spa retreat with lots of long meetings in between.”

Tap tap tap. 

“Wait a minute.” Lance’s gaze snaps back up at his boss where she’s still sitting with her legs crossed, hammering the pen against hardwood. Her white hair is slicked back so tightly into a bun that Lance is glad there’s no sunlight streaming into the room. The reflection in the egregious amount of gel would probably blind him. “Four weeks? This says two days.”

“Their days take a little bit longer than hours. Everything over there takes a little bit longer, now that I’m thinking about it.” Her hand stills. “The Blade managed to talk them down from four days, so it’s still very short for their taste.”

“I can’t be up there for four weeks,” he protests, although he knows he doesn’t have a whole lot of leverage here. None at all, actually. This is his literal job.

And it’s not like he has anything to do that would require him to be on Earth either. His garden has a fully automated sprinkler system and his cat would probably jump for joy if he took her to spend some time with Veronica and her wife. 

He would spend most of his time at work anyway, keeping busy, answering inquiries, calling, negotiating, doing what he’s good at. Doing what he loves. 

Might as well go to that off-planet conference and do the same thing there, right?

If the Blade is there as well, at least it could be somewhat less boring. He enjoys working with Kolivan – ever since Lance found out a couple years ago that he's actually a big softie underneath all that gruff exterior, they’ve gotten along a lot better. 

Margaret stares expectantly at him, and only now Lance notices that she’d said something. “Sorry?” he asks. 

“I’d love to trade places with you, but it’s your name on the invite.”

Lance bites his lip, teeth burying themselves in soft flesh. “Okay.” He nods decisively. “I’ll do it.”

“Not like you had a choice,” Margaret answers with a smile. Lance is pretty sure it’s more of a threat than reassurance.

Right. 

Not like he had a choice. 

The day before he departs, he brings Blue over to Veronica’s place. She meows the whole way there, clawing at her carrier in the backseat of Lance’s old truck, even attempting to get her claws through the bars to swipe at Lance’s arm and murder him in cold blood. 

He tries to soothe her, bribe her with snacks, but she’s really not having any of that. She just hates being in the car. And Lance can’t really fault her for that, although he would appreciate not bleeding out in the middle of a highway while he’s driving.

“You’re a beast,” he says to her as he presses down on the doorbell of his sister’s place. Blue meows again in response. Long and suffering, as if she’s really, truly dying. “And a drama queen.”

The sun beats down on him from above, the few trees planted next to the porch doing little to shield him from the warmth of the pavement below, that makes him feel like he’s standing in a large non-stick pan. At the very least they offer some shade.

He wipes the budding sweat off of his forehead with the back of his free hand, squinting through the little diamond-shaped glass panel in the middle of the door, trying to make out any sort of movement. 

It still catches him by surprise when the door finally swings open, revealing Veronica with gardening gloves on and a tank top that is definitely made up of 100% sweat at this point. She’s got a fan made of an old newspaper in her hand, her face glowing in the bright red of exertion. 

“Come in,” she says unceremoniously. “I’m not gonna hug you in this weather, but I hope you can feel the love.”

Lance smiles, but he still presses a kiss to her cheek, unsurprised at the taste of salt clinging to his lips after. 

The AC inside is cranked all the way to the max, and it sends a shiver down his spine as he steps inside. 

He sets the carrier down and lets Blue out. She immediately makes a beeline for his sister’s bare legs, rubbing herself up against them, leaving a trail of orange fur stuck to Veronica’s sweaty skin. She meows for her attention like she’s been starved of it her whole life.

“We’re taking care of the garden right now,” Veronica says as she kneels down to pet Blue’s head, getting a generous amount of dirt on her in the process, “but do you have time to stay for a bit?”

“I’m scheduled to leave at sunrise tomorrow,” he answers, closing the crate and putting it up on top of the wardrobe to his right.

“Lance.” Veronica levels him with a half-hearted glare. “I’m asking if you want to stay for a beer. Not if you want to stay here forever.”

“I–” he hesitates, pushing his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Yeah, maybe.”

With a satisfied smile, Veronica leads him into the garden. It’s like an oasis in this weather. Small, yet filled to the brim with wide-spanning trees and overgrown wildflowers, insects buzzing, butterflies competing for prime spots in the blooms. 

Acxa is in the process of digging a hole to re-position one of the trees when she sees them coming. She looks equally exhausted as Veronica, the skin on her shoulders painted a bright lilac from what Lance assumes must be sunburn. 

It’s good to see them both again.

They sit around a small table with folding chairs in the shade of the largest tree in their garden. Veronica had cracked open the ice-cooler, pushing a bottle of vaguely bad-tasting craft beer into his hand.

“Four weeks,” Veronica muses, lifting her own bottle (same brand, different flavor (hers is much better than Lance’s)) to her lips. “That’s the longest one yet, right?”

Lance nods, fingers scratching at the paper label on his bottle. The glue got mostly dissolved by the condensation on the glass which makes it easy to push it around as he likes. He’s invested in peeling this thing off in one go. 

“You’re going to be okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Lance answers. “I think so.” 

His thoughts drift back to his conversation with Margaret a few days ago. It’s his name on the invite. He doesn’t really have a choice.

It’s pretty clear to him that he’s only been picked because of his past achievements with Voltron and not because of his (quite extensive) expertise as a diplomat. Yet it really only adds to the load on his shoulders that comes with following up on the invitation. Still taking credit for something that happened so many years ago, when he’d barely breached into adulthood, that he has so little recollection of, feels off. Feels wrong, almost.

No one had ever cared about that.

Ex-Paladin, Ex-Defender of the Universe.

It adds a certain amount of flair when he’s being passed around and introduced to influential people, shown off like a newly acquired plastic doll.

They’re going to ask what his favorite part of being a paladin was, and Lance won’t say that it wasn’t mostly fun and games – he’ll say his favorite part was doing an aerial silk routine on the Voltron Show, and that’ll get some laughs even out of the biggest hard-asses. 

Veronica looks like she’s going to say something, like offer to talk to his boss about it, or ask if Lance has talked to his boss already. Which, obviously, he has. 

“Is the Blade present?” Acxa asks instead, uncrossing her legs and slumping back into her chair. Sweat gathered at her temples rolls down in small droplets, clumping up the stray hair escaping her ponytail.

“Yup. Do you know who’s coming to join me in my unending suffering?”

She’s joined the ranks of the Blade’s leaders a few years back, but has since reduced her workload a bit, doing less footwork and more of the diplomatic cases. Asking her is probably a good idea, because Acxa knows her shit. 

“Not me,” she mutters. “Probably Kolivan. Although, he apparently broke his foot last time planet-side and has been less than helpful on any mission since then.”

“He’s been causing a fucking stink everywhere, if you ask me,” Veronica juts in. “I love that guy as much as the next one, but the last debrief with him was hell.”

Lance peels off the label. “That sounds fun.”

“He’s been very, uh, yell-y. I think it’s been stressing him out that he can’t really physically do much. It’s only two weeks of ordered rest and he’s already acting like he’s, like, two seconds away from exploding.”

“Yelling won’t help with that.”

“I’m sure he knows that. But honestly, for your sake, I hope he’s not the one coming to join you.”

“I have to agree,” Acxa says. “Keith is off-duty right now, so it could be Krolia, as well.”

The pricking sensation from his nails in the inside of his palm makes him jerk upright a bit – he hadn’t noticed that’d crumpled the label in his hand. 

“Krolia would be cool,” he mutters, trying to smooth out the paper with his unsteady fingers. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“She’s never been great at the diplomatic stuff though, you might have to cover her ass if she joins you,” Veronica remarks with a grin. “You’re gonna have to suck up to those guys extra hard to balance her out.”

Unexpectedly, Lance laughs. He watches Blue step out into the garden, nervously taking in the new surroundings. “Nothing better than that,” he says.

“Well, if anyone can do that, it’s you.”

He ends up staying past sunset, for lunch and for dinner, helping them in the garden, letting himself bask in the fuzzy feelings that come with being around his loved ones. So what if he’s going to be tired tomorrow? He doesn’t think he could bring himself to regret that.

The alternative would be sitting on his couch in his empty apartment, counting his fingers down from ten and back up again, jerking off a couple of times, maybe blasting himself with the sound of his TV and the radio at the same time so he doesn’t let his thoughts stray to where he doesn’t want them to go.

The warmth of the sun still lingers on his skin when he sets foot into his designated ship the next morning. It’s 5 AM, and the first streaks of orange light up what’s left of the night sky while Lance throws his bag into the bunk bed in the back of the ship.

Like all newer Earth-designed ships, it’s disgustingly sleek, without any space for whimsy or joy, really. Lance hates them. He hates the cold steel, he hates the bright white fluorescent lights, he hates how every room somehow manages to look like an airplane bathroom.

He waits until the last possible second to plop himself down in the pilot’s seat. The course has been charted for him already, and he swallows as he sees the 1 Day 14 Hours estimate until he arrives at his designation.

A shuddering breath spills from between his quivering lips. 

It’s fine, he tells himself.

He flicks a few switches and the engine roars to life. 

Tap tap tap, comes the sound of his foot against the floor.

His hands clench around the controls as he’s done it a million times before.

He swallows down the taste of copper in his mouth.

There’s no way to escape the feeling of his body being pressed back into the seat as he builds up enough momentum to leave Earth. Gravity is a wall of sheer force – the Earth doing everything in its power to keep him tied to its core. 

And Lance escapes, barely. 

His stomach feels like it’s about to drop into his legs, his bones feel compressed into a tightly sealed vacuum, his flesh pulled back by everything at once, the Earth’s greedy tendrils winding around his spine.

It’s a feeling like none other.

For one day and fourteen hours, Lance is restless. 

The bunk is a bit too small for him – he can’t stretch out without letting his feet hang into the hallway, so he mostly dozes off curled up in the cockpit, legs pulled up onto the leather of his seat.

He texts Shiro after receiving a picture of his kid on her first day of second grade, and he promises to meet them for dinner once this conference is over. 

He talks with Matt on the phone for a solid two hours, having made the mistake of asking about his latest project, sending him into a spiral of “oh, and…”.

He throws a bouncy ball to the ground and against the wall over and over again until it hits him smack-dab in the middle of his forehead and he gives up.

He reads the second half of the sci-fi novel he brought along and gives it a bad review. 

He doodles shitty sketches of frogs into the margins of his briefing that he barely read.

It’s pacing and it’s keeping himself occupied somehow. 

Only when the indigo, bright blue planet surrounded by rings larger than Saturn’s comes into view, Lance actually makes an effort to try and read the briefing. 

But the noise of his own thoughts coupled with the low rumble of the ship’s engine make the words seem to blend into each other, creating strings of letters that blur into muddled messes of color that make next to no sense at all. He throws the idea of reading it out of the airlock, and instead lets the robotic voice of his data pad sound it out for him.

Barely anything sticks, and it’s probably made harder by the fact that Lance is trying to get his uniform on at the same as he listens, jumping to pull his freshly pressed slacks over his thighs, fumbling with the clasps and buttons of the jacket across his chest. 

The tone of anthracite really does nothing for him, Lance thinks as he gives himself a once-over in the reflection in one of the windows. Not even the very nice fit of the jacket can fix this atrocity that’s specifically reserved for diplomats.

At the very least his ass looks fantastic.

Small mercies.

What Lance eventually gathers from the Exclusive Edition Boring Briefing Audiobook is that this planet’s leadership used to be at odds with the alliance. They used to make an actual effort to disrupt their trade routes and offer nothing but hostility to travelers who had to make stops in their system. That was until the Alliance had proposed a peace treaty. It held, shakily, but it stopped the planet’s offenses for a while.

Iylsed now has a new generation of leaders, a council of 12 people willing to work together to join with the alliance for good, putting their past behind them.

All of them will be present at the conference, and all of them apparently have wildly different ideas of what their new contract with the alliance needs. 

Lance slumps over, by now sitting in his chair again, letting his forehead rest against the data pad.

This is going to be great.

The first thing he notices when he touches down in the capital city’s port and steps out of his ship is that the gravity is a little lighter than it is on Earth. It’s heaven for his knees and his spine, a much needed reprieve from carrying around his own weight. 

On the flip side, it’s a steady reminder that he’s not home anymore.

Once he pays his fee, he’s greeted by two weirdly humanoid guards with cyan skin and large antler-like growths on the top of their heads. Their eyes lack irises, instead their entire eyes are a deep dark blue with a slitted, barely-visible pupil in the middle. Both of them, more worryingly, hold large spears in their hands. 

Lance bows to greet them and they tap their spears to the ground in return.

The capital city is futuristic as hell, Lance notes. With buildings tall enough to pierce the sky, built as organic shapes winding up and up, interconnected with one another through bridges and tunnels and thick ropes of immovable metal. Trees shield against the sun that shines bright from its spot between the planet’s visible rings. Their leaves look thick and spongy, and less surprisingly, given what the planet looks like from space, blue. Every free space that’s not occupied by pathways or buildings or market stands is filled up by those sponge-like trees. 

There’s something new to discover around every corner. Be it a new shape of building, a plant unlike anything he’s ever seen before, Iylsedins with colorful beads decorating their antlers. It makes the way to the conference building a lot more interesting and a lot less nerve-wracking than Lance had thought it to be.

He’s shown to his room and instructed to go to the top floor in thirty minutes to attend the introductory ceremony. 

The room is shaped vaguely organically, not unlike the building itself, with no hard edges, furniture built to accommodate for the rounded floors and walls. It has a round window on the south side, facing the rather large bed, giving Lance a stunning view out into the city. 

Right now, he thinks he’ll be able to get through these four weeks just fine. Probably.

Getting settled into his room takes some time, and he’s nearly sprinting towards the elevators and then again to get to the boardroom on time. 

It’s oval-shaped, made complete by a large round table in the middle with at least 24 seats around it. The eastern side of the room is a singular window pane that lets the light stream in.

He’s one of the last few to arrive, and he’s glad to see some familiar faces around, although they’re mostly people he’s seen through a holo screen during the past years. 

New Altea has sent someone he hasn’t seen yet, a woman with dark skin, purple marks and shining black hair, maybe a couple of years older than Lance by Human standards. He only gives her a small nod and a smile as he finds his way to the spot marked with his name.

He perks up when he sees that the empty spot next to his is marked for Kolivan, but as he looks for his gigantic purple sorta-apprehensive-friend, he can’t seem to find him.

The minutes tick by as everyone finds their places, and the seat next to Lance stays empty.

He finds himself getting fidgety. Finds himself wondering if something happened to Kolivan.

One of the twelve new Iylsedin leaders stands then, dressed in a bright sun-yellow, clasping her hands in front of her chest as she warmly welcomes all of them and thanks them for their time.

Her tone is much less threatening than it initially sounded in the invitation and Lance can’t help but breathe out a little sigh of relief at that.

He listens as he arranges the needed files in his data pad according to her advice. It’s all pretty standard up until now.

She repeats what was said in the briefing for the first twenty minutes, which makes Lance feel significantly less bad for barely listening back on his ship. He’s making up for it now. He’s even nodding very attentively. Holding eye-contact. All that jazz. Never let anyone say he’s bad at his job.

Then she explains the informative meetings and exploration trips (whatever the hell that is going to be) will be held in small groups while the negotiations will take place with everyone present. They are going to try to accommodate to the different day-night cycles on everyone’s home worlds, but cannot promise that everything will work out quite as smoothly. As some of them come from planets that have days as short as 24 hours, from folks that are strictly nocturnal, from some that do not sleep for months at a time, it’s going to get complicated at times.

Everything will be spaced out with plenty of downtime to replenish and get needed rest, but everyone’s presence is important, and that will have to take priority.

Lance furrows his brows as he looks over his planned schedule for the next week. He’s definitely gonna have to sacrifice some sleep here. Yikes.

The first hour flies by. 

Lance’s posture has gone from somewhat respectable to bad to worse, and his attention span is slowly but surely reaching its breaking point, when the door in the back of the room slides open. 

Blue and gray and black. Long, dark hair. A familiar set of eyes. The same faded scar carved along his cheek.

Lance jerks upright, nearly jumping out of his chair.

“I’m filling in for Kolivan.”

The words strike right through Lance’s sternum. And he didn’t even have his defenses up. He didn’t have time to prepare. 

Although somewhere deep down, he knows that no time in the world could’ve prepared him for seeing Keith again.

“He was needed for an emergency in–”

The words die on Keith’s tongue as his eyes meet Lance’s.

Silence stretches inside of the room, everyone expectantly looking at Keith to finish his sentence. 

Lance’s hands curl into tight fists under the table as he desperately wills himself to relax. But how can he, when Keith’s eyes harden, and his lips press into a thin line, his jaw working as he clenches his teeth? How can he, when that feels like another hit right where it hurts?

It’s fine.

“Sorry,” Keith finally says, unsticking his gaze from Lance’s sitting form. He bows toward the twelve leaders. “Kolivan got caught up in an emergency call and I will be filling in for him. I’m representing the Blade of Marmora in his stead.”

Lance is struggling to wrap his head around those words.

“What is your name, Blade?” the Iylsedin dressed in yellow asks.

“Kogane.”

“Very well, please take your seat.” She gestures to the open spot next to Lance, where the sign now displays KOGANE instead of KOLIVAN.

Keith follows her direction, nodding solemnly.

Lance doesn’t look at him when he sits down. 

It’s fine. It’s just Keith.

—21.12, Earth, Cuba

“You’re crazy,” Keith mutters as he closes the door to Lance’s childhood bedroom after making it inside, but the growing smile on his face betrays him. His cheeks are painted in a deep red from the wine he’s had, and Lance’s heart beats so much faster in his chest at the sight of that. It might jump out of his chest and run right over to Keith, really. And that would just be embarrassing as hell. “This is the third time tonight we’ve both used the bathroom excuse at the same time.”

Lance leans back onto his elbows, a smug half-tilt tugging at his lips. “Forgive me for wanting to spend some time with my boyfriend.”

“There’s no way we’re getting out of this unnoticed.”

“They’re all way too busy trying to keep up with my family to even think about us,” Lance answers, making grabby hands at Keith. 

With only a little bit of an eye-roll, Keith comes closer, joining Lance on his old bed, the frame creaking as he sits down next to him. “And when they go to use the bathroom only to see that not one of the two is occupied?”

“Baby,” Lance coos, moving to straddle Keith’s hips, climbing into his lap and softly brushing the hair out of his face. “You’re overthinking this.”

The bed creaks again, damningly loud. 

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are,” he says. “If someone asks I’ll just say I was showing you something.”

Keith’s eyes glow like gold-stricken amber in the soft light of the bedside lamp. It nearly catches Lance off guard. Only nearly.

The rum in his system softens the edges of surprise, lets the inklings of love bleed into him instead. He hasn’t said it yet, but fuck, does it sit on the tip of his tongue.

“Like that’s less suspicious.”

“It is, definitely.” Lance presses a kiss into Keith’s hairline so he doesn’t let himself slip up. “I would believe me.”

Keith’s gloved hands land on Lance’s hips, squeezing at his sides. “I don’t think anyone else would.”

“They’re not master detectives hellbent on figuring us out, you know?”

“Lance…”

“Let them find out. Whatever. Shiro won’t give a fuck if we’re boning.”

Lance lets his own hands trace over Keith’s forearms, fingers slowly dragging over soft dark hair and scar tissue and skin and muscle and just, Keith. He lets himself have this, at least. Because he can.

“You’re so–”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t stand you.”

“Good, because I can’t stand you either.”

He doesn’t even overthink it as he leans forward to kiss Keith, slowly and softly and still holding on to him. And Keith responds by sliding Lance’s shirt up, just the tiniest bit, which Lance shuts down almost immediately. 

“Now that would actually be suspicious,” he whispers into Keith’s mouth.

Keith sighs, contenting himself by cupping Lance’s jaw instead, fingers curling into his hair, thumbs brushing over the Altean markings on his cheeks.

It makes Lance feel giggly and fucking high above it all, his whole world reducing down to where Keith’s lips meet his own, to every single point of contact between them. 

He feels fucking incandescent.

Sometime later, the noise outside of the room picks up, loud laughter and voices coming from the living room underneath them. Time had passed so seamlessly, imperceptibly, so fast that they hadn’t noticed it at all.

Lance pulls back, blinking, willing the room to stop spinning, focusing his gaze on Keith’s kiss-bitten lips. He squints, as if that would make hearing what’s being said easier.

And maybe it does, because Keith’s eyes widen as the sound gets louder. 

“Motherfucker,” he curses. “That’s the countdown.”

Lance scrambles. “Shit.”

They’re by the door in less than ten seconds. 

Lance has his hand on the handle. “How does my hair look?” he asks. “Did you mess it up?”

Keith blinks. “Not– Uh. Could be worse.”

Lance tries to smooth it out with one hand. “Asshole,” he says and pushes the door open.

“3…2…”

They just need to get down the stairs and around the corner and act as if they’ve been there the whole time. Easy as pie.

“Hey, Lance?” 

But Keith has other plans, apparently.

The clock strikes midnight and Keith pushes Lance against the wall, knocking an old picture of whatever the fuck down in the process.

His hand fists into the cotton of Lance’s shirt, and he surges forward for what must be the most desperate kiss that Lance has had yet in the three months they’ve been together. Lance gasps into the space between them, letting Keith hold his weight, listening to the noise surrounding them explode into deafening cheers. 

The kiss is almost frenzied, lips crashing against each other over and over, teeth dragging across flesh, the feeling of Keith’s tongue soothing over it right after. Lance tries hard to not make any sounds, but it borders on being impossible. The whine that escapes him as Keith presses him harder into the wall really just slipped out. But Keith shuts him up again right after. 

It’s all Keith and it’s possibly the happiest Lance been in years.

Keith untangles himself first, pressing his forehead against Lance’s. Breathing in where Lance is breathing out. 

“Happy new year,” he says.

Lance laughs, bright and open. “Happy new year to you, too.”

When they arrive downstairs a minute too late, no one really notices with the exception of Hunk, who pulls Lance into a bone-crushing hug almost immediately.

“You missed it, buddy! Happy new year!” he exclaims, easily lifting Lance off of his feet.

Lance grins. “You too, man,” he says as he gets set down again, slinging his arm around Hunk’s shoulder. “I think I had too much to drink.”

Hunk looks at him, a sliver of worry in his eyes. “You okay now?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Ugh, no wonder you look like that,” he says as he catches sight of Lance’s hair. He reaches out to fix it, rather clumsily trying to untangle his messy curls. “Next time you tell me, alright?”

“Dude,” Lance says. “I swear it was super-duper okay. Keith took care of me.”

“Keith?” Hunk asks, immediately giving up his quest to fix Lance’s hair. “Guess we’re lucky he didn’t try to drown you in the toilet.”

Keith meets his eyes from across the room, his face blushing bright red, his cheek squished by Lance’s mother pressing a wet kiss to it.

Lance smiles – it’s on his face before he can even think about it. 

“Keith can be really nice when he wants to be,” he says.

“I should’ve recorded that,” Hunk answers with a snort. “Keith will never believe me if I tell him you said that.”

“Better keep it secret then,” he jokes and finally tears his eyes away from Keith to look back at his best friend. “Come on, didn’t Shiro say he brought tequila?”

“Oh, no, you are not getting your drunk little hands on that!”

But Lance is already untangling himself, moving into the crowd and navigating toward Shiro’s ugly Garrison-issued travel bag. “Yo! Matt, Pidge, Keith!” he hollers over the noise through his hands cupped around his mouth. “Tequila!”

Hunk follows hot on his heels.

And if Lance’s hand brushes Keith’s a couple times too many while they stand gathered outside, watching the moon move across the sky, laughing and screaming with energy, passing drinks around, no one points it out to them.

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

Lance dips the very second the introductory ceremony concludes. The traditional Iylsedin piece of music stops, and Lance is getting the fuck out of there.

He doesn’t even linger for a second. Just grabs his things and makes a run for it right back down to his room. 

When his door finally closes behind him, Lance’s chest is heaving with ragged breaths.

What the fuck is Keith doing here?

It’s one thing to see him once every year, having exactly 364 days to prepare in advance, but it’s a whole other thing to have him show up here, and to be stuck here alongside him for the next four fucking weeks.

It’s, above all, not fucking fair.

Because he knows Keith doesn’t want to see him, and he’s probably still furious over what happened years ago, and he definitely didn’t think Lance would be here either, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

Every breath is a glass shard to his lungs. Every inhale an old wound that’s begging not be reopened.

He digs the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids. Inhales and holds it. 

Inhales again. 

Again. 

He’s not breathing out.

His lungs expand, pushing against his ribs, straining bones to their limits, and Lance thinks he’s going to start crying. 

He thinks it for just a moment, one that feels too heavy and overwhelming for something that should be so simple. 

It’s just Keith. 

It’s just Keith, and they have both proven over and over that they can be civil around each other. They can be amicable, even. As long as they stay out of each other’s way. 

And maybe that’s exactly what he has to do here. That’s the game to play. 

1. Stay as far away as humanly possible from Keith. 
2. Do not talk to Keith. 
3. Preferably, but this is optional, do not even look at Keith. 

He finds himself wanting to text someone about this. Wanting to call someone. Actually, most definitely Hunk, because he’d know exactly what to do. 

But Lance can vividly imagine how that conversation would go. He would say, “Keith’s here!” and Hunk would say, “okay? Tell him I said hi!”, because no one ever fucking knew. Because somehow, no one had ever found out, and both Lance and Keith had kept their mouths tightly shut about it. 

All everyone knows is that they went from strained rivals to barely even friends to two people who can’t be in a room with each other without starting a fight. They all know something happened, but never really what had caused it. 

He told himself it was easier that way. 

Now, he’s coming to regret it. 

But hey, that’s more than ten years too late. 

Before the next meeting starts, he makes his way down to the building’s mess hall, hoping to find something edible in there. 

Easier said than done, when a lot of the food is either the awful Altean goo that kicks Lance’s sensory issues into overdrive these days, or something that looks more watery than the worst of soups. 

He settles for a bowl of grains with something green on top, and finds himself a place to sit. 

Alone, preferably. He doesn’t know if he’s in the mood to talk right now, even if it were someone he knows well. Maybe after he’s had some sleep, he’ll be right back to the old Lance. Maybe then he’ll be a little less tense, a little less on edge. 

The quiet corner he found doesn’t stay quiet for long. Of course it doesn’t. 

“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” says a voice from above, and then there’s someone sitting in front of him. 

The Altean diplomat from earlier introduces herself as Sahirya, shaking his hand with an almost shy smile on her lips. 

She asks about him, about his role on Earth, which he answers politely, smiling at her jokes, trying to not make her feel like she’s talking to a wall. 

Soon, though, he notices the changes in her posture, the way she’s leaning in, the way she’s blushing just a little more at what he says, the way the eye contact seems more intense. And Lance can feel it going into a different direction. 

Especially when she says, “I couldn’t really help but notice your marks. You’re special, huh? They suit you, I think.”

And if there’s one thing that Lance loves, it’s a woman who’s direct with him. 

Just– Just not right now. 

“I’m–” The same age old sentence threatens to spill from his lips. 

“I’m engaged,” is what the memory foam he’s made of wants him to say. 

But he’s not. Not anymore. 

Hasn’t been for almost a full year now. 

Sometimes he still thinks he can see the tan line of his ring, even though it’s been burnt over by countless hours in the sun. There’s not even a ghost of it left. 

He briefly wonders if she still goes through the same thing. If she also starts, and halts herself. 

“I’m not really looking to uh– You know,” he says, and it comes out a little harsher than he wanted it to. “But I’d love to get to know you better.”

Sahirya smiles, not a trace of disdain on her features. “It’s all good, Lance,” she answers. “Thought I’d give it a shot.”

And that’s pretty nice to hear, actually. “I’m glad you did.” Lance smiles back at her. “Which group are you in, by the way?”

They find out their schedule looks almost identical for the most part, which means that Lance won’t have to worry too much about feeling out of place. She asks if Lance has any plans for his free time tonight, and when Lance says that he’s planning on sleeping, she genuinely laughs at that. 

Sahirya loosely invites him to join her for some deeply platonic drinks tonight, and the corners of Lance’s lips tug up even more when he accepts that invitation. 

With the promise of drinks on the horizon, Lance makes it through the next meeting – an overview of potential trading offers – without too much trouble. He doesn’t even lift his head when Keith walks in. Or when Keith sits down on the designated chair next to him. Or when Keith taps his fingers against his own thigh. 

Tap tap tap. 

Lance doesn’t let it distract him. 

He nods, listens and takes notes and he really feels a little bit like he’s back at university. 

Once that’s done (only one hour longer than scheduled! Wow!), he goes back to his room to get dressed. The scratchy uniform comes off, and Lance stuffs it into the laundry chute. He hopes it works like it did back on the castle, otherwise he’s gonna have to show up in his civilian clothes tomorrow, and that would probably not be seen as something positive. 

Could he call someone and ask? Probably! Is he insane? Absolutely not. 

So he won’t call. And he’ll just hope it’ll get back to him on time. 

He changes into his favorite black jeans and the nice blue linen shirt that he loves so much and he feels like he’s ready to take on the world. It makes even the artificial gravity feel a little less off.

He pockets his phone, takes a deep breath, gives his curls a last little tug, absentmindedly noting that he should probably get his undercut shaved again sometime soon if he wants this thing to keep looking good, and pushes the button next to the door to open it.

As he leaves the room, he turns his head to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything important, when a heavy weight slams into his side – catching him by surprise and sending him stumbling against the open doorframe.

“Watch i–” comes a too familiar voice, trailing off at the last second. “Fuck. Hi, Lance.”

Lance steadies his weight on the wall next to him, taking a moment to gather himself even if just to spite Keith. He lets his gaze drag upwards, slowly, taking in the beat-up jeans and horribly old boots, the dark brown leather jacket that is in desperate need of some love, and the braid that’s already sporting a few early grays in there. 

Fun fact: Lance hasn’t been this close to Keith in seven very solid years.

Fun fact: it’s not very fun, is it?

Because just the sight of those few gray strands makes something ugly and deep-seated crawl up from his stomach into his throat. Something overwhelming and all-consuming and unfair. Something he’d rather shove away, something he’d rather dispose of in one of those nuclear waste barrels, seal that shit up as tightly as humanly possible, and bury it so far down in the earth that he can feel the heat of its core on his skin as he digs with his hands and nails.

Lance doesn’t meet Keith’s eyes. Focuses on the uneven bridge of Keith’s nose instead.

If he were younger, still in his early twenties, where being a petty asshole was something he did with pride, he’d say “oh, Keith, buddy! Didn’t even notice you were here!”. But that’s a distant memory of who he once was. And he’s– He doesn’t want to–

He tells himself he doesn’t want to fight with Keith here. Ignores the simmering urge underneath his skin.

So, instead, he just says, “hey,” like a complete fucking idiot.

“Sorry, I–” Keith clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t think anyone else was on this floor.”

Lance laughs. It’s a not a good laugh, nor one that’s particularly convincing. It’s hoarse and too high in pitch and it seems to cause Keith damn near actual physical pain. 

“Uh, yup,” he says, trying to not let the near-lethal amount of adrenaline in his system affect him too much. His hands feel like they’re shaking. He doesn’t know if they are. “That’s my room right here.” He doesn’t dare to look.

“Ah,” Keith answers. As noncommittally as it gets. He jerks his shoulder towards the room right next to Lance’s. “That one’s mine.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s–” God, Lance needs to get a fucking grip. “Cool. Super coolio.”

Keith’s brows furrow. “I guess.”

Unfortunately, Lance has always had a knack for getting verbal fucking diarrhea when things got too uncomfortable. And this is pretty high up on his personal uncomfy-list.

He feels it coming on, and he really doesn’t know what to do to stop it.

“Almost like on the castle, huh?”

Oh, man.

Keith blanches. The color honest to god drains from his cheeks. 

“Sure,” he says flatly. “I’m gonna, uh–” He gestures to the staircase behind Lance.

Lance raises his hands, a lackluster gesture of ‘sorry’, and moves to the side. “Yeah, I’m kinda late to drinks, so…” He lets the sentence linger for a second too long.

Keith halts, barely half a step taken. He looks at Lance, eyes searching for something, anything. Lance doesn’t know if he finds it. 

He doesn’t know if Keith had ever found it.

Probably not.

“Ah.” Keith finally frees Lance from the shackles of his stupidly intense eyes and walks down the hallway. “Enjoy your drinks,” he calls over his shoulder.

Lance turns away without saying anything, hellbent on reaching the elevator on the other end of the hallway before Keith reaches the staircase on his end. 

It’s not until the elevator doors slide shut behind him that Lance lets himself unclench his jaw.

This was not just the closest, but also the longest and probably most awkward encounter he’s had with Keith in nearly a decade. 

And with just that little interaction, he’d failed every single point on his list from earlier.

And now he knows that Keith has gray hairs and that he still wears the same shitty boots he wore when they were together, and that they have their rooms right next to each other. Because of course they do.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

And when he looks down at his hands, they’re shaking.

Chapter Text

—22.02, Earth, Arizona

Morning fucking glory. 

Keith looks like a goddamn celestial being in the baby blue silk sheets. Naked and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Lance’s tan, freckle-covered hands are planted firmly on his gorgeous chest as he lifts his weight up before sinking right back down onto Keith, drawing a too loud moan out of him. 

The morning light streams inside through the open window above the bed, swathing him in gold and sunshine. 

While the open window is nice, Keith really needs to quiet down a little if he doesn’t want Lance’s new neighbors to hate them. 

But Keith is close, and Lance can tell, and maybe Lance doesn’t really give a fuck what his neighbors think. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that Keith doesn’t care, either. 

Lance grinds his hips down harder, faster, breaths turning ragged as he tries his best to have his already tired out body give its all. 

It doesn’t help that he’s oversensitive, every upward thrust of Keith’s hips driving him to where it’s almost more pain than pleasure, but he grits his teeth, ignores the way his thighs burn and shake, and goes to fucking town on his boyfriend. 

Keith’s fingers hold on tightly to Lance’s hips, calloused tips fisted into the hem of the shirt that Lance had slept in. It keeps slipping down his shoulders and Lance keeps pulling it back up, refusing to expose too much of himself. 

It hurts now where Keith’s hands grip onto him, bruising him in the process, and Lance loves, loves, loves it. He lifts himself up slightly, letting Keith control the pace now, meeting him halfway for every harsh snap of his hips. 

And he can finally let his thumbs glide over Keith’s now healed pierced nipples, so he does just that, getting the immediate reaction that he wanted out of it. 

He might know Keith’s body better than his own at this point. 

“Fuck, Lance,” Keith gasps, letting his head fall back onto the pillow, tilting his chin up, losing himself to the sensation. He stutters in his rhythm, almost slowing down as if trying to hold himself back. “I’m gonna come. Fuck. Lance, Baby, please can I–?”

And who is Lance to deny Keith anything? Especially like this. 

“Please?”

And that’s. Uh-huh. 

Lance smiles and rocks his hips down against Keith’s. “Yeah,” he says, the word barely more than a gasp. “Inside.”

Keith doesn’t waste a second chasing his bliss as he buries himself inside of Lance to the hilt, and just lets go. 

Lance shudders as Keith spills inside of him, hot and slick and heavy and he’s chanting Lance’s name like a prayer, over and over and over. It might be Lance’s favorite sound in the world. 

He slumps forward against Keith’s chest, not quite yet bothering to separate himself from his boyfriend, ignoring the sticky feeling of his own drying come on his shirt that’s now pretty much gluing the two of them together. 

It should be gross. 

Scratch that, it is gross. But Lance can’t bring himself to care too much. 

Keith’s chest is warm against Lance’s cheek and Keith’s hands find their way into Lance’s hair, fingers playing with the individual strands, twirling around his curls, tugging, scratching against his scalp. 

Lance lets his eyes flutter shut, reveling in the feeling, inhaling Keith’s scent. His right hand draws patterns into Keith’s skin. Hearts and suns and swirls. Maybe he draws a dick or two. Keith doesn’t notice. 

It’s so nice, almost serene like this. He can’t help but wish every day could start like this. That he could wake up every morning next to his boyfriend, and Lance could get so close that all he can feel and taste and smell and touch and hear and see is Keith, and that he doesn’t have to think about what’s going to happen next, or whatever has happened before. 

That it could just be them, transcendent and all-encompassing. Just them. In love. 

Keith murmurs something, and it’s enough to make Lance notice that he’s been drifting off. “Huh?”

He lifts his head, blinking, watching Keith’s hand move by his forehead somewhere, twisting another curl around his finger. 

“You’re so fucking perfect,” Keith says, his voice kept so, so low, so, so reverent. 

The words take a moment to process, but when they do, they feel less like the loving compliment that they are, and much more like something held over his head that he can’t reach – an expectation to live up to. 

An expectation Lance could never fulfill. Not in a million lifetimes. Not for Keith. 

He doesn’t answer, swallows everything that’s tightening up in his throat.

Pushing himself upward, he finally separates himself from Keith, cringing at the feeling of being left empty. 

“Wanna shower together?” Keith asks as Lance flops down next to him onto his stomach. He’s trying not to make too much of a mess, although it’s way too late for that already. 

Lance tenses, somewhere underneath his skin, and only shakes his head. 

He doesn’t blame Keith for still trying, of course he doesn’t. 

But Lance doesn’t lift his shirt over his head until he’s in the bathroom, and he barely spares himself a glance in the mirror before he steps into the shower. 

He turns it on, doesn’t wait for the water to heat up, and winces when it hits his skin. 

Time passes too fast in the shower. Much too fast. 

The water keeps rolling down his body in rivulets, catching on hair and muscle and gnarled scar tissue, moving past the remnants of a lightning strike along his spine. 

Perhaps the movement of the water is too fluid to happen to him in real time, too sped up, and maybe Lance hasn’t been standing in here for minutes, but for hours, days, years. 

Because when he steps out of the shower, gets dressed in boxers and a new shirt, and then walks down the hallway to join Keith for breakfast, he finds the table half set, and a hastily packed bag by the door. 

“Are you–” 

“I’m sorry,” Keith interrupts. “There’s been an emergency distress call, and they need me to come in.”

Lance’s stomach sinks. It’s not the first time this happened, and he knows it won’t be the last. Keith is important for the Blades. He won’t stand in Keith’s way. 

Keeping Keith shackled to the Earth would be a disservice to him – a punishment, almost. 

But still, it’s hard to let him go each time. 

“How long will you be gone?” Lance asks. 

Keith’s face falls, features twisting. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth as he hesitates before finally answering. “Kolivan said three, four months, maybe? He’s not sure how bad the situation really is.”

And the unease brewing in Lance’s gut triples in size. Something about it is making him feel sick, and he doesn’t know if he can hide it from showing on his face. 

It’s evident he doesn’t, because while he doesn’t answer, still processing, Keith rounds the kitchen table between them, crowding into Lance’s space. 

His hands sneak around his sides, landing on his back, and he buries his face in Lance’s neck, pressing soft kisses against the sensitive skin there. 

“That’s long,” Lance manages to bring out past the lump in his throat. 

Keith presses another kiss to the underside of Lance’s jaw. “I know,” he answers, curling his fingers into the fabric of the shirt Lance is wearing, pushing himself even closer. 

The sting of distance fades quickly with how Keith’s touching him. His skin is still feeling much too sensitive from earlier and now Keith is turning it against him. 

Maybe not really, but Lance lets him do it, lets Keith shove him against the kitchen counter. 

Keith’s thigh settles between Lance’s legs, making itself right at home there, pressing up against Lance’s boxers and drawing a hiss from him. The friction sends bright sparks down his spine. It’s too much too early, but Lance chases it down with trembling rolls of his hips nonetheless. 

“The flight there alone is two weeks long.” Keith’s hands wander downward, reaching around to cup Lance’s ass – to pull him in, essentially making him grind harder against Keith’s thigh. 

Lance whines. “Can’t they ask someone who’s closer?” His voice is already in shambles – shaky and bordering on desperation.

“I’m the closest they could get their hands on,” Keith says between more open-mouthed kisses across Lance’s neck. And then, the friction gets nearly unbearable where Keith is pressing up against him. Lance’s hips stutter as his head falls forward, landing at the junction of Keith’s neck, trying to suppress any noises spilling from his lips. It feels so good and he needs Keith to keep going while he squirms away from it, already surpassed the edge of too much. 

His own hands land on Keith’s bicep, squeezing tightly, the feeling of muscle moving underneath his skin addicting. He holds on even tighter, as if it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to Keith. 

“Wish it didn’t have to be you,” he gasps. 

But then Keith pulls his thigh back, and Lance nearly cries out in protest. Tears gather in his eyes and he’s not sure if it’s from how very oversensitive his body is or because Keith’s leaving again. 

“I think they’ll let me take a datapad this time,” Keith says instead of answering properly, both hands dipping past the waistband of Lance’s boxers, pulling it down at an agonizingly slow speed. “So we can talk.”

Lance’s breath hitches as Keith finally frees him, wrapping one of his stupidly skilled hands around the half-hard erection he’s sporting.

“It won’t feel that long, promise,” Keith whispers, his breath hot against Lance’s neck. “I’ll make sure it won’t.”

He bites down a sigh, ignoring the urge to tell Keith that four months is almost as long as they’ve been together. Or that the last time Keith was gone for a month, Lance thought he was gonna lose his mind – because Keith was out there; and Lance wasn’t. 

He doesn’t voice any of that. Instead, he watches Keith sink to his knees in front of him. Instead, he winds his fingers into Keith’s hair. Instead, he fucks Keith’s mouth. 

And that’s all he’ll get for the next four months. 

When Keith kisses him after, he tastes himself. 

Lance walks him to the hangar where Keith keeps his ship while he’s staying with him. Keith gets his permission to lift off on a little printed piece of paper that got stamped with bold lettering reading ‘ACCEPT’.

While Keith gets his bags stored away, Lance waits outside until he finishes, kicking at rocks in the dirt, biding his time, thinking about anything but not seeing Keith for four months. It’s not easy, because it’s all that his thoughts seem to want to drift back to. 

He watches a blue dragonfly settle on one of the hinges holding the ship’s malfunctioning ramp open. 

Five minutes have passed when Keith finally steps back outside. The look encompassing his features is almost painful to look at. 

Keith tries for a smile then, moving closer to Lance. He jumps off of the ramp into the red dirt, dust coating the soles of his boots. 

The kiss they share is too short, and in no way enough to make up for four months without any. Lance hooks his pinky through one of the belt loops of Keith’s jeans. He finds he doesn’t really want to let go just yet. 

When Keith steps away, Lance just pulls him back, one, two, three times. He couldn’t let go even if he wanted to. He’s bound to Keith. 

The third time Keith cups Lance’s jaw with his gloved hands, just holding him for a moment.

He looks intently at Lance’s face, as if to take him in, to memorize every little thing, every freckle, every line, every small scar. Lance does the same in return, his dark eyes, the tiny collection of moles scattered across his face, the single gray hair that somehow always grows back in his bangs. He takes in the way Keith’s lips part, showing off his chipped left incisor, and he holds on to the leather of Keith’s jacket for dear life. 

“I love you,” he says, and maybe that’s enough to make Keith stay. 

Keith’s eyes nearly sparkle, but it’s still dimmed by the crushing threat of distance between them. 

“Good,” he breathes. “I love you too.”

It’s not enough. It couldn’t be, and Keith wouldn’t allow it either. 

And that’s the last thing Keith says before he leaves, pulling himself back onto the ramp. The movement is enough to scare off the little dragonfly that Lance had been watching earlier, and it flies away out of the hangar. At least he hopes that’s where it’s going. 

Lance doesn’t cross the threshold. His feet stay firmly planted in the red dirt. 

Alone.

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

“It’s like he’s everywhere, Vee, literally.”

Veronica laughs, and Lance is pretty sure he can hear Acxa snorting off-screen. 

It takes exactly three days for Lance to realise that there’s a problem and to realise exactly why that problem is happening. 

He and Keith are the only two people in this conference building who run on a 24-hour day and night cycle. 

Well, Keith’s on the Blade’s 26-hour cycle, but it’s close enough. 

It’s so close that wherever Lance shows up, Keith shows up, too. 

And it’s already scratching at his self-imposed resolve of not wanting to fight with Keith while he’s here. 

“I swear! Like, I’m at the gym, he’s at the gym. I’m getting breakfast, he’s getting breakfast. I’m getting coffee, he’s there, at the same time, getting tea and soup! Tea and soup, Veronica! That’s way too many liquids for breakfast! It’s annoying!”

“If it’s so annoying, why do you know what he’s getting for breakfast, huh?” his sister asks, and Lance does not like what she’s insinuating here. 

He squawks. “Ever heard of knowing thy enemy? Of course I’m scoping him out!”

She doesn’t need to know that he’s intimately familiar with the fact that Keith doesn’t like the taste of coffee except for when Lance makes it in his old, banged-up french press, and that he always goes for black tea if he can find it. And well, Keith just really likes a good soup.

“Okay, keep telling yourself that,” she says, shrugging. 

It’s night where she is, Lance realises. She’s leaning against the headboard of her bed, blanket pulled up to her stomach, the book she was probably reading before Lance called her laying at her side. 

Being on a different planet than her but still being able to talk is weird. It being the ass-crack of morning for him is weird when the sun isn’t setting for another three of his Earth-days and it’s entirely too bright in his room.

“It’s true. Like, I’m trying to get a hold of his routine so I can work around him!”

“Or you could just talk to him, like a normal person,” Veronica supplies. 

“Right,” Lance says, “or not.”

His sister rolls her eyes, and it’s uncool to see a face that looks so similar to his own do that to him. “Okay. Then, quite frankly, you guys should maybe just fuck about it.”

Lance chokes on his spit. Between coughs he can hear Acxa saying, “yes. I’d agree.”

“What the hell?” he gasps. Coughs one more time. “That’s your coworker, Acxa!”

She leans into the frame, raising an eyebrow. “He’s my friend first. I’m just agreeing with Veronica.”

When the hell did they become actual friends?

Probably in the last seven years that Lance has refused to talk to Keith. Maybe. 

And honestly, he usually doesn’t talk to Veronica about his Keith related problems if Acxa is there for the simple fact that it’s embarrassing as hell, but he doesn’t really have the choice right now. The alternative is to fucking explode, so that’s not really great either. And that’s also gonna be horrible for the cleaners afterwards.

“Are you relaying any of this to him? Are you spying on me?” he asks, getting real close to his phone screen. 

“Maybe it’s all Keith and I talk about.”

That earns her a slap on the arm from her wife. “That’s not true,” she says to Lance. “Acxa’s being an asshole.”

“I gathered that,” Lance answers, glaring at the traitor in question. 

“Look, Lance. I’m just saying: there’s obviously some tension between you guys.” She moves her hands to the left. “And you haven’t really been on the market for a while.” She moves her hands to the right. “Maybe you two just need to get it out of your system.”

Lance pulls a face. He wants to say, “we’ve tried getting it out of our system before.” He wants to say it so badly that the very making of his being starts to feel unstable. He wants no one to ever insinuate anything about them ever again. But he keeps it to himself, honoring the dumb promise him and Keith made over a decade ago. “Yeah, sure. As long as you don’t ever accuse me of not getting any again.”

“Well,” Veronica says, stupid smug grin wide on her face, “never said that, but if the shoe fits.”

“I’m going to crawl through the screen and actually kill you,” Lance threatens, pointing a finger at the camera. “I hate you.”

“Go right ahead, but before you do that, either talk to Keith or have sex with him. Up to you.”

“Oh man, Vee, it’s been so nice talking to you, but my calendar is sooooo full all of a sudden, you wouldn’t even believe it,” Lance says then, scratching some nonexistent dirt off of the camera. “Like, I really gotta go, like, ten minutes ago.”

Veronica crosses her arms in front of her chest. “That’s how you wanna play it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance defends. “But, oh man, they’re gonna kick my door down if I don’t get upstairs now.”

“Just tal–”

“Oh, god, they’re already on it! I think they brought a battering ram!”

He’s already reaching for the end call button, but Veronica still gets in a “love you, bye! Talk to Keith!” somehow. 

In the stretching, overbearing silence that’s falling across his room now, Lance stares at his reflection in the dark phone screen in front of him. 

He’s not even going to entertain the train of thought that’s barrelling towards the very forefront of his mind. He’s not going to. 

They’ve tried this. They’ve tried. And it didn’t do jack shit. All it did was make things more complicated. 

So, maybe, Lance thinks as he clenches his hands into tight fists, they just have to talk. Like mature adults. That’s possible. Surely, that must be possible. 

He gets his uniform from his closet, peels off the sweaty, ratty outfit he’d slept in, and goes to the bathroom to take his cocktail of daily meds. They’re arranged in a tacky plastic case that his twin sister Rachel had gotten him from the dollar store after he’d forgotten to take them four days in a row and had to suffer the consequences of that afterwards. 

He goes through the steps of his skincare routine, slathering his skin with a generous helping of everything, as if that could smother all the things he wants to say to Keith, keeping them sealed underneath his skin barrier. 

When he gets to the mess hall half an hour later, Keith’s already there. He looks up when Lance walks in, watches him for just a moment, and then returns his attention to his breakfast. Insufferable. 

There are a few other people scattered sparsely across the room, primarily Iylsedin guards who just got off their shift. Lance still hasn’t really figured out how that works, but apparently they don’t need to sleep for more than five hours during one of their days. Which is five hours in two weeks. It’s hard to wrap his mind around it because it would quite literally kill a human being. 

He hums as he stands in front of the menu that has finally changed since he got here for the third time this trip. 

Most of this stuff isn’t edible to him, but they did apparently expand their menu for the diplomats coming to visit. Maybe someone finally complained about the lack of options that didn’t involve food goo. He recognises some Galran food, some Altean food, Driyan and Koweplan food, more and more, and after further skimming it, something that looks vaguely Earth-like. 

He settles on rice and egg with a spicy sauce on top. Wondering, as he leans in closer to inspect it, if the barely-there similarity to the actual meal is the same for all the others as well. Because the egg doesn’t quite look orange, a little too red, and the rice looks less like grain and more like pasta. Weird how that works. What gets lost in translation and what ends up getting substituted instead. 

He grabs his tray, and makes a beeline right for Keith – trying to do it before he can talk himself out of it. So, he walks alarmingly fast, almost sprints. 

Keith startles when Lance drops his tray on the table in front of him. Along with that, silence settles across the room, heads turning towards them.

“Wha–” he brings out, dark eyes wide as they snap upwards, meeting Lance’s. 

“Why are you stalking me?” Lance accuses, setting his hands down next to his tray, leaning over Keith. 

Keith stares at him, incredulous. His brows pinch together, his top lip curls upwards in distaste. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re everywhere I am, dude.” Lance throws his hands into the air. “Why are you up my ass?”

Keith scoffs, letting his chopsticks clatter to the plastic tray. “I’m not up your anything, Lance,” he says flatly, “and nowhere near your ass.”

“Sure as hell feels like it.”

Lance is, uh, freaking out, he thinks. Seeing Keith hasn’t been a novelty anymore, not since they started to spend most of their days confined to the same boardroom, but talking to him is a whole different beast. And it’s especially shitty because there’s this urge to fight Keith embedded into his veins, always at a simmer, edging on a boil. Lance wonders what switch had flipped in the years gone by without talking to him that made him this irrational now. It feels like it’s worse now than it used to be. It feels much worse than it did just three days ago. He doesn’t like whatever the fuck is stewing inside of him. 

“Does it?” 

“Yes it does! I can’t even get breakfast without you being there.”

Keith’s eyelids drop, unfazed and unbelieving as he looks up at Lance. “We’re the only ones on the same day-night cycle.”

“I know, but–”

“If you know that, then drop it.” He picks up his chopsticks again. “Unless this is your convoluted way of wanting to talk to me, this conversation is absolutely going nowhere.”

“I–” Caught. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Then don’t do it.”

“If you stop being everywhere I am,” Lance argues. 

He’s being a child about this, he realises, as he watches Keith’s face look like it should sit in a thesaurus right next to the word ‘annoyed’. 

It sucks. This realization sucks. 

It shifts his momentum, pumps the fucking breaks for a moment there. 

“Like I said,” Keith mumbles. “Same rhythm.”

Lance crosses his arms in front of his chest, pushing back off of the table. “Fine. Whatever.”

Keith looks unimpressed as he lifts a serving of the alien rice to his mouth. His cup of soup already sits empty at the side, and Lance is glad Keith didn’t just start slurping that down in protest. He would’ve probably started swinging. 

“Yeah. Fine.”

“You’re infuriating,” Lance adds for good measure. 

Keith chews. “So are you,” he says through the mouthful. “And you started this.”

Ew. 

Ugh. 

Lance takes his tray, moves to the end of the table, and angrily starts digging into his rice. 

Maybe he needs to relax a bit. 

Honestly, he got next to zero satisfaction out of ragging on Keith just now. It wasn’t good, or fun (which, was it supposed to be? Not really, he thinks), or any sort of helpful. He talked to Keith. That was it. 

The rice in his mouth tastes off the very second he realises why he acted like that. It goes from mildly tasty to cardboard and plastic wrapper in his mouth. 

He got Keith to engage with him. 

That’s what he wanted. 

Just. Keith’s attention on him. 

And he doesn’t know why he wanted that – not when all he thinks wants to be is left alone, no searching eyes boring into the side of his face, no familiar silhouette hovering close like a ghost of what has long passed.

Something about Keith being here is genuinely starting to mess with Lance, and he really doesn’t like it. 

It very nearly drives him up the wall that Keith doesn’t even try to stay out of Lance’s way, when all Lance thinks about is how to warp his schedule so he doesn’t have to face him every single time he has a break that’s longer than five minutes.

Whatever, ignore that. He doesn’t care that Keith’s here. At least, that’s what he tells himself. 

He shovels down his food, and when it’s one hriga (their equivalent to seconds, as in, the smallest unit of measuring time. It’s around ten minutes converted to Earth Time) until the next meeting, he gets up. 

Only problem with that, Keith gets up at the exact same time. And they stare at each other for a moment, both just fucking standing there with their trays in hand, before they both walk into the same direction and to the same meeting room. 

It’s awkward and tense as hell and Keith takes the elevator and Lance takes the stairs, taking two steps at a time to get there faster than Keith. 

He doesn’t. 

They end up in front of the door within two seconds of each other, and Lance is trying very hard not to show that he’s out of breath.

Keith clicks his tongue, and very barely refrains from rolling his eyes as well, but he gets his hand on the button next to the door first. The door slides open, and much to Lance’s surprise, Keith steps back and gestures for him to go in front. 

“Thanks,” Lance mutters, because he’s not a total dick, and ducks his head as he walks past. 

Keith almost smiles at that, joining Lance at the conference table. 

And it’s fine, until it’s the middle of the night and they’re in their last negotiating meeting for the day, the Iylsedin leaders insisting on everyone’s presence. 

So Lance is a little too tired, a little too lax on his note-taking. He’s not really paying as much attention as he should, but then Keith says something that gets Lance’s blood boiling. 

“…no probationary period. I don’t think it will be necessary.”

And Lance’s head snaps up from the spreadsheet in front of him. 

“What?” he asks, his voice perhaps a little harsher than intended. 

“Were you listening?” Keith snaps. “Or do I need to repeat myself?”

Asshole. 

“I was listening, Captain Kogane,” Lance answers, pointedly referring to Keith by his last name and title. It makes it feel less like he’s talking to his ex and more like he’s just talking to a coworker. Which, yeah, he is. A shitty coworker. That he has extensive history with. “I just think the idea is absurd.”

“Absurd?” Keith’s brows raise as he breathes out a baffled laugh. 

“That is what I said.”

“And why would it be absurd?”

“While they are very hospitable now, they have demonstrated nothing but hostility for the alliance for longer the past decade and they refused to aid during the war,” Lance says. “There’s been a change, of course, but that’s not even accounting for a fraction of the time they’ve been acting against us.”

“That sounds like you’re not even considering the option of an alliance.”

Lance opens his mouth. Closes it again. “Don’t twist my words,” he answers, glaring at Keith. 

Everyone else at the table is watching, their eyes playing ping-pong between the two of them. It’s setting Lance on edge. 

He’s usually so good at this, and something about Keith being here, encroaching in his space, just makes him want to act out of line. 

“I’m not,” Keith argues. “I am simply asking you to clarify.”

Lance almost rolls his eyes. “All I’m saying is that we need to tread carefully. We can’t just trust them blindly and hope that things will stay different.”

“I put my trust into this planet because I’ve seen the changes, alright? I’m not pulling this out of thin air.”

“Yeah? Because it seems, so far, that the change is still unreliable. It would be a huge risk to let them in without a probationary period.”

“It’s not.”

“I don’t think we should be trusting just anyone with alliance intel.” His hands clench tightly underneath the table. “Even if the war is over, there is still so much that’s not taken care of yet, and we can’t allow ourselves to have such an easy point of attack in case things go south.”

“Do I get that right? You really think the alliance can’t be accepting new members if they’ve displayed any sort of hostile behaviour in the past?” Keith asks. “It’s a miracle Earth got in, then, don’t you think, Ambassador McClain?”

It grinds Lance’s fucking gears. He exhales. Presses his lips together.

“It’s a miracle the alliance hasn’t had any breaches of confidentiality with the way you’re handing out accession to just anyone.”

One step too far. A step across the invisible line in the sand.

Keith’s nostrils flare, and he gets up from his chair, metallic legs scraping across the floor.

For half a second, Lance thinks Keith’s going to just grab him by the collar of his uniform and yank him out of his seat.

But instead, he’s clenching his jaw and turning toward the leaders. “Is it possible to adjourn this topic of discussion until tomorrow?” he asks a little too calmly. 

Lance’s eyes wander from Keith, who’s visibly seething at this point, towards the row of leaders that are all exchanging meaningful looks with each other. 

“We can postpone this until sunrise, if it makes the conversation easier. Maybe it’ll give you time to think,” the Iylsedin dressed in purple answers. “Everyone involved should take some time to piece an opinion together.”

Lance can’t make out the expression on their face, can’t decipher it properly. He feels white hot shame prickle at the back of his neck.

Keith is silent until the meeting ends, his breathing calm, his gaze stuck to the spreadsheets in front of him, hands folded in his lap.

As soon as it’s over, Lance grabs every paper he can get his hands on and hastily shoves it into his bag, ready to absolutely haul ass to get out of this room and away from Keith and not have to see him when he fumbles with the keys to his own room.

But that’d be too easy, wouldn’t it?

Lance is halfway through the door, caught up in the middle of everyone leaving, his bag clutched to his chest, trying to tap Sahirya on the shoulder to ask her to spend some downtime with him tomorrow, when he hears Keith’s grating fucking voice behind him.

“Ambassador McClain.”

Lance’s shoulders instinctively draw upwards as he stops in his tracks. 

Everyone heard, and he can feel the pitying looks he’s getting from all over while they continue to file out of the room, taking care to step around him.

“A word, perhaps?”

He takes a slow breath in through his nose, closing his eyes for a moment before turning around and plastering on a smile. “Of course.”

Some of the other diplomats start to slow down a little as they exit, all of them waiting to just catch a fraction of whatever is going to go down next, but Keith very dutifully waits on the other side of the table for both Lance to come over to him and for the door to slide shut.

It’s silent for a moment, stretching between them while Keith regains his composure.

He steps towards Lance, just a step, but he is way too close for comfort, brows pulled together, eyes narrowed. 

Or, maybe, his composure is really not what it used to be.

Lance doesn’t miss the way Keith’s gaze flicks down to his lips. He chooses to ignore the way that makes him feel too hot all over.

“What the hell was that?” Keith spits. 

Lance moves away, but Keith closes that distance almost immediately. “What do you mean?”

“That, just now, Lance. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Am I not allowed to disagree with you now?” he asks, just to be difficult.

Keith is too close, close enough that Lance can make out the small details, the few old acne scars on top of his cheekbones, the dark brown of his eyes, the very slight 5 o’clock shadow that comes with it being way too late for either of them to be up anymore. Close enough that Lance can smell his cologne, making out the vague scent of cedar. It’s new – different.

“That wasn’t disagreeing. I–” Just for a moment, Keith falters. His shoulders sag almost unnoticeably, the tense line of anger dulling. “I like when you disagree with me, that’s what made us w– It–” He shakes his head, as if physically getting rid of the thought. “What you did just now was unprofessional at best.”
Lance raises his brows, taking the sentence apart in his head. Piece by piece, syllable by syllable. 

“How was that unprofessional?”

Keith crosses his arms in front of his chest. “You didn’t take issue with what I said for the sake of the alliance,” he says, and it already dawns on Lance what he’s going to say next because he’d thought the same. “You were arguing with me for the sole reason that I was the one who brought it up. It felt like you were disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing with me.” 

“You think I’d stoop that low just to get on your nerves?” Lance asks, more confident than he feels. If anything, Keith’s right, and Lance knows that.

Keith laughs. Short. Humorless. “I think you weren’t even arguing about the alliance.”

“Yeah, right.”

But his derisive answer isn’t enough to sway Keith at all. He just looks on, tapping his pointer finger against his bicep, too snugly hugged by the Marmora uniform. 

(Not the time, Lance.)

“Cut that shit out, alright?” Keith says then, a little more assertive. “Just– We already have a reputation for not getting along, which is why they wanted to send Kolivan in the first place.” Lance didn’t really know that. “Let’s not feed into that.”

“What does it even matter?” Lance asks. 

Keith glares. “It matters because it’s shitty enough to be stuck here for another three and a half weeks. You don’t have to make it shittier.”

“I’m not the one who’s making it shitty,” he retaliates. “If you put half as much effort into avoiding me as I put into avoiding you, we literally wouldn’t have to have this conversation at all.”

“Don’t you think I have better things to do than to skirt around you all day long?”

Ouch. 

“Like what? Brooding and taking up all the weightlifting equipment at the gym?”

“Fuck off.” Keith bites. “I’m trying to work. Trying to get my job done and get through this month – something that wouldn’t hurt for you to try as well.”

“Oh, yeah, because you’re so good at–”

Keith cuts him off. “I don’t want to have to avoid you, Lance.”

A quiet noise of surprise leaves Lance’s mouth in response. 

“It’s too tiring to be on alert all the fucking time, and I just want to put everything aside. It’s only for this stupid conference, okay?”

Lance guesses that makes sense. And as much as it burns inside of him to double down on everything he’s said, something about the way Keith asks for a temporary ceasefire seems genuine. Underneath that piercing glare and the seemingly uncaring tone of voice. 

“Okay,” he brings past his lips. “I can be nice.”

“Doubt it,” Keith answers without missing a beat. “Just don’t be an unprofessional asshole, got it?”

“Easily.”

“Sure.” With that, Keith grabs his own bag from the table. “I can’t believe you outrank me.”

Nice parting words, dickhead, Lance thinks as he watches Keith brush past him and out into the hallway, watches his long braid resting between his shoulder blades. 

—22.04, Earth, Arizona

It’s a good day. One of the better ones, at least. 

The first heatwave this year is early – it’s only April, but it’s got Lance standing in his kitchen without a shirt on, with all the windows opened, trying to at least get some sort of breeze going. Much to Lance’s dismay, it’s just as warm inside as it is outside, with the oven on and the pan on the stove sizzling with hot oil. 

There’s music playing from the beat-up vintage radio. Something RnB, something he can tap his foot to. Something he loves without knowing the titles or artists of the songs. 

He uses the back of his shitty plastic knife to scrape the leftover fish bones off of his wooden cutting board and into the trash, very carefully sets it back aside, and then puts the salmon filets into a glass container, squeezing some lemon on top. 

Closing said container, he maneuvers it into the fridge, and wipes the countertops down. 

He checks on the green asparagus in the pan, adds more salt before turning the stalks, grinning at the light browning on the back. It’s all coming together perfectly. 

The potatoes in the oven smell really fucking good, too. 

And when Lance checks the clock above the set dinner table, he sees that he still has thirty minutes before Shiro and Adam arrive. 

Technically, he has thirty five, but they’re always five minutes early because Shiro insists it’s polite. 

Honestly, lowkey, Lance wishes they were always five minutes too late and a little less polite. 

But it's all good. It’s all going according to plan. 

He’s got his back turned toward the door just a little bit later, reaching for his freshly ironed dress shirt when it opens. Briefly, Lance wonders why Adam and Shiro are this early and how they’d even get in because they don’t have a key. 

There are only three people who do have a key, and that’s, well, him, his mother, who’s in Cuba, and–

Keith. 

Lance’s chest swells with a vast, glowing joy. 

It swells and swells as he turns around, eyes wide in surprise. 

For a second there, he has the glow of the sun in his chest. 

Keith has his travel bag slung over his shoulder, has his hair up in a bun that’s halfway to falling apart, there’s dirt on his white tank top, and in his left hand he’s holding a bunch of sunflowers, all varying lengths with blunt, sawn-off ends. Lance distinctly recognises them as the ones that belong to one of his asshole neighbors down the street. 

The smile on Lance’s face only grows at that. 

But only for a moment. 

Because just as he wants to run towards Keith and bury his hands in his hair and breathe him in and touch him again, he sees the expression on his face. 

It makes Lance’s blood run too cold, makes his skin feel too hot, and sends a burst of adrenaline through his system. 

And it makes him realise what’s really happening. 

Keith’s gaze is positively cemented to Lance’s shoulders and his collarbones, where the very outer edges of his lightning scar wind across his skin, spreading out like rivers from the sea. The very scar he hasn’t seen up until now – that no one except Allura had seen, and Lance had taken great care to keep it that way. 

Lance hastily tries to pull the white shirt on, fingers shaking as he attempts to button it up in the few seconds that Keith looks, processing. 

He’d imagined this scenario a million times in his head. How he’d sit Keith down, how he’d try to make sense of it, how he’d delve into what had happened to him. 

How he’d very delicately explain every little–

“What the fuck?” Keith’s voice cracks. “Lance.”

But Keith has never been delicate. And Lance wouldn’t love him if he were. 

Right now, though, he feels too vulnerable, too exposed, and his fingers slip on the pearlescent buttons, and as he tries again, his vision blurs around the edges. 

He can’t do–

He can’t–

He–

The look of shock on Keith’s features is too much for Lance to handle, the sharp edge of Keith’s words slicing right through the strings holding him up, and he crumbles like a marionette would. 

He pulls the shirt closed, crossing his arms in front of his chest, and storms right past Keith. Lance can’t talk to him like this, not like this, not like this, not like this. 

The tears finally spill over as he makes it outside, the air suddenly closing in on him from all sides. He needs to get out of here. Needs to go anywhere that isn’t right fucking here. 

With shaking legs he makes the climb into his truck, slams the door shut, doesn’t put the seatbelt on but turns the key in the ignition. 

The engine roars to life and tears prickle hot in Lance’s eyes, blurring the image of his hands white-knuckling around the steering wheel. His throat feels like it’s closing up further and further, like the cut-off strings now coil around it instead of falling to the ground. 

He chokes out a sob. 

And realises he doesn’t know where to go. 

He’s lived here for three months. And he doesn’t know where to go. 

There isn’t a single place he could pick out that isn’t the grocery store, the Garrison, or Shiro’s place. 

He hasn’t gone out enough and he doesn’t know what to fucking do. 

Maybe there was never anywhere for him to go in the first place.

The next inhale rattles in his throat, almost turning into a hiccup as another shudder racks through him. He slams his hand against the steering wheel. Turns the ignition back off. 

Both of his hands twist into the fabric of his shirt as he hugs himself close, letting his head fall forward.

The tears keep falling, dripping onto his pants, soaking into the fabric. He feels powerless to stop them, the anxiety in this moment too overwhelming to hold off, and Lance can only let himself get pulled under. 

Lance doesn’t know how much time passes before he’s no longer close to dry-heaving while trying to catch his breath, before it’s nothing but the occasional shudder, and the embarrassing reality of overreacting sets in. It burns hot in his cheeks, makes his stomach feel like it's turning in of itself.

A knock on the window makes the crushing pressure on his chest dissipate, just for a split second as he looks up to see Keith. 

His trembling fingers press the button to unlock the passenger side, and Keith climbs in before closing the door behind him again. 

It’s awkward. For a minute, there’s nothing but silence. Lance watches the seconds tick by on the old clock of the dashboard, still blinking tears out of his eyes, his lashes clumped by the saltwater. 

“I’m sorry.” Keith’s voice almost sounds like a gunshot in the silence, positively shattering it. “For ambushing you like that, and–”

“You didn’t ambush me.” Lance sounds hoarse, throat too tight to let his vocal chords work the way he wants them to. 

Keith swallows. “Yeah, but– I just think I could’ve handled that a little more gracefully. I– What didn’t you tell me?”

His hands fist a little tighter into the fabric of his shirt until he’s sure the material is going to fray underneath his bitten-down nails. He turns his head away from Keith. He doesn’t respond.

“What happened to you, Lance?”

A thin laugh escapes him, a harsh breath out through his nose before he blinks back up at the man next to him. “I guess I thought The Singular Life and Death of Lance McClain wasn’t a cool enough title for my memoir later.”

Keith’s eyes narrow in confusion, his head slightly tilting to the side. It would be sweet to see him all worried and confused like this if it didn’t make Lance feel like the end of the world was fast approaching. 

And maybe it is. Maybe this is what the end feels like. 

“I died,” he chokes out. “I died up there and I didn’t even know until months later.”

He watches Keith process this. Watches his eyes wander across Lance’s face, almost erratically searching, maybe hoping for a trace of humor there. 

Lance wishes he was joking. He wishes all of it was a fucking joke. 

“When?” Keith asks when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for. His hands are twisting in his lap, holding on to each other for dear life. 

“While you were gone, at the Omega Shield,” Lance answers quietly. “Probably around the same time as your whole space whale adventure happened. I don’t know. It’s all– It’s all messed up.”

“I’m–”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. You being there wouldn’t have changed anything, it’s not like anyone else ever fucking noticed either.”

“What?”

Lance holds his breath. The words had spilled before he’d wanted them to. 

He’d forced them behind a carefully constructed dam, and made sure that he wouldn’t let them out, that he wouldn’t resent his friends for something that wasn’t their fault. 

Kept in the dark and keeping in the dark. 

“No one knows,” he mutters. “Allura brought me back, so she’s the only one, and even she just never told me about it until–”

Another fresh sheen of tears gathers in his eyes, quickly welling over. 

Keith doesn’t push him, but he unwinds one of his hands to lay it on Lance’s thigh. It’s too hot through the fabric, but Lance doesn’t shrug it off. 

His mouth tastes like salt when he tells Keith about it. 

How he’d woken up with no recollection of what happened, with Allura sitting next to him, relief clear as day etched into her features, asking him how he felt, and he’d simply assumed he’d only passed out for a minute there. 

How, months later, he’d stood in the Atlas' kitchen, trying to make them breakfast, but he’d stretched his arms over his head to reach something on the top shelf and he suddenly couldn’t feel his hands anymore. 

How he’d stood there, clenching and unclenching them, digging his nails into his palms until they drew blood because he couldn’t fucking feel it, teetering on the edge of a full-blown panic attack, limbs already trembling, trying to tell himself he’s just overreacting. 

How Allura had asked him if he was experiencing the side effects of dying. 

How Lance’s voice had cracked, terror slipping into it as he asked her to repeat herself. 

How he’d spent the rest of the day in the medical wing, examined and prodded at, tears that never did spill burning behind his eyes. 

“And she didn’t tell you earlier?” Keith asks, his expression twisting from one of worry into the fraying edges of fury. His voice sounds like he’s holding back. 

Lance shrugs. “Maybe she did, I don’t remember.” He pauses, willing his voice to stop shaking. “I can’t remember.”

“She never made you do any check-ups or anything?”

God, Keith is angry. Keith is seething. His free hand is clutched into a fist, his jaw clenched tightly, Lance can see the muscles work through his skin. He’s tenser than a bow about to let go of an arrow. 

“I think I got a check-up from Coran after, but all of us did, right? It was just a routine thing and he found nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Keith repeats under his breath. “You died and they found nothing out of the ordinary?”

“Apparently.” Lance sniffles, wiping at his eyes. “Left me to find out all the neat surprises myself.”

“I’m calling Allura,” he says. Steadfast and stubborn in the way only Keith can be in his anger. “I’m gonna–”

Lance swivels around to face him. This is the absolute last thing he wants. 

“You’re not going to do that,” he argues. “You’re not.”

“And just le–”

“What fucking good is it going to do to tear into her, Keith? It’s been years since then.” He points his finger at Keith’s chest. 

“What does that matter if it’s been years if you’re still affected by it?”

“Because I’m dealing with it, Keith!” The echo of it rings out in the car. “Boo fucking hoo, I died! We all could’ve died every single day out there, that’s the problem with being a fucking child soldier in an intergalactic war. Don’t start shit with Allura because she brought me back.”

“But–”

“She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“She didn’t even tell you!”

“She saved my life!” Lance’s voice almost doubles over at the end there. “What else was she supposed to do? She’s the reason I’m still here and she’s the reason you didn’t have to come back to the castle to the others telling you that my body got ejected somewhere out into space because they’re not gonna carry a fucking corpse around with them.”

Keith reels back in shock, his expression shattering, and it feels like Lance’s chest is about to splinter just the same. 

“Fuck,” Lance breathes. “Sorry.”

“Lance, I–”

The car feels too small, too suffocating, the air growing stale, and Lance’s phone rings from where he’d thrown it onto the dashboard. 

His eyes dart over to it before he can squeeze them shut as if to block the reality of things out. But there in the picture underneath the name in bold lettering, is Shiro’s face, an old picture from just after they’d come back to earth. 

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

“Shit,” Lance echoes out loud. “I forgot.”

“What? Were you cooking for him?” Keith looks more stressed than anything else now. 

“Oh, god. Him and Adam were supposed to show up five minutes ago, yeah.”

He wipes at his eyes, scrambling to reach for the phone. 

As he tucks the phone away and frantically buttons his shirt up, he hopes that he looks presentable enough. A quick look in the mirror confirms that he looks like a right fucking mess. But he wipes his eyes again, shakes it off, and leaves the car. He bundles up every last bit of panic and trepidation and anger in his limbs and tucks it away as tightly as possible, hoping that no cracks will form under the pressure. His limbs still feel too loose, too jittery, his hands unsteady. Lance doesn’t think that feeling will ease up on him anytime soon.

He only locks his truck after he hears Keith close the passenger side door. 

In the front lawn, Shiro and Adam are already waiting for him, gift basket in hand (because of course they’re bringing wine), worry written clear across their faces.

Adam sees him first, expression lighting up at it. 

“Lance!” he exclaims, already spreading his arms to pull him into a wide embrace, before he hesitates – his eyes drift to Lance’s hastily (and most importantly, wrongly) buttoned shirt and to the puffy redness surrounding Lance’s eyes, and then over his shoulder. “Keith?”
Keith has his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “Hi,” he greets, nodding towards him. “Hey, Shiro.”
“What are you doing at Lance’s?” Shiro asks, and Lance cannot for the life of him decipher what his face is telling him. Swinging between amusement and confusion. “Aren’t you still on duty for at least a month?”

And only then, Lance realises the picture they’re painting.

They very much look like they’ve either been fighting or fucking, and Lance doesn’t know what he’d prefer for them to think. 

He opens his mouth to answer, but for once, Keith is faster.

“I got sent home early and needed a place to crash,” he answers. “And Lance was nice enough to pick me up at the docking station. It was all kind of last minute.”

Shiro and Adam seem to believe the lie for a solid thirty seconds until they all wander into Lance’s apartment and find the food halfway prepared in the kitchen, and although Keith had been somewhat thoughtful and turned the stove and oven off as Lance had stormed outside, the green asparagus is a mushy heap of shit at best. And, to add to it, Lance could’ve easily pushed their arrival time back since they don’t live that far away.

They don’t say anything, but Lance catches the way Shiro keeps nudging Keith with his elbow, trying to be subtle. However, it’s almost common knowledge that Shiro wouldn’t know subtlety if it slapped him in the face.

Lance can’t find it in himself to care. He just wants to make it through this dinner. Preferably without crying again. 

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

As it turns out, the exploration trips may be Lance’s favorite part of this conference.

The first one had been in Mirtral’s capital city, where they’d been shown through museum after museum, from a planetarium to a guided exhibition about Iylsedin art from their prosperous golden ages millenia ago.

Looking at everything, getting an explanation for every single question he had, reminded him of what he loves about his job.

Learning, taking in, and applying. He loves how different alien species are to his own, he loves seeing how their history has changed them into who they are today, he loves hearing alien music and seeing how they’d etched their own fingerprints into everything they made.

And now’s no different.

Sahirya has her arm looped through his as they follow a tall Iylsedin wearing an orange flag between their antlers. The two of them are squished somewhere between the other diplomats that are also all desperately trying to stick to their group and to not get lost in the sheer mass of other people.

They’ve been walking for a while now, and Lance doesn’t really recognise the streets anymore from the last exploration trip, but they’re still just as full, if not more so. 

And maybe it’s the fact that it’s the first of seven days of darkness, so instead of the heat of the sun, he feels the cold glow of bioluminescence emitting from the tightly crammed buildings around him. The buildings aren’t the only things glowing, the Iylsedin people do as well, glowing bands wrapped around their limbs and antlers, swinging with every step, illuminating the way in front of them. It might as well be a different city altogether.

In a way, the trips are relaxing. They’re, for once, not in uniform, a lot more chill and less uptight. There’s little need for formalities between the diplomats, no reason to use titles and official language. 

Lance delights in it; he’d always thought of a few of those conventions as rather restricting. Now he gets to be himself as much as it’s possible while still technically being at work. It’s nice.

They’re standing in line in what’s supposed to be one of the planet’s most delectable fine dining experiences. It’s almost unassuming on the outside, but the line is long, and Lance is pretty sure the only reason they even get to stand in it is because of their status. 

Either way, he’s excited, and he’s one hundred percent going to send Hunk a million pictures so he can check it out for himself one day. Man, he’s going to lose it when he sees those. 

He’s just in the middle of recounting the possibly weirdest fine dining experience he’d had – they’d been instructed to wear hats or helmets, and then the aliens had simply dumped their food into those. Lance had spent literal weeks trying to get the smell of steak out of his paladin helmet – to Sahirya and the Driyan ambassador, when something tugs at his sleeve.

His head snaps to the side, only to almost land nose-to-nose with Keith, who’s motioning for Lance to follow him. Lance gives him a quick once-over, trying to conceal it as annoyance, but rather takes in the surprisingly nice black flannel that Keith is wearing and the silver necklace that pools between his collarbones.

After suppressing the universe’s loudest groan, Lance utters an apology to the other two and falls into step behind Keith.

They get out of the line, and for a very irrational moment, Lance thinks Keith is going to lead Lance behind the building to choke him out. Or something. Because Keith has been nothing but nice to him the past three days and maybe it hasn’t just been pissing Lance off.

“What’s wrong?” Lance immediately asks as soon as Keith comes to a halt at the narrow walkway between the restaurant and the overly bright shop next to it. 

Keith sighs. “The food in there isn’t edible to us.” He vaguely nods into the direction of the large, round windows to his left.

“How so?”

“Exactly what I said,” Keith answers. “I stood far enough in front to see the menu, and I asked, and they didn’t really factor in–” He cringes just a little. “Well, our off-planet stomachs. Or our singular set of teeth.”

Lance snorts despite himself. “I wonder what’s so bad that we can’t eat it.” That’s a half-truth, honestly. He can think of plenty of things that are inedible. Like rocks and–

“Rocks.”

What?

“Huh?”

“Look.” Keith gestures to the window, and Lance moves closer, watching the two guests closest to them chow down on some honest-to-god glowing rocks and something that looks like iridescent fog as a side dish.

“What the hell?” Lance mutters, barely refraining from pressing his nose to the thick glass. “But it smells so good.”

“If you’re willing to risk your teeth for that, go right ahead.”

He shudders. “Not really, but I bet the crunch is fucking heavenly.”

“More of a sensory nightmare, really,” Keith admits. “Heard ‘em crunching even from outside the door.” 

Lance grimaces in sympathy. “Yikes,” he mumbles and turns back to face Keith. “What are you gonna do if you’re not going to Crunch Town?”

Keith scuffs the front of his boot against the dirty ground, not meeting Lance’s eyes. “I was probably going to grab something elsewhere,” he says. Pauses. “You could join me if you want to?”

“And go where? If this is the best their planet has to offer?”

The right corner of Keith’s mouth quirks up, and it would be almost undetectable if it weren’t for the way his cheek dimples. “I know a place.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.” Maybe Keith’s plan to discreetly end Lance’s life is still in the works, who knows? “Man, why can’t we just get a nice Earth dinner? Why does everything have to be so stressful?”

“You think this is stressful?”

“I mean, kinda, yeah. Is that a crime?” Lance shoots a withering glare into Keith's direction. 

“Not really.” Keith seems impervious to that. “Are you coming along or not?”

“Depends.” Lance sucks his lips into his mouth as he thinks, tapping his pointer finger against them. “Is the food there good?”

“It’s better than literal rocks.”

“Is it better than the cool-looking fog?”

“Possibly.”

“Alright, fine,” Lance concedes, clapping his hands together. “Probably better than a trip to the hospital, too.”

Keith brushes past him, waving his hand, pointer finger outstretched. “Can’t promise that.”

As Keith turns, Lance is sure he can see the smallest hint of a fully fledged smile on his face.

The excuse Lance had made was half-assed at best. Something about Keith having a stomach-bug (“A bug in his stomach?” Sahirya had exclaimed in terror before Lance could soothe her by explaining the Earth idiom), and Lance needing to escort him back to the hotel, like any good coworker would.

Although he’s now wondering if he even should’ve left the group in the first place because he’s wildly flailing to catch up with Keith’s fast walking pace and trying not to lose him as he winds and twists through the masses without a care in the world.

He’s doing somewhat okay on that front until Keith ducks around a corner and Lance loses sight of him. 

And now here he is, looking left and right and behind and in front of him, a little lost in the sea of glowing Iylsedin folks, with no clue where to go. Sweat is beading at his neck and he can’t read the signs on the shops because his translator refuses to even begin to process visual input, and someone rudely bumps into him, doesn’t even apologise to him, and–

A warm hand wraps around his wrist and pulls him forward again. Lance would recognise that stupid pair of gloves anywhere. He almost trips over his own feet. 

“Thought I could count on you to keep up with me,” Keith says, smug as ever, letting go of Lance’s wrist and picking up the pace again.

“Asshole,” Lance mutters under his breath. He very nearly takes Keith’s shoes off with how many times he ends up stepping right onto his heels.

Ten minutes later, Keith makes them stop in front of a multi-story house, the existence of a restaurant only marked by a tiny neon sign with an arrow that points down a grimey-looking staircase that Lance actually would love avoiding entirely. Completely. Staying a million parsec away from it, actually. This thing is space Tetanus incarnate, just waiting to get Lance and strike him down.

But of course, because he shouldn’t have expected anything else, Keith moves forward and pretty much slides down the staircase in a swift and practiced move (he jumped, he just jumped, but to Lance, in that moment, it looked begrudgingly cool). 

Lance gingerly uses every single sponge- and moss-covered step to its fullest, refusing to touch the horrifically nasty handrail next to it, and lets Keith hold the door open for him. It’s the least he can do after forcing Lance into using that bacteria-ridden torture device. And they say chivalry is dead!

The interior of the restaurant is very different from the outside. Luckily. 

It’s all rounded edges and corners and everything is drenched in a low orange-red light. The furniture somehow carved into the material of the walls, creating a perfectly blended picture in front of them. 

Sparkling lights hang from the ceiling above every single table, and from where he’s standing, Lance can see into the kitchen on the other side of the room. 

The place is packed with the exception of one or two tables, a few otherworldly fellows scattered between the Iylsedin patrons. 

Keith leads him to one of the rounded tables, and it barely takes more than a minute before a, he thinks, half-Galra woman shows up behind them. 

She’s got Galran marks up the side of her neck at least, and the same clawed fingers and yellow eyes, but looks otherwise different, on the smaller side while still packed with muscle, and long white hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. Lance can’t, for the life of him, tell how old she is. 

Unexpectedly, her eyes crinkle as her face lights up at the sight of Keith. 

She yells his name loud enough for some of the other guests to turn their heads. It’s definitely loud enough to startle Lance. 

Beaming with glee, she reaches over and ruffles Keith’s hair like one would do to a child, rather than a fully grown man. 

She excitedly speaks to Keith in a language that sounds Galran, but not quite, all harsh consonants and rapid-fire syllables. And more baffling, Keith responds in the same language, although slower, his pronunciation thought-out and careful. 

Lance can’t help but look on in wonder as his translator refuses to put in the work for him. 

Keith points at something at the menu behind him, and the woman nods excitedly, chattering away and holding on to his outstretched arm. His hand lands on top of hers and he jerks his head into Lance’s direction. 

“Do you still drink?” he asks in English.

Lance blinks. “I guess?”

“Perfect.” And he turns back to the woman next to him, nodding and smiling at her before she scurries off.

“Who was that?” Lance asks, propping his chin up on the palm of his hand.

Keith leans back in his seat. “Wikra,” he answers insanely helpfully.

“And how does she know you? How do you know her?”

“Long story,” Keith answers flatly and stretches his legs out underneath the table.

The sole of his boot brushes against Lance’s as he moves. Almost instinctively, he pulls his own legs back, crossing them.

“I have time?” Lance offers.

“Not for this one,” Keith rebuffs almost hastily, as if he hadn’t really thought it all the way through to bring Lance here. “Their service is a little too fast for that either way.”

As if on cue, the woman, Wikra, comes back with two blue bubble-shaped glasses and a large bottle of a glittery purple liquid.

It looks intimidating at worst, and Keith’s stupidly smug face as he pours them and tells Lance, “bottoms up!” really doesn’t help.

Lance is pretty sure the drink is burning a hole into his esophagus as he slams the small glass back and does his best not to gag as he swallows it down.

“Christ,” he mutters. “Does she want us to go blind?”

“You might have to have a couple more of those if you wanna achieve that,” Keith answers before knocking his own glass down. He doesn’t pull a face, but Lance is convinced he can see his eyes water just a little bit.

Lance, to avoid looking at Keith even more, sets his pointer finger down on the rim of the glass, moving it across in circles, playing with it. He just hopes the food will arrive soon. 

“I think I’ll pass,” he says. But Keith already has the bottle back in his hand and just stopped pouring it into his glass.

“You sure?” Keith asks.

If Lance didn’t know better, he’d think Keith sounds a little dejected. Just a bit. And Lance is a weak man on his best days.

“Okay, whatever. What’s one more?” 

If anything, it might make the evening a little less uncomfortable.

Three drinks later, the food still hasn’t gotten here, and Lance feels the tension washing off of him. The shitty glittery liquid is much stronger than Lance had assumed from the taste alone, and it very much crashed into his system almost immediately. Not that Lance minds – much.

Because he’s said so much dumb shit in front of Keith on this trip alone so far, it doesn’t really matter at all in the end if he adds some more dumb shit to that.

Not that it matters in the first place. 

There’s no endgame here, Lance thinks. Only a semblance of it, and that might just be that he and Keith go right back to ignoring each other when this conference is over and things go back to their natural order.

Keith will keep doing his work with the Blades and Lance will continue to work as a diplomat and maybe they’ll cross paths and maybe either of them will meet someone else that fits like a puzzle piece into their lifestyle and–

“So,” Keith breaks the silence, singlehandedly pulling the breaks on Lance’s train of thought. He doesn’t look Lance in the eyes while he does it, his gaze instead fixed to Lance’s fingers where they’re still fumbling with the blue glass. “You’re not wearing your ring anymore.”

Oh.

Right.

Keith wasn’t there for last year’s reunion. He couldn’t have known.

But still, he’s surprised that Keith paid enough attention to notice such a small, almost irrelevant detail.

“Correct,” Lance answers, rolling the ‘r’ in a way that he hopes will add a little bit of lightheartedness to that conversation. “Been almost a year.”

It doesn’t. Not really.

Keith grimaces. “Ah,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”

“‘S fine.” Lance waves it off, finally letting go of his death-grip on the glass. “It was the best for both of us. We left on good terms, so there’s really no hard feelings.”

Keith’s eyes wander up to meet Lance’s, and there’s something searching about his expression, something that Lance doesn’t really know how to place yet. The liquor in his system probably doesn’t help with that.

“What happened?”

Now it’s Lance’s turn to scrunch his face up. “Keith, buddy,” he starts, taking a metaphorical knife and carving a line into the table between them, “no offense, but I think you’re kind of the last person I want to talk to about that.”

“Right,” Keith says. He nods a few times too many, as if to show that he really understands.

“Look,” Lance tries instead, “if you wanna be nosy, you can ask Shiro about it.” He shrugs. “He probably heard me cry about it the most, so… If anyone knows, it’s him. Oh, and probably Adam, by proxy. You’re just– You’re not gonna hear it from me.”

He watches Keith bite down on his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he breathes. “That– Sorry for bringing it up.”

“Can’t blame you for asking,” Lance says, forcing himself to smile. “I’d probably be nosy as hell too if the roles were reversed.”

And sometimes, Lance wishes he could think before he talks. 

Luckily, before Keith gets the chance to dissect that unlucky lapse in judgment, Wikra shows up with around seven metric tons worth of food. 

It smells so good, Lance can barely stop his mouth from watering as she sets down small bowl after plate after wooden board after more and more and more. 

Lance can recognise them as Galra recipes, at least a few of them, from years ago when Keith would send him pictures of his food in the mess hall or, primarily, when the Blades would do their own cooking. 

He squints at the food, trying to make out some of the ingredients, trying to discern what he’s going to like. 

And Keith, apparently, picks up on that. “I didn’t get anything you’re not gonna enjoy,” he says way too casually. Leaning forward, he skims over the bowls and plates before pointing his finger at one full of red dough buns, with some sort of filling already spilling out of them. “I’d bet money on this being your favorite.”

Lance’s impulse is to look at Keith, right at him – right through him if he only could.

Wordlessly, he reaches for one of the buns, steam rising from the bowl beneath. He holds it up to his nose and inhales deeply. 

Fuck. Keith might be right. 

It smells really, really good. Like fresh sourdough, garlic and fried sage. 

Lance bites into it without another thought, and barely gets to taste any of it, because it’s hot as actual fucking hell and it pretty much immediately burns his tongue.

His eyes begin to water as he sucks in an eager breath, hands gesturing for Keith to give him some water, without considering that they don’t have any water on their table.

Keith gives him another glass of liquor that Lance downs too fast. It puts a damper on the fire, only to replace it with a different type of burn.

He coughs, hard, blinking away the tears gathering along his lashline, and Keith–

The asshole is laughing at him.

He’s actually laughing, teeth glinting in the orange light, both cheeks dimpling deeply, eyes scrunched shut. A familiar picture, but the edges are tinted differently. Muddled, maybe.

Keith’s older, they’re not on Earth, and they’ve never been off-planet together. 

“Too hot?” Keith asks through another fit of laughter.

It sends a sharp pang through every vein in Lance’s body, lights him right up with something searing, something burning, something devastating. 

And Lance thinks he resents that. 

It’s too casual. Too normal. Too nostalgia-riddled. Too unreal.

“Fuck you,” Lance answers, coughing again. “I’m glad my demise is entertaining to you.”

Keith presses his closed fist against his mouth. “Oh, it is, very much so. I’m having the time of my life.” His entire face is red, flushed down to his collarbones where the silver necklace glints in the sparkling lights from above. It’s probably not just from the laughter – Keith has always been kind of a lightweight. 

“Starting to think you just love seeing me suffer, man.” Lance hands Keith’s empty glass back over to him. “Can’t believe you gave me more of this piss-water.”

“Piss-water?” Keith repeats, corners of his lips twitching. He’s having way too much fun with this.

“If you wanted to get me a drink, you could’ve just given that to me in a normal way,” Lance argues. He taps the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. That’s burned as hell. “You didn’t have to push me into burning my whole entire mouth for that.”

“I mean,” Keith starts, lowering his hand and reaching towards the half-full bottle of purple liquor again to fill up both of their glasses, “I did get you a drink the normal way.”

“That–”

“You were the one who bit into the steaming food.”

“No,” Lance says, pointing his finger at Keith as he takes the now full glass by the rim. “I think you instigated that somehow.”

“Keep thinking that, McClain.” 

There’s a permanent smile playing on Keith’s lips now. It’s small, but it’s there. And Lance feels that fire in his blood burning brighter knowing that he’s causing it.

“I will, thank you very much.”

“Guess I’ll have to try again then,” Keith says, teasingly almost, and clinks his glass against Lance’s before downing it in one clean swig.

Lance feels his cheeks redden against his will. “Guess so.”

They stumble back to the conference building two hours later, warm and giggly, stuffed with too-good food.

Keith easily leads the way with his hand wrapped around Lance’s wrist. As they walk past the rock-eating place that’s posing as a fine dining restaurant, they check the perimeter, only to see that the others have already left the restaurant, but the queue is still just as long as it was earlier. 

Once they’re back at the building, they’re being as careful as possible to avoid being seen sneaking back in by any of their colleagues. Maybe more careful than they need to be. But they stick to the emergency exits that Keith opens without a worry about alarm bells ringing out, and Lance, with an insane amount of adrenaline circulating in his body, is slowly starting to think that he should’ve just told Sahirya that he was getting something else to eat and not made up the stupidest lie in the world. He doesn’t think anyone would’ve cared in the first place. 

But something about Keith keeping him close, pulling him along, hovering at his side is almost as intoxicating as the shitty drinks they had.

Taking the staircase turns out to be a bad idea, because they’re both out of breath by the time they reach floor ten, and they still have five to go until they get to their rooms. At the very least the lighter gravity is helping, but Lance is still trying his hardest not to heave with every exhale.

He thanks the heavens above when floor fifteen finally comes around and Keith pulls him across the hallway after checking if anyone else is in the vicinity.

It’s blessedly empty as Lance trails after him, keeping his eyes fixed on the way Keith’s braid is very much coming undone now, thick strands falling down his back and over his shoulders, the gray hairs looking less like gray hairs and more like the tail ends of shooting stars striking across a curtain of inky black.

And maybe Lance is still a little tipsy. Whatever.

Keith doesn’t let go of his hand until they’re standing in front of their respective doors, still close enough to reach out and touch, close enough that Lance can see Keith’s eyes flicking down to his lips for the third time this evening, close enough that that alone is enough to bend something inside of Lance to where it almost snaps.

“Do you–” Keith clears his throat, looking Lance right in the eyes. He’s got his shoulder leaned against his door, looking all confident and relaxed and less tense than Lance has seen him since they got here. Maybe in years, even. “Do you want to come in?”

Lance knows that exact tone of voice. Oh, he knows it too well.

“For what?” he asks, because they both know they’re scheduled for the same meeting at the asscrack of dawn, and they’ve already stretched time to its limits by staying out and getting a little too drunk for that. 

Keith shrugs, lips half-tilting into a smirk. “Stress relief?”

“That so?”

“If you want it to be.”

And Lance knows he should be strong enough to say, “no” this time.

Chapter Text

—22.04, Earth, Arizona

“What are the side effects of dying?”

Keith sounds incredibly careful when he asks this hours later, finally having made his way to their bedroom. 

After an arguably too-tense dinner, Shiro and Keith had gone on a walk, leaving Adam to clean with Lance. And Adam hadn’t exactly asked questions, but he’d been a little too interested in how Keith and Lance get along now. 

When they left an hour after that, Keith had sat at the table, stone-faced, glaring at the pattern of the wood grain as if it had personally killed Lance. 

And Lance hadn’t wanted to talk either, not then, so he’d skirted around the kitchen as much as humanly possible. 

Lance closes the book he was pretending to read – the letters kept blurring into one another – and looks up at Keith from where he’s sitting underneath his blanket. 

Keith, despite all that clearly visible anger from this day, looks… Defeated, almost. Looks like he’s teetering on the edge. His eyes are soaked in emotion, anxiety and something much deeper than that gathering along his lashline. 

That look in his eyes is enough that it makes Lance’s throat feel too tight, his skin feel like it’s crawling, his hands feel like they’re about to start shaking. 

He slumps downward, pulling the blanket up instead of answering Keith. Laying on his side, facing away from his boyfriend, trying to bury himself underneath the too-hot silk sheets. 

But Keith doesn’t really let him do that. Without turning his face to look, he hears Keith slowly walking across the wooden floor, panels creaking as he does. 

The mattress next to him dips. It’s something usually so comforting, something he’d found himself looking forward to for the past two months, as Keith sits down. 

He feels like he’s burning up, engulfed in flames, sweat trickling down his neck and into the orange fabric he’s laying on. 

The air glitters with dust particles in the light of the setting sun outside, and Lance thinks he’s running out of time. He doesn’t know for what. But his room is a mess, clothes strewn across the floor, piling up and up. Empty plates and glasses stack on his bedside table while Keith’s remains untouched except for a thick layer of dust. The only things on it are a small lamp and an old sketchbook, both unused for too long.

“You don’t have to tell me now,” Keith tries again, shifting a little. “Or tell me at all, if you–” He sighs. “But you have to tell someone. Does anyone know?”

Lance nods, softly, quietly, not a word spilling past his tightly sealed lips. 

Behind him, Keith exhales shakily. “Okay.”

In his head, Lance makes a list of it all. Every side effect he’s had the pleasure of becoming intimately familiar with. 

It keeps getting longer and longer, and maybe, Lance thinks, some of those aren’t even tangentially related to dying. Some of those are just things he should be dealing with a lot better than he is. 

He scratches things off the list. 

Restarts. 

Collects. 

Scratches away. 

Restarts. 

Feels panic clawing up at him. 

And Keith moves to get up. 

“I don’t–” Lance tries, but god, his voice shakes, and tiny knots winding are winding themselves along his windpipe, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter. “I don’t even know where to start.”

Keith halts. Leans back. The springs in his mattress move.

“I feel like– The–” 

Why is it so hard? Why is it so fucking hard to talk about this with someone? 

Is it because it’s Keith?

“I–” His voice wavers. Cracks right in the middle. The tone breaks. A harsh stop.

This shouldn’t be so hard.

Lance is a fucking coward.

Dimly, he recalls being back aboard the Atlas during the war. It was the middle of the night, and he knows that the lights were all set to the deep, dim blue that made the whole ship look like it was underwater. 

That’s how it felt, back then, too. The stale, recycled air had felt like too-thick sludge that Lance had to wade through. But through it all the smell of plastic permeated his nose, so dizzying and inescapable. Nauseating. 

His pajamas were synthetic. The fabric made his hair stand on end, occasionally sending little sparks flying if someone touched him. 

He’d peeled himself out of bed not even ten minutes earlier, trying his hardest not to wake Allura along the way. Before he’d even managed to stand upright, his back had exploded into fiery pain, embedded into the marrow of every single disc in his spine.

There’d been an underlying current of hurt during the day, his hands going numb again and again, tingles brushing over his shoulders – but this felt different, oh, so different, and Lance thought he might pass out from the black spots that slipped across his field of vision.

Biting down a cry, he sunk into a squat, locking his hands behind his neck, thumbs pressing into the most prominent ridge of his spine, pushing his forehead against his knees. Uneven breaths came through his nose, as quietly as possible while still trying to quell the nausea that came with the pain. 

He felt it then, in his entire body, shaking with the effort of keeping it together.

It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d ended up retching from the pain. 

Luckily, at least that time, the pain went as fast as it came on, but it left him shuddering, feeling too twitchy, his skin too raw as he walked down the empty hallways, going nowhere in particular.

But he’d found Shiro on his own in the mess hall, still in uniform, staring down at a large stack of papers. The very same food from that evening was still untouched next to him, his glasses used as a paperweight instead of sitting on his nose.

When Shiro had asked what was keeping him up Lance had shrugged.

When Lance had asked what was keeping him up, Shiro had asked if Lance really wanted to know. 

Maybe Shiro was feeling a little too raw as well. Lance had expected the weight of responsibility to be the answer, but Shiro told him of what he remembered from the time before Voltron, of what happened to him before Keith had set off those explosives, and Lance had followed him right into the fray. And of what came after.

And Lance asked question after question. And Shiro answered every single one. 

Just from what Shiro said, Lance’s chest had felt tight, his stomach dropping at things that Shiro recounted as if they were stories from a book he’d read. 

They’d stayed up until the first people began filing in for breakfast, and Lance couldn’t wrap his mind around it all.

What matters now, Lance thinks as he blinks tears out of his eyes, pulling the blanket tighter around himself, is that Shiro was steadfast.

Shiro was, despite everything that had happened to him, calm and collected as he’d told Lance about everything.

Shiro was a rock where Lance was a crashing wave, shattering where it connects.

And Shiro had seen so much worse, been through hell and back multiple times.

Lance’s problems wouldn’t even make a fucking dent in Shiro’s, and he knows it’s unfair to compare, he knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself. 

His mind draws the connection anyways – wraps a red thread around the pin in Shiro’s life and connects it to Lance’s own. 

How could Shiro be so composed when Lance falls apart before he even starts to speak?

He knows the answer.

Even if it’s a cruel one.

He’d given it to himself already. 

“My memory is fucked,” Lance says, barely keeping it together. He can hear his pulse roaring in his ears. “I don’t even really remember how it happened, and I– I don’t think I remember the entire month after coming back. There’s just—” He gasps for air almost. “There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Keith doesn’t move. Lance isn’t even sure he’s breathing.

“It might as well not have happened,” he continues. “The only reason that I know time passed at all is because the scar healed and Allura was suddenly so close with Lotor and I didn’t remember any of it. It still gets spotty sometimes, where things just– They slip. And then they’re gone.”

The first tear spills over and then it’s too late. The second one follows right after.

“The blast didn’t just get my head, though, it also fried my fucking nerves right along with me.” He feels that anger welling up in him again, with every tear that runs down the side of his face, staining the bright sheets. It feels like he’s drowning in that emotion. “Before Allura found out and took me to the hospital, I would have days where I couldn’t get out of bed if I tried.”

Finally, that gets a sign of life from Keith, who just moves to lay down next to Lance, wrapping a strong arm around his middle and pulling him close. He still doesn’t say anything, but maybe just this once, Lance is thankful for it. His breath is warm against the nape of his neck.

Lance hiccups around a muffled sob that shakes through him, and Keith holds him just a little tighter.

“Sometimes I couldn’t feel my hands– or–” He presses his palm against his mouth to suppress another one of those pathetic noises. “I’d get really bad flares of pain.” His eyes squeeze shut. It forces the tears clinging to his lashes to drip down. “Just really, really bad. And even with– I have painkillers that I have to take every day, twice. Even with that and physical therapy I still get them sometimes.”

Keith presses his forehead against Lance’s neck. “So that time you told me to stay on rotation for two days longer was…?”

“Yeah,” Lance whispers, nodding. “It was a bad one.”

“Fuck.”

He almost breathes a laugh at it. That– yeah. That hits the nail on the head, he guesses.

With another stifled hiccup, he decides to turn around, looking right at Keith this time. Right at the man that he loves.

The evening light streaming in through the window above them is gentle towards him. Now, it doesn’t feel like a timer clicking down, but instead like an old friend. It tinges Keith’s cheeks with a tender golden blush, and it takes the edge off from the turmoil of emotion brewing in his eyes by catching on his unfairly long eyelashes, casting equally long shadows on his skin.

And this, for just a second, makes Lance contemplate spilling his guts to Keith. 

Telling him everything.

He wants Keith to know.

He wants Keith to know that a laser blast cauterizes the wounds while a blade doesn’t. That Lance can’t use a kitchen knife without being reminded of holding his bayard in the form of the Altean broadsword. Allura had been so proud of him then, and Lance remembers mirroring that exact same pride. He’d been beyond fucking thrilled, blood thrumming with excitement.  He was the first to unlock a third form of his weapon. He’d done something no one else on their team had done.

Until he’d used it a grand total of three times. 

Until he’d sliced through flesh and bone and muscle and sinew for the first time instead of metal and wires. Until warm blood had splattered against his visor. Until he’d gone through the entire mission with the remnants of someone’s life caked to his armor. Until he’d stripped out of said armor in his hangar still, nothing but terror driving him to get rid of it. Until Lance had scrubbed his hands raw with a steel brush until they bled, held underneath a stream of scalding water although none of the gore had ever even so much as touched his skin. 

He wants Keith to know that he’s never been further away from the stars than now. That he had a panic attack the last time he sat in the pilot’s seat of a ship. That he hopes it was just a fluke. That he, despite that, hasn’t dared to set foot back into one. That he’s stuck.

He wants Keith to know that more often than not, he feels like he’s back in space. That he’s not in the parts of space he wants to be, but in the vast unknown, in the terrifying darkness. That he feels like he’s dying in Red’s cockpit. That, sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he sees lightning spreading behind his eyelids.

But Keith’s eyes soften, his brows pull up in the middle, and his hand wanders to Lance’s cheek, and Lance thinks that Keith’s being careful with him. Looking at him like he’s something fragile. Something to wrap in bubble-wrap and send off with a warning. To handle with care.

And that makes the ugly claws of resentment tear at his lungs from the inside.

Because Keith has only ever used his sword as a weapon, and he’s stronger than ever.

Because Shiro lives on in a body that’s not even his own, and he’s more collected than Lance could hope to be.

Because Allura nearly had to give her life in the ultimate sacrifice, and she’s leading a whole planet in rebuilding.

And Lance is a coward.

Afraid of his own skin.

He clutches at the fabric of Keith’s shirt as he sobs into his chest, steady heartbeat thrumming against his cheek. 

Keith stays silent, he just keeps Lance held close, his hands softly tracing over Lance’s back.

“Dying is a fucking copout,” Lance stutters. “It sucks. It sucks so much.”

All he gets in response is a questioning hum from Keith.

“I always thought there would be–” he shudders, tears coating his voice. “I thought there would be something. Just– Fucking– Anything. My life flashing before my eyes, some fanfare, a rundown of my happiest moments, maybe. Or I thought I’d see my grandma, telling me off one last time for being reckless.”

A cicada chirps outside. It’s the first time that Lance consciously hears it today.

“And instead I got nothing. I got a black screen, a dead fucking TV. I don’t think I even heard Red then.” He heaves through another sob, snot and saliva smeared further into Keith’s shirt. “Felt like kicking me while I was already gone, as if to just hold me down further. All I wanted was– I just– I thought there would be someone to tell me that I did good.” 

God, his eyes hurt. His throat feels stripped raw.

He hurts and hurts and hurts and fucking aches.

“Someone to tell me I did the right thing. That I made the right choice by taking the hit for someone else. I wanted someone, in the end, to be proud of me. Instead, I just thought I passed out for a bit. I gave up everything I was and I got fucking nothing back.”

Keith tightens his grip and presses his lips into Lance’s hair. 

“Oh, Lance,” he murmurs, which means jack shit. It means nothing at all. And both Lance and Keith know that.

But what’s there to say?

What the fuck is there to say?

“I hate that I died,” Lance admits. “And I hate that I was brought back.”

Keith’s fingers clench behind Lance’s back. He feels it. 

“I felt like a fucking ghost sometimes back then, like everyone was staring right through me all of the time. Like I wasn’t even there.” He squeezes his eyes shut harder, pressing closer into Keith’s chest, as if he were trying to literally get under his skin. As if he were trying to become one with him. Leave his old body behind. Start new, without his old self holding him down. Go on inside a better soul.

“And sometimes,” he whispers, barely audible, “sometimes I wish she’d never brought me back to life.”

Keith’s breath stutters. Lance feels his heartbeat skyrocket against his cheek. 

“I never fucking asked for it. Or for any of this,” he continues, because he’s on a roll, because he’s spilling so much to Keith already, because he doesn’t care. What does it fucking matter at all? “I never wanted to constantly be in pain. I never wanted to be so fucking afraid, Keith. I never wanted this.”

There is, after all that, nothing to be said. And Keith doesn’t do that. But Lance feels wetness gathering in his hair. He feels the softest of shudders that run through Keith. Feels how the fingers stroking his back shake. 

“I wish she could’ve just let me go. Found a new red paladin. Maybe that would’ve been better.”

Keith doesn’t say anything. 

Instead, he runs them a bath later. 

The blinds are drawn, the only light in the room comes from a small candle burning up on the windowsill. The air smells like jasmine and honey. 

Lance doesn’t comment on how red Keith’s eyes are, and Keith stays silent about Lance’s admission. 

With trembling hands, Keith helps to guide Lance into the water, helps him adjust until he’s pressed against Keith’s front, his calloused hands holding him at his waist. He washes Lance’s hair for him; short, bitten-down nails soothingly scratching over his scalp. He litters Lance’s shoulders with kisses, one after the other. And each one piles up just a bit. Each one adds a little weight to what’s pulling Lance’s shoulders down. 

When it comes to washing his back, Keith wordlessly offers to let Lance do it by himself. For a second there, Lance hesitates. But he doesn’t want Keith’s hands to feel the raised skin webbing across his back yet. Not yet. Soon. But not yet. 

Keith understands, softly holding Lance by the chin and tilting his head back to kiss him one last time before rinsing himself off and leaving the room. 

Lance stares at Keith’s retreating silhouette, backed by the golden light streaming in from the hallway as he opens the door. Studies the hair clinging to his neck and back, barely past his shoulders now. Studies the scar across his right shoulder. He lets his eyes drift, up and down and right back up where Keith’s softly smiling at him. 

And then, Keith leaves. Closes the door behind him. 

And Lance sinks.

He lets himself drift off underneath the surface of the water, taking a deep breath before he does, a gasp as he tries to fill his lungs with enough air to last an eternity. 

Underwater, he opens his eyes, watches the foamy bubbles dance above him, light of the candle reflecting like bright sparks. 

Underwater, even with the soap, his eyes don’t sting. 

Underwater, he floats. 

Underwater, he doesn’t have to worry too much. 

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

“What happened to last time being the last time?” Lance asks, leaning his shoulder against the opposite doorframe. 

Keith’s body responds before his mouth does. He rolls his eyes. “That was your idea, smartass. Not mine.”

Pursing his lips, Lance lets his gaze rake over Keith’s body, over how the leather of his jacket hugs his shoulders so nicely, how his flannel shows off his collarbones. There’s no use in trying to act against what he wants in his drink-clouded mind. 

(Okay, not clouded. Tipsy. Little over that threshold. A tiny bit drunk perhaps. Lance is a pro at holding his liquor, yeah?)

There’s no use in denying that he wants Keith. His body, at the very least. That he wants Keith’s hands on him. 

He laughs. “Fine. Guess you’re right.”

“You guess?” Keith asks, and maybe he’s getting a little bit nervous around the edges now. 

“I’m not gonna be giving you the satisfaction of actually being right,” Lance answers, waving his hands. “Who do you think I am?”

Unimpressed, Keith stares at him. Just stares. Apparently over being nervous and over Lance acting like an idiot. 

Lance lets his hands drop to his sides. Stares back. 

“Cool,” Keith says flatly, cocking his head to the left. “So, what’ll it be, Ambassador?”

The title sends a hot fucking shiver down Lance’s back. 

“It’s a captain’s job to make sure his crew is well rested and relaxed. Isn’t it, Captain?” Lance plays along, if only to see the red flush on Keith’s face and neck deepen the tiniest bit underneath the overhead lights. 

Keith hums. “It’s my duty,” he answers with that stupidly crooked smirk on his lips. “Although I can’t promise the well-rested part.”

“Sounds good enough to me.”

Keith unlocks the door, lets Lance in first with a wave of his hand. 

And the door isn’t even all the way closed when Keith starts to crowd Lance towards the desk. They don’t bother to turn the lights on either, the whole room bathed in the deep blue glow of the city outside, with the exception of a small orange lamp that sits on Keith’s desk. Which, speaking of, Lance hits it ass first, biting down a small yelp of pain and surprise. He places a hand behind him to keep steady, and the other one holds on to Keith’s arm, fingers curling into the worn leather. 

“Don’t even think about–” Lance starts, but Keith cuts him off. 

“Don’t worry,” he says, eyes sharp and intense, “I know the rules, Lance.”

He doesn’t even find time to worry, because Keith roughly tugs Lance’s jacket off, throwing it aside. It must hit something, a loud noise coming from wherever it lands, but it’s lost on him the second Keith’s lips come into contact with his neck. 

Everything zeroes in on the sensation of the wet, open-mouthed kisses that Keith leaves on him, right above his pulse point, biting down harshly and soothing over it with his tongue. 

Lance’s hand flies up into Keith’s hair, the movement tugging the already fraying braid loose, the long strands falling freely over his shoulders now. 

He’s missed this, Lance realises as Keith pushes himself closer, easily slotting himself between Lance’s thighs, forcing his back into an arch by crowding him over the table. He’s missed Keith’s hands, already sneaking underneath his shirt, warm fingers gliding over hot skin. He’s missed Keith’s mouth, positively ravaging his neck. And, god, maybe he’s missed Keith. 

Maybe he’d just missed how Keith’s body could make him feel. 

Yeah. 

That’s more like it. 

Lance’s legs wrap around Keith’s thighs almost on instinct as Keith rolls his hips, pushing closer, closer, closer.

With one hand, Keith unbuttons Lance’s shirt while the other holds on to the nape of his neck, hastily ripping it open and trying to get it off of Lance like it’s personally offending him by just being there. 

But Lance likes his own hands right where they are, so the fabric remains bunched up somewhere around his forearms. He decides that’s good enough, and apparently so does Keith, because he kisses down towards his collarbones, sinking his teeth in along the way. 

Lance shivers as he’s pretty sure that Keith is about to puncture skin, but the pressure lets up just before that happens. Instead of drawing blood, he leaves marks, red and dark across his neck. It’s not like Keith leaves him hanging though, not in the slightest. His hands are everywhere, nails raking along Lance’s back, smooth leather and the tips of his fingers digging harshly into Lance’s sides, desperately trying to pull him even closer. 

Desperation wins out, as it always does with Keith. Lance ruts his hips forward, reveling in the fact that Keith’s already really fucking hard against Lance’s own unfortunately clothed raging hard-on. 

The fact that Keith still feels this way about Lance after all these years seems unbelievable to him. Because all that Keith’s doing is kissing his skin, and it’s still turning him on like crazy, and that just lets the fire in Lance’s veins burn so much brighter.

The physical proof that he’s affecting Keith like this strokes his ego in the most wonderful way. 

It’s not just the ego boost that’s nice, but the knowledge and undeniable evidence that Keith still wants him is honestly just really fucking hot.

Keith thumbs over Lance’s nipples, over and over, grinning like he won the lottery when he watches Lance bite down the smallest of whimpers – because Lance thinks he’s definitely doing enough for Keith’s ego already. He’s not gonna give in and become a shivering, whiny mess just because Keith knows what he likes. He’s not gonna. Keith will have to work a little harder for it if that’s what he wants out of him. 

“Wanna take these off?” Keith asks, voice gravelly as his hands start tugging at Lance’s belt. 

He can’t help but frantically nod, though. Kicking his shoes and socks off by stepping down on the heel, Lance lifts himself up from the desk just long enough for Keith to make quick work of the belt buckle and the zipper of Lance’s jeans, pulling them down right along with his boxers. It leaves Lance completely naked on the desk save for the shirt still bunched up on his arms, offering a little bit of coverage where he doesn’t really need it. Lance gasps as the colder air hits his exposed skin, but it’s quickly replaced by pure heat as Keith’s gaze lands on him. Taking, taking and taking him in, consuming him in molten fucking lava. It’s made more intense by the fact that Keith’s still fully clothed, he hasn’t even taken his jacket off. 

“You’re just gonna stand there and stare?” Lance asks, leaning himself back on the desk, spreading his legs a little more in a surge of confidence he honestly hadn’t known he had in him. Maybe it’s because it’s Keith. “Or are you going to put your money where your mouth is?”

And only because it’s Keith. Keith, who’s seen every angle of him at least a thousand times. The only difference is that they’re a few years older and that Lance has managed to grow into his skin. But maybe that’s exactly what does it for him. 

Because he’s pretty sure he sees sparks fly in Keith’s eyes before Keith’s on him again, sucking harder on those dark marks without caring about the repercussions, grinding his hips against Lance’s naked, too-sensitive dick. 

“Wouldn’t have to stare if you weren’t so fucking pretty,” Keith answers, the words sinking into the junction of Lance’s collarbones. 

Lance jerks forward, a moan spilling past his lips as sturdy denim rubs up against him, and fuck, he’d really wanted to keep it down. Keith, however, picks up on it, as he always does, and grabs Lance’s hips, pulling him closer to the edge of the desk. He now purposefully grinds against Lance, and it sends him to another plane of existence pretty much immediately. 

With his head thrown back, eyes scrunched shut, Lance barely notices that Keith’s looking at him, he barely notices anything but the blinding friction against his dick.

But just as Lance finds that familiar tightness in his gut building just right, it stops, and Lance’s head snaps upright again, the complaint already on his lips. 

“You a–”

But it’s cut short by the sensation of Keith wrapping his gloved hand around Lance’s dick, stroking him agonizingly slow. 

Keith’s watching his face, and Lance is watching Keith’s. 

His head falls forward as Keith slowly, slowly, too fucking slowly moves his hand upwards, eventually pressing his thumb against the slit, where Lance is leaking an embarrassing amount of pre already. 

“You’re so messy,” Keith whispers, and Lance is too caught up in swallowing down the next noise threatening to leave his mouth to notice how utterly breathless Keith sounds. 

His forehead comes to rest against Keith’s, because that’s the closest he can possibly get, and his eyes glue themselves to Keith’s lips as he watches his tongue dart out to wet them. 

Fuck, he wants to–

And Keith’s looking right back at Lance’s lips before his eyes flick back up to look Lance in the eye as he starts jerking him off in earnest. 

Lance gasps, fingers scrambling for purchase in the soft leather of Keith’s jacket. And somewhere far away, he can hear Keith laughing, feels the puff of air against his lips. 

He wants to lean in, lean in, lean in and take. 

He holds back. 

He weakly snaps his hips upward into Keith’s fist, chasing that little bit of additional speed he needs to push him over the edge. He wants to come so fucking bad and at the very same time he doesn’t want this to end, and he doesn’t know which side of him will win in this stupid battle. 

“‘m close,” he manages to bring out, the words barely more than a breath of air. 

Keith laughs again – having entirely too much fun with this – and speeds up just a tiny bit more. 

“I don’t think so,” he answers then, abruptly stopping and tightly squeezing his fingers around the base of Lance’s dick. 

His legs kick out as the building pressure gets staved off, a cry of protest falling from his lips before he can help it. There’s sweat beading on his forehead. “Oh god, you fucker,” he breathes. 

Lance’s thighs shake.  

“Yeah?”

“You’re the worst.”

Keith smirks, letting up on that tight squeeze, instead dragging a fingernail along the sensitive skin, tracing along the head and back down again. “Good,” he answers. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

They’re trading puffs of air between them, in and out as Lance catches himself. 

But he only catches himself so much, while the edge slips out of his grasp, his eyes stay glued to Keith’s lips. And Keith’s dealing with the very same problem. 

His fingernail drags from tip to base again, wrapping thumb and middle finger around Lance, and then, just as another whine escapes Lance, Keith asks a question. 

“What do you say we break one of those stupid rules?”

Lance’s breath hitches, and–

Keith’s lips are spit-slick, glistening in the blue light from outside. 

–and Lance has never broken those rules, and–

Lance gasps for air, watching Keith’s pupils blow wide enough to swallow up the dark brown around it.

– and Keith has never asked to break them. 

“No,” Lance answers. Simple as that. 

“Okay,” Keith says, pressing his free hand against Lance’s lower back from behind, worn leather against scar tissue, and pulls him forward into an arch, only to pick up the pace again. 

Both of Lance’s arms land on Keith’s shoulders, locking them behind his head. 

And–

And–

Lance surges forward, crashing his lips against Keith’s. 

It’s pure ecstasy. 

Keith’s lips against his, mouth open and wanting and desperate, and he gives in to Lance almost immediately. Meeting him over and over in the middle. 

And maybe Lance doesn’t give a flying fuck about those rules anymore. Because he’s kissing Keith for the first time in ten years and it feels like the world could crash and burn around them and he wouldn’t even notice it if the floor collapsed underneath him. 

Lance’s hands fist into Keith’s hair, and Keith lets go of him in favor of holding on to his back, pulling him in and crowding in on him even more, bending him over the desk, holding their combined weight up with one hand on its surface. 

It feels so familiar and yet so new, because Keith’s tongue tastes like the awful glittery alcohol as Lance sucks it into his mouth, and Keith’s hair has never been this long, almost tickling where it touches his arms from where Keith’s bent over him. 

His entire body feels like it’s on fire. 

He blindly reaches down between them to undo Keith’s belt and open his pants, freeing his dick from what must by now be painful confines. 

In this position, Keith can’t really use his hands to help Lance if he wants to keep holding him like this, so Lance has to untangle his other hand too, aggressively pulling down his pants and boxers. He barely gets it down past Keith’s ass because it’s hard to think with Keith’s mouth on his own, but he thinks it should be enough. 

Keith groans into Lance’s mouth as he snaps his hips forward, sliding his dick right up against Lance’s, and yeah, yeah, that’s enough for now. 

Or, not quite, and maybe Keith thinks the same. 

“Shit, wish I could fuck you,” he rasps, caught up somewhere in Lance’s lips. And Lance whines in response. 

He really hadn’t prepared for any of this at all, because he’d been expecting them to politely ignore each other all evening like they had for the past three days. If he’d known– Well. He’d probably have spent his afternoon differently. 

“Next time,” he gasps as Keith moves forward again, building up a steady rhythm of friction. 

Keith kisses the side of Lance’s mouth. “Next time?”

“Hah– ah, maybe.”

Through hazy eyes, Lance sees the stupid smile on Keith’s face. And he shouldn’t be saying shit like that. He really shouldn’t. There won’t be a next time, not after this. 

Keith honest to god whimpers when Lance moves his right hand back down between them where they’re lined up against each other, and he eats it right up. 

He’d always loved when Keith was loud, and that really seems to have not changed in the slightest. 

The noises leaving him only get louder as he fucks up into Lance’s fist, his dick deliciously dragging against Lance’s. And Lance, having been pulled back from the edge twice already, feels his orgasm coming on fast now. 

“Keith,” he whines, because they’re breaking rules anyways, because he can’t bring himself to care anymore, “I’m–”

But Keith shuts him up with another bruising kiss. “Don’t come yet,” he orders, pulling back for just a second. “I’m almost there.”

Lance crashes against Keith’s lips again, all teeth and tongue and spit, and it’s so hard not to come when all of his senses feel heightened and overwhelmed. When every sensation feels a thousand times as intense as it is. The slick slide of Keith’s dick against his own, the additional pressure of his own hand, the zipper of Keith’s leather jacket brushing across Lance’s chest, the metal of Keith’s belt buckle slapping against Lance’s ass with every snap forward of Keith’s hips, the silver of the chain hanging around Keith’s neck against his chin. 

He’s scrunching his eyes shut, fingers white knuckling and tangling in Keith’s hair at the nape of his neck, pulling harshly, clenching the muscles in his stomach, thighs locking tighter around Keith’s hips. 

He doesn’t even know why he’s listening to Keith, doing what he tells him to. In no other scenario would he ever even consider this. Giving pushback wherever he can. Countering every argument. 

But fuck, he thinks he’s seeing stars dance behind his eyelids as the pressure builds and builds and builds, and he doesn’t think he can hold off much longer like this. He doesn’t know if it’s only been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but every passing second turns into a challenge for Lance to just hold the fuck on and cling to Keith as he chases down his own pleasure, uncaring for how close Lance is to shaking apart. 

“I–”

“Just hold on a bit longer,” Keith gasps.

He might just come right then and there, he doesn’t think he can hold on a bit longer, but–

He wants to be good for Keith. 

Just this once. 

“Let go,” Keith whispers, and Lance does, coming so hard that his vision almost whites out.

His head falls back, barely saved from slamming against the desk by Keith holding him up, and he cries out, no longer in control of his volume. 

The movement of Keith’s hips stutters, shaky, as he tumbles over the edge right along with him, his breath hot and wet against Lance’s neck. 

Lance, half-consciously pulls his hand back up, bringing it back around Keith’s neck, pulling him in for another kiss, one just as messy as they are. 

And for a small, delirious moment, Lance wishes they could stay like this forever. 

But the feeling of come, rapidly cooling and horrifyingly tacky on his stomach pulls him back to the reality of things much faster than he would’ve liked it. 

Keith, chest still heaving with heavy breaths, gives Lance a moment to adjust, guiding him towards the desk so he can support his own weight before leaning back. He brushes his hair out of his face, pushing it over his shoulders. 

Then, while Lance is still blinking blearily at him, not quite having let go of the moment passed yet, he tucks himself back into his pants too fast for Lance to even catch a glimpse. 

Keith turns on his heels, going to the bathroom, and returns with a wet towel and a glass of water, handing it to Lance to wipe himself down and to drink respectively. 

The towel is lukewarm but the wetness feels cold to his stomach, and it definitely wakes him up, and makes him realise that he’s still wearing absolutely fuck all.

He cleans up and buttons his shirt up as fast as he can, getting some sort of covering up going. 

Keith looks at him while he gets dressed, and Lance can’t help but feel fucking embarrassed. It was hot in the moment, but now he just feels a lot more naked than he actually is. A lot more exposed. 

He tries to ignore the way his cheeks burn as he pulls his pants back up, leaving his rumpled shirt untucked. 

Keith shrugs his jacket off, finally now, hanging it over the back of the chair next to the desk, and grabs the hair tie that had landed on the ground to tie his hair back up into a ponytail. 

“Do you want to stay?” Keith asks quietly as he maneuvers the insanely long strands through the hair tie. “Shower’s all yours if you want it.”

Lance considers from where he’s still leaned against the desk, too shaky on his legs to actually stand properly. He reaches for the glass Keith had brought him, takes a few sips. It’s cold against the inside of his palm where he clutches onto it. 

“I–”

He doesn’t know if he wants to stay. If it’s a good idea. 

(It’s not. All of this was a bad idea. They shouldn’t have done this in the first place. Lance should’ve just eaten rocks like everyone else.)

“I think I’ll go back to my room,” he answers. 

Keith’s expression doesn’t change at all, not even a twitch to his lips. “That’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

Lance shudders, forcing himself to get up, grabbing his jacket and socks and shoes from the floor, not even bothering to put them back on. 

He trudges through the room, already trying to not let his thoughts spiral when Keith says his name. 

“Huh?” Lance asks, turning, looking at Keith over his shoulder. 

“Thanks for, uh– This whole evening, I guess,” he says softly. A lot more careful than anything else he’s said this evening. “It was nice.”

Lance feels the corners of his mouth quiver, more heat building in his cheeks. “Yeah,” he answers. “Thanks for the stress relief, Captain.”

He mock-salutes before he presses the button to slide the door open, making an absolute fool of himself. Looking like a fucking clown. Like a total dumbass.

“Dont–” Keith starts, before halting himself and taking a shaky breath. “Don’t run again, okay, Lance?”

It’s a clean punch straight to the jugular. 

Lance doesn’t know if he’s lying when he says, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The door slides shut behind him as he steps out into the hallway.

—22.07, Earth, Brazil

When Lance wakes up from his afternoon nap, he’s greeted by the roaring ocean – waves crashing into sand and cliff-sides, spraying as they hit the shore. 

The sun is warm on his skin, shining brightly in between a few scattered clouds from where it’s sitting past its highest point in the sky. There’s sand in his hair. 

And Keith’s sitting by his side, arms propped up on his knees as he looks out to the sea. His shoulders are red, even if there’s new sunscreen already applied and reapplied all over his back. He looks so calm, serene, almost. 

Every gust of wind blows at his hair that he’s messily moved out of the way to tie a red bandana over his head, protecting his scalp from the worst of it all. 

When Lance stirs, Keith seems to notice. A small smile forms on his lips as he turns around to look at Lance. 

“Welcome back,” he says, fondness dripping into every single letter. It makes Lance feel warmer than the sun ever could. 

Before he answers, Lance stretches his arms over his head, tensing until something in his spine pops wonderfully. He sits up, leaning into Keith’s side. It’s way too hot and much too sticky, he thinks as he presses his cheek into Keith’s tragically sunburned shoulder. 

“How long was I out?” he mumbles, still half asleep. 

“Six hours,” Keith replies flatly. 

Lance’s head snaps back up, eyes widening in shock. “Six hours?” 

Keith doesn’t keep the grin at bay for very long. “I’m joking,” he says. “Thirty minutes. Tops.”

“Asshole,” Lance exclaims. “I was gonna say, like, the least you could’ve done was give me the rotisserie chicken treatment and roll me around a bit, but it’s good to know that you would totally leave me to crisp up on one side only.”

“I did put a towel over your legs so they wouldn’t burn,” Keith tries, shrugging.

“Not good enough, mi amor,” Lance says with a dramatic shake of his head. “That just gave me sweaty thighs.”

“That’s hot.”

“You’re a freak.”

Keith laughs. “Maybe.”

Instead of driving it further, and beating the shit out of their joking back and forth, Lance looks out at the Atlantic ahead of him.

Already, more and more people are beginning to gather, swimming and enjoying themselves, some lazing on their surfboards and inflatable mattresses, some splashing each other with water. Their part of the beach, surrounded by steep cliffs on both sides, now no longer really secluded.

Lance doesn’t think he minds it too much.

The tide is higher now than it was when he fell asleep, but it still has at least two hours to go until it reaches its highest point. In an hour, he thinks, they should try to surf again. Or, well, Keith should try. And Lance will try to guide him through it while hopefully catching some of those waves himself.

He’s made it his mission to teach Keith how to surf properly, but for the past week, they’ve mostly been on the road. Keith drove until he tired out and let Lance take over, going from place to place and from country to country.

So far, they’ve crashed at dingy motels with moldy AC systems, they’ve slept in their car’s backseat after having possibly the most uncomfortable sex of Lance’s life, and they’ve had one really nice stay at a luxury hotel, but decided after that they’d rather spend that money elsewhere. Namely, on good food and buying shitty tourist souvenirs.

One week of this roadtrip down, and three more to go.

(And then Keith has to leave for six months. Lance tries to block it out as much as possible, but the bold lettering in the briefing has seared itself into his optic nerve.)

They’d landed in Santiago, courtesy of economy class middle-seats and Lance throwing up into not one but two paper bags before knocking himself the hell out with prescription sleeping pills (thanks, Pidge) and tiny bottles of rum (thanks, nice cabin crew guy who drained Lance’s wallet with his very charming smile), and made their way from there.

In two weeks, they’re on another flight to Havana, and then, hopefully very soon after, en route to Varadero, visiting Lance’s family for the last week.

At first, Lance had been worried that Keith and him would not be making it through this trip. Some worries nagging in the back of his mind about being in an enclosed space with him for so long, butting heads over every small thing.

But here they are, and Lance truly believes he’s more in love than he’s ever been.

“You see that guy over there?” Keith asks, stretching his hand out to point at a man balancing a truly hazardous amount of packaged ice cream in his arms, stumbling toward his family. 

Lance slaps Keith’s hand down, anything to get him to stop straight-up pointing at their unsuspecting victim.

“Ice cream man?”

“Yeah.”

“I see him.”

“Where do you think he’s going to be in ten years?”

They started playing that game around the time they crossed the Argentinian border, trying to keep each other occupied on the road when Lance wasn’t reading something to Keith, or when Keith didn’t talk at length about a niche topic he’s interested in, or when they didn’t blast old party songs at full volume, or when the quiet simply became too boring.

Of course, they could simply look and point at someone and make up a story for them, but it felt a lot more fun in the moment to think of where they could be a decade down the line.

“Hm,” Lance starts, crossing his arms over his bent knees and leaning his head against them, squinting at the man in question. It’s hard to judge from a distance, but he’s probably in his mid 40s, wears swim shorts with a US-dollar bill design on them, and the blanket he’s steering towards has a gaggle of kids on it. Either it’s a kid’s birthday party or the man’s been busy. “You think those kids are all his?”

“Nah,” Keith answers. “They’ve got present wrappers all over the place. Asshole didn’t even collect ‘em to throw them away.”

Lance scoffs at that, but as he squints harder, he doesn’t think he can quite make out the detail of the discarded trash. Stupid Galra and their stupid superior eyesight. 

“Alright, do you have any guesses?”

“I asked you first.”

Lance boos him, but Keith remains undeterred. “Okay fine, I’ll say, uh, in ten years, he gets himself a fancy new truck. Full-on mid-life crisis mode. And he picks his kid up from school in his new whip, but here’s the kicker–” Lance wiggles in fingers. “Kid fucking hates it. He’s so embarrassed by the bitchin’ flame decals on the sides that he does a hard left and takes the bus home.”

The smile on Keith’s face is intoxicating. Lance wants to see more of it. 

“That’s brutal,” Keith says, biting down on his bottom lip, still grinning brightly. “But that’s what he gets for littering like that.”

“That’s not all though,” Lance says, wrapping his hand around Keith’s sunscreen-sticky wrist. “His wife hates it too.”

“No way. He’s getting the bad ending.”

“Yes way. She hates it so much that she leaves him.”

“Flame decals aren’t that bad, in his defense.”

“Oh, Keith,” Lance coos, “I’m afraid you just have no taste. You would’ve put flame decals on Black if Allura had let you.” 

“I wouldn–” Keith barely makes it to the end of the sentence before Lance cuts him off with a cackle.

“You totally would have.”

“Would not,” Keith argues. “But you would’ve put truck nuts on Red.”

That rapidly changes the conversation. Lance glares. “I’ll kill you, Keith. That’s a fucking promise.”

“Yeah?”

Lance doesn’t answer, but he shoves Keith’s side, hard enough to topple him over, and dives right after him. Hands struggle for grip, Keith trying to push Lance away, and Lance trying to pin Keith down. Laughter hazily floats between them. It feels almost dreamlike for a second there as Lance finally manages to press Keith’s wrists down into the sand.

Keith’s teeth glint in the bright summer sun, his hair fanned out around his head, the red bandana a splash of color across the deep black. His eyes are squeezed shut in laughter.

“I would not put truck nuts on Red,” Lance wheezes, barely keeping his own giggles under control. “You’re an ass.”

“You’d think it’s funny!”

“I would think it’s horrifying! I’d never do that to my gorgeous baby.”

Keith snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“Keith…”

“Keeeeeith,” Keith mimics him, pouting for extra dramatics, twisting his wrists free and pushing Lance onto his back. 

The sun frames him from behind as he holds Lance down. He looks like a goddamn angel sent from above.

“I do not sound like that,” Lance answers defiantly, unable to do anything about the warmth blooming his chest at the sight that’s unfolding in front of him.

Well, maybe there’s one thing he can do.

He checks left and right to see if anyone’s watching them before pushing himself up and pressing a kiss to Keith’s lips.

Keith smiles into it, his face lighting up, glowing with joy. It’s enough to make him ease the grip on Lance, letting him roll back onto his towel, getting sand absolutely everywhere in the process.

“Fact is, flame decals are horrible. And truck nuts are even worse,” Lance says, pushing himself back up on his elbows to look out at the crowd.

Keith crosses his legs in front of him, leaning forward. “Maybe he’s got truck nuts on his new car.”

“Oh, god. Yeah, maybe that’s the last straw for his wife.”

“Good riddance,” Keith says. 

“Agreed.” Lance nods, letting his gaze sweep over the people milling about. “You think anyone here’s deserving of another bad ending?”

 “Only that guy, I think,” Keith answers. “Everyone else here gets a good ending.”

Lance blows out a puff of air between his lips. “You really think so?”

Keith smiles. “Yeah.”

An hour before midnight Keith had dragged Lance out of their motel room and into their truck, driven for twenty minutes, and taken him to a secluded clearing at the edge of one of the cliffs they’d been surrounded by earlier.

Despite Lance insisting multiple times that Keith had been replaced by a serial killer wearing a super realistic mask of Keith’s face, Lance is still alive and kicking an hour later.

Now, Lance has his head resting on the towel that covers Keith’s naked body, his thigh warm even through the fuzzy material.

“How’d you even find this place?” he asks, breathing in the night air, relishing in the pleasant soreness deep inside his bones, in the thin sheen of sweat covering his skin. 

Keith’s hand is in his hair, playing with the grown-out curls atop his head. “Apparently there’s a super popular make-out spot about twenty minutes on foot from here.”

“What do you even know about make-out spots?”

Keith loosely gestures to the two of them. “Enough, apparently.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“You don’t count.” Keith interrupts the (really nice) thing he’s doing to Lance’s hair in order to flick at his forehead. “But I heard some people at the beach talk about it while you were out.”

“Oh baby, taking romance tips from teenagers,” Lance jokes. “Didn’t know the situation was that dire.”

“They were definitely our age, but the situation was actually that dire. I don’t know if you know, but I’ve never been here before, so I’ll take whatever tips I can get.”

“Speaking of,” Lance says, “we should probably try that restaurant the lady in the lobby was raving about.”

“Yeah, maybe.” 

They sink into a comfortable silence. The only sound comes from the ocean, glittering in the moonlight, dark waves crashing against the cliffs. 

Lance feels more at peace than he has in a while.

He’s happy here with Keith.

And he kind of never wants this trip to end. Another day has passed by, and even though the memory of it is sitting beautiful and sparkling inside his hippocampus, it’s another day closer to Keith’s departure in three weeks.

If he could, he would ask Keith to stay just a little longer. Just five minutes. And every time, after four minutes, he’d ask anew. He’d ask and ask and ask.

But he never does that. 

Because what Keith does is so much bigger than the both of them.

Even though the love he keeps inside his ribcage for Keith feels bigger than that. Big enough to fill up the entire universe and even more than that. It feels unthinkably big.

It feels unending. Unfathomable. Unforgettable.

Bigger than it all.

How could it not be? With everything they’ve been through, with how entwined their lives have been ever since they first met, with their souls having shared an intricate bond beyond comprehension? Knowing Keith inside and out.

“Where do you think we’ll be in ten years?” Keith asks eventually, breaking the silence.

Lance turns his head to look, and from the expression on Keith’s face alone it’s evident that he’s been stewing on this for a while. 

His chest aches. 

He had never really thought of a future in that way, he thinks he still doesn’t. 

When he’d worn his blue armor for the first time, he’d seen it written in the stars that he would die young. Right up there, somewhere along the unknown constellations that had blinked back at him whenever he’d lifted his head to look.

They said he’d go fighting on the frontlines. Go out in a blazing sea of light.

So he’d gone ahead and checked that off of his list. 

Lance had died young. 

But no one had prepared him for what that would mean. To die young and to keep living after that. For what that would leave him with. 

He looks at Keith, sees that he’s almost imperceptibly biting the inside of his cheek, dark, moonlit eyes nervous as he waits for Lance’s answer. 

For Keith’s sake, Lance humors him. 

Because maybe Keith is thinking of a different future altogether. 

A future where Keith isn’t about to step up to lead a millennia-old organization soon, and maybe he’s thinking of one where Lance’s sense of self isn’t as muddled as old paint-water, where he could cook a meal without having to take breaks because he can’t hold a knife for long enough to cut a vegetable into pieces. Maybe he’s thinking of a future where they’re not apart more than they are together. 

“In ten years,” Lance muses, swallowing down the bitter taste on his tongue, “you’ll look like your dad, I think.”

Keith’s eyes widen in surprise. 

“You already do sometimes, when you refuse to shave.”

His breath staggers for a second. “You’re gonna take after your mom,” he gets out. 

“I’d hope so.” Lance grins. He lets Keith off the hook. “I’m not planning on graying early, man. No box dye could ever replicate this beautiful shade of brown.”

“You’re an idiot. What else? You’ve got to give me more than that. Looks aren’t everything.”

“Easy for you to say, I’ve seen your mom.”

“Whatever.”

“Okay, okay.” Lance purses his lips, studying Keith’s face. The constant time in the sun has brought out the smallest dusting of freckles on the bridge of Keith’s nose. One, two, three, four, Lance can count them without a problem, even in the dim light of the waning moon. “In ten years, I’ll love you.”

“Too easy,” Keith answers with a smile. 

“Too easy?”

“Yep. I’d be dead or stupid if I didn’t love you in ten years.”

That hurts somewhere deep down in Lance’s stomach. Feels like he’s lying to Keith. 

And maybe he is. But he’s not doing it on purpose, not to hurt Keith. Quite the opposite.

Keith just dropping things like this has become a bit of a habit for him lately, and there’s not a single time where it doesn’t hit Lance like a meteor at full speed. Especially when Lance usually had to pry, dig in deep to get him to speak openly. 

This time, Lance blames it on the very definite post-orgasm haze that Keith’s apparently still feeling to its fullest.

“Then maybe we’ll be stupidly married by then,” Lance says. “And we’d have a cottage by the sea! Two kids. Both girls, but they fully take after you and they are two absolute menaces.”

“Two girls?” Keith asks, his eyes lighting up even more. “I’d want two boys, I think.”

He fucking beams at it. Truly, Lance thinks, Keith’s smile could rival the sun blasting them with a UV-index of 10 this afternoon. His smile easily breaches the scale. 

“Guess we’ll have to have four kids then.” Lance shrugs.

Keith grins. “Why stop there?”

“Shit, babe, you’re so right. How about six?”

“What do you think about eight?”

“Ten.”

“Twelve.”

“Fourteen.”

“Okay, at that point you should probably just become a teacher or something,” Keith says.

“I don’t think teachers become teachers because they want an insane amount of kids,” Lance rebuts.

“Maybe you’re the exception.”

“Hm.” He smiles back at Keith. “I’d probably make a pretty good teacher.”

“You’d make a great teacher.”

Something inside of Lance clings to that. Something small, something incomprehensible that’s been building for a while. Something that rests right next to that sinking feeling. Hand in hand, arm in arm, side by side. 

It’s something. At the very least, something that slowly fills that empty, gnawing space. 

“You think so?” Lance pries. 

Keith tries to hide the spreading flush on his face by looking out at the water. “Maybe,” he admits almost bashfully. 

Just as Lance is about to say something else, the words already on his tongue, Keith asks, “Do you wanna go flying?”

That stops him in his tracks. 

“What?” His voice almost breaks.

But Keith just nods into the direction of the cliff, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Get a little midnight swim going?”

Lance sits up, not really caring about where his own towel is slipping off to. He skeptically eyes the shoreline underneath him, trying to discern if they’ll just fucking die once they hit the water.

“It’s safe,” Keith assures him.

“And what? I’m just supposed to trust you?” Lance raises an eyebrow, turning back to face Keith who checks his phone, and then gets up in all his very naked glory.

Keith’s face scrunches up, but he extends a hand to help Lance up. “I’d hope so? We saw people jumping here earlier today.”

“But the tide–”

“It was low tide when we got there in the morning,” Keith says. He shakes his hand a bit.

“Fine,” Lance answers, letting Keith’s strong hand pull him up easily. “If we go splat on those rocks that’s on you. And you’ll have to explain to my family what we were doing here naked in the middle of the night.”

“Can’t do much explaining if we’re both– Whatever. Yeah, I’ll do it.” His fingers stay tightly closed around Lance’s.

“Good.”

Keith lets go of Lance’s hand before he moves his arm around Lance’s middle, pulling him in close by the waist. He leans in, breath ghosting over his lips, body warm, exuding glowing heat even in the breeze. Lance clings to it.

Keith’s lips are hot when they press against Lance’s, even if just for a second. His skin prickles right there.

“Happy birthday, Blue,” Keith whispers, voice low, his eyes steeped in moonlight and affection. Lance would never look away from him if he could.

And right, it must be past midnight.

Another year passed.

Another year older.

“Thanks,” Lance mutters. He presses his face against Keith’s neck, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Sunscreen and sea salt is all he gets, with Keith’s own scent somewhere buried underneath that. It’s soothing nonetheless.

“Last one in the water gets the shitty side of the bed,” Keith says, pulling him back. He barely gives him a second to react before he pinches Lance’s ass and runs off like he’s a man on a mission. 

Perhaps he is.

On a mission to get the better side of the bed. And Lance can’t let that stand.

He runs after him, putting his full trust into Keith’s promise of a safe landing, and jumps off of the cliff’s edge right after him.

It’s much higher than he’d thought, the glimmering ocean water so far away from the soles of his feet. But he’s in the air, and his eyes don’t know what to focus on. The moon, unobscured by clouds, the stars, blooming and glowing above him, or the roaring sea beneath him.

Milliseconds turn into minutes as gravity wraps itself around his body and pulls him down with everything it’s got to give. It’s keeping him tied to the ground, always dragging him to the lowest point once he’s in free fall. It’s mesmerizing and infallible, how he can always count on it to pull him back, to keep him from floating, to keep him tethered to the core. Like an astronaut, held in place by a thick rope that holds up even through debris and chaos. 

His lungs fight for air as he descends, falling and falling, faster and faster.

And just for all of two seconds, for the first time in years, Lance flies again.

The impact doesn’t hurt.

Keith’s warm hands find him in the freezing ocean water, holding on to him as they float beneath the surface. Keith’s lips find his again right before they swim upwards to breathe.

Maybe, Lance thinks, like this, he won’t need to come up for air.

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

Lance feels the flare-up coming on before it actually starts. 

The meeting he’s in is a particularly awful one. There’s no negotiation happening – this is more of a sit and listen type deal, Lance’s well-known biggest strength. And it would be fine, even this early in the day, if Lance had slept well in the slightest, and if the Iylsedin leaders weren’t fighting the entire time through. 

In the briefing it had said that they all have different opinions on what their conditions to joining the alliance are, but now that they’re getting deeper into it, it’s really coming to fruition. 

It’s a lot of them speaking over each other, interrupting, and a snide comment here and there. 

Which Lance would love to listen to more closely so he can debrief about the drama later with the others, but, yeah. He’s got something coming on. 

After he had woken up, his shoulders felt tingly, like tiny needles puncturing the skin, rolling across him in waves. Lance had clenched and unclenched his hands, still retaining feeling in them for the time being, rolled his shoulders out, stretched his back, did some of the exercises his PT had suggested he do when this happens. 

None of it really did anything to quell the feeling, but Lance was on a tight schedule and there wasn’t any pain yet. So, he grit his teeth and took his normal meds, plus twice the number of painkillers he’d usually take, and got dressed. 

And now, he’s struggling to keep his grip on the pencil in his hand. It’s shaky at best.

In the very back of his mind, he hears his shithead undergrad classmate laughing and saying, “hey, bud, that pencil isn’t going anywhere.”

He tells himself to relax, but the pencil slips the very second that he does. It loudly clatters against the table, and he tries to slap his numb hand down on it to keep it from rolling further across the surface. All of that fucking mess puts a harsh stop to the heated discussion unfolding in front of him. 

Without exception, every pair of eyes in the room lands on him. Keith’s eyes burn the hottest on the side of his face. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, keeping his own gaze glued to the table’s smooth surface, searching for any sort of pattern in it.

It doesn’t help that his clothes hurt on his skin, at least across his back. Just the thin cotton of the shirt he’s wearing beneath his uniform is enough to make it feel like it’s rubbing his skin raw. Every hair on his body stands on end, even as nearly everyone turns their attention away from him again. 

Because of course, Keith is still looking – Lance doesn’t even have to look back at him to know the exact expression on his face right now. He knows it. That warm concern, even after The Incident (as Lance had dubbed it in his head) two nights ago. 

When Keith finally, finally stops and returns to listening to the discussion, the pain creeps up on Lance.

Slowly at first. 

Small waves of electricity roll up his spine, each more intense than the last – thousands of tiny needles jabbing into his skin, a thousand bird beaks fighting their way out of the outer layer of an eggshell, desperate for air, cracking it as they breach.

Every single pinprick branches out across his skin along the patterns of nerves winding between sinew and bone, twisted along his cardiovascular system. A little jab turns into a searing flash of pain shooting across his back.

Lance barely keeps it together as he sucks in a breath, clenching his jaw tightly to make sure not a single noise leaves his mouth. 

The next flash is even worse. 

This time, Lance carefully sets down his pencil, both hands coming to rest on his thighs, fingers squeezing into the fabric hard enough to bruise the flesh underneath. He can’t feel it in his hands, but he definitely feels it in his legs. 

Just as slowly as the pain came on, his pulse started to get louder, replacing any other noise reaching his ears, instead hammering against his eardrums at a panicked 172 times per minute. 

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and Lance needs to get the fuck out of here. 

He makes a point to take out his datapad, scroll, and to act as if there was something on there catching his attention. It’s hard to do when his body feels like it’s shattering into pieces with every slight movement, but he’s caught up in not wanting to alarm anyone. That, and not really thinking that his shitty damaged nerves are anyone’s business but his own. 

He stands, then, clearing his throat to cover up a sharp hiss of pain, his datapad clutched tightly between his fingers. 

“I need to be excused for the rest of the day,” he says, speaking fast so his voice doesn’t get time to betray him. “Something important came up.”

Once again, the fight dies down uncomfortably fast, and one of the leaders nods at him, the glowing bands in their antlers tilting along with their head.

Lance books it. 

He walks back to his room as fast as he can without starting to run. 

The second the door to his room closes behind him, he’s taking his awful jacket and his shirt off, and climbs onto the bed to curl himself up atop the sheets. 

He breathes. 

He breathes in and out for hours on end. In rhythm with the waves of pain crashing across his body. 

There’s nothing else to do but breathe. Lance hates these days with a passion. 

He’s bored out of his fucking mind, but as soon as he wants to do anything that would put an end to that, his body punishes him relentlessly. 

So, he exists. 

For the entire day. 

All he does is exist. Curled up tightly in his bed. 

Breathing in and breathing out. 

Sometimes, the aftermath is worse. 

He regains feelings in his hands sometime in the evening, and with it, the pain slowly subsides, the flood ebbing. His head is filled with cotton, struggling to put together coherent thoughts for the next hour after. For that time, he’s dead to the world. 

It’s endlessly frustrating. 

He showers afterwards, brushes his teeth and gets dressed. 

Discarding the pants of his uniform into the laundry chute, he picks up a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie instead. Something soft and comfortable, something that doesn’t feel like it’s scratching off the top layer of his skin.

With every blink of his eyes, he feels a little better, a little clearer. Still strung out and run ragged, but nowhere near as bad as this morning. 

Fresh air might do him some good, and since the windows can’t be opened in here, Lance is pretty sure he’d used up all the oxygen in his room for at least a week to come. 

However, the city below is so full, too crowded for him to keep up with in his state. 

He goes for the next best thing. The rooftop. 

Arms slung tightly around himself, he steps out of his room, and makes the trek towards the very top, taking the elevator up as far as it goes before switching to the stairs. 

It’s the third day of darkness, just the middle of the night for the Iylsedin people with their insane day/night cycle, and Lance is seriously starting to miss the sun. However, it doesn’t make the sight stretching out behind the heavy steel door any less breathtaking. 

Flickering bright and blue underneath him as he steps out towards the edge lies Mirtral’s capital city. Rounded buildings drenched in lights raking their way up into the sky. Constant movements in the streets, heavy fog winding its way across the pathways, making the glow light up even brighter. 

The air is moist as he breathes it in, coating his lungs from the inside. It smells like it’s going to rain soon. It’s perfect. 

He finds a space for himself somewhere by the edge, a group of four supply crates set up in a circle right there. Behind some of the crates are metal poles with old lightbulbs fixed to them, creating a bit of atmospheric lightning that vividly reminds Lance of back alleys behind restaurants. He thinks it might be where some of the guards take paid breaks without telling anyone about it. 

This theory is only backed by the small heap of discarded snack wrappers placed in a metal tin and what Lance thinks might be the Iylsedin cigarette equivalents squished out on the ground next to it. 

The peace and quiet doesn’t last long. 

Behind him, the door opens, and Lance flinches, whirling around. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to be fucking arrested by the guards who just wanna dick around on the roof instead of working, but it’s not an Iylsedin that stands in the door frame. 

It’s – because who else could it be – Keith. 

Still in uniform, which makes Lance feel a very special brand of inadequate in his sweatpants, clutching two bottles of water in his left hand.

He carefully closes the door behind him before walking the ten meters towards where Lance is sitting and looking out at the city spreading out beneath them. 

Lance eyes the bottles in his hand, how holding them both makes his hand look larger than usual, even though Lance intimately knows that Keith’s hands are smaller than his own. He wonders if Keith came here on purpose. 

“You got a hot date or something?” Lance asks, clearing his throat after, his voice sounding like it’s been shot to hell. 

Keith smirks, turning his attention back to Lance. “Or something.”

Heat flushes into his cheeks. “Must be quite the stunner if you’re bringing ‘em water as a gift.”

Keith walks around the crate across from Lance and lets himself sink down on top of it. “Yeah, totally.” He hands one of the bottles to Lance. “Hold this.”

Lance does, but he falters, because his hands are nowhere near strong enough yet to twist the cap open. And he really doesn’t want to ask for help. He’d probably rather throw himself off of the side of the building than ask Keith, who’s surprisingly been nice enough to bring him water in the first place, to open the bottle for him. 

Keith opens his own bottle easily enough, then wordlessly hands it to Lance, taking the bottle he’s holding back to open this one too.

“Thanks,” Lance mumbles, probably furiously blushing, hoping that the blue light of the city next to them will cover up the red on his face.

Keith takes a long sip, and Lance mirrors that, realising that he hasn’t had any water all day. His throat is thoroughly parched.

“So, what’d I miss today?” Lance inquires, leaning back against the pole behind him. He tries for a smile, though he doesn’t know if it reaches his eyes.

Keith actually ends up downing half of the bottle before he sets it down on the ground between his legs. His braid falls over his shoulder, but he flicks it back with a short twist of his hand. Lance’s gaze is glued to the movement.

“Oh, a lot,” Keith answers casually. “It got heated.”

“Are you saying it wasn’t already heated before I left?

The corners of Keith’s lips tug upwards. “I’m saying that our argument last week was a stiff breeze compared to that.”

“Wow.” Lance unglues his eyes from Keith’s hair and instead looks out at the bustling city next to him. 

Out of the corner of his field of vision, he sees that Keith does the same. “The financial officer called the head of security a bitch.”

That snaps Lance’s attention back to him. “Really?”

Keith nods, grinning. “It was quite the show.”

“Man, now I wish I would’ve stayed.”

“Yeah, it got physical too.” Lance gapes as Keith turns back at him, smiling wickedly. “They started throwing punches left and right."

“What?”

“It was crazy. I barely got out in time to avoid getting hit by a folding chair.”

Keith’s smile is dazzling enough that Lance believed him for a second there.

“Now you’re fucking with me,” Lance says, crossing his arms in front of his chest, frowning.

“Yup.”

“You really made me believe you.”

“Well, I didn’t lie about the bitch fiasco, that part was true,” Keith defends himself. “But I took notes, if you want ‘em.”

Keith taking notes is basically unheard of. Even way back on the Atlas, when Keith was leading Voltron and whatever strategy being discussed might actually be of importance to save the whole entire universe, Keith would just sit, and sometimes listen. Pen and notebook nowhere to be seen. Not that Lance did much better on that front back then. 

Lance taps his fingers against each other, pushing the pad of his pointer finger into the thumb nail. “Sure, thanks.” He pauses. “I should probably g–”

“What happened to the no running, by the way?” Keith asks like it’s just another question. Interrupting Lance’s attempted getaway.

Lance freezes for a moment, biting down on his bottom lip, furrowing his brows.

He hasn’t exactly been avoiding Keith, but–

“I wasn’t running,” he defends, opening and closing his water bottle again. “I was just–”

“Avoiding me.”

Lance lets his head fall forward. “Avoiding you, yeah.” He presses the cool plastic against his forehead. “But, to be fair, I was hungover as hell. I was also avoiding everyone else.”

Keith hums. “Felt targeted.”

“I can promise you it wasn’t.”

There’s a whirlwind of something brewing in Lance’s chest that really makes him feel like lashing out again. Even if Keith is being nice, and if he’s being direct and open. Something makes Lance want to push. 

Maybe that is exactly why Lance wants to push. Keith’s never been this open around him. At least not where it got uncomfortable on the emotional side of things.

“And just when I thought we were making progress,” Keith says, sighing, and Lance realises a second too late that he’s being sarcastic.

He quirks an eyebrow. “You call a drunk handjob progress?”

Keith actually laughs at that. “I mean,” he starts, “we weren’t fighting that entire evening, so… Counts as progress to me.”
Lance lets himself fall back, cold plastic still pressed to his forehead. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Man, we’re doomed.”

“Speak for yourself.” Keith’s eyes are on him again. “You were the one who pretty much started every fight here.”

“Did not,” Lance lies.

Thinking back on it, he most definitely did. Initially, it was just to get Keith’s attention somehow, if he were to pick that apart a little more thoroughly. And then, it was to keep Keith from getting too close. To keep what happened two nights ago from happening again.

“Very much did.”

“Watch what you say, Kogane,” Lance answers. “You’re starting one right now.”

Keith snorts. “If I wanted to start a fight, I think I could come up with something better than that.”

“Could you now?”

“Yeah,” he says, lips still upturned, not a dent to his mood. “I’m not really too keen on fighting with you lately.”

Lance doesn’t say anything in response, unsure of what exactly would be the next best thing to answer, to not let this conversation skitter out of his control. 

“Believe it or not,” Keith continues. “But I don’t actually like constantly arguing with you.”

“Wasn’t always like that.”

“True, I guess.” He takes another swig from his water bottle. There’s barely anything left at this point. “You know, things change sometimes.”

Things change, that much Lance can hand to Keith, but fuck, just how much stays the same? Just how much does Lance feel like he’s the same bratty twenty-something around Keith that he used to be?

Too much, he thinks. And that’s becoming very dangerous.

“Sorry,” Lance blurts before he can seal that bit up tightly. “Fighting you is easier than pretending you’re not there.”

“Oh?” Keith raises his brows.

He shouldn’t have said that. He probably shouldn’t say the next sentence, either. “It’s pretty fucking hard to ignore you.”

As Keith just looks at him for a moment, evidently processing the lapse in Lance’s already fraying sanity, the smell of rain in the air intensifies. Before Lance has the chance to look skywards, his left shoulder gets absolutely drenched in ice-cold water. Like someone took a bucket of it and just dumped it on him.

“What the fuck?” he mutters as he sees the rain descending towards them.

He isn’t even sure if he can call it rain, if it even classifies as such. 

There’s an ocean coming down from above in the form of bubbles as large as Lance’s head, popping whenever they reach any sort of surface, soaking whatever’s beneath it in a puddle of water.

Another bubble drops down between them, splashing across Keith’s thighs. He just pulls a face, looking genuinely upset at it. Lance almost has to bite down a smile at that before reminding himself that he’s just casually been spilling whatever the fuck his brain had cooked up to him. 

The next bubble explodes right in the nape of his neck, and now it’s his turn to be upset. The water is freezing where it seeps into his hoodie.

“We should probably get inside,” Keith says, bringing both hands up to shield himself from the rapidly increasing number of bubbles falling their way. Another one splashes across his arm.

Lance is already getting up, nodding frantically. He doesn’t need to be told twice.

By the time they reach the door not even half a minute later, both of them are soaked down to their bones. 

Keith pulls at the handle and opens the door, letting Lance through first, waiting outside and getting another three hand-sized bubbles to the top of his head, thoroughly dousing him in rain.

He runs inside right after Lance makes it in, and lets himself fall against the door after slamming it closed.

Lance wipes the water away from his face as he watches Keith take a couple of heavy breaths, chin tilted upwards. He gathers himself, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes.

“Don’t ignore me, then,” Keith says, fumbling with the leather of his soaked gloves, fully concentrating on his task of getting them off of his hands.

Lance’s eyes widen against his will. “What?”

“If it’s so hard to ignore me, don’t do it.” The first glove comes off, Keith’s skin underneath glistening. “It’s easier.”

Is it really easier?

Lance doesn’t know if he agrees with that.

He presses his lips into a thin line, staring down at where Keith is still leaning against the door, looking much too relaxed for the turmoil that Lance is feeling in his chest. 

“I guess.”

“This doesn’t have to be difficult, Lance,” Keith answers, voice kept low. “We can get along.”

And that–

That snaps something inside of him.

Of course it’s difficult. Everything about this stupid situation they’ve gotten themselves into is difficult.

“Whenever we get along we end up sleeping together,” Lance bites, the simmering coming to a boil. “I don’t think that’s the way to go, either.”

“Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Fucking your ex?” Lance takes a step back. “Pretty high up on the list of things any good therapist tells you not to do.” He would know.

“Fine,” Keith says, finally getting the other glove off and looking back up at Lance. “We can get along and not jump each other’s bones if it’s so fucking terrible.”

“Fine,” Lance repeats.

“Great.”

“Amazing.”

“Cool,” Keith says, because he just has to have the last word.

And then he brushes past Lance, down the staircase.

A shuddering breath escapes him. 

He needs to change into something dry.

Chapter Text

—23.12, Earth, Cuba

Lance has no idea what he’s doing. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Lance says out loud. “Is it supposed to burn like that?”

Rachel laughs, the sound echoing in the cramped bathroom. 

“I think that’s normal?” she tries reassuring Lance. “My scalp feels like it’s about to come right off.”

“Oh, you think?” Lance mimics her. “Well that changes things. It’s now impossible for us to get chemical burns.”

He looks at himself in the mirror, craning his head to get the hair at his neck and behind his ears properly covered in the blue bleach paste. It’s weirdly fun, and Lance could probably do this all day long. He doesn’t even want Rachel to help anymore. 

She has her hands full anyways – showing him pictures of tiny baby animals while she waits for the bleach in her own hair to do what its supposed to do is a very important job. 

They spend too much time waiting for the bleach to fry their hair into a yellow-blonde mess. The smell of the mixture stings in Lance’s eyes, making them water like crazy, and it makes for forty very uncomfortable minutes. He’s close to jumping for joy when its finally time to rinse it in the sink. 

Both of them end up applying ungodly amounts of toner afterwards, hoping to get some of that yellow tinge out. It works better for Rachel than it does for Lance, but he suspects that’s because she’s had the bleach in for longer.

Seeing her with blonde hair is almost enough to give Lance some sort of whiplash. It looks good, no doubt, but incredibly different. It highlights the red blush in her face from the warm water she showered with after getting the toner off.

He says as much to her as he rubs a towel over his own wet hair, not yet daring to look at his reflection in the mirror. 

Rachel smiles brightly. “You look different, too,” she says, reaching out to grab a hold of one of the curls in Lance’s bangs. She pulls it forward carefully, moving it into Lance’s field of vision. “Very bright.” The curl doesn’t really bounce back as it usually would when she lets go of it, and the ends look a little rough, but Lance had wanted a change, and now he has it.

All change comes with a bit of sacrifice, he guesses.

“Do you like it?” he asks. 

“I think it’s cool,” she answers. “Might’ve fucked the curls a bit, though.”

“Just a bit.” 

“Come on, you haven’t even seen yourself yet.” 

Rachel then grabs his face, pressing his cheek against hers and makes them both look into the mirror. 

He has to blink a couple of times until recognition sets in. For a second there, he’s looking at a stranger, someone very different from himself – facing none of the same struggles, wanting change because it’s fun, and not because it’s necessary for him to keep moving forward. And he’s looking at his twin sister, who’s never not looked like he did. Now matching the stranger in the mirror.

Until that image twists and he finds himself somewhere under that nearly-white hair. Somewhere in those shared blue eyes.

“You look like you call things tubular unironically,” Rachel teases, letting go of him only to poke him in the cheek, “and that shell-necklace of yours is not helping your case in the slightest.”

“You look like me, dumbass.”

“Nuh-uh,” she counters. “You look like me, because you’re younger. You’re the cheap copy.”

“Asshole,” Lance says.

She laughs. “Infant.”

“Shut up.”

Lance is ready to tackle her, but she’s faster, running for the open door and right into the hallway.

Their smiles are like twin suns when they almost crash into the living room, ready to send their mother into an early grave, but she just smiles, her fingers running through their hair, taking in their new appearance.

Rachel pinches Lance’s side. He subtly punches her arm, hard enough to make her suck in a breath.

“You’re both going to need haircuts,” their mom states, pointing at their horribly damaged ends. “But otherwise, it’s alright.”

“Alright?” Both Lance and Rachel gasp. 

“Just alright?” Lance asks.

She furrows her brows, pressing the knuckle of her pointer finger against her lips in thought. Assessing. “I like it, but it’s gonna to take some getting used to.”

“I get that,” Lance agrees. “As long as it’s just that.”

“Just that. Now, go show your father,” she says. “He’s in the garden.”

Their father, evidently, doesn’t really like it, but he’s mostly hiding it. At the very least from Rachel.

Because he calls Lance back after Rachel is already inside again, only to very quietly ask, “Do you think this will look good for your job applications?”

And Lance’s enjoyment drops like a fucking rock. Because suddenly his hair is a glaring mess and no longer a welcome change.

He doesn’t care if it looks good for that. Quite frankly, he does not give a shit. 

Sure, it’s been a constant nagging worry, somewhere in the very back of his mind. It’s something that causes his stomach to twist if he thinks about it too much.

But it hasn’t really been out there, and his father has never quite explicitly brought it up like this.

His mother has, though. Multiple times.

Rachel is going into her third semester of biochemistry.

And his parents just want to see him succeed.

It feels more like punishment than anything else.

Later that night, he sits in the field outside of the house with a picnic blanket underneath him, keeping his butt safe from the threat of the dewy, wet grass. 

His telescope stands shakily atop the blanket. The old, fraying book laying next to him is almost a memory taken to the present, flipped open on the tab of constellations in the night sky. He’s honestly still wondering how this book hasn’t fallen apart after years and years and years of near-frantic use. The spine is bent, the glue coming undone in places. There’s water damage from when he’d spilled hot cocoa on it when he was eleven years old. 

“Do you think I can see you tonight?” Lance asks, head tilted upwards. 

The stars gleam above him, oh so bright in the darkness.

From the speakers of his phone, Keith’s voice sounds staticky as he tells Lance to wait. A lot of clanking and rumbling later, Keith has apparently figured it out. 

Lance knows Keith’s in transit between stations right now, probably sitting in his cockpit, feet up on the dashboard, keeping his eyes trained on the stars passing by. He’s probably changed out of his uniform and into something more comfortable for the next three days of travel. 

Lance imagines him, a sweatshirt a few sizes too big for him, joggers where the legs always ride up halfway up to his calf, only one sock because Keith swears it keeps him from overheating. He imagines his hair spilling across his shoulders, messy and in desperate need of a cut, imagines him flipping through the book that Lance had bought him last time they were on Earth together that he hasn’t had time to read up until now. 

The image makes his chest squeeze tightly. 

This time, for once, Keith’s not ungodly far away, sometimes even close enough for Lance to see where he is if the stars align. He’s traveling by pod, which is significantly slower, but wastes less resources, and for Keith, who’s still healing from his last injury, it’s a blessing to get three days of low-impact duty. 

“How clear is the sky?” Keith asks in response. 

“Crystal-clear. I can see the Milky Way.” For now, that is. The forecast tells him it’s going to rain in two hours. 

“Tell me about it.”

Lance breathes in, inhaling the scent of the earth beneath him. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says. “Fucking mesmerizing.”

Keith sighs, maybe he adjusts his position a little bit. “I miss it.”

“And it misses you.”

“I miss you,” Lance wastes no time in tacking on. “It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, just another month,” Keith answers, sounding a lot more tired, a lot more weary. “I miss you too.”

It brings a prickly hot heat behind Lance’s eyes pretty much the second Keith’s mouth opens to speak. That’s what it always is, isn’t it? Always just another month. Always just another week. 

He’d missed their last anniversary. He’d missed his last two birthdays. Lance tries to not let it get to him, but it’s not as easy, not really. 

“So,” Keith continues, “I’m passing M33 right now.” He coughs. “Well, not really passing, but if I zoom in I can get a pretty good visual on it.”

Lance blinks. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s pretty. Surprisingly purple,” he says, laughing. “It’s just a large purple-blue spiraling dust-cloud to my right.”

“Do you think you can send pictures?” 

“I can try,” Keith answers. 

Lance’s picture of his bleached hair still hadn’t sent, the connection between them being unsteady at best. Even Keith’s voice sounds a little too mechanical at times. He doubts he’ll get to see what Keith’s seeing, and he guesses his hair will stay a surprise for when Keith comes back. 

Something clacks, switches are flipped. “I’ve also got a very good view of a very special H II region from here.”

“Oh,” Lance breathes. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Keith’s voice is quiet, nearly reverent. Lance can imagine the wonder in his eyes as he looks on, and his stomach sinks, heavy like stone. “This one’s NGC 604, I’m pretty sure. It’s so big, and it’s– It’s really something. You’d love it.” He can tell that Keith is barely paying any mind to his phone, rather has his gaze glued to the screen where he’s zooming in on one of M33’s spiral arms. “To think that thousands of stars will begin their existence right there, in that huge green cluster of stardust and gas, it’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Lance’s heart pushes against his ribcage from the inside, as if trying to get to Keith from there. Trying to nestle itself up there between the stars. 

“And it’s all here and I can see it,” Keith continues. “All I need to do is to look out of the window and search for it. It– It almost looks painted, or like someone flew through it a bunch of times to drag the dust with them. Can you see it too?”

With a start, Lance scrambles forwards, wrapping both his hands around his telescope as he begins adjusting the lenses. He’d been too caught up in listening to Keith that he’d forgotten to actually do what he came here for. 

With that realization, he begins to feel just how cold his hands are – joints stiff, skin aching as he tightens one of the knobs on the side of it. Not that it’s cold outside, but Lance is tired and a little more upset than he’d like to be right now. 

A quick look at the book by his feet tells him he’s looking for the Andromeda Galaxy M31 and Mirach, and somewhere beneath those he should be able to find it. Same distance right down again.

He skims the next paragraph, pointer finger gliding underneath the lines of printed text. 

“You might only be able to see it with–”

“Binoculars, yeah,” Lance finishes for Keith, finger settling underneath the word. “It’s too dim on the surface, apparently – the light scatters too far. Maybe I can see it with just my eyes, though.”

Lance tilts his head up to squint at the night sky. Silently, he curses the light pollution of the city not too far away, but the sky is at least somewhat dark, so that it should technically be possible. 

With a bit of time for his eyes to adjust, he finds the Triangulum constellation pretty fast, and his eyes drift further up towards Andromeda. The gorgeous glow twinkles down at him, lighting up as if it’s waving to him. 

M31, Mirach, take the distance, back down and– He squints harder. Trying to make something out there. 

All he can find, even with all the practice he’s gathered over the years, is a muddy smudge of grey-ish color.

He keeps his eyes cemented to it until they begin to water and the image blurs even more. 

“It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Keith asks. 

A pang of longing explodes in Lance’s chest. “Yeah,” he lies. 

“Keith, I think I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lance says after an excruciatingly long bout of silence between them. As he glances up at the stars, he thinks he can feel the pull their very own gravity. As if the arm of the Milky Way was reaching out to him, cradling him, wrapping layers and layers of stardust around his spine and pulling him towards the unending darkness of space. 

But Lance stays rooted to the earth, no matter how much the stars call out to him. He doesn’t speak their language anymore, doesn’t understand what they’re saying. He wishes he could, but the words are muddy and drenched in blood, foreign sounds in his eardrums that make him feel isolated enough to make his hands shake. 

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, edges of his voice soaked in worry. 

Lance sighs. “I mean I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.” His hands come up to press against his temples. “My parents keep asking about finding a new job, and it’s always this ‘what are you gonna do next?’ and I’m so tired of hearing it.” He digs the heels of his palms in harder, as if some pressure might alleviate his worries. “It’s all anyone asks me about. As if I don’t even matter in the first place.”

Keith hums thoughtfully, letting the words sink in. “Lance, you do matter.”

“All they want to know is what I’m going to fucking do with my life.”

“You’re not less than–”

“I know that, obviously,” Lance cuts him off. Something digs into his back from underneath the blanket that has him shifting uncomfortably over and over again. “Like, rationally I know that. But if every time a relative or some family friend comes over, which is a whole lot lately by the way because Christmas is coming up, all they do is ask about my career prospects, it starts to feel like no one even really gives a fuck. They’re asking out of obligation and they’re asking to make me feel like shit. That’s all it is.”

“You could always tell them to stop asking,” Keith offers.

A sharp breath escapes through Lance’s nose. “That’s such a you answer.”

“Does it matter?”

“‘Course it matters, man.” Lance shifts again, the pressure beneath his shoulder blade wandering from one spot to the other. He might have to move his blanket. Or just pack it up and go back inside the house. “I’m not telling my family to fuck off, even if my answer is staying the same.”

There’s a quiet hum of noise from Keith’s end, and Lance can’t help but wish that Keith were here with him. Laying on the ground beside him, arm outstretched to where Lance could easily tuck himself into his side, press his head to Keith’s chest. Listen to Keith’s slow and steady heartbeat. Like this, he can’t even see Keith’s face. And he can’t even see the same things in the sky. All he gets is muddled color, while Keith can see the genesis of stars bursting into existence with the naked eye. If Keith suited up for an EVA, he could probably feel the heat through the layers of the thermal flight suit.

“Is there anything you do want to do?” Keith asks eventually. 

Lance has to imagine him tilting his head inquisitively, has to imagine the questioning look on his features, the way his hair would fall into his eyes.

“I haven’t even graduated high school,” Lance answers, swallowing down the taste of copper that’s beginning to coat his tongue.

He hasn’t really breached this topic with Keith in the past year, ever since it had first come up when Keith and him had been to Varadero last time. His mother had asked him at the kitchen island, because Keith is aiming for a leading position, and Lance is– Well. He’s there. Struggling to cut into the meat on the cutting board. 

The answer is that Lance has no fucking idea.

He’s a pilot who can’t fly.

He’s longed for the stars his whole life only to have been burned by the touch.

He’s a pilot who can’t fly.

He’s barely in his mid-twenties and he’s a veteran with nothing to show for it except for shaking hands.

He’s a pilot who can’t fly.

“You saved the universe,” Keith counters decisively. “I don’t think anyone gives a fuck whether you finished the last four months of high school.”

“Tell that to all the places that haven’t gotten back to me.” He hasn’t applied anywhere. He doesn’t think it matters. “I’d probably need to go back to school first anyways.”

“Would that make you happy?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, swallowing again. His throat clicks around nothing. “Maybe?”

“Maybe’s not good enough.”

The next breath Lance takes is a little more shallow, just enough to notice. Just enough to make that dizzy-trembling sensation behind his eyes set in. “It might have to be good enough,” the words force themselves out. They sound too thick, too wet. Like he’s about to cry. “I don’t know what I want. I have no fucking clue. Not even a little bit.”

He’s a pilot who can’t fly. 

There isn’t much else he’s good for. 

“Lance,” Keith says quietly. God, he fucking misses Keith. He’d feel less terrified if Keith were here to wrap his fingers around Lance’s wrist to ground him. Less terrified if warm lips pressed against his temple. Less terrified if there was a heart beating next right to his own, rather than two million lightyears away. Less terrified if they were skin to skin, and not separated by the ozone layer and the Kuiper Belt and nothing beyond the arms of the Milky way, and steel and insulation.

His throat tightens, and the next breath is barely a flimsy attempt at it.

“Lance, sweetheart,” his boyfriend tries again. “You don’t have to know what you want. It’s not important.”

He bites his bottom lip, teeth nipping at a flake of dried skin. It hurts when he rips it open. “Then why is it all anyone cares about when they see me?”

“Because they don’t see you.”

Lance presses his eyes shut as the stars above him begin to swim. 

“I shouldn’t even have brought it up,” he whispers, part of him hoping that Keith won’t hear it. He says it to the stars, to the grass around him, to the bugs that find the light of his phone screen terribly interesting. He says it to himself, and he doesn’t think he says it to Keith.

Keith is silent for a moment.

Then, “I’m glad you did, actually.”

Lance opens his eyes, blinks the water away, tries to imagine that it doesn’t cling to his lashes. “So you can have a good look into my psyche?”

“No– I– I mean, yeah, but–” Keith’s stuttering – which is never a good sign. Few things make Keith nervous, and it’s hard to imagine what’s set him off during his impromptu trying not to cry performance. “You could always come with me, you know? The Blades have an open spot for you.”

“Yeah, right,” Lance says, almost derisive. “No Galra heritage here.”

“You were my right-hand man, Lance. They’d be lucky if you joined for just one mission every once in a while.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

Keith stays silent for a moment before he blurts, “I, uh, spoke to my mom.”

“Okay?” The anticipation and resulting anxiety spikes enough to stave off the new onset of tears for a moment. To let him ignore the complete absurdity of Keith’s request. “And?”

“Because the Blade I’ve been sharing a room with transferred to a different station last week, and I– Okay, I–” Rustling. “He moved in with his mate, and I wanted to know– There are special rules for bonded pairs. Galra value mating bonds so much, because, ugh, you know how they mate for life, right?” 

Lance didn’t know that. 

“So, they have this whole thing about getting to work together with your partner at any opportunity.” His voice sounds strained. The noise barely reaches Lance’s ears. He thinks he knows where this is going, and it’s rapidly accelerating his heartbeat in his chest. “If we were bonded, we could get to share a room, we’d get missions together, and there’s a process for weapons forging that–”

Lance blinks. Hard. “Bonded, like– You mean like…?”

“Bonded.”

“Bonded,” Lance sounds the word out slowly. “Like for the rest of our lives?”

“I– Yeah, I guess.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He lets the syllables coat his skin like evening dew. 

“I really mean it, Lance, we could–”

The very idea is laughable. Lance is barely holding himself together with scotch tape and hot glue. And Keith is thinking much further than that. And it makes him want to laugh, and to scream in blinding joy that Keith wants that uncertain future with him, wants to make it a little less so. And yet, right here, as he stares at where he hopes Keith is in the night sky, it feels like a sucker punch to the gut. Like a kick right into his ribs. 

His response is harsh as it collects like bile in his throat. It’ll choke him if he doesn’t say it just the same.

“I mean it too, Keith,” he brings out. It burns in his mouth, sears his tongue and corrodes his teeth. “I don’t want to go with you.”

The ‘I can’t go’’ stays wedged between his gums like rotting meat. The ‘I’m stuck here’ remains unsaid. The ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t even half-formed yet.

Keith is out there.

And Lance is down here.

And Lance can’t leave.

And Keith doesn’t understand.

How could he?

“What?” Keith asks, audibly caught off guard by his answer.

Lance balls his hands into fists, the sharp edges of his nails where he’s anxiously bitten them down over the past week cut into his palms. He takes a deep breath, but it, too, ends up too shallow, jagged edges of his ribs cutting into his lungs. 

“I don’t want to go with you.” Rinse and repeat. “This is my home, Keith.”

Another brutal lie, another thing piling up. 

Earth hasn’t been his home since he got swept up into the stratosphere and beyond by Blue. He’d thought it was, back then, and he’d missed it desperately. But coming back hasn’t filled that gnawing emptiness nestling in his chest. It feels less like a home than it ever has. Not his apartment back in Arizona, not the faded green brick walls here in Varadero. Nothing comes close. 

“I want to stay here,” Lance says. 

Maybe if they were both a little older, they could have an actual conversation about this. Talk things over, figure out where they can make changes, and end up with a plan that works for the both of them.

“Okay,” Keith answers.

But his hurt bleeds into his voice, an open wound bared with a single word. And Lance can’t help but feel like he’s going to be sick.

This isn’t working for either of them. None of this is. 

Lance is sure, however, that even if he were a little older, he’d never ask Keith to make himself small, to stop reaching for the stars, to stop doing what he does so fucking well – to stop doing what he does best.

“Shiro was telling me there might be an opening at the Garrison soon,” Keith finally whispers after what feels like a small eternity. His voice shakes on the last word. “You could ask him about that.”

“What opening?” Lance asks. He’s since laid down on the blanket, gaze fixed to the skies above him. Wrapping his arms tighter around himself, he tries to feel any semblance of comfort.

“One of the fighter pilot class teachers is retiring.” Maybe Lance’s imagining the sniffle on Keith’s end. “They need someone to take over the sim classes.”

Only a small noise of surprise makes it out of Lance’s mouth in response.

“Give him a call, maybe he can set you up with something.”

“I–”

“It could be perfect for you.”

Lance squeezes his eyes shut. “Maybe.”

Keith hangs up first not soon after, conversation fizzling out and dying down, the million lightyears between them charged and heavy enough to feel.

Lance stays right where he is, watching the stars above him move as the night progresses. Dark clouds form, obscuring the glow. Thunder cracks far away atop the ocean to his right. 

Lance stays there, even as rain begins to crash down on him, even as it soaks through his clothes, even as it seeps into his skin, even as it chills him to the bone.

He’s running a fever the next morning. 

He tells himself it would’ve happened anyways, that staying outside in the rain didn’t play a role in it. Maybe he’d been sick already when he’d snapped at Keith, and maybe that’s why he’d thought in extremes like that. 

Him and Keith are fine. The fever has just thrown him a little.

—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral

When the knock on his door startles him awake way too fucking early, Lance is about ready to throw hands.

Well, that’s only until he opens the door, still sleepily blinking, his shirt rumpled, his sweatpants riding up his calves. He doesn’t even want to begin to think about how his hair must look. 

He stares right at Sahirya, who looks way too nice for this time of day. Her hair is beautifully curled, eyeliner very neatly done in the same lilac color as her marks, clothes freshly pressed in the laundry. 

“Oh,” she says, clearly surprised. “Did I wake you?”

“Only a little,” Lance answers, absentmindedly scratching at his eyebrow. He lets himself slump against the doorframe. He must look like a right mess to her. 

Evidently, because her face scrunches up in sympathy. “I’ll never get the hang of the different times, I think. Been trying for years to remember all of them”

Lance shrugs. “New Altea has, what, thirty-eight hours? Thirty-six?” 

“Thirty-eight,” she answers with a smile. “Twenty-seven vargas.”

“Kind of hard to match.” He leans forward a little when she laughs. “What brings you here, anyways?”

“Right! First I wanted to ask if you’re doing any better?” And when Lance nods, she nods too, holding up a finger to tell him to wait. Then she digs through her travel bag with her free hand until she manages to grab a hold of a data pad. “Your– uh– sorry. Captain Kogane gave these to me and told me to give them to you.” She shoves it into his unresponsive hands. 

Lance blinks once. Twice. Briefly wonders if he’s still dreaming. With the way that Keith stormed off yesterday, he didn’t think he’d want anything to do with Lance at all anymore.

“It’s the notes from the meetings you missed,” she keeps going when Lance doesn’t open his mouth to respond fast enough. “He’s away on Blade business today, but he’ll probably join back up with us in Zitra sometime in the evening.”

“Zitra?”

“Today’s a travel quintant,” she casually says, as if Lance had intently listened the entire time he was fighting his own body yesterday. “Meeting’s at the dock in–” Her eyes drift to the dark red watch that’s embedded into one of the many rings she’s wearing. “Two vargas.”

Shit. That’s in less than three hours. 

“Really?” It’s a dumb question, but Lance is really hitting it out of the park with those one-word replies today. 

“It’s– Yeah. I thought he was going to tell you yesterday after he went to see you.”

“He didn’t mention it,” Lance answers quietly, ignoring the fact that she knows that Keith went after him. “Only mentioned the notes.”

“Oh, then, today’s a travel quintant, which means we’re meeting up at the dock, and the whole quintant is reserved to get to Zitra and settle in. Meetings resume as usual once that’s done, but we’ve got a bunch of free time to explore until then.”

“Ah.” Lance holds the data pad a little tighter in his hands. “That’s good to know.”

“I’m sorry you’re only finding out right this moment, but at least you’ve got the notes now.” She smiles at him. “The captain was scribbling like crazy yesterday, there’s gotta be something interesting about Zitra in there for you. And everything else you missed.”

“I– That’s nice.”

“If you’re asking me,” she says, conspiratorially leaning towards him, lowering her voice, “I think he’s a bit sweet on you.”

The surprised sound makes it out of his mouth before Lance can clamp his jaw shut. Instead of doing the normal thing, which would be enforcing professional boundaries or at least something of the sort, he asks, “What do you mean?”

Because they’ve gotten along very well so far, and Lance loves having people he can be candid with, and, well, sometimes he has to branch out a bit from old habits. 

“I don’t know.” It seems very conversational, the way she’s saying this. Like it’s no less exciting than the notes Keith took. Like it’s not actively pulling away the floor underneath his feet. “He just, hm, seems a bit livelier around you.”

“Does he now?”

“I think so? Listen, I don’t know him that well, this is just what I’ve noticed compared to the other times I’ve seen him during conferences or duty-enforced festivities.” She shrugs, readjusting the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “And he’s been taking notes like a madman after you left, and I haven’t ever seen him do that, so…”

Lance doesn’t even know what to say to that. He stands there for a moment, eyes narrowed, processing. “I guess. Keith can be nice if he wants to be.”

“Oh, that he can. I’m very aware. I just–” Sahirya glances at her watch again. “Ah, I’m sorry for opening this can of Wurglars, but I still have some errands to run, so I’ll see you at the dock, yeah?”

Lance is still stuck on can of Wurglars, when she tells him, already halfway down the hallway, “We’ll talk more when we’re in Zitra tomorrow!”

“Does we have to?” Lance half heartedly asks, but Sahirya just grins and waves in response.

As he carries the data pad inside, he clicks it on, skimming past the pages. 

It doesn’t really register, because what the fuck? This may be a first, outside of his immediate family or Shiro and Adam, that someone noticed something off about Keith and him. That someone was insinuating at least some degree of infatuation. 

They’d been good enough at hiding it around their friends, Lance thinks, so that they’d never thought of them as more than tentative friends and two people who ended up hating each other for some reason. Not one of them had ever noticed them slipping away, not when they were together, and much less after. It seems incredulous to Lance, that they didn’t see the fond looks, the squeezed thighs under the table, the locked ankles. Or that they didn’t see the heated glares, furious snarls and provoking remarks that always pretty quickly turned into hurried and angry hook-ups in supply closets and empty rooms. 

And now, Sahirya, who’s gotten along well with Lance, and who’s only met Keith a handful of times before, sees a difference between them. 

Their friends, he’s sure, have never figured it out. They can’t mind their own business for the life of them. Hunk and Pidge would’ve been all up in their relationship. Allura would’ve laughed at him.

He doesn’t know how to feel about this. 

Eventually, he actually manages to read Keith’s notes – not just skim across the near illegible scrawl that reflects every part of Keith’s being in lettering.

Keith had been thorough, and with every passing page, Lance feels the pit in his stomach grow a little larger. There’s something on each page, ranging from highlighted text and little explaining comments in black writing, across small transcript excerpts, right down to any questions that Lance had barely thought of answered in the margins. He turns page after page, struggling to absorb the information, because fuck, he feels bad.

Somewhere towards the end, there’s a few pages about Zitra. Possible destinations, local cuisine, history, geographic anomalies, everything of that sort. 

Few things are underlined there, almost as if Keith had had a hard time listening then. But Lance flips another page, and there’s something circled in bright blue, ‘Idea?’ written right next to it in the same color.

Lance leans forward, the tip of his nose almost pressing against the screen.

Hot springs of sorts, he gathers, located in something like a crystal grotto. It looks positively breathtaking in the picture, but that doesn’t catch his attention as much as the highlighted text underneath does.

‘…recommended for pain-regulation and relaxation. The thermal spring offers many different types of baths depending on the intensity of pain, ranging from sore muscles to chronic issues. Though everyone is…’

God, he’s an asshole, isn’t he?

Here Keith was, just yesterday evening, not just offering an olive branch but bringing the entire fucking olive tree, roots and dirt and all, and Lance had brushed him off; he’d been needlessly cruel when he hadn’t even meant to be. 

It makes Lance wonder why Keith is putting any sort of effort into keeping Lance close at all.

Yes, he’d been feeling like shit. Yes, his back had been killing him. 

But was that just an explanation rather than an excuse?

He tightens his grip on the data pad, his gaze cemented to the blue color on the page. 

Keith still knows his tells after all this time. Or maybe he doesn’t, and he’d just thought that Lance could use a time-out. He’s not sure. Not really.

But he’s sure about one thing: he’s got to apologize. 

Properly, this time. No chickening out, no turning the fight back around to Keith, no snapping, no dumbass, childish behaviour. Apologizing and owning up to the shit he’s said. Sticking to what he means, sticking to what he wants.

The journey ends up being blessedly short, although it still has him white-knuckling the armrests in his pod for the whole hour and twenty-eight minutes of it. 

Zitra, as it turns out, is according to Keith’s notes not just the name of the country they’ve flown to, but the name of its capital city as well. Densely populated, somewhere on the other side of the planet’s equator where it’s much, much warmer. On the less good side of it all, despite things looking up back in Mirtral, it’s still night here for another day. Lance desperately misses the sun.

It doesn’t make the city any less gorgeous as he walks through the streets towards their new hotel with three of the other diplomats by his side.

The architecture is very similar to that of Mirtral, all organic shapes and closely packed together, but the building’s materials are different. They look like they’ve been made out of opaque glass, blue and green, almost teal in hues. 

Lance can, if he squints, make out the depth of the material, but he can never see quite through it. Every light, artificial and bioluminescent, that they pass reflects in it and sometimes passes right through, lighting up the entire city from within. 

He supposes it’s for temperature regulation, but he can’t quite confirm it. The temperature resembles something tropical back on Earth, and Lance can’t help but hope that it stays dry. 

Trees and bushes and grass grow everywhere, in every crack, every open plane, everything that isn’t covered in paths and buildings. All blue, all blending in with the buildings surrounding them.

The view is impressive. 

He’s so mesmerized that he barely notices the time passing, and before he knows it, it’s already late at night, for him at least. The whole day was spent exploring, listening to his coworkers indulge him in the history of this place, trying some of the food. (Keith had been right, these guys are extremely fond of rocks, and they can and will break his teeth if Lance makes an honest attempt at eating.)

Yet he finds himself restless, laying on his stomach on the round bed in his new bedroom for the next three days. The blue glow of the city outside lights up his room through the walls and the floor and the ceiling, and Lance’s back still feels a little sensitive to the touch. 

As if taunting him, the data pad with Keith’s notes lies next to him on the bed, the screen having gone dark on the entry that Keith had circled in blue.

It’s a reminder that Lance had been a complete dick, and, maybe worse, pressing into an old bruise that still lingered somewhere underneath Lance’s skin. 

Somewhere where it’s still as blue and purple as it had been over ten years ago. Somewhere there, still festering. One that tells him that Keith is always a Blade first. Because he’s with them again, even here, maybe just on a call, but he’s important and busy enough to be gone for an entire day. 

It’s important, and Lance’s own feelings have to take a backseat. He wants to talk to Keith and apologize, to clear things up, but instead of throwing those words right up in front of Keith’s feet, he gets to stew in them and slowly let the acid dissolve his throat.

It’s selfish. He knows this. 

Lance groans, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

He picks the data pad up again. Reads the text again. Tries to ignore the way the highlighted part makes something in his chest flutter.

Apparently, the crystal that grows in and around those hot springs are what the buildings in this city are made out of. So, if anything, Lance is doing some geological research for himself.

And he’s not doing it because Keith had been so unnervingly kind that it makes everything in his ribcage feel too tight for a short moment whenever he thinks of it.

His geological research is awesome, Lance decides an hour later, after he’s made the trek to the grotto on foot, paid for entry, got himself undressed and robed up, and stepped into the cave.

Bright, glowing pools of steaming water stretch across the space like large droplets of rain scattered on the ground. Lance lets his eyes drift as he steps towards the one facing the door that has no one inside of it yet. 

The light in here is dim, red-ish, almost orange in color, contrasting with the light blue coming from the water. The air smells salty, the ground is wet and warm underneath his feet. Lance feels himself relax as he listens to the rumble of chatter a few pools down to the side, overlaid by the occasional splash and bubbling of water.

He lets his robe fall before he walks into the pool. The fabric collects around his feet, and Lance can’t help the excitement that courses through him.

Slowly sinking into the water feels like stepping into an overfilled tub. With the lower gravity, the water’s surface tension seems to be exponentially higher, filled past the rim and still holding in place.

The description hadn’t been lying. Every centimeter of his skin covered in the water relaxes more almost immediately, enveloped in warmth and something so deeply soothing that it nearly knocks Lance right out the second he’s fully seated, head leaned against mossy rock behind him. There’s easily space for two people, but he’s exceedingly glad that he’s alone.

Lance dozes, he thinks. Just a little. His back thanks him for it, for the weightlessness and the aid of water.

Minutes, hours, days must pass before a noise startles him awake, a little louder than the quiet background.

The door in front opens, and another figure steps through into the room.

Skin shining in the light, robe curled tightly around themself, dark hair winding down past where their arms hold on.

Lance blinks, surprised, and it takes him a moment to place, because Keith’s not supposed to be here; But that’s undeniably him.

He sinks deeper into the water, hoping that Keith won’t notice him if he’s just a pair of eyes in one of the many pools. He doesn’t take into consideration how hopelessly stupid it will make him look.

With a bit of a start, he realizes hasn’t seen Keith’s hair outside of his braid yet, but it’s so long. It looks less unruly when it’s open, and it’s probably freshly brushed, judging by how sleek the strands appear as they fall over his shoulders and down his robed chest.

Lance is so caught up in staring that when Keith is looking back at him, he almost doesn’t notice for a second.

Through steam and lights, they hold eye contact for what must be long enough for an entire star system to be born out of dust and fire.

Keith’s lips press into a thin line, and Lance can see the way he grinds his teeth, sees muscles working underneath his skin. He watches him close his eyes and take a deep breath before walking past him.

A pang of anxiety crashes through his nervous system. Keith is clearly still somewhat mad, and Lance deserves all that and more, but he wants to make up for it, can’t he see that?

He stays right where he is, though. Just watches Keith move towards the next pool to Lance’s right, an even smaller one, probably barely enough for one grown man.

Then it dawns on him that he himself is naked, and Keith isn’t yet, and he’s still wearing the robe, but he surely won’t–

There is something very intentional about the way Keith undresses. It’s always been like that.

He rolls his shoulders out slowly, letting the satin-like fabric glide down across his steam-humid skin, facing away from Lance. Even underwater, Lance feels his mouth go dry as the falling fabric reveals his strong upper body, muscled and well-fed, familiar flashes of silver titanium on his chest, the slimmer taper of his waist, the indents of his spine. 

New to Lance are only a few scars here and there, some less severe than others, and thin black marks curving up around his hips, coming from what must be his thighs. It’s a tattoo, Lance is pretty sure.

He lets his gaze trail along the lines, following the path as the fabric falls to the floor. They run across the curve of his ass right down to his thighs, winding along there twice, rings in his skin that squeeze themselves around thick muscles. 

Lance can’t tear his eyes away – he can’t. It’s borderline impossible. 

He’s seen Keith naked countless times – hell, he’s been the reason for most of those, but a body changes a lot in years passing by. And Lance can’t get enough of it. 

For a selfish, horrifyingly self-indulgent moment, he just lets his gaze rake down Keith’s body. He lets himself compare to what he knows. He lets himself imagine what it feels like underneath his fingertips. Under his lips. He lets himself imagine the taste of the thermic water smeared across Keith’s sweaty skin, and–

He reins himself back in.

He doesn’t get to do this.

Instead, he gets to watch Keith letting himself sink into the water until he’s down to his shoulders. His hair fans out around him, a stark contrast against his skin, strands made weightless by the water. 

Keith has decided to sit with his back to Lance, which, honestly, kind of grinds Lance’s gears. The fact that he’s not even been acknowledged beyond visible annoyance, and then actively being ignored is not, uh, great. 

He’s getting his own treatment, it seems. And it doesn’t feel good. 

Keith stretches his arms above his head, muscles straining underneath his skin. He stretches until something stops hurting, and then he pulls the thin red hair tie from around his wrist with his teeth.

Lance keeps staring. 

At the way his arms tense and move. At the way his fingers wind through his hair to pull it out of the water. At the way he slips the hair tie around the bun that he’d haphazardly formed on top of his head with very practiced movements. At the way his wet hair lets droplets of water run down his skin, where it carves its way along the sweat already beading on Keith’s neck. 

Man, if anyone were to see Lance right now, that would just be embarrassing as hell. Cheeks red, eyes wide. All that jazz.

At the very least, Keith won’t see him, because he’s decisively facing away from him, and he’s not even bothering to turn just the slightest bit.

How is Lance supposed to apologize when he can’t even silently mouth the words and force Keith to read his lips? This is the worst. The actual worst.

He considers what he’s about to do for a few seconds. Not even. A second, max. Because it’s not the smartest idea he’s ever had, and he can’t believe he’s actually about to do this when his body already starts the motion.

As naked as the day he was born, Lance gets up and stalks over to Keith’s pool. He at least has the decency to cover up his junk in case the aliens are iffy about that, but really, why would they care? For all they know, it’s a third, shorter arm? A weird leg? They wouldn’t know! 

And he wants to skirt around the worst case scenario, which is Keith turning around and immediately coming face-to-face with his dick. It wouldn’t quite set the right tone for an apology.

Luckily, Keith doesn’t turn. Lance instead moves to sit next to Keith. Water splashes at his sides as he lets himself sink into the warmth, and too late he realizes that Keith had chosen a much smaller pool. It’s meant to seat one person at most.

Their knees knock together underneath the water, calves pressing up against each other, shoulders touching. Keith runs hotter than the water, Lance notices. 

Keith, also, has his eyes closed, appearing relaxed for a moment.

Lance shifts again and this time the illusion shatters – Keith is very clearly not relaxed, jaw shut tightly, brows knitting together, eyes squeezing shut a little further, but he’s not opening them to even spare Lance a half-hearted glance.

He’s uncomfortably aware of Keith’s naked body pressing against his own from the side when he asks, “What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Keith grits out.

Maybe his brain is making it up, but he feels the crackle of static between their bodies, sparks of electricity lighting up at every single point of contact. 

“Looks like you’re trying and failing at relaxing.” 

“Wonder why that is,” he answers flatly.

Lance sucks his lips into his mouth, affronted. “Yeah, Keith, why is that?”

Keith still has his eyes closed, still attempting to keep up the pretense of ignoring him. “Because I’m trying so hard not to have sex with you right now.” His voice is drenched in sarcasm.

Alright, yeah. Okay. Maybe Lance deserves that.

“You’re insufferable,” Lance says nonetheless. Then, “I came to apologize.”

“Not gonna be a lot of coming there.”

“Har har.” Lance rolls his eyes so hard they might detach from their sockets. “Very mature, Keith.”

Being as mature as he is, Keith sinks further down into the pool until the water hits his chin. His leg slides along Lance’s, hot and, from what it feels like, intentionally. 

“Look,” Lance starts again, taking a deep breath to calm himself down, “I was way out of line yesterday.”

Keith barely cracks one eye open to look his way. 

“I was– Ugh. I had a shitty day, and I swear I only meant to avoid you a little bit, and you were just being nice, but I guess it kinda rubbed me the wrong way.” He tries to scoot away from Keith, just a few centimeters, but the angle of the carved-out seat makes it impossible. “I’ve been out of line this entire time, though, I guess that’s not really a good excuse.”

Finally, gratefully, Keith opens his other eye as well, mustering Lance’s face. His brows pull together in the middle as he’s letting his gaze drift over Lance's features. 

“So,” Lance says, slumping back against the wet stone behind him, “I’m sorry. We were actually finally getting along and I was acting like a total jerk.”

Keith blinks slowly before pushing himself back up, water clinging to his skin, glistening in the colorful glow surrounding them. “I can imagine how shitty your day was, but also, yeah, you were a total jerk.”

“I was.”

“Are you going to be starting shit again tomorrow?”

With a little too much enthusiasm in his movements, Lance shakes his head. Water sprays from the tips of his hair. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he adds. 

Keith arches a brow at that, squinting at him. He leans in closer. It’s too close. Everything in this stupidly small swimming pool is too close. Heat spreads underneath his skin. “Really?”

He doesn’t back away though. He stays right where he is, the tip of his nose barely a hair’s width away from Keith’s. “Really.”

Keith lingers. He lingers for a second longer than is good for Lance’s health, but then a sliver of satisfaction creeps onto his face, corners of his lips quirking up as he pulls back. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Lance repeats. He sighs with relief. “That’s good. I kinda thought I really biffed it this time.”

Keith grimaces. “Probably heard worse from you.”

“That’s awful.” 

He raises his hands above water, defensively gesturing before Lance can say much more. “I’ve probably said worse to you, too.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees with a shrug. “I guess it cancels out.”

“Guess so.”

Silence stretches between them, only carried on by the warm fog in the air, the sound of chattering far away where it can’t reach. Lance wishes they weren’t having this conversation all the way pressed against each other, but getting up and switching pools now is a no-go. He’s not gonna be the one to get up first. No way, José.

“Why are you even entertaining this at all? Like, I guess I’m not exactly easy to be around,” Lance asks when the silence gets too unbearable, when it becomes too uncomfortable to be this close to Keith without being close to him. 

Asking is a losing game, he reminds himself. They’re only here for another two weeks, and that’s all of Keith he’ll get for the foreseeable future. Until the next team reunion in December. And even then, he’ll get passing glances, and maybe they won’t actively avoid each other, won’t leave the room if the other one enters, but that’s all it’s going to be. 

They’re still the same people after all.

It’s almost funny how hard his heart is hammering in his chest.

Keith hums thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t even asked himself that question yet. 

Maybe he hasn’t. It’s entirely possible that Lance is reading too much into this – That it was the same no-strings attached hook-up it was seven years ago, that he’s keeping Lance around for a quick high of pleasure. He thinks Keith wouldn’t do that. He’s always been too intense for that, but really, what does Lance know?

“For no reason other than that I want to,” Keith finally answers.

Even though he tries to not let it show, Lance’s breath catches. 

“But wh–”

“I like being around you when you’re not a giant pain in the ass.”

“But I’m annoying most of the time.”

Keith smirks. “True, but we’re still both here, aren’t we?”

“Oh!” And that reminds Lance. “Thank you for the notes, Keith,” he says, the sincerity matching Keith’s from earlier, but it seems to still catch him unprepared.

“I was going to take them anyways.”

Lance is pretty sure that’s a lie. Not once in the past two weeks has Keith picked up a pen during a meeting. 

He doesn’t say anything, though. Keeps that bit of information stored away for darker days.

They stay in that hot spring until their fingers look like withered raisins and the humidity has curled Lance’s hair completely, until Keith nods off mid-sentence, until Lance’s eyelids grow unbearably heavy, lashes clumped with drops of water.

Keith is the first to get up, and Lance really can’t keep himself from taking in the view in front of him. Only now he sees the scar ripped across his side, a little too fresh to not be causing him pain.  He’d love to know how it happened, but he doesn’t voice that. Knowing Keith, he’d probably tell him it’s a long story. Keith never indulged in his scars. He got them and swallowed them down, kept their stories like ghosts in his chest. Lance wonders if they haunt him, too.

“Those are new,” he says instead, gesturing at the black lines spiraling up Keith’s hips and wrapping around his thighs. Lance tries (and fails) to not look directly at Keith’s dick. 

Keith picks up his robe, as ungraceful as being naked and crouching down by the poolside usually is. He looks down at his own hips as if it’s his first time seeing them, a little surprised. After standing upright again and slipping the robe on, he ties it at his waist. 

“Oh, yeah,” he answers. “I got them done a few years ago.” He shakes his shoulders out, reaching up to undo his hair. 

“What do they mean?” Lance asks. 

Slowly, hesitantly, he pulls himself out of the water as well, stumbling over to pick up his own robe by the other pool. Keith’s eyes seem to be glued to his body as he moves, because he takes longer than usual to answer.

“I’ve been doing a lot of research on Galran history while I lived on different stations. Whenever I had downtime between missions, I’d use that time to learn,” he explains, clearing his throat. Lance wraps his robe around himself. “Found out that, if you’re half-Galra, back before the war begun, all the way back then, you’d get your parents marks inked into your skin if you didn’t have them. And I guess my Galra traits never really showed, so…” he trails off.

“That’s insanely sweet,” Lance says, smiling as he pictures the image of it in his head. Of Keith, younger than now, telling his mom about this. “What’d Krolia say? Did she lose her mind?”

“Yeah, she did.” Keith smiles too, falling into step beside Lance as they head towards the exit. “Never seen her cry before that.”

“I bet.”

“I did skip the face tattoos, though,” Keith says, pushing the door open, letting Lance through first. “They’d make me unemployable.”

Lance curtsies jokingly, which earns him a playful hit to the shoulder. “I think that’s the least of your worries, you dropout.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Very rich coming from you,” he says, but he laughs, and Lance counts it as a win. 

He thinks he counts the whole evening as a win.

Especially as they step back out into the city, dressed and tired out completely, and Keith’s hand reaches for Lance’s so they don’t lose each other in the crowd.

—24.05, Earth, Arizona

Lance is sure that the years of food goo have permanently damaged Shiro’s taste buds.

It’s just a hypothesis, but one look at the burger joint that Shiro chose to hang out in pretty much confirmed it for him.

The outside, luckily, is more run-down than the inside. A retro sort of shabby-chic interior decoration greets him as he opens the door. All polished and chrome and orange, and everything looks sort of worn, in a manufactured-as-such way.

Lance isn’t quite convinced yet, and he thinks he would’ve much preferred to get coffee somewhere more chill, but Shiro just got back from work and a man’s gotta eat.

A sweeping glance across the room reveals Shiro, already sitting in a bright orange booth, his hair a shock of white, contrasting against the pleather of the backrest. When he sees Lance, he raises his arm in greeting, smile on his face widening, genuine joy lighting up his features. 

He shakes off the uneasy twisting of anxiety in his gut, clenching his hands at his sides.

It’s hard to feel anxious if Shiro is beaming at him like that.

“We match,” Shiro says as Lance approaches. 

It takes him a hot minute to figure out that Shiro’s talking about their hair. Because Lance has been frying the fuck out of it over the past half year, aggressively taking care of his roots, it’s been normal to have a flash of white in the corners of his vision, to have to put extra efforts into keeping his curls nice. 

So, he’s been rocking the platinum blond look since him and Rachel had first bleached it. And he thinks he likes it, even though it’s been a challenge to recognize himself in the mirror sometimes.  

It also, now, reminds Lance that he hasn’t seen Shiro since then. Nearly half a year passed, and Shiro lives twenty minutes away on foot. 

“Yeah, now we both look old as hell,” Lance jokes to cover up the fact that he’s nervous, which is probably not great to start with. 

But Shiro gives him an amused smile and a fond roll of his eyes. “You more so than me, bud.”

Lance finally slips into the booth across from him, awkwardly maneuvering his gangly limbs to fit into the tight space. 

“Been a while,” Shiro says then, though his voice holds no disappointment inside of it. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.”

“Likewise,” Lance answers. He finally settles into his seat. His hands land on top of the table, fiddling with the glue that’s taped the menu to the surface. It comes off at the edges, dust and dirt having already gathered underneath. “Life’s been busy, I guess. Sorry.”

“No need to be.” Shiro’s smile turns gentler, his eyes soften. “I get it. Everything’s been all sorts of hectic lately.”

If he’s being honest, he’d made the call to Shiro more out of guilt than out of intrinsic motivation. He could’ve just asked him at their last team reunion in December, but that time Allura and Coran were hosting it on New Altea, and Lance, coincidentally, had still been too ravaged by the flu he’d caught to join. He could’ve called at any time. He didn’t.

But Keith came back to Earth two weeks ago, and Lance didn’t want to be empty handed for it. He wanted to give him good news, anything, something, maybe just show him that he’s doing more than fuck all. So, he finally made that call to Shiro that Keith had brought up almost six months ago. 

Lance remembers that evening too clearly, and he remembers Keith’s mood drastically changing for a few weeks after. Without ever meaning to, Lance had driven something between them that had hit an artery underneath. 

Keith hadn’t brought it up again, but Lance could tell that he’d been chewing on it. Eventually though, he’d caught himself, and everything resumed as it’s always been.

Keith, up there.

And Lance, down here.

Status quo ante bellum.

“How’ve you been doing?” Shiro asks as he studies the menu in front of him.

Lance ducks his head. “Good.” The lie peels off of his tongue, leaving a tacky residue. “I’ve been good. Busy with work, all that.”

“Oh.” Shiro blinks at him. “What is it that you’re doing right now?”

Lance shrugs. “I’m helping a team of archivists with alien artifacts and stuff like that. Giving some input on validity.”

The team of archivists text him pictures of mostly junk, and Lance, every few days, takes a second to type out an answer. There’s no contract, there are no hours, there’s no pay, he doesn’t even get credited for it.

He doesn’t know why he’s lying.

Or at least, he doesn’t want to admit it to himself – he wants an excuse for being absent, he wants an excuse for being as distant as he is. He wants his excuse to be something more solid than time slipping away through his grip like riptides in the oceans. A job is a good excuse, even if none of it is real.

“That’s really cool, Lance,” Shiro says genuinely enough for Lance’s throat to feel just a little too tight. “I’m glad you’re at least doing something fun, all I got is paperwork.”

“I can imagine.”

“Speaking of paperwork…” Oh, man. “How’s Keith doing? He told me he’s crashing at yours again, although I haven’t really seen him since he came back.”

Lance doesn’t meet Shiro’s eyes this time. Talking about Keith to anyone close to them inherently seems like lying on account of the whole, well, dating for almost three years at this point and still not having told anyone about it thing. 

When Keith had first suggested it, it had been thrilling and exhilarating. Now it’s more second nature – too ingrained into his muscles that he can’t touch Keith when they’re out very publicly, that he doesn’t mention it to the others. He just swallows it down, and if anyone asks, Keith is his friend. These days, every fucking “friend” that comes from his mouth is a chip in the marble.

Keith thinks it’s the better and safer option for the both of them. It doesn’t paint a target on Lance’s back. It sets no expectations from anyone else.

“Yeah, he mostly came to hog my office. He’s drowning in paperwork, I’m pretty sure.” 

The waitress shows up just as Lance is about to expand, and she’s got a pretty smile when she takes their orders. He orders the greasiest thing on the menu and Shiro gets the same thing with sweet potato fries instead of regular ones.

“Gunning for leadership will do that to you, won’t it?” Shiro asks, like Lance has any goddamn clue what leadership is like. His closest tap into it had been sitting in Black and having her outright reject him, no matter how badly he’d wanted it back then. Maybe she’d been right, seeing the rot in him before he even got the chance to.

“Guess so.” Lance shrugs, leaning back against the orange pleather of his booth. “He only comes out to eat three times a day, but otherwise he’s pretty much ocupado.”

“But he’s alright? You know how he gets sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lance knows. Intimately. “He’s stressed, but not in over his head just yet. Don’t think Kolivan is giving him any more work than he can handle.” 

If anything, Lance has been Keith’s stress relief for the past two weeks. Rough and fast before they go to bed. A bit more gentle after they wake up. But it’s most of what he’s getting to see from Keith right now.

“I hope so.”

Lance does too, because even if Keith is here, he’s not here all the way.

Until the food arrives, Lance tries not to think about why he and Shiro had actually met up here. And he’s not going to be the one to bring it up first.

When the plates, literally dripping with grease and smelling absolutely divine, get placed in front of them, Shiro takes the task of talking about it first off of his hands. 

“So, the position at the Garrison, right?” he asks conversationally. “Would your current job be…”

“Oh, I could quit at any time,” Lance juts in too quickly. 

“Okay,” Shiro breathes, picking up a fry with his fork to slather it in mayonnaise. Of course he’d use cutlery and not his fingers. It makes sense for his prosthetic, but with his flesh hand it’s really just pretentious. “I wanted to make you an offer. Or, yeah, two, really.”

“Two?” Lance raises an eyebrow, approximately four fries in his mouth right now. They could not have picked a worse place to have this conversation.

“Two,” Shiro confirms. “The first option is the one you already heard of. Position freed up last month and there’s a spot with your name on it, if you want. There’d be a few formalities to take care of, but they’re really hoping that you’ll be the one to fill that position.”

“Are we sure that Iverson is okay with this?” Lance half-jokes, suppressing a smile at the idea of Iverson finding out that he’s going to be Lance’s coworker. The guy had apologized to Keith, never to Lance though. Like he’d never gone right for Lance’s throat just the same.

“I think he’d be delighted,” Shiro says with a smirk. “It’ll do him good to be proven wrong every once in a while.”

Lance considers this. He very deeply considers it.

Honestly, he’s already fully on board with applying properly for this job. It’s better than whatever the hell he’s doing right now, and it’ll give him something to properly sink his teeth into. Maybe making sure a bunch of kids will do better out there than he ever did is something to keep working towards every day.

“What’s option two?” he asks, picking his burger up and taking the first bite. 

Shiro finishes chewing before he speaks, like someone who actually knows his manners. “The Garrison is about to launch a two-year exploration mission in two months, and I’m going to be leading it.”

Lance’s mouth drops open in surprise.

“They promoted me to Admiral a while back, and now they want me to take command over the Elpis for its maiden flight.”

“Woah,” Lance says dumbly. “That’s– Shiro, that’s huge. Holy shit, man.”

“Yeah.” Shiro nods, and the smile on his face seems a lot more shy now, a little bashful, almost. “I really can’t wait to get back out there. And to see space and other planets while we’re not perpetually stuck in an active war zone.”

Lance, despite his best efforts, stiffens a little at the words. His smile turns wooden.

“No fighting involved,” Shiro keeps going. “I don’t think I could do that anymore, even if I wanted to, but exploring to find potential new allies and see all kinds of new places is exactly what I’ve been missing.”

“I get that,” says Lance.

Shiro nods thoughtfully. “Didn’t become an astronaut for nothing.”

When Lance doesn’t answer, he just continues. “So, this is what brings me to your option two,” Shiro begins. Lance’s heart frantically pumps blood straight to his head, making his pulse scream in his ears. “There’s still an open position just waiting to be filled.”

“And that would be?” Lance asks. “Need someone on Earth to make sure you’re staying sane and connected?”

“I need a right-hand man.” 

Oh.

“I want someone who can keep me focused and call me out if my decisions are worse than they could be. I would love for you to do for me what you did for Keith back with Voltron.”

Oh, god.

“If you want to, obviously.”

“I–” Lance’s voice shakes. 

“On paper, it’s a first officer position. Comes with your own room and adjacent bathroom, nicer bed, loads of benefits. We’ve got a garden and a gym on board, trained mental health professionals if you need them, and…”

He thinks his brain is doing him a favor as it tunes out the rest of what Shiro’s telling him. 

An offer like that before the war would’ve changed Lance’s entire life. It would’ve been his dream come true. Shiro trusting him like that, wanting his input. 

He doesn’t notice how hard he’s digging his fingers into his burger until hot juice spills from the meat right onto his skin. But even that stinging pain doesn’t stop his joints from staying locked in place.

What little food he’s got in his stomach feels like it’s about to come right up again, steal the show by making a grand reappearance. Nausea is quickly taking over his senses. It makes him finally drop his burger and reach for the napkin, wiping the juice off and pressing the paper into a tight, hard ball in the middle of his palm.

Red splotches appear on his fingers where the fluid had spilled down, an easily identifiable track – a roadmap of searing.

Out of all the things he’d expected, this hadn’t been one of them. Not even close. Not in a million years.

Two years out in space right by Shiro’s side.

Something that edges on panic explodes in Lance’s chest, right inside his coronary arteries, like something wrong got into his bloodstream, and it needs out, out, out. He needs it gone, out of his system.

How has absolutely no one in his life put the pieces together yet? How has no one figured out that he’s fucking stuck here? That his feet are drenched in tar that’s burning through his shoes and and keeping him cemented to the ground by the raw soles of his feet? 

There’s nothing keeping him here except his body that’s actively trying to kill him on his worst days.

Keith is barely here anyways – it would probably be easier to make time to see him if he were in the middle of uncharted territory. He sees Hunk and Pidge a few times a year, and his family is scattered across the planet.

“Lance?”

Fuck.

“Sorry,” he blurts out, trying to black out the reassuring, hopeful smile on Shiro’s face. “I– I don’t think I can–” He swallows thickly. 

“Are you okay?” Shiro asks, features twisting into worry, and that’s the last thing Lance wants right now.

He gulps down a breath. “Yeah,” he struggles to say, “I’m just, uh, surprised?”

Shiro’s not convinced, evidently. He’s never been good at hiding any sort of anxiety from showing on his face, at least not in a way that Lance can’t see it. “How so?” 

“Just–” Breathing in and out. Look alive, Lance. “I don’t really think it makes sense for you to ask me when there’s so many– So many much better people out there.” Better at being alive, better at staying alive, better at filling the role that Shiro needs.

“I specifically asked you because I would like to have you by my side. Not just anyone.” Shiro shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I trust your judgment blindly, I want you to know that.”

Lance barely keeps the biting comment in, keeps it from slipping out with the last reserve of strength in his jaw. 

“I don’t think I can just uproot my life like that again, Shiro. I’m so sorry.”

His face falls. Plain as day.

“But that position at the Garrison… I think I’d like to make that work. And I could give you some support from down here, right?”

Shiro thinks on it, eyes wandering across Lance’s face, down to where he’s crumpling the fuck out of his paper napkin. Lance loosens his grip when he notices.

“Alright,” he says cautiously. “Are you sure? You can think on it, maybe talk it through with Keith?”

“I don’t think Keith is gonna do much about me being gone for two years. He might be a little upset that he has to keep using Hunk’s office, but I’m sure he’d be grateful about the superior food.” Sometimes, Lance lays it on a little too thick. This is one of those times. They all know that Keith spends most of his free time with Lance. They all know they’ve gone on vacations together. They all know the two of them spend a lot more time with each other than they do with anyone else.

Shiro laughs, a little surprised. “I’m certain you’ll find that Keith cares a lot more than you think.”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

Keith is fingering him open when Lance finally tells him about the job offer later that night. About one of the offers at least. 

Slack-jawed and loose-limbed, his cheek pressed into his pillow, one of Keith’s hands splayed across his back, Lance gasps, “I’ve got an interview at– ha– the Garrison next week.”

Skilled fingers drive deeper into him, crooking at the perfect angle to make Lance keen. 

“Really?” Keith asks, sounding almost more breathless than Lance himself. 

He nods frantically, pretty sure he’s rubbing drool from earlier into his cheek. 

“That’s really great, baby.” Lance can hear the smile in his voice, lets himself bask in it. “The teaching job?”

Keith pulls his fingers out, leaving Lance gasping and empty for just a second before lining his lube-slicked cock up. 

The ‘Yes’ gets punched out of him with a snap forward of Keith’s hips. It turns into a broken moan instead.

In one quick movement, the hand on his back pins his wrists above his head. Keith leans closer, closer, never letting up the pace that’s steadily building to something faster, and his breath ghosts over the shell of Lance’s ear. 

“You’re going to be great,” he says. Lance has to bite down on his lip to keep from crying out. “I’m so proud of you, Blue.”

Lance blinks away the tears that threaten to collect along his lower lashline, gathering somewhere in the corners of his eyes.

It’s blistering desire that washes across his skin – a desire to be someone Keith can be proud of.

—35.09, Iylsed, Zitra

Business resumes as usual the next day and the morning after as well. 

Lance drags himself through meetings that are slowly starting to sound the same no matter what topic they’re speaking about, and every second on the clock seems a little too sluggish. As in, the third hand on the clock above ticks one tiny little step forward every every ten minutes. It’s unnerving.

Keith is still assigned his seat next to Lance, and he seems to be struggling in a similar, but arguably worse way. He nods off twice towards the evening, and once keeps his eyes closed long enough for Lance to kick the side of his shin underneath the table.

And when Keith doesn’t show up for lunch or for dinner later that day, Lance notices. 

He’s no longer actively scoping Keith’s routine out, but the guy has been on the same routine as Lance for roughly two weeks now, and it’s a little too easy to notice that he’s missing.

Lance has decided that he’s no longer going to be starting shit from now on. Pinky-promise. He doesn’t want Keith to actively regret trying to soften the blows between them.

So he walks up to the dispenser in the mess hall after finishing his own meal and orders something vaguely Galran that he vaguely remembers Keith liking years ago. Crazy mushroom-fish skewers but purple and red. You could not pay Lance to sink his teeth into that. Not that he’s making fun of the dish, but rather has it so deeply ingrained into his very human body that eating red mushrooms and purple meat will most definitely just fucking kill him. But hey, he’s, like, 70 percent sure that Keith has tried and enjoyed this. However, just to really be sure, he gets a bowl of soup on the side.

Tray in hand, very carefully balancing it, channelling his entire skillset from being seventeen and working at some beach shack restaurant, he makes his way up to Keith’s room. Next to his own. Because of course it is.

He knocks on the door loud enough to wake someone from the universe’s deepest slumber and what he gets in response is… Complete and total silence.

He tries again.

And one more time.

“I’m busy,” comes what is unmistakable as Keith’s voice, a little rough around the edges.

Lance rolls his eyes, hoping that the exasperated energy is projecting straight into Keith’s brain. “It’s me,” he tries.

“I’m still busy, Lance,” Keith answers without missing a single beat. Turns out vibe-projection doesn’t work and is a certified sham. Tragic.

“Come on, Keith, let me in,” Lance whines. “I’ve got food.”

No answer. 

“I went on a treacherous trek to get some nutrients for you, man. I was not only a gatherer, but a real hunter as well. In the woods, no shoes on, nothing. I almost had to drink my own pee just to survive, like those survivalists in movies. You can’t imagine the struggles I faced.” He keeps complaining to the closed door. “Keith, it was so hard to boldly go where no man has gone be–”

The door opens, revealing a very disgruntled looking Keith, with tired eyes and undone hair, still in uniform for some reason.

“You look like shit,” Lance says matter of factly, eyes flickering over the dark circles underneath Keith’s.

“Wow, thanks,” Keith answers without a twitch of a muscle in his expression. He looks tired. “Anything else?”

“How much did you sleep last night?” Lance attempts at joking, but there’s an inkling of worry somewhere. Not that Keith can’t take care of himself, he knows that, but some deeply rooted instinct wants him to make sure Keith is alright.

Keith sighs. “Didn’t.”

“What?”

“I didn’t–”

“I got that,” Lance cuts him off. “What’s so important that it keeps you from sleeping?”

“Do you just want to keep standing there or…?”

Alright, now Keith’s inviting him in. Unexpected, but Lance can roll with it. 

He steps inside, taking in the room that looks the exact same as his own, same opaque crystal material coating the walls, same bed against the same side of the room, same desk with the harsh contrast of Keith’s being absolutely stacked with papers and data pads. Setting the tray down somewhere in the middle of it, cautious not to squash anything underneath, Lance glances across the different stacks.

“Those are confidential,” Keith warns. “Look too hard at one of them and I’ll have to kill you.”

Lance grins, letting his fingers glide across Keith’s scrawly handwriting, over raised lines of ink on paper. “Ha ha,” he says. “Big bad Captain Kogane is going to stab me.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Keith, decidedly, looks like he’s not joking. Leaned against the door where it’s closed behind him, jaw set, arms crossed in front of his chest. 

“Jeez, alright,” Lance backtracks, holding both hands up in defense. He steps back from the desk. “I can’t read that chicken scratch of yours anyways.”

“Lie,” Keith says.

“This”–Lance gestures vaguely at the table–“is much worse than usual. Save the killing for the actual bad guys and not for your guardian angel who has, by the way, just oh-so-graciously brought you food.”

Keith’s eyes flick over to the food on the table. It’s probably lukewarm by now, Lance realizes a little belatedly. 

“Okay,” Keith drawls. “You’re on thin ice, though.”

“Good enough for me,” Lance answers with a smile, taking one more large step back and gesturing for Keith to sit on his desk chair again. 

Keith complies and immediately goes to town on the skewers. 

Lance seems to have made a good choice, thank fuck. 

He kicks his shoes off and throws himself down on Keith’s neatly made and unused bed, laying on his back and letting his head hang off of the foot end of it. Blood rushes to his face – he’s going to be so dizzy when he gets back up, but man, maybe this makes him look chill rather than sort of anxious about being here. He’s not really sure how to act around Keith yet, still feeling out how far he can stretch the bindings between them without having something snap. How far he can pull back the bowstring while aiming without actually letting go of it, without letting the arrow hit its target.

“So, what’s been keeping you up?” he asks.

Keith doesn’t hesitate before he says, “That’s confidential, too.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you can give me something. Literally anything.”

He has to listen to approximately ten seconds of chewing before he gets an answer. “The Blades are being– I guess they need a little extra attention right now.” Keith pulls his shoulders up to his ears. “Every time I try to hand off a mission, everyone seems to want to give me a million more.”

“That the case right now?” Lance lifts his legs up into the air, hips too, doing some kind of vertical biking motion. It looks stupid, but it’s fun, so Lance keeps his legs up.

Keith stares at him, brows furrowed. “Yeah.” He takes another bite, watching Lance go through the motions. “What are you doing?”

Lance drops his legs down to the mattress, spinning around to lie on his stomach and look right at Keith. He pretends the dizziness is totally not catching up to him. “The question is what are you doing, buddy.” He extends his pointer finger to point right at him “What you need is some good ol’ fashioned R&R.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Rest and Relaxation. Capital letters,” Lance says. “And I’m here to provide just that.”

“Not feeling very rested or relaxed at the moment, sorry to break your illusion.”

Lance almost laughs. Almost. But Keith’s not funny enough for that.

“And how do you feel about face masks?” 

Keith scrunches his face up. “Also bad.”

“Perfect.” Using his arms to push himself up, Lance maneuvers himself off of the bed, already walking towards the door. “Give me five minutes.”

Keith looks one second away from dead bolting the door shut behind Lance. “What if I don’t let you back in?”

Lance grins. “You’re gonna be missing out on a pretty relaxed evening.”

After what must be the most frantic five minutes of Lance’s life, searching through every single thing he’d packed for this trip and washing his face in the sink, Keith does decide to let him back in.

He’d even gone the extra mile – changed into some comfortable  gym shorts and a loose flowing shirt, tied his hair up. Lance tries not to gape when he sees Keith like that. Especially when his eyes catch on the flash of black ink peeking out at the bottom hem of his red shorts, somewhere above the knees. It feels almost scandalous.

“So?” Keith asks, snapping Lance out of his thigh-induced daze.

“We can either do this in the bathroom or on the floor,” says Lance.

He only realizes how that sounds when he sees Keith biting down a laugh for the first time today.

“In the bathroom is more your style, isn’t it?” Keith’s teeth are clamped down on top of his bottom lip, nose crinkling as he finally grins.

Lance glares at him, not even wanting to reward him for smiling, lest he start Pavlov’ing him or some shit. “Shut up.”

“You really set yourself up for that, though,” Keith shoots back.

“Glad to know you still have the humor of a twelve year-old.” Lance shoulders past him into the room, settling himself into a spot by the foot-end of the bed. “Come on,” he grunts, letting his bag smack to the floor next to him. “On the ground with you.”

Keith closes the door and smiles to himself as he sits down in front of Lance, cross-legged, only one sock on his feet. 

“You’re so proud of that one, aren’t you?” 

“Only a little.” Keith links his fingers in front of him, turning his palms inside out and pushes forward until his joints pop. “Now do your worst.”

Grumbling under his breath, Lance digs into his cosmetic bag, searching for a cleanser and the sheet masks he’s stored in there for truly horrendous days. For Keith, today may be one of them. 

“Did you wash your face?” Lance asks as he lays out everything between them.

Keith doesn’t answer for a little too long, and when Lance looks up, he sees those dark eyes staring right through him. Guilty.

He presses the cleanser into Keith’s hands and orders a bathroom-trip, pronto.

Two minutes later, Lance has checked the ingredients on the sheet masks and Keith is back to sitting right in front of him.

“Do you want to go first?” Lance holds up the unfolded mask, waggling it in Keith’s face.

“Only if you’re the one to put it on me,” Keith answers, surprisingly quiet. “I’m still no good at this.”

Lance nods and scoots forwards. His knees, covered in the fabric of his pants, knock against Keith’s, bare skinned and warm even through the thick layer separating them. He tries not to pay it too much mind, but it feels like half of his brain has decided to shift the focal point of his thoughts to those two places of contact. 

Keith leans in as well, pushing the stray hairs out of his face with both hands. The grays glint and glimmer between his splayed fingers.

“When’s the last time you did one?” Lance asks as he finally closes the distance by starting to apply the mask on Keith’s forehead. The material sticks to his skin, becoming almost sheer at the contact. 

Keith hums as Lance lets the tips of his fingers glide across the slick mask, applying pressure at his temples, then the uneven bridge of his nose, over his cheekbones, his jawline, his chin, and gently tapping it down over his cupid’s bow. His eyes are closed the entire time, long, black lashes fluttering, and maybe he’s enjoying this a little bit.

Lance hasn’t seen him like this in a long while.

“Probably over ten years ago,” Keith eventually answers, eyes slowly opening again, just when Lance finishes up by running his thumb over the excess fluid gathering along his jaw.

Lance’s heart skips ten to fifteen beats in his chest. He holds his breath before he finally pulls back. “Thought you’d finally be getting some more practice in.”

Keith doesn’t look at Lance when he says, “Blade headquarters aren’t really known for their wide array of skincare.”

“Yikes.” Lance pushes his bottom lip into a pout, slumping back against the bed behind him. “But I guess you don’t need it if you’ve got purple fur all over your face.”

“Guess not,” Keith says. He reaches for the other package between them, holding it up for Lance to see. “Want me to do yours?”

Lance nods. “Sure, just don’t mess it up. It’s my last one.”

Keith doesn’t mess it up. Quite the opposite. He’s very careful with his movements, all gentle touches and tender grazes, making sure that everything sticks where it’s supposed to. 

It’s taking an almost overwhelming mental effort for Lance to not sink into the touch.

To not let his thoughts sink right along with his body.

Into how familiar this feels, the ghost of a memory long passed, the breath of laughter shared between kisses and joy. Into how orange curtains brightened up their entire bedroom. Into how radiant Keith’s smile was back then, smearing the rest of the fluid into Lance’s bare chest, almost making him scream with how cold it was.

It feels like a little stroke of static hits him every time one of Keith’s fingertips connects with his skin. He watches Keith, face pinched in deep concentration, too caught up in aligning the edges right to even notice Lance’s eyes on him. 

Two minutes of torture, of Lance keeping it all locked up inside, not uttering a single word.

Eventually Lance sets a timer for twenty minutes, excitedly taking off the mask the very second it rings, both of them sitting with their backs leaned against the bed. Keith has his data pad propped up between their legs, creating a physical barrier that keeps them from getting too close.

It’s a good thing, he thinks. Because the last time Keith had invited him to his room, Lance had ended up promising Keith a next time, and Keith had told him he was pretty. He’s not even thinking of what Keith’s lips felt like against his own. They wouldn’t survive another hit like that. Not now.

Lance isn’t really paying attention to the New Altean reality show, too occupied with the feeling of Keith’s arm pressed against his own. He only snaps out of it when Keith shifts.

“Have you given any thought to your proposal for the probationary period yet?” he asks.

“What?” Lance turns to face him. “You really want to talk shop right now?”

“It’s not– I just want to know what you think. That meeting’s tomorrow night.”

He purses his lips in thought. He hasn’t really made much of an effort to come up with something new, but there’s something in Keith’s eyes, something soft and almost pleading, that tells him he should probably look it over once more.

“I don’t think I’ve changed my mind, Keith,” he answers honestly. “It’s the safest way to make sure we don’t compromise anything.”

“Is there nothing they can do to show you that it’s different now?” 

And that sounds a little too open, doesn’t it? A bit too raw.

“I never said that.”

“It’s starting to sound like it.” The words are harsh, but Keith’s voice is gentle, slow. Syllables said to persuade and sway. 

“No. All I want to say is that surface level changes don’t always indicate something deeper, and I’m– I’m digging, okay? I’m trying.”

“You’ll look into it?” Keith asks. Lance doesn’t understand why Keith cares so much. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“I think it would be good for us to appear less scattered in front of their leaders to begin with. Put up a little more of a united front,” Lance suggests. “You could also, you know, look into my side of things, exercise a little caution–”

“I’ve never been good with caution, Lance.” Keith has slowly inched closer during their exchange, and Lance hasn’t even noticed until Keith’s hand connects with his own again. Fingers brushing. It could be on accident. It could be intentional. Either way, Lance’s breath stutters. “That’s never been my strong suit.”

“I know,” Lance manages to answer. He subconsciously counts the moles on Keith’s face. One, two, three, four. Tiny dark dots scattered across like stars on a bright night. 

“Just tell me you’ll look into it and I’ll make sure that we’ll have that united front for tomorrow,” offers Keith, decisively nodding.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“I promise I’ll look.” Lance holds up his pinky finger. “I can’t promise I’ll change my mind.”

Keith holds his own pinky up, hooking it through Lance’s. “I’ll take it.”

Chapter Text

—24.06, Earth, Arizona

“There’s absolutely no need to be nervous,” Franier says as she jots down a couple of notes on her laptop.

She’s one of the Garrison’s recruiters and she’s the one Shiro reached out to in order to schedule his interview. The golden name plate on her desk says ‘Lt Cdr J. Franier’, but Lance had been too nervy to catch her first name when she’d introduced herself ten minutes ago.

Since then, he’d spent every free moment letting his eyes drift over each surface in the room, trying to figure out her first name.

Her well-manicured nails hit the enter key twice before she turns back to him. 

“Really, no need.” 

She smiles at him, and Lance tries to believe it even though he’s sweating like crazy and feels like he’s about to vibrate out of his seat at any second.

“You’re pretty much a shoo-in for this role, Lance,” she continues. “No one has quite the experience like you do!”

And that’s the crux of it all, isn’t it?

That no one currently on Earth, except four other people, went through what he went through.

“I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Lance jokes, wringing the fuck out of his hands in his lap. This would usually be exactly his wheelhouse, right up his alley, but all he can think is how horrendously out of his element he feels.

Franier props her elbow up on the desk, pointing at him in a way that reminds Lance of the way that those assholes behind get-rich-quick schemes tend to gesture.

“It’s the absolute best way of looking at it,” she says, her smile not faltering at all. “You’ve got diplomatic experience too, lots of it if your references are to be believed.” (His references are Shiro – only Shiro.) “And whatever you’re lacking in formal prerequisites we can get you up to speed for until the next semester starts.”

Lance nods, knowing he’ll be in for a hellish few months of non-stop studying if he is to accept the job. Might be good to keep his mind off of things, though. 

“That sounds great,” he says, voice meek.

Franier stands up, fast enough to startle Lance. “I’m glad we agree,” she says. “Now, if you’ll follow me.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, but Lance does as he’s told, stepping out into the unfamiliar hallway with her.

The Garrison had ended up taking so much damage during the invasion years ago that many parts of it had to be rebuilt completely from scratch. Of course, they’d used the opportunity to make everything just a little bit bigger in the process. 

“This next part is going to be child’s play for you, but unfortunately we have to include this in the interview process,” she explains. “It’s simply a formality.”

“What is it going to be?” Lance asks, clasping his hands behind his back.

“It’s two parts, actually.” They round a corner. It’s only then that Lance starts to read the writings on the signs they pass. “The first one is obviously taking a spin in our new and advanced flight simulator. I have heard from my coworkers that you did take great joy in crashing those while you went to school here.”

Lance laughs, thin and unsure. “They were rigged,” he says, trying for another joke. 

Shiro did tell him he’d be flying today. Lance had honestly tried to prepare for it.

Every single day, he’d told himself he’d go to the dock just outside his city and he’d take Keith’s ship. And he’d told himself he’d fly.

But instead, he stayed in bed. Instead, he scrounged up a garbage-adjacent meal in the kitchen. Instead, he tried to make sure Keith didn’t lose his mind with all the work he currently has to deal with. He never once asked for the keys to the ship.

The one time he did work himself up to asking, he’d stood at Keith’s desk, opened his mouth, and hesitated. Again. He’d hesitated too long and when Keith tilted his head in question, hair falling over his shoulders, Lance just asked him to fuck him senseless. That was easier. 

The new simulator room is huge. Ceiling high enough for Lance to have to crane his neck to take it all in. Different types of ships are set up in rows along the edges, but one stands out above all. In the middle of the room sits, in all its glory, a brand new and advanced MFE Mark II Fighter, the newest in their arsenal, now decked out in further research and developed in direct collaboration with the Altean research facility on Earth. 

Lance had heard Matt gushing about it more than once whenever he was around at Pidge’s place, so he knows a thing or two by osmosis. 

When Franier catches Lance staring up at it, she smiles. “For the simulator, we were able to get one of the new prototype hulls and interior, so it can feel as real as possible for our cadets.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Lance answers, voice still thin, eyes glued to the cockpit that he’s going to have to climb into later. “I bet the kids are super excited about this.”

“They sure are! It’s been the biggest upgrade in the last year safe for our simulation program.”

A sense of dread washes over him. How silly, he tries to tell himself. It’s not even real. He knows this, he can see where the hull is attached to the ground. But this dread feels less like fear and more like something close to a premonition, a bad omen almost. 

“How so?” he asks, clenching his hands where they’re still behind his back, linking his pointer fingers and pressing until the pain gets a little too much. 

Franier’s smile only grows. “We’ve managed to advance it enough that no two simulations will be the same! It uses a complex algorithm that dictates and adjusts difficulty based on the cadet’s skillset. It pushes where the cadet’s lack and pulls back where it’s not needed,” she explains excitedly. “And thanks to the Alteans and our other intergalactic colleagues that have poured their heart and soul into researching for these simulations, we’ve got enough intel on Galra warships and jets that we can successfully model them, as well as their attack patterns and possible ambushes for added realism. Our cadets, after successfully making it through all the levels, will be prepared for everything.”

Lance’s hair stands on end, cold sweat gathering at the nape of his neck and dripping down his spine. He can feel it moving, overly aware of it as he nods, forcing his lips into a smile. 

For fuck’s sake, it’s not even a real ship. It’s a simulation. It’s nothing Lance would ever need to be scared of. 

Yet, he can’t shake the unease, can’t shake the trepidation that slowly spreads into his limbs out from his chest.

He suits up in silence in a small changing room, trying not to shiver as the synthetic material glides across the scar on his back. The helmet slots into place as well, connecting seamlessly to the neckline of the suit, leaving no room for the cold of unending space to seep in and make him suffocate. Although, he might just manage that without the help of space right now.

As he climbs into the cockpit, Franier’s voice in his ear, informing him of the countdown starting in one minute, he tries to rationalize.

It’s a tight fit, Lance’s thighs barely far enough apart to comfortably hold on to the control stick in between. He sighs, moving to rub a hand down his face but instead connecting with the hard plastic visor. 

With another shaking exhale from his lips he confirms that he’s successfully made it into the seat.

“Alright, your vitals look good,” another voice sounds out through his earpiece. He didn’t know anyone else would be here. “If anything, your heart rate may be a little elevated, but I don’t see reason for concern.”

“Just nervous,” Lance grits out, viciously ignoring the sound of his pulse in his ears.

Franier’s laugh rings through the rhythmical noise. “Like I said: child’s play! If anyone has done this before, it’s you.”

“Right, yeah.”

The lights in the room dim, and that’s new, too. Then the cockpit window dims as well, the orange console lighting up in contrast.

Lance sucks in another breath, holds it for a few seconds, counting along with the countdown, and blows it back out.

It’s fine, he tells himself. It’s not real. It’s a simulation. 

“Three.”

Breathe in.

“Two.”

Hold.

“One.”

Lance coughs as he’s thrown into space, sputtering as he chokes on the exhale.

He hacks up half a lung, squeezing his eyes shut. And once he catches himself, stars light up around him, his hands tightening around the controls. 

It’s a beautiful sight at first. Lance drinks it in, the twinkles and faraway nebulae glinting. The sense of longing in his heart nearly bursts out of its confines when he realizes how much he’s missed being out here, how it felt like a part of him was still here, up here.

“Three fighters enclosing on your six,” an unfamiliar voice calls out. “I think we’ve been ambushed.”

Lance checks the screens, and that sense of longing entwines with something much more rotten, gets infested with it at the same time as he sees the Galra fighter ships looming behind him. He’s seen them before, he thinks. 

He’s steering towards a supposedly abandoned factory outpost, according to the index entry showing up on another small screen to his left. 

“They must’ve been on patrol.” Lance flips the few buttons that he knows the function of, ready to engage with hostile behavior. “Keep your guard up, wait for them to open fire first. It might just be an automated troop.”

“You’re right,” the voice answers. It sounds disembodied, and Lance cannot, for the life of him, see an allied ship anywhere in his vicinity. “Shields up.”

“Shields up,” Lance confirms, pressing one of the larger buttons to his right. 

He can do this.

Child’s play.

The first shot hits the shield.

It rattles the ship, but not quite enough to catch Lance off guard. His heartbeat quickens, breathing coming on faster now. 

Another hit.

Lance wrenches the steering wheel upwards to get a direct visual on his attackers.

“Engage,” he orders, “and stay close.”

“Roger that.”

Despite the way that anxiety is flooding his system, crashing across his body in waves, it doesn’t quite pull him under. 

Lance is present, Lance is above water, Lance hits his shots with perfect accuracy.

He takes down two of the fighters effortlessly, grappling with the third when the first roll-out of automated drones comes into his vicinity.

The scanner in the front of the cockpit starts going crazy with signals and interference. It beeps fast enough for the sound to ricochet off of the glass, loud enough to drown out Lance’s pulse.

He curses, uncaring of how it might sound unprofessional to the people watching. 

“We need reinforcements if we want to make it to the station like this,” he hears himself say.

Just a single moment of relative silence passes. And then, unexpectedly and unyielding, one of the drones rams his ship from behind. It sends Lance’s head snapping forward, leaving him struggling to regain balance, making him spiral out of the supposed formation.

His console blinks a bright red as Lance swallows down the taste of bile in his mouth. His hands cling to the controls, pulling and pulling and pulling them back, attempting to take control over the total lack of gravity.

“There are no reinforcements coming, Lance,” the voice shouts over the blaring alarms. “Keith isn’t going to be here on time!”

Wait, Keith?

Why isn’t Keith up here?

“Why not?” Lance asks in response. He scans the area around him quickly, checking for Allura and Pidge. 

Hunk’s voice is filled with anxiety as he answers, “I don’t know! I– I’ve sent multiple signals, but he isn’t answering.”

“Shit.” Lance kicks Red into higher gear, narrowly avoiding the next drone-turned-battering ram. “He was supposed to be available two hours ago.”

Hunk’s response gets drowned out by more noise, shattering and ear-splitting as Allura enters their comms line, bombarded by more drones. Her voice isn’t even audible over the sound of crunching metal on impact.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lance curses. And he switches to Spanish then, because the English vocabulary is simply not enough. 

He calls out Allura’s name, but it’s no use. When he spots her and Blue out of the corner of his vision, he almost lets go of the controls in front of him. It’s overwhelming in every sense of the word, panic-inducing and terrifying. She’s followed by what must be at least a couple dozen drones, right on her tail, moving along with her every movement, speeding up to ram her. 

“Lance, what do we do?” Hunk shouts. 

Sweat runs from his brow, dripping into the hollows of his eyes. Lance’s hands clench so tightly around the controls, muscles nearly locking up in his entire body. He thinks he’s going to throw up. 

“Where’s Keith?” Lance repeats, because this whole mess is Keith’s fault to begin with. If Keith had been here, and they’d had Voltron, it wouldn’t nearly–

“It doesn’t matter!” The sound of steel hitting steel underlines Hunk’s answer. “You’re calling the shots, man. What do we do?”

The words send a cold chill down his spine. He’s done this before. He always takes over for Keith. 

But never in a situation like this. 

Never when it seemed so hopeless. 

Lance thinks. Squeezing his eyes shut as he’s trying to keep his breakfast down. 

He doesn’t even fucking remember what they’re here for. 

They have to get to the station, Lance knows that much, but as he tries to recall what they have to do aboard? He blanks. It’s static. It’s inky darkness.

Fuck, he knows he’s been having trouble remembering from time to time, but his hands wind around absolutely nothing as he tries to find what he’s looking for. This feels different – worse.

He tries to remember. Shiro told him. This morning. 

And he doesn’t remember anything from this morning, either. It’s like he woke up strapped into Red, like he was born in this very seat. Yesterday slips from his grasp, too. They were resting, a two-night downtime, he thinks. On some planet. But the name turns into thin smoke.

Lance’s vision is swimming with tears. 

“Hunk,” he starts, his voice a shaking mess, “you burst through the fighters tailing Allura. Once that’s done, you’ll go right through to the station, alright? Yellow’s armor is by far the thickest, it should keep you going.”

“Okay, on it.”

“Allura, stay close to me, I’m going to help you. Pidge? Make sure that Hunk has a way through.”

“I can’t!” Pidge swiftly answers, panicked. “I can barely hold off the ones tailing me!”

“Shit,” Lance says. “Alright, okay. Hunk, do you think you can manage on your own?”

“Yes, sure.” Hunk doesn’t sound very sure. “Station should be empty, right? This is just the automated defense system, right?”

Lance doesn’t fucking know. He doesn’t remember. 

“Yes!” Pidge answers for him. 

“Alright, let me know once you’re inside,” he picks back up. “You’re going to be okay, buddy!”

Hunk’s smile is palpable even as another drone rams into Lance’s side. A small flash of light in what otherwise seems terrifyingly hopeless. 

The battle rages on for ages, and Lance can’t tell what’s up or down anymore. Cold sweat clings to his body all over, making him shivery, clammy hands shaking on the controls. His skin hurts, like he’s stretched too thin, like his body is experiencing things a living thing should never even be exposed to. It’s pure panic. 

He has Hunk’s voice in his ear, telling him he just made it in, marking the passage of time as Lance frantically tries to help Allura while being rammed and shot at over and over and over and fucking over. He’d desperately enabled the seatbelt earlier, now it’s just his head taking the brunt of it, snapping back against the seat with every collision. 

Lance doesn’t answer, too focused on what’s in front of him, trying to drown out the noise of Allura shouting for his help. Because he’s already helping. He’s trying. Fuck, he’s trying. 

And where is Keith?

Lance punches the button to send another distress call his way. 

Maybe they need to retreat. Maybe there’s no–

Lance’s blood freezes in his veins. 

Hunk is screaming in his ear, and Lance had missed him saying that the station decidedly was not empty. Lance had missed it and now Hunk is in pain. 

Hunk got hurt. 

His best friend got hurt. 

Lance stills for a moment, eyes wide and unblinking as he stares at the scene unfolding in front of him. His breath becomes shallower, faster. Every inhale comes on more rapidly. 

He should’ve told them to get out of there. 

He should’ve made the call sooner. 

He should’ve been a better leader. 

Oh, god. He can’t breathe. 

Lance can’t breathe. 

Hunk’s comms have gone silent. Never a good sign. 

He can’t catch his fucking breath. 

And that feeling of impending doom only seeps deeper into his bloodstream as he watches Yellow zip past him. And Hunk’s still not responding. 

It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s bad. 

He doesn’t hear himself screaming to tell the team to get away. To get back to the planet. 

He doesn’t feel himself piloting Red back there. 

What he feels is pure, unadulterated terror as he jumps out of Red. His feet land in the black, dusty ground, kicking up sand and dust when he begins to run. Every step is heavier than the next, crossing the short, but too-long way towards where Yellow has curled herself up, as if to protectively wind herself around Hunk. 

Lance barely hears himself screaming for her to let him in. Doesn’t know how long it takes for her to actually open up. Too long. Too long. And Lance’s vision is getting spottier by the second. 

What he feels is Hunk’s blood sticking to his armor. What he feels is how his hands shake as he sees the broken Galran spear sticking out of Hunk’s shoulder. What he feels is the warmth of Hunk’s body fading as he realizes his attempts of carrying his best friend are fucking useless. He cries out for Allura, and it takes too long for her to show up too, but together they manage to bring him to the hospital. 

Lance clings to her like a second skin afterwards. He apologizes. Over and over. It’s his fault after all. He almost got Allura killed too. Her shields had been down by the time he’d finally ordered to retreat. And it’s his fault after all. Hunk is barely hanging on to his life by a thread. 

He sobs into her shoulder, snot and salt water soaking into her flight suit. 

She helps him take his blood stained armor off. Clicking open the individual pieces and sliding them off, gently putting them aside. She cradles his face in her hands as he tries not to dissolve deeper into panic. And she tells him Hunk’s going to be okay. 

Lance tells her that she’s got no fucking way of knowing that. He can’t get his eyes to focus on her, gaze frantically bouncing around the room, scanning for any signs of an ambush. Lance tells her that Hunk may as well be dying while they’re out here in the hallway just doing fuck all. That they need to locate a healing pod instead of trusting these sad excuses for doctors. That they can’t trust them to get Hunk out of that surgery room alive.

She tells him he doesn’t mean that.

Lance confines himself to the outside of the hospital for the rest of the night. It gets incredibly cold, but it seems so unfair for him to luxuriate while his best friend is fighting for his life. So, he stays. At least until he doesn’t feel Hunk’s blood sticking to his skin anymore.

Purple snow drifts around him, small flakes that gather on the ground and every surface he can see. It lands on his shoulders, leaving wet residue where they melt. 

On the bright side, the cold works wonders against the way his back hurts. Occasionally the scar tissue from his accident hurts, and Lance figures that’s just the healing process, but today he’s uncomfortably aware of the way his skin shifts over his bones. It feels oddly fitting to the mood, too.

His knuckles are tinged dark with the freezing air, his teeth chattering when he hears hurried footsteps approach. Someone’s running, and Lance almost doesn’t lift his head until that someone calls his name.

It sends his blood boiling almost immediately, gets rid of the dreadful cold in his chest and replaces it with scorching heat instead. Lance clenches his fists as his gaze flicks upward to see Keith.

“Oh, now you finally found time to show up?” he snaps, acidity coating his voice.

“Lance,” Keith breathes. His eyes go wide. “I– There wasn’t any signal for me, Kolivan said–”

“I don’t give a fuck what Kolivan said.” Lance unclenches a trembling hand to press an accusatory finger into Keith’s chest. He leans his full weight behind it, making sure that Keith feels the heat of his anger flare through their point of contact. 

“Lance? What–” Keith starts, trying to step back and away.

“You were gone and Hunk almost got killed because of that.”

The color drains from Keith’s features. Red of exertion makes way for the pale white of shock. “What happened to him?” he stutters.

“Exactly what I said, team leader.” Lance can barely hide the fury in his voice. 

This whole thing is Keith’s fault. 

If Keith hadn’t fucked off to god knows where to do god knows what, they would’ve been up and away from this forsaken planet long ago. If Keith had been there, maybe he’d have accepted defeat earlier. If Keith had been there, he would’ve sent Lance in instead of Hunk. If Keith had been there, Lance wouldn’t have had to call the fucking shots in the first place. Keith should’ve been there.

“I couldn’t– I swear, Lance, I got here as fast as I could,” Keith’s tone is one that Lance deliberately avoids digging into. He doesn’t want to feel sympathy, he doesn’t want to see Keith’s point of view. He wants rage and revenge and someone to pay for what happened to Hunk under his watch.

“You shouldn’t have been gone in the first place!” He raises his voice without really meaning to.

But now the old barrel has been kicked and opened on impact, and now Lance doesn’t want to hold it back anymore. Feelings long left unsaid splashing across their feet in this empty street. It’s not the first time Lance has had these thoughts.

“It was important!” Keith counters, expression screwing into something else that more so mirrors what Lance is feeling.

Lance’s finger still bores itself into Keith’s chest as Keith stays uncharacteristically unmoving. “Then check your fucking priorities!” 

Not for long though, because Keith processes for just a moment. A few snowflakes lands in his hair. Then, he swats Lance’s hand away and grabs him by the wrist.

“Oh,” Keith scoffs, “you want to talk to me about priorities?”

The laugh escaping Lance’s mouth is bitter, stricken by hurt. “What? At least I’m there for the team when it counts.”

“You treat everything like it’s a fucking joke.” Keith steps closer, grip tightening on Lance’s wrist to the point that he knows it’ll bruise. And that’s fine, too. “You think we’re here for shits and giggles while you find someone else to fuck every night. We are the ones who do the actual heavy lifting. Don’t you dare talk to me about priorities.”

It would hit harder if Keith had been around the past three months to see that Lance has been barely able to keep himself dragging forward. He doesn’t even know when the last time was that he spent longer than half a second glancing at someone else with more intent than to just see his surroundings. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lance seethes, twisting his wrist out of Keith’s grasp. 

“Fine,” Keith snaps. He steps away from Lance, moving to the side, aiming to get past him through the door.

Lance doesn’t let him, overwhelmed with his emotions, and he doesn’t know where to put them, where to let them go. He pushes Keith away by the shoulders, forcibly bringing distance between them. Keith almost falls.

He looks shell-shocked as he regains his balance. 

“I want to see Hunk,” Keith brings out.

Lance thinks he’s about to swing at him, but Keith is faster. He plants his hands on Lance’s chest and shoves him to the side, barely even giving him a chance to react. 

Stumbling, Lance reaches for the wall to steady himself, ice-cold fingers digging into uneven brick. 

Keith’s gaze is sharp enough to cut. “Get some rest,” he says. “That’s an order.”

“I’m not taking orders from you,” Lance spits, shuddering. “Why the hell did you bother coming back if you’re gone all of the time anyways?”

Keith doesn’t have an answer for him. He only stares for a long, unending moment before he shoulders past him into the hospital.

Lance mentally tries to rank the top three worst places to have a panic attack and throw up in. 

Number three is his childhood bedroom when his family is home. 

Number two is his own bedroom in his apartment when Keith’s there. 

Number one is the Galaxy Garrison’s men’s bathroom right in the middle of a job interview. 

He doesn’t count that time he had to cut short an interview meant for international distribution because that technically wasn’t happening in a room. 

He splashes cold water into his face and into his mouth, trying to wash away the acrid taste coating his tongue and teeth. 

The clock above the door reads that it’s 3:45 PM, which means that he has fifteen minutes until his psych evaluation. It also means that he was only in the simulator for ten minutes before they pulled him out, citing his spiking heart rate and his rising blood pressure. He dimly remembers Franier’s voice in his ear and her manicured fingers snapping in front of his face. Something about her asking if he wanted to go home or proceed.

It felt like he’d been in the simulator for at least a day.

What’s even more terrifying than his fucked perception of time is that he’s not sure how much of what he just saw was part of the simulation. If he’d really been in that battle at some point, or if they’d pulled data from Coran’s personal archives to mirror a real fight as accurately as possible.

An injury like that on his best friend – he would’ve remembered that, right? Right? Lance couldn’t possibly have forgotten something like that. He wracks the deepest corners of his brain as his hippocampus is already losing its grasp on what he just saw.

It felt too real to be fabricated, from the sheer terror in his veins to the anger radiating off of Keith’s eyes as Lance tore into him. 

And, god, Keith. Did he really say all those things to his–

It must’ve been at least six years since then, all the way before they even made their way back to Earth.

And Lance doesn’t know if it really happened at all.

It leaves him trembling.

“So,” Dr. Marot says, gathering his stack of data pads between his hands, making sure they’re all neatly placed on top of each other, “I’ve been informed of the incident in the simulator by Lt Cdr Franier and I feel compelled to ask if you’re really sure you want to proceed. I can promise the entire interview process and everything you say within these four walls will be treated with the utmost confidentiality, but I understand if you were to call it quits here. No one will hold it against you.”

The office is as sterile as it gets. Bright fluorescent lights beating down on Lance from above that feel like he’s a specimen under a microscope. Maybe that’s just what he is.

Dr. Marot, too, looks like he’s ready to dissect Lance and store parts of him in a petri dish afterwards. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a full-on tweed suit with a lab coat over it.

“I wish to proceed,” Lance answers. He doesn’t really question what the incident was. Maybe he did fine, maybe he kept up his shooting streak. Maybe it was really just his vitals being elevated.

“Okay.” Dr. Marot nods, taking the top data pad off of the stack and unlocking it. “Your full name, please.”

Lance’s shirt sticks to his back where it’s soaked with cold sweat. Maybe he finished the simulation without crashing it for the first time of his life. He hopes he doesn’t smell like he just threw up. Maybe he’ll do fine here too, and he’ll finally have a fucking purpose.

“Your full name,” Dr. Marot repeats.

Worry seeps into the deep crease between his brows.

“Sorry,” Lance says, entangling his fingers in his lap. He can’t stop tapping his foot. “Leandro Charles McClain.”

“Perfect,” the doctor answers, scribbling something into the empty spaces. “Then let’s get right into the heavy stuff, shall we? Just to get it out of the way.”

Lance nods.

“Have you ever had any thoughts of harming yourself or others?”

He swallows down the acidic taste of bile.

The heat of early summer nearly sends Lance to his knees as soon as he gets back to the parking lot. He rips open the door to his car, cranking the AC as high as it goes, breathing in the artificially-tasting air. Trembling hands reach for his phone. 

“Lance, buddy!” the voice on the other end of the line says, tinged with laughter. “I was literally just thinking about you! How–”

“Hunk,” Lance brings out. “Can I come over?”

“Wh– Are you okay? Are you in the area right now? What’s up?”

He glances at the open GPS screen in the center console of his car. It’ll take him roughly four hours to get to Hunk’s place if he really punches the gears. “I– I’m alright,” Lance says. “I just thought a weekend trip might be nice.”

“It’s Tuesday, but I’m loving the energy. Yeah, come over, man. I got lots o’ time.”

He shoots Keith a text, informing him that the interview went well, but that Hunk’s going through a bit of an emotional crisis right now and Lance just has to step up and be a good friend right now.

Then, he pushes his car to its limits and makes the trip in three hours and twenty-six minutes.

Hunk’s place is a safe haven. The evening air finally cools everything down through the open windows, and Hunk’s arms are warm and comforting as Lance sinks into his side on the couch. They watch movies throughout the night, ordering greasy takeout, gossiping over their neighbors and Hunk’s coworkers.

It’s exactly what Lance needs. 

He ends up borrowing Hunk’s clothes to sleep and manages to get his hands on the spare blue toothbrush that Hunk had stashed away for him behind the bathroom mirror.

The distraction works until Lance sees what he couldn’t bear to think about this entire evening. When Hunk slips into a tank top to sleep in, Lance’s eyes catch on his shoulder.

A darker tone than the rest of his skin, gnarled and with visible stitch-lines even after all these years – the scar that Hunk got when Lance had sent him towards a near certain death.

He averts his eyes as fast as he can, keeping the shaking hands at bay until they’ve both settled into bed. 

As Hunk’s breathing evens out, Lance all but plasters himself against his back, pressing his forehead against the ridges of his spine. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes stay dry, but sleep doesn’t come quickly.

—35.09, Iylsed, Zitra

One thing has always held up in truth. Lance and Keith work well as a team.

If they got their shit together, that is. In those rare moments, they are a fucking dream – a force to be reckoned with, the blow no one sees coming.

This time, they did actually manage to put up a united front after spending their day together to come up with a plan for the next meeting.

Of course they’re not the unexpected punch to the gut during a diplomatic event – that could easily cost them their jobs  – but they’re close to it. Bouncing off of each other, finishing each other’s sentences, backing one another up if someone questions something. 

‘Yes’ to the probationary period for Iylsed, ‘No’ to a set timeframe. The alliance will hold another small meeting to discuss the actual length, but they will refrain from telling Iylsed’s leadership when the time has officially passed. This way they can assure a proper demonstration of trust and a will to mutually aid one another. 

All Lance would have to do after this conference concludes is to present this idea to the alliance’s leaders with Keith in tow. Most of the people are just representatives, not the actual decision-makers – not to count Keith, who very much does belong to the leaders and decision-makers of the Blade. 

Lance is beaming by the end of their presentation, smiling brightly at Keith, who mirrors that excitement right back at him. Keith tries to keep it under wraps, putting up a professional front, but his cheeks dimple as the corners of his lips tug upwards. 

They get rewarded for it too, with nods and agreement sounding out from all over the room. 

That’s not the only rewards they get, though. The meeting wrapped up much faster than anticipated (that’s thanks to their dumb fight in front of everyone else last time) and they were given the opportunity to head out on the next exploratory meeting three hours earlier. While they’d normally have to wait until the morning (for Lance’s schedule at least), they can now go out as the night approaches.

Lance, having been cooped up in this building for almost two whole days now, jumps at the opportunity. He doesn’t really give Keith an option not to follow. Anything to get that guy out of his hotel room turned makeshift office. 

He gets changed in his own room, getting out of his stuffy uniform as fast as he can. 

His duffel bag doesn’t offer the best of the best. Since they’re only here for one more day before traveling back to Mirtral, Lance hadn’t really thought to pack his nicest things. Slowly but surely, Lance is slowly starting to regret that. 

The exploratory meetings are some of his very few chances to show off that he, too, can be a real looker outside of the eyesore that is the ambassador’s uniform. 

His blue hoodie and black jeans will have to suffice. At least the hoodie makes his eyes pop and matches his marks in color. 

He looks at himself in the mirror, reapplying his sunscreen, going around the little cut in his cheek where he’d nicked himself with the razor this morning. Despite that, he looks good. He thinks. 

There is a very small, but also very insistent voice in the back of his mind that wonders if Keith will like his outfit. 

Ha. Like hell is he going to indulge that stupid voice. If his last remaining braincell has one task, it’s trying to keep shit like this at bay.

At the very least, he tries to keep that thought down as he tugs at the drawstrings of his hoodie, making sure they’re even.

The large asphalted clearing they’re visiting seems nearly deserted when they get there. Lance squints against the light of the rising sun that’s finally heating up his skin again, holding his hand up to shield his eyes. 

Their group of a dozen people slowly makes their way across the strip and towards the large hangar at the end of it. 

Inside, they’re greeted by another guide who finally tells them what their exploration trip today is all about.

Iylsed has remodeled their warships into discovery- and science-oriented vessels. Made for long distance flights and quick speeds, with enough room for a lab and two cots per ship. Some larger, some smaller.

They’re allowed to go for a few test-rounds in the smaller ones today. 

Lance doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Their guide then hands them off to one of the pilots standing behind her.

Said pilot stands with her hands crossed behind her back, muscles in her arms well-defined in the morning light. Everything about her exudes power. Lance has a hard time looking away.

She must be half Galra, standing even taller than their Iylsedin guide, with purple skin and yellow eyes but otherwise Iylsedin features. Her white hair is kept short and cropped close to her head. Her accent is different, too, catching on the consonants as she reads out their names for the assigned ships.

Lance is in a group with Keith and four others. A different pilot helps them find their way, while Keith hangs back for a minute, apparently to speak to the half Galra pilot.

He doesn’t question it, but he walks a little slower so Keith has an easier time catching up.

“Now, I know we have two former Paladins of Voltron in this group, so to you two, this probably isn’t as exciting,” their pilot says with a nod towards Keith and Lance once they’ve all piled into the ship. “We’ve engaged a speed lock, so everyone can safely pilot this ship for a few hriga at a time. I’ll be here to help you sort out the controls and I can answer any questions you may have.”

“Can we disengage the speed lock?” Keith almost immediately asks, so straightforward that it punches a laugh out of Lance. Of course he’d ask that.

“You’ll have to ask Rina,” she answers, her voice soft but pleased at the eagerness. “All I can offer is the safety tour.”

Surprisingly, the flight doesn’t set Lance off at all. 

Maybe because there’s no trace in the interior that even suggests it ever being a warship, maybe it’s the lack of speed, maybe it’s the sheer amount of people cramped in here. He can ignore the prickling feeling at the back of his neck. 

All in all, he doesn’t even spend more than fifteen minutes flying, instead poking around the lab, reading reports and safety manuals. 

It’s fun, quite honestly. 

Fun enough that he agrees to join the group for dinner after. It’s already late, but Lance had skipped the cafeteria in favor of making sure he looks good to go out, and he’d be lying if he said he couldn’t hear his stomach growling.

Lance ducks through the door outside, following the Driyan ambassador back towards the city when a strong hand wraps around his wrist.

“Hey,” Keith says, pulling him closer with a smile.

Lance really can’t help the way his heart skips a beat at that. “Hi,” he breathes, dragging his eyes upwards to meet Keith’s.

“Do you have time?”

What kind of question. 

“Yeah,” Lance answers with a short nod. Keith’s hand is warm where it meets his skin. “Why?”

Almost predictably, Keith’s smile grows at the question. He reaches his free hand into the pocket of his jacket to procure a set of ship's keys that jingle as he pulls them out. 

“Because these guys really need to start locking up their shit a little better.”

Lance’s eyes widen in surprise. “Did you–” He reaches for the keys. “Did you steal these?”

Keith laughs. A sound that makes something light and fluttery explode in Lance’s chest. “Nah,” he says. “Just got a permit from Rina.”

It catches Lance a little off guard. A laugh bubbles up from his throat  – a sharp exhale as it makes its way out. “Suddenly becoming boring at your big age?”

Keith rolls his eyes, but his smile doesn’t seem to falter. “Not trying to get us both fired for once.”

“Huh, so unlike you.” Twisting his wrist, Lance lets his fingers wrap around Keith’s forearm. “Bet the Blade would just cease to exist if they fired you at this point.”

Lance’s eyes, glued to Keith’s smile, pick up the way the tugged-up corners falter. Just a bit. Almost unnoticeable. Briefly, he wonders if he said something wrong. 

“I’d hope not. Been working on making myself a little less essential to them,” Keith answers.

Confused, Lance tilts his head. “And what exactly does that mean?”

“It means I’ll tell you that later.” Keith tugs at his wrist just a little, pulling Lance towards him. “Now, what do you say we take those ships out for a proper spin?”

This time, Lance doesn’t dwell on it. He trusts Keith enough to spill when he feels ready to, at least he hopes he does. The small wave of anxiety that comes with stepping back into the ships takes up most of his mental space anyways.

There’s little apprehension in his bones, he’s not scared. Even if it was seven people crammed into the cockpit earlier and the controls were limited. It was almost, well, good. And flying just with Keith? Might be something that Lance can actually enjoy.

“Seems like you boys wanted to dial up the fun a little bit, huh?” The same pilot from earlier, Rina, apparently, says as they wait patiently for her to finish setting up the ships, disengaging the speed locks. Lance doesn’t know when the last time was that someone else referred to him as a boy – maybe the people here grow much older than Humans. 

She pulls a lever with a groan before jumping down the half-raised ramp, landing effortlessly in front of them. 

“Should be adjusted to your liking,” she says with a low whistle, wiping sweat off of her cheek. “Just don’t break anything.”

“We wouldn’t dare,” Keith answers. He holds his hands up in the air in defense. “We’ll take good care of them, promise.”

“I’ve seen you flying, Kogane. I’ll be lucky if you bring it back in one piece.”

Lance turns to Keith, brows pinched in confusion. This is the second time that he seems to know someone that Lance doesn’t on this planet. Has Keith been here before?

They climb into their respective ships, suit up properly inside, and Lance barely sits in the seat for ten seconds before he’s opening a private comms line. They have to wait for the clearing signal, so Lance might as well use that time productively. It’s also definitely going to help him get his mind off of flying for himself for the first time in a long time.

“You gonna tell me how you know her or should I ask her myself?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. Through two thick layers of glass, he can see Keith still adjusting his helmet, a small sliver of teeth visible through a smile.

“You sound like a jealous boyfriend,” Keith says instead of answering properly. 

The thought itself sends a cold jolt down Lance’s spine. His hands tighten on the controls in front of him. “You’re not funny.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.” Keith shrugs, his helmet finally adjusted as he opens the visor to look back at Lance. “It’s still a long story Lance.”

“We’ve got time right now. You can just give me the condensed version, if you want.”

For a moment, Keith considers. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, brows furrowed. “You can get the extremely condensed version, okay?”

Lance sits up a little straighter. “Yeah.”

“I crashed here during the winter last year,” Keith says almost solemnly. “Got shot down by an automated patrol.”

It was an unsupervised set of drones, Keith explains. They should’ve been long since shut off, but someone apparently had just managed to overlook them. Occupied with things other than flying, Keith hadn’t had his shields up, and his ship had taken the full brunt of the force. The impact splintered parts of the outer hull into the ship.

With a piece of debris stuck in his side, easily having torn through his flight suit and skin, Keith had scrambled to find help. Iylsed had just been the closest inhabited planet. His ship had ripped through the stratosphere and nearly burned up as he’d eventually hit the ground. 

He knows Rina because she’d been doing patrol flights over the outskirts of Mirtral’s capital city and thus saved him from what was most likely certain death. After a long time in the hospital, Keith was deemed fit enough to leave, but his ship was still in a state of disarray that desperately needed repairing. 

Rina, being caught up in her job, had no way to give Keith shelter during that time, so she–

“She asked her mother to let me stay.” Keith’s lips are still tugged up into a smile. “Remember Wikra? From the restaurant we went to.”

“Yeah,” Lance breathes, trying to take in all the information. This is where Keith got the scar across his abdomen that Lance had seen in the hot springs from. This is possibly why Keith was pushing for Iylsed to be able to join their alliance as fast as possible.

“That’s her. She spoke in this insanely convoluted Galra sub-dialect that my translator couldn’t pick up, so I really had to get my ass in gear to learn it.”

Despite himself, Lance feels a small laugh coming up. “Seemed to do pretty well, as far as I heard.”

“Oh, no.” Keith waves him off. “My Galran is broken as hell at best, this is honestly no better. It’s a miracle anyone in their family managed to understand me at all.”

“If you say so,” Lance answers. He adjusts in his seat. “That why you didn’t show up at the reunion last year?”

“Pretty much. I was stuck here for three months while their political shift was happening, so the Blades couldn’t send reinforcements for a while without it being seen as a hostile action.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, pretty much sums it up.” Keith shakes his head. “Believe me if I said I would’ve much rather spend that time with you.”

“Matt made a mean casserole,” Lance offers, an extended hand with a lighthearted joke attached. “Nearly put all of us into a food coma for two days.”

For a moment, silence crackles, a familiar sound of static as Keith thinks. Lance watches him.

“I mean with you, Lance,” Keith says then with a certain finality lacing his voice. “Seeing you would’ve been–”

Keith’s interrupted by their video feeds simultaneously popping up in front of them. Because it’s never that easy, is it?  

The feed shows Rina in what Lance assumes to be the facility’s command central. 

“You’re all cleared to go,” she says, smiling brightly to show off all her sharp teeth. “I’ll see you back here in an hour.”

“Thanks, Rina,” Keith answers, nodding appreciatively. “You’re an angel.”

“I hope that’s a good thing.” 

Lance snorts. “I’d say yes.”

“It better be,” Rina threatens. “Now don’t have too much fun.”

Lance slams the pedal to the metal. Or does the alien spaceship equivalent of it the very second they roll out of the hangar. 

He pulls the controls close to his chest, catches himself letting his eyes fall shut. 

It’s become customary over the years to still search for that inkling of fear and panic in his chest. Despite years of exposure therapy, it’ll stay with him, he knows that. 

But right now, he can’t seem to find any. Whether it was Keith’s voice that kept him shielded or just the fact that it’s the second time today he’s stepped into a ship. Lance finds nothing but a smatter of thankfulness. 

The sensation of being pressed back into the seat on his own volition drowns out every single one of his senses. His ribcage rumbles in tandem with the soft hum of the engine, his breaths are shallow as the forces keeping him to the ground enter their last stand.

Lance fights through it, pushing harder and harder, and he’s doing it because he wants to – because Keith had asked if he wanted to fly with him. He’s not flying because he’s told to and he’s not flying because he has to and he’s not flying to destroy. 

He’s taking a joyride.

For the first time in a long time.

As he breaches the soft cover of clouds, Lance gets to breathe again. He snaps his eyes open, only to immediately be taken aback by the beautiful bright blue that’s enveloping him from all sides. He can see the sun, still hanging low above the clouds. The planet’s rings cross the sky above him, deeply deeply blue, cerulean against the brighter ocean-like color of the sky. 

Air rushes into his lungs.

His ribs expand.

And Lance screams as he pushes the ship to go faster.

Keith is hot on his heels, easily keeping up with him, whooping through laughter that Lance hears clear as day in his ears.

The ship cuts through the skies as if it were completely weightless, winds and clouds whipping past it so fast that Lance barely even notices it. 

Ecstasy burns in his veins. Molten glass, burning almost white as it spreads through his body in a fiery raze. Adrenaline spikes. 

Lance laughs.

Maybe he’s gone mad with how much he’d missed this. This exact feeling.

He pulls upward at the sharpest angle possible, sending himself into a spiral up and up and up. A corkscrew that he can barely feel in his seat before he dips back down into a free fall. His stomach drops with him, but it’s welcome this time. A feeling long forgotten that he clings to now, hoping the memory will imbue itself into his nervous system.

“Easy there, tiger,” Keith’s voice thrums through their comms line, sparkling with unconfined fire. “Don’t power yourself out just yet.”

“Or what?” Lance yells, looping around Keith’s ship just for the hell of it. Maybe as payback for all the times they had to fly in formation way back at the Garrison and Keith had decided he wasn’t interested in it at all.

“Or you’ll lose the race,” Keith answers, pushing his ship forward and out of from under Lance.

Lance drifts into a sharp curve to fly upright again. “Oh, fuck you, Kogane,” he cries, pushing the speed as fast as he can.

“Fuck me yourself,” Keith answers, bluntly enough for Lance’s grip on the controls to slip for a second. “Or win. Up to you.”

“I’m winning.” Lance is slowly gaining on Keith, not letting his comment distract him for too long. “Everything else is out of the question.”

“Sure. Loser has to buy dinner.” The smirk is audible in his voice. 

“And drinks,” Lance adds, just to up the stakes.

“Fine. You’re on.”

They zing across the sky like shooting stars, winding and twisting around each other, overtaking and cutting in line for the better part of an hour. 

Lance’s body is burning up with explosive joy by the time they declare the race finished with Lance only being a few seconds behind. It was a deserved win, and Lance can’t even begin to be upset about it, because he thinks something in his chest had slowly opened up again.

After years of being shoved into tiny confines, of being pushed down and made small, the desire that had him reaching for the stars is enveloping him again. Like an old friend, like someone he’s known his whole life. A bond that tethered his soul to the endless vastness of space forever. 

A couple of times over the past decade he’s felt an approximation of this feeling, an inkling of it. But never like this. 

With Keith’s unabashedly loud laugh ringing in his ears like the ocean crashing against his skin, it felt like so much more than just flying. 

Lance digs his nails into this feeling, holds it so tight that his knuckles shine white through his skin, presses it against his sternum until it seeps into his system. He breathes, laughs, screams around it. Feels it slotting right into place.

They come back down on the landing strip in front of the hangar. 

Lance pulls his helmet off, the fresh air hitting his sweat soaked skin in a way that has him sighing in relief. He takes a deep breath. 

Then, he runs for the hatch, because everything in him is screaming to see Keith too.

His whole body shakes as the burst of adrenaline dies down, his hands and knees tremble, but he runs across the asphalt, boots hitting heavy on the sun-warmed ground.

It’s a bit of a way to Keith’s ship, but Lance doesn’t mind it, too overwhelmed to think clearly through the buzzing in his head.

Keith jumps down to the ground. He paints a similar picture. 

Keith’s framed by the rising sun, the stray hairs stuck to his sweaty skin, his braid slung over his shoulder, cheeks red with exhaustion. He’s still holding his helmet in both hands until he sees Lance sprinting towards him, deciding to not-so-softly set it down on the asphalt next to him.

And the smile on his face, it’s–

It’s so bright it’s almost dizzying.

It makes Keith’s eyes crinkle at the corners, dark brown shining almost amber in the light, and it makes his cheeks dimple deeply to the point that it makes Lance think back to pressing his thumbs into them after chasing Keith down for just one more kiss, just one more, one more, one more. Lips pressing against teeth because they can’t stop laughing.

He crashes into Keith’s open arms, wrapping his around Keith’s shoulders. 

Keith stutters, his breath hitching for a moment before he’s hugging Lance back tightly enough to make his bones creak under the strain.

“Thank you,” Lance gasps into the fabric by the soft skin of Keith’s neck. His lips are so close that he can almost taste the salt that clings to Keith. “Thank you.”

Keith doesn’t answer, just holds him closer for a moment, burying his face underneath Lance’s ear. Every puff of air from Keith sends a shiver of lightning down Lance’s spine, setting every nerve ending alight on its path.

“Thank you,” he says again. At this point he’s not even sure what he’s thanking Keith for.

“You lost,” Keith mumbles.

“I know.” Lance can’t help but laugh. It shakes his entire body. “I would’ve paid for your dinner anyways, idiot.”

Slowly, slowly, carefully Keith untangles them from one another. His smile is nearly as blinding as the morning sun when Lance dazedly blinks up at him. 

“I wouldn’t have let you,” Keith says quietly.

Even as the rush of the adrenaline wears off, Lance’s heart does somersaults and backflips in his chest at the sight of him. So close that they’re trading puffs of air between them. 

Keith had brought him the sky today.

“Now you have to,” Lance answers. 

Keith’s hands are still resting tightly against Lance’s waist, skin hot through the flight suit. Lance doesn’t want him to let go. He doesn’t want this to end. 

The selfish part of him, the one that doesn’t tend to think things through – the same one that had made him say yes when Keith’d invited him to his room last week – it wants Keith. Deeply and desperately. It wants Lance to lean in and take like he had before. To find out what Keith’s lips taste like without being soaked in alcohol.

Lance thinks, for a second, that he wants to kiss Keith.

—24.07, Earth, Arizona

When the call comes, Lance is elbow deep in preparing a salad for Shiro’s goodbye party tonight. 

The phone lights up as it begins to vibrate, proudly displaying the words ‘private number’ on top of the screen. 

Lance rinses his hands in the sink, toweling them off on his shirt before contemplating wether to pick up or not.

His hand winds around his phone as he watches it ring. And ring. And ring.

He has a feeling he knows what this is going to be and it makes his throat feel too tight already.

Maybe he should leave it.

“Are you gonna answer that?” Keith asks from where he’s standing on the other side of the kitchen island, prepping the marinated meat skewers. 

The question is enough to shock Lance out of his stupor.

“Yeah,” he answers breathlessly, watching as the call goes to voicemail. He can’t do this here, not with Keith listening. Not with Keith close.

His feet carry him into his (or, currently, Keith’s) office, where papers and data pads stack up to the ceiling. Used coffee cups and empty glasses of water littering the table. It’s all full, except for the middle of the desk where Keith had bent him over this morning instead of joining his first meeting of the day on time. 

He sits down there, wrapping his hand around the wooden edge, trying to recall that very same feeling from this morning in order to ignore the panic swelling in him. 

The screen of his phone had gone dark again, so he listens to the voicemail with his breath held. It’s just Lt Cdr Franier’s voice giving him a number to call back. Lance jots it down on the palm of his hand with a marker he’d managed to find in the chaos.

Franier answers on the fourth ring.

“So glad you could get back to me,” she says. “I’ve been wanting to talk about your interview last week.”

Lance’s pulse almost drowns out her voice.

She’s very sorry, she says. They found another candidate. 

Lance tells her that there’s no need to be sorry, not at all. He waits for the other shoe to drop.

But Franier doesn’t just drop it, she launches it at the ground with a metal baseball bat. 

His performance in the simulator had been worrying. She didn’t think he was mentally present for most of it, dazed and out of it afterwards. Not even to mention his psychological evaluation. She doesn’t know any of Lance’s answers, but she’s got the info sheet in front of her, including the bold, red writing that tells her he’s been deemed unfit for duty. 

She tells him that there’s help available if he needs it, that the Garrison, since he’s technically an alumni, offers counseling for free. 

When Lance hangs up, he buries his face in his hands, pressing his palms into the hollows of his eyes. 

He should’ve seen this coming.

He should’ve known this would happen. 

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Who was that?” Keith asks, brows knit together in worry. 

In the time it’s taken Lance to get done with his call and try not to cry after, Keith had finished both meals and cleaned the kitchen. He rounds the island to get to Lance, carefully pressing himself close. Lance stiffens, but lets him in nonetheless.

Keith’s hands carefully snake around his waist and hold on tightly. They’re way too warm.

“The Garrison,” Lance answers. “They, uh, let me know how my interview went.”

“And?” Keith’s eyes widen a bit, curiosity written right into them.

Lance makes the decision in half a second.

He lies.

It doesn’t come easily. He has to tear his eyes away from Keith’s, tuck his head into the crook of Keith’s neck. 

“I turned their offer down,” his voice melts into warm skin. “You know that terrible uniform gray never did anything for my complexion.”

Very gently, Keith pushes Lance backwards, hands holding him by the arms. He pushes until Lance meets his gaze again. 

“Lance,” he breathes. His expression is unreadable. A confusing mess of conflicting emotion. “Why did you turn them down?”

“Told you,” Lance answers. The words are binding him by the ankles and wrists, shackling him further to the wall of lies he’d built. 

“We’ve talked about this, haven’t we? You wanted to be a teacher.” Keith doesn’t raise his voice at him. Not that Lance had expected it, but maybe it would’ve been more fitting. “There’s no way you turned them down because you don’t like the color of the uniforms.”

“It’s–”

“They wanted you badly enough to take you without even a high school diploma, Lance. They would’ve given you a neon green uniform if you’d asked for it.” Keith takes a deep breath in. Eyes flick across Lance’s features. He lets the breath back out. “What was it?”

“Look, the salary is shit, alright?” Lance tries, his tone much too defensive for such a flimsy lie. Money is never going to be a problem for them, even if Lance decided to never leave his apartment again. “And I’m not–”

Chin tilting downwards, Keith silently urges him to keep talking.

“I’m not cut out to be a teacher.”

“You–” His hands tighten around Lance’s arms as he searches for the right words to say. It doesn’t hurt, but Lance squirms under the intensity of it. “Is there still time for you to think on their offer?”

Of course Keith would still hold out hope. It’s so like him that it almost makes Lance feel sick.

“I told them I wasn’t reconsidering,” says Lance, shaking his head. He presses himself in closer towards Keith. He wriggles his arms until Keith gets the hint and wraps them around his shoulders instead, pulling Lance in for a hug. “I’ll keep an eye out for something else.”

“Are you sure? Because I know you’d do great. You’d be fucking amazing.” There’s a certain reverence in Keith’s voice that makes Lance’s throat feel too tight. “I’ve seen you take care of the kids in your family, I’ve seen you taking care of kids from different planets, Blue. You somehow made them laugh while they were sitting in the destroyed rubble of their homes.”

He presses his eyes shut to avoid crying into the thin fabric of Keith’s shirt. “I’m sure. I don’t think I can teach them anything.”

It takes a moment before Keith says, “Alright.”

He asks to talk about it some more tomorrow, to really think it through. Lance agrees.

It takes another moment before Keith says, “I love you.”

Lance says it back, choking on emotion. He loves Keith so much. He loves Keith so, so much. There isn’t a universe out there where he doesn’t. 

Though, not for the first time, he wonders if it’s enough.

Shiro’s goodbye party is already in full gear by the time they climb off of Keith’s motorcycle and park it next to the open garage. 

Lance is still smoothing out the wrinkles in Keith’s linen shirt when the rhythmic beats of music from the garden reach their ears. It draws out a smile from the both of them, grinning at the choice of cheesy party songs. 

The heat is blistering as the summer approaches its peak, sun beating down on them from above. With smoke from the grill, the smell of fresh vegetables and meats wafts over, mingling with the smell of freshly mowed grass and the distinct scent of the motorcycle’s engine next to them. It’s a lovely summer evening. Shiro and Adam couldn’t have picked a better day to say goodbye.

Keith tugs a few of Lance’s curls back into place, cupping his cheek when he’s done. The kiss they share in the privacy of the garage is over too quickly, and it leaves Lance wanting. But Keith just smiles, infuriatingly handsome in the way he always tends to be, taking Lance’s hand and pulling him towards the laughter and music.

While there may be misty eyes here and there, especially on Shiro’s part, it feels less like attending a premature funeral and definitely more like a party. It’s beautiful. They went all out on decorating their garden, inviting friends and family from all over for this. Strings of bright lights are hung up between trees and the roof, twinkling like stars against the lilac skies.

Hunk and Pidge are there, Allura and Coran checking in via video feed, Adam’s and Shiro’s coworkers are invited too (none of whom Lance recognizes, thankfully), and even Shiro’s adoptive parents have made the trek over here all the way from Michigan. Who Lance assumes to be from Adam’s family sit tucked away on the patio, waving hello as Lance and Keith stumble into the garden. 

It’s such a wonderful evening, filled with good food and reconnecting, with inspiring conversations and small, private moments shared with Keith whenever they have a moment for themselves, that Lance almost forgets what made him feel so awful today in the first place. He’d been so determined to make this a good evening. To let Shiro and Adam have Keith’s full attention.

It works until it doesn’t.

Until Shiro asks him if he has a moment to talk and Lance already feels the anxiety settling low in his gut.

They’re standing in the kitchen. Lance is leaning against the kitchen island while Shiro is fumbling with something at the counter across from him.

“Do you want another beer?” Shiro asks innocently, as if trying to create an opening for himself.

At the very least it would give his hands something to do, Lance thinks, while he’s trying to wind himself out of this conversation. He nods. 

The glass that Shiro presses into his waiting hand comes straight from the fridge. Cold, and water already beads along the sides as the heat of the room hits it. Lance opens the cap with the back of a fork laying next to him on the counter. 

Shiro clinks their glasses together, an approving nod towards the bottle cap accompanying it.

The silence as they drink is near unbearable. Especially because Lance knows exactly why Shiro asked him here. He wishes he would just say it.

Another forty-seven seconds pass before Shiro does. Not that Lance was counting.

“How did your interview go?” he finally asks, corners of his mouth strained into a smile that doesn’t even reach his eyes. It’s the same look Lance has seen a million times while Shiro was still leading Voltron. Shiro is unsure of what to do or what to say, doesn’t know what the right way to go about it is. He probably thinks he’s in over his head, pushing his own problems aside to make room for Lance’s.

Lifting the bottle to his lips, Lance shrugs. “How much do you know?”

Shiro breaks eye-contact first. A rare occurrence. “Enough to know that Marot declared you unfit for duty.”

“Shocker,” Lance mutters in response.

“And I know enough about that to know that it means, at its core, that you shouldn’t be allowed to hold a weapon of any sort in your hands.”

“That’s–” Lance shrugs again. He doesn’t know what to do with his body. “Exaggeration, honestly.”

“Is it, Lance?” 

Over the years, Shiro has become less of a leader and embarrassing teenage crush, and more of a close friend to Lance. He’d heard Lance out when he realized that him and Allura worked much better as friends and they were thinking about breaking up. He’d indulged Lance in watching romantic dramas and drinking wine together. He’d made sure to visit Lance the most while he was still living with his family after the war. 

Resulting that, Shiro had learned to read him scarily well. 

Last time they’d spoken, Lance had wished for someone to figure him out. 

He regrets this now. 

“Yeah, man,” Lance answers. “It’s blowing things way out of proportion.”

“Sure, okay. What about the fact that you haven’t been off planet ever since the war ended?”

Fuck. 

“You don’t know that.” Lance might as well be huffing and puffing, threatening a physical fight. It’d be a better defense than what he has going for himself right now. 

“Lance, I–” Shiro sounds weary. Very unlike the tone that Lance was almost hoping to hear. Lance can do a fight. Lance can’t do worry and caring. “You pretty much just confirmed it to me.”

“Shiro, it’s nothing. I honestly just like being here. I’ve had enough space to last me multiple lifetimes.”

The evening sun now casts long streaks into the kitchen, illuminating both of them from the side as Shiro’s lips press into a thin line. 

“Did you tell Keith? Does he know about the job?”

And why the hell does Shiro care if he told Keith?

“He knows I’m not taking it.”

“Is that–”

“That’s all he needs to know.”

Shiro doesn’t answer, but his hands are fumbling with the neck of his glass bottle. Light scatters in dark yellow hues on the wooden countertops where the sun reaches it.

“He’s got enough on his mind as is,” Lance says quietly. “And today is your day, too. I don’t want to talk about me and whatever my problems apparently are.”

“It’s kind of hard to concentrate on it being my day if I know the reason my friend turned down the offer of coming with me.”

Lance feels his face slip for a moment. His brows furrow. He blinks away the prickling hot feeling behind his eyes. “I swear I’m alright, man. Really. There’s nothing to worry about. Keith doesn’t have to worry either, okay?”

With quiet steps, Shiro joins Lance on the other side of the kitchen island. His hand lands on top of Lance’s shoulder. Warm and steady.

“I just want you to know that there’s help available,” he says. “It doesn’t have to come from me or from Keith. But it would soothe my nerves a little if you were to look into it. And yours will feel a little better too once you do.”

Lance wants to take a step back. Wants to move out of Shiro’s space. “I don’t need help,” he says. It comes out strangled.

“We all do,” Shiro answers, eyes gentle and too understanding. “Hell, the first year after the war I went to therapy three times a week. It’s the only reason I can go back to space now. I’d hate for you to miss out on this, Lance. You’re not even twenty-five yet, don’t spend the rest of your twenties longing for the stars.” 

“I don’t need help,” Lance repeats. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his vision blurs, drowning Shiro in a mess of golden light. He wipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt, barely managing to take care of the first tear tracks when Shiro pulls him into a tight hug. “I don’t–” It’s muffled against Shiro’s shoulder.

“It’s okay to not be ready yet,” Shiro says. “Just promise me you’ll start looking when you are.”

A shudder racks through Lance’s body. He shakes in Shiro’s arms. “What if I’m never ready?”

“I think you’ll be doing much better by the time I get back to Earth.”

“You’re giving me a deadline?” Lance bites back a sob. “That’s fucked up.”

Shiro’s laugh rumbles in his chest as he lets go of the hug to instead lay both of his hands on Lance’s shoulders. “Look, I just know it, alright?”

“Okay,” he hiccups, wiping at his eyes again. “Don’t tell the others.” 

The others means Keith specifically, he’s sure that Shiro knows that too.

“I won’t, as long as you promise to take care of yourself.”

“I can try.”

“That’s better than nothing.”

Lance takes a moment or two to collect himself, Shiro encouraging him with a warm smile. 

When he steps back out into the garden to see Keith taking care of the grill with a laughing Adam next to him, Lance almost considers throwing out their secrecy and wrapping his arms around Keith in search of comfort. He settles for resting his head against his shoulder and looping his pinky through the belt hoops of Keith’s jeans. It’s still terribly intimate, but Lance joins in on making fun of Keith for the apron he’s wearing – bold lettering stating ‘THE REAL MEAT IS DOWN HERE’ with an arrow pointing dickwards – and it takes the tension out of his body, lets lightness flow in again. 

The evening stretches out forever in Lance’s mind. All laughter and enjoyment and seeing his friends. When Shiro’s eyes linger on him and Keith for a little too long, Lance does his best to ignore it.

—35.09, Iylsed, Zitra

The bar that Keith picked is terribly loud. Everything about it feels like a Jazz bar back on Earth, the blues of the building’s material illuminated by deep oranges and reds, a band playing live music in the corner behind Lance. Their instruments are alien enough that Lance can’t even begin to figure out how they’d even be played. Some tangle in the musician’s antlers, some wrap around their bodies in intricate tubes. It’s quite a sight, not to mention how great it sounds.

Looking down at the menu on the table in front of him, Lance is grateful that it has pictures. It helps him rule out anything that is straight-up rocks or looks otherwise inedible.

They eventually settle on sharing something that looks like glass noodles with vegetables, along with an assortment of different breads ranging from flat ones to ones that look more like marshmallows. Keith orders them a bottle of Nunvil, this time a little more careful with pouring it for both of them. It’s like they’ve unanimously and silently agreed to not repeat the incident last week.

Conversation flows easily between them. It’s a stark contrast to just over two weeks ago, where they couldn’t even be in a room together without arguing. Now it’s making each other laugh and making sure the other person is eating well. 

How things change, huh? Just how, comparing to the past decade, easy this is.

With red tinging his cheeks, Keith asks Lance for a dance. There’s nothing he can really do that doesn’t include saying yes. He wants to. Today, right now, he thinks he would do anything Keith asked him for.

They slot against each other like they’ve never been apart in the first place. Lance leading, his hand settled across Keith’s ribs just underneath his shoulder blade, and Keith following, hand firmly settling on Lance’s shoulder. Their fingers entwine between their other hands, and that’s not really how it’s supposed to go, but Lance can’t find it in himself to call Keith out for it.

He guides them into the Altean royal standard, something slow that anyone can pick up within thirty seconds of starting.

“Been a while since we danced like this, hasn’t it?” Keith asks with a tiny smile on his face. The orange lights from above bathe him in a beautiful glow, reflecting in the shiny strands of his hair, brushed and falling freely over his shoulders. 

“What’s a few years?”

“Feels like no time at all,” he jokes, turning his head to check if they’re bumping into any of the other couples that have started joining them on the dance floor. “Also been a while since we’ve flown like that.”

“Even longer than the dancing,” Lance answers. He nearly stumbles in his steps as he wonders if he should just–

Keith’s looking at their feet, eyes glued downward for the time he needs to figure out the steps. Lance counts out loud for him, Altean numbers as they take a little longer to say and fit the rhythm much better than a simple one, two, three, four could. Allura had taught him this dance, his ex fiancée had taught him how Altean worked. It’s certainly helping him out now. 

Lance could tell Keith that he hadn’t been able to fly. As long as he’s looking down, it might be easier for Lance to get the words out.

So far, only a handful of people have heard him say that out loud. Keith wasn’t ever one of them.

But he’s got nothing to lose now, does he? 

It’s become almost a mantra that he keeps repeating to himself every time he lets himself drift too much: Keith will go back to the Blades, Lance will continue his job on- and off-planet. Their paths might cross again for a few moments in time. They won’t stay entangled like this.

“Been a while since I enjoyed flying at all,” Lance manages to say. “Didn’t use to be like this.” Dipping his toes into the topic very carefully, ready to pull back if needed.

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, only looking up for a split second before focusing his attention back to their feet.

Lance takes a deep breath. Makes the jump into the deep end. 

“After the war, I mean. I couldn’t fly,” he explains. “I’d set foot into a ship and freak the hell out. Couldn’t sit in a pilot’s seat without seeing– Just– Everything that ever went wrong. It always felt like dying all over again.”

Keith stutters in his steps, crashing into Lance. “Fuck,” he curses, steadying himself again, stopping their dance right in the middle of the floor. 

People still dance around them, narrowly avoiding collisions like moons circling their unstable planet. 

The air is warm and filled with smoke, smells like lacquered wood and cigars. He can feel fabrics brush past him.

And all Lance can focus on is how the lights reflect in Keith’s eyes. 

“You couldn’t fly?” Keith repeats, looking up at him.

“Yeah,” Lance confirms. “I handled it badly at the time, but I also didn’t even know where to begin with it all.”

Keith nods, setting his foot backward, softly nudging Lance into dancing again. 

“Space messed me up. War messed me up. Dying arguably messed me up the most.” With every word, a heavy weight he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying lifts from his ribcage. His ribs creak under the relief. “I was terrified all the time. I just couldn’t fathom going back out there again.”

Keith’s fingers squeeze against Lance’s. “Is it selfish of me to ask if that’s the reason you never came with me?”

“I think you’re hitting the nail on the head,” Lance answers. “Back then, I couldn’t even handle kitchen knives. The thought of anyone putting a rifle in my hands– It’s– I would’ve sooner liked to bury myself alive.”

The expression lining Keith’s features makes it look like way too many things are falling into place for him right now. “Lance, I’m so–”

“No,” Lance cuts him off, albeit gently. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. Even if it seems like that’s becoming a bit of a pattern. I’m sorry I never ended up letting you in, I’m sorry that I took all that hurt out on you.”

Instead of answering, Keith does something unexpected. 

His hand wanders from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, fingers brushing through the shaved hair there, and he pulls Lance closer to press a featherlight kiss to his cheek.

The spot feels like it’s been set ablaze. Like it’s been waiting to be set aflame, only for Keith to light the match. It makes him feel like his head is spinning. 

He pulls Keith closer and he doesn’t falter in his steps, he doesn’t overindulge. 

“I’m glad you’re here now,” Keith whispers, close enough for Lance to hear it over the music. “Even if I wish you would’ve told me sooner.”

“I wasn’t ready then.”

“I know,” he answers, smile wobbly. “Maybe I wasn’t either. Maybe we were just a little too young then.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees. “Maybe we were.”

Before Lance has the option to pay for the meal, as per the terms of their bet earlier, Keith sets the money down on the counter with a smirk. Lance protests, but Keith just tells him that he might have to invite him again to settle his debts. 

As they walk back to the hotel, sun bright above even though it’s close to 5 AM for them, with their arms brushing at every step, Lance makes a few very important realizations.

At his very core, Lance is a lover.

He loves brazenly and head over heels. He loves fiercely and with devotion.

He loves the people who have made him into who he is today.

He still, to this day, loves Allura. She’s still his friend, she’s still one of the most important people in his life.

He still loves the woman he was engaged to. She’s shaped him in ways he can’t even begin to comprehend.

And in a way, he’ll always love Keith. The man whose thumbprint is ever present in every choice Lance has made for as long as he can remember. Loving Keith is a given. Loving Keith is melded into his DNA. Encased in amber.

He doesn’t love Keith in the way he used to, but that, to him, is a good thing.

He doesn’t think he’s there yet. 

Lance had always thought that he was well over Keith. And, yeah, for a few years, he was. Truly and entirely.

Unluckily, now there’s a low but persistent flame that burst to life in his chest over the past days that’s gotten just a little too big to ignore.

It’s too easy to fall back into their games, too easy to get hung up on Keith’s smile.

He reminds himself to stick to his mantra. To tuck those emotions right back to where they came from.

This time, he can’t allow himself to dig his fingers into Keith’s chest again. 

Chapter Text

—25.07, Earth, Texas

Keith made leader half a year ago. In that time, Lance has seen him roughly four whole days. 

Two of those days are yesterday and today. 

Despite it having been so long since Keith got his new rank, the Blade hasn’t gotten around to commemorating it properly. 

So, Keith’s inauguration gala is today, held in his home state. It’s where he’d spent the first couple years of his life before foster care took over. 

He could’ve chosen to celebrate it in his father’s home country, and had very well considered it, but he’d never even set foot on South Korean ground, so the decision kind of made itself. 

It’s the first time Keith is putting on his ceremonial leader’s uniform. Lance watches him from the bed in their shared hotel room. 

He’s curled up on the pillows, blanket slung around his legs, biting on the skin around his fingernails as he keeps his eyes glued to Keith.

These days, Keith is all muscle mass and broad planes of milky soft skin, webbed with scars and littered with moles across his back. He slips into the under suit, having to put in effort to pull it over his thighs and over the swell of his ass. It’s a sight to behold. Lance gets a good eyeful of it, happily storing that image away for later.

Keith zips himself up, bending forward to pick up the actual complicated part of his uniform. He pulls it over his head, wrapping it in front of his chest, adjusting the shoulders until they stay exactly where they’re supposed to be, and secures everything in place with a belt.

“Wanna do my hair?” Keith asks quietly. He climbs onto the bed, crawling over towards Lance and settling between his legs. “Could use a skilled hand.”

Lance snorts. “Are you asking for a handjob or a braid?”

“Would it be wrong to ask for both?” 

Still grinning, Lance smacks Keith’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for all that,” he says. “C’mon, turn around.”

Keith obliges while Lance pushes himself upwards to sit behind his boyfriend, accepting the brush and hair ties handed his way.

Untangling Keith’s hair is never anything short of a challenge, even if it barely reaches the middle of his shoulder blades. However, Lance appreciates getting to take care of Keith’s hair. His own, semi-recently shorn into a buzzcut to finally get rid of the white, is no longer in need of any sort of maintenance. At least not for the next three months. 

Once he’s done brushing through the long strands, Lance winds his fingers into them to section properly. It’s quiet work as Lance concentrates. His tongue peeks out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes narrowing to make sure he’s not missing any stray hairs.

Keith keeps fidgeting with his hands in his lap, seemingly… Nervous? Maybe. Keith has every right to be.

“You don’t have to worry, Red,” Lance tries to soothe him, even as his own nerves are slowly starting to creep in on him. It’s a big night for Keith – arguably one of the most important ones in the past few years. “You’re going to be great.”

Keith stirs. “What if I fuck it up?” His voice sounds uncharacteristically small. Insecurity on Keith is a side that Lance almost never sees. Hasn’t really seen like this since they were teenagers.

“Then you get back up and try again,” Lance murmurs. “Keith, there’s no one more qualified for this role than you. I mean, you’ve put years of hard work into getting here.”

Keith shudders as he breathes in. Lance pauses his task to press a kiss to Keith’s exposed neck, right above the collar of the suit. 

“Okay,” whispers Keith, more to himself than to Lance. “Okay. Okay.”

There’s a moment of silence.

And then, “does your outfit come with a belt?”

“Uh.” Lance blanks.

He’s wearing red tonight. Keith’s color. Subtle enough to not really rouse attention since Keith’s all about blues and purples now, but still a direct way of showing his support.

It’s a beautiful set of a pair of slacks and a dress shirt with sheer, billowing sleeves. He’s got a sash to wrap around his hips, so he guesses that counts as a belt.

He echoes that out loud.

Keith nods, but he doesn’t stop fidgeting. “I– There’s a tradition for inauguration ceremonies.”

Slipping the hair tie around the end of the braid, Lance hums in acknowledgment. He fluffs up the strands slightly before laying it over Keith’s shoulder.

“To show a display of trust in the rest of the Blade, new leaders can hand off their luxite blades to their partners or mates – however you want to call it.”

Lance stays silent. His mind is running at top speeds to process what Keith just said.

As if to make it more intense, Keith turns around, knees bumping against Lance’s. His eyes are wide, nervously jumping across Lance’s features.

“What are you asking me?” Lance hopes to keep his expression neutral, his voice even, but there’s an avalanche coming his way and there’s little he can do to escape it.

Careful hands wrap around wrists, thumbs resting against his pulse point. It takes a great amount of effort to not twist his way out of Keith’s hold.

“I guess– I–” Keith clears his throat, eyes finding Lance’s, holding steady. “I’m asking if you want to make it – us – official.”

Lance curls his hands into fists without noticing it. What he does notice is Keith’s expression nearly shattering. Lips pressing into a tight line, the red of his lower waterline watery. 

Lance hasn’t even said anything yet, but the overwhelming dread that bursts from his heart makes him feel like he did something wrong, wrong, wrong. 

He opens his mouth.

Nothing but carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds leave it. No words. Nothing.

Keith is offering to release them from the stupid trap they’ve put themselves into, never bothering to plan further ahead than they both could see. 

And all that Lance can think is: What if they break up? And what if something goes wrong? 

It will leave people asking Lance why. 

Why did it happen? Why? Why couldn’t they make it work? Why? Why can’t Lance get a fucking grip? Why? Why? Why? Why did Lance break up with Keith when Keith so clearly loves him? Why? Why did Lance never see the burden he was placing on Keith? Why did Lance not free Keith from him much earlier?

It’s not that Lance wants to leave Keith. He doesn’t think Keith wants to leave him.

But over and over again, Lance asks himself if Keith wouldn’t just be better off without him.

And now, to put their relationship out in the open after almost four years – it makes him feel terrified. Hesitant. Frustrated. 

“I think you should keep your blade on you,” Lance manages to bring past his lips without choking. The words are shards of metal dragging their way along his vocal cords, ravaging his throat on the way up. His whole mouth tastes like blood. Like old, rancid copper. 

“You don’t want to?” Keith asks. His voice is steady, understanding, so much that it makes Lance feel ill. Nothing but his eyes give away that Lance has hurt him. It shoots a pang of guilt right through his chest like a bullet. Shattering skin and bones on impact, staying wedged into place between his lungs. A dangerous place for guilt to be. 

Lance inhales shakily. “Not tonight.”

And Keith lets go of Lance’s wrists, instead wiping some non-existent dust off of the fabric of his suit. He’s blinking fast, pursing his lips. 

“Okay,” Keith says. He scoots backwards to get himself off of the bed. “Wish I hadn’t suggested it in the first place. This stupid secrecy. Fuck.”

Lance doesn’t know what to say. Keith feels painfully raw right now. His mere presence is scratching off layers and layers of protection that Lance had built for himself. 

“I just– I remember thinking that I was doing you a favor,” Keith continues. “But it’s so clear that I wasn’t. This–” He stops himself. Hesitates. “Fuck, listen, I’m sorry, I’m just nervous. I’m–”

Lance slings his arms around himself, letting his back fall against the bed’s headboard. Keith’s words prick at his eyes. He watches him pace back and forth, all the while he’s unable to form words around the growing lump in his throat. 

“I’m gonna check on the bike,” Keith eventually mutters. He doesn’t meet Lance’s eyes. “Just meet me outside when you’re done, okay?”

Half-heartedly, Lance nods. All he can do is watch Keith leave, closing the door behind him. Keith is good at that. 

Lance takes too long to collect himself. He furiously wipes at his eyes, reminding himself to not feel guilty about it. He’s allowed to not feel guilty, right? He shouldn’t. 

And yet. Guilt is all he should feel. His reasons for saying no are selfish and hypothetical. If grounded in reality, he would show Keith off any chance he got. He would’ve been glued to his side from the very moment they got together. He would’ve kissed him in front of their friends and family until they’d wrinkle their noses and tell them to get a room. 

But in his own, private thoughts, he’s scared they’re not going to last. It’s come up, unwanted like a pest, in his mind over and over. 

The way they are, with Lance being down here, and Keith being up there. They don’t stand a fucking chance, do they?

Loving Keith feels like it’s not enough anymore. Loving Keith for Lance is loving him at a distance. It’s having his heart long for something other than staticky phone calls and half-hearted conversations while Keith’s mind is clearly somewhere else. 

And maybe Keith knows that too. Maybe this was a last attempt at something. 

Lance wipes at his eyes again, sniffling. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. It distracts him for a moment long enough to get up from the bed. 

Sluggishly, he gets into his outfit for tonight. Red against his skin. It’s missing the ever-present tan. Lance hasn’t really left the house a lot this summer. 

The deep, dark red makes his skin look livelier though, gives it a certain edge that he’s missing by himself. 

He applies concealer over the blue-ish rings that decorate his under eyes, watches himself become a person again. 

His hair is bothering him. He hates how it looks: a shitty buzzcut that’s barely been growing out for two months. It’s still just sticking up, but at least the sides are shorter, making it look like there’s at least some sort of haircut happening. 

Looking at himself in the mirror is a chore at best. 

When he steps outside, Keith already has his helmet on, holding out another one for Lance to take. 

The engine of Keith’s bike roars to life as Lance gingerly climbs onto the seat behind Keith. He pulls the legs of his pants up so they don’t get fried by the heat, regardless of how stupid that makes him look. 

Wrapping his arms around Keith’s waist, he gives him the signal to start driving. 

“I love you,” Lance says. 

Keith stomps on the gas. 

Once they make it to the venue, Lance grabs on to Keith’s arm to steady himself. It’s deeply overwhelming. 

What is usually probably a hall for events and concerts, has been decked out with low hanging chandeliers, lights dim and only illuminated by the candles above. The seats have been mostly moved, replaced by standing tables and bar stools, and along the sides are tables set with a large buffet, staff running around to work the bars and keep everyone’s glasses topped off. 

“All this,” Keith begins, his eyes wide as he takes in the scene, “just for me?”

Lance can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips. “All that hard work has got to pay off somehow, doesn’t it?”

They make their way through the crowd, full of faces Lance doesn’t recognize – alliance partners, Blade members, bigwigs from the Garrison and whoever else entangled with Keith somehow and deemed important enough to be here. 

Lance is still holding on to Keith’s arm when they finally find Krolia somewhere close to the other side of the room, near the large stage that Keith is going to have to hold a speech on later. 

She wraps her arms around Keith, squeezing tightly. 

“I’m so proud of you,” she says with a small smile on her face. “You’ve grown so much.”

With her hand still holding on to his shoulder, Krolia takes a step back to admire her son in his new uniform. It’s a very intimate moment, and Lance feels very out of place to be so close to it. He feels like he’s intruding. 

Keith presses his lips together, looking up at his mother. “Thank you, mom,” he brings out. His voice sounds thick with emotion. 

Subconsciously, Lance finally takes a step back, moves out of the way. Krolia still hasn’t spared him a glance, and rightfully so, too caught up in admiring Keith and his new look. Lance can’t blame her. 

It feels like minutes pass before she acknowledges him at all, giving him a quick hug and saying that red suits him well. He barely manages to stutter out a thanks before Keith tells him that they should find Kolivan behind the stage. 

They being him and his mother. 

Lance nods, because he’s here as a friend, as moral support, not as his partner. It was his own decision. Right now, as the little pang of inadequacy bursts in his chest, he’s not so sure that it was the right one anymore.

He beelines for the bar instead of aimlessly wandering, silently thanking Keith for driving later, and snatches himself a glass of sparkling champagne. Maybe he takes two and downs the first one almost immediately. Who’s to tell?

Nursing the second one, he lets his eyes drift. There’s no one who really catches his eye, although Keith had mentioned that Hunk and Pidge might show up sometime later. Their train got delayed. This delay included the entire Holt family, except Matt, who’s also currently off-planet and mission bound. 

Lance nearly chews his bottom lip to shreds as he tries to wrack his brain for anyone he could possibly be spending time with. He realizes with horror that he stupidly left his phone back at the hotel, as if all of this wasn’t enough. Now he can’t even text anyone to ask. 

He mentally thumbs through the catalog of Blades he actually knows well enough to cling to their side while Keith does everything that needs doing. 

The only ones that come to mind are, well, Lotor’s ex-generals. And while he may be cool with Acxa, the rest of them have tried to kill both Lance and Keith at some point, so he holds a liiittle bit of a grudge. Especially the one who nearly crushed Keith’s windpipe that one time. Lance still refuses to even invoke her name. 

His choices are looking pretty slim. 

Lance must be on his fifth drink, a generously fruity rosé, thank you, when the lights dim further and the stage illuminates in their stead. 

As if stuck in a daze, almost star-struck, he watches his boyfriend step out into the light. His hands are clutched tightly around a microphone, and for a second Lance is scared Keith might break it.

He doesn’t. Instead he smiles. Straining to see against the light, but the smile stays.

“Thank you all for coming here,” Keith’s voice echoes through the room.

Everyone’s attention is glued to him, up there, looming larger than life. Lance cheers with along everyone else. Merging into one unrecognizable shape with the crowd.

The rest of the leaders, as well as their representatives step onto the stage with Keith, building a united front behind him. Kolivan, Krolia, Acxa, eight others Lance doesn’t think he’s ever seen before in his life. 

Keith turns around, nodding towards the Blades behind him. The smile on his face won’t seem to fade.

Lance’s chest swells with pride. It’s hard to tamp it down. 

Keith has worked so fucking hard to get here, spending nearly a year doing all the shitty work that no one else wanted, picking up the slack, taking on more and more and more responsibility, leading missions by himself and going over what must’ve been thousands of hand-written reports. He’d studied their history and calculated new trajectories for them. He’d even, and that was his last project before he eventually made it to leader, commissioned and then oversaw the building of a new HQ somewhere near the outskirts of the Antennae galaxies. Thanks to the Altean wormholes, the travel wasn’t too outrageous, but building the station and calculating for the immense pull of an ongoing collision between the two galaxies took time and effort. 

Lance had always known that Keith was insanely smart, but when he occasionally listened in on one of his calls, or a saw a filled sheet of paper floating around, all Lance got out of it was gibberish. 

And finally, all of it is paying off for Keith. 

Lance couldn’t be more proud if he tried.

Keith goes on to thank the Blades for their efforts during the war again, saying that none of this would’ve been possible in the first place if not for them, then thanking everyone in the audience and especially in the coalition for showing up today. It’s a long list of people he’s thanking. Lance counts himself among the ‘people who helped him clear his head’. 

Maybe there would’ve been more thanks for him if he’d just taken Keith’s blade and kept it safe for him.

“I know a McClain-made braid when I see one,” a very familiar voice says behind Lance.

He whips around fast enough to almost spill his wine everywhere, hitting his elbow on the wooden bar next to him.

Veronica laughs at him before spreading her arms wide, pulling Lance into a hug. The sensation of hugging his sister again after not having seen her for almost two years is long overdue to say the least. They’ve called a bunch, but it doesn’t really replace seeing each other. It feels a little bit like a lost piece slotting back into place. 

After all this time, Lance had almost forgotten that ‘bigwigs at the Garrison’ now includes his sister, too. 

“Commander McClain,” Lance jokes as they finally untangle from one another, moving to lift his hand into a mock-salute. “It’s an honor to see you here.”

“You’re a dumbass,” Veronica answers, pulling at Lance’s saluting arm, nearly spilling all of his wine once again. “Oh, what do you have there?”

“Rosé.” He promptly has to move his glass out of Veronica’s reach. “Aren’t you actively on duty right now?” 

She rolls her eyes at him, sighing loudly. “You’re no fun,” she huffs, instead opting to link her arm through his and lean against the bar. 

“Oh yeah, I’m the resident buzzkill, didn’t you receive word yet?” Never mind that Lance actually is a pro at bringing the mood down the past years and especially today. 

“Must’ve not reached me yet,” she says, shrugging. Her eyes drift towards the stage, where Kolivan has stepped forward, standing next to Keith with a clawed hand on his shoulder. Keith is still beaming up there. And that’s good, Lance thinks. That despite hating being at the center of everyone’s attention, the sheer giddiness of achieving something he’s worked so hard for easily outweighs it. 

“So, did you do his hair? Am I seeing that right?” Veronica asks, ever so nosy, leaning more into Lance’s personal space (not that he ever had much between him or any of his sisters in the first place).

Lance nods, stomach turning sour as he thinks back to what transpired immediately after. 

“Are you going to make your move anytime soon now?”

Lance is pretty sure his heart skips a beat in his chest. “What?”

“You’ve been mooning over him the entire evening,” she says, eyebrow arched in questioning. “I’m saying you should probably go for it, even if it’ll be long distance.”

“I’m not really made for long distance,” Lance says. It’s a barely disguised truth, because he really isn’t taking it well. Hasn’t been taking it well for the past years. Not counting their blissful beginnings where Keith’s missions would barely last weeks or months. 

Veronica’s smile is tinged with sad sympathy. “Yeah, I’d imagine it’d be hard when the Blade HQ becomes a permanent residence,” she says. 

Hard is quite the understatement, Lance thinks. Keith moving permanently would be– Lance doesn’t even want to think about it. But he tells himself Keith wouldn’t put the Blade over Lance, would he? At the same time, Lance would find himself unbelieving if Keith didn’t. He wouldn’t – couldn’t – allow that. 

Maybe he’s deluding himself when he imagines himself being Keith’s first choice.

“Yeah,” he says out loud, throat constricting around the word. “Would suck major ass.”

“Major ass,” Veronica echoes, eyes glinting. “How’d you know my new boss’s name?”

It startles a laugh out of Lance as he blinks away the tears threatening to well up. 

“So, no moves on Keith?”

“No moves on Keith,” Lance repeats. He stares up at the stage. “I wouldn’t stand a chance.” 

“Nonsense, you’re a fucking catch and he’d be blind not to see that.” 

As if on cue, Keith’s eyes meet Lance’s, and maybe Lance is just hallucinating it, tipsy-fuzzy brain lagging around the edges, but Keith’s smile visibly falters. It sends another rocking wave of guilt straight to his chest. His breath stutters. 

“I’m not sure Keith would share that sentiment,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. What he needs very desperately is an abrupt change of topic. To move it away from how he’s failing Keith in every single aspect of his life. “What about you then? Are you making moves? Or at least laying pipe or whatever the kids are calling it these days?”

“Ew.” Veronica snorts, shaking her head. “I hate you. I have not been laying pipe, but yeah, I have been making moves,” she says. “Wanna see?”

“Obviously,” Lance says, incredulous. He’s thankful that at least Veronica has something going right for her.

Veronica then whispers, “Look,” and points at the stage before waving with both her hands, smiling much sweeter than Lance has ever seen her do before. He wasn’t aware she was capable of that. 

Much to his surprise, after scanning all the Blades on the stage, he sees Acxa release just the tiniest bit of her uber tense stance. One of her hands uncurls from the tight fist by her side, three fingers moving from side to side in what might be the world’s most subtle wave.

Lance’s mouth almost drops when he makes the connection. “Holy shit,” he breathes. “You and Acxa?”

“We’ve just been talking, alright?” she says, wrapping her hand around his forearm. “Nothing crazy. No pipe laying yet.”

Lance whistles lowly. “How the fuck did that even start? I mean she’s hot, obviously.”

“Long meetings, longer evenings,” Veronica muses, cheeks tinging red just the faintest bit. “When she wasn’t holed up working with Keith somewhere, we just kinda ended up– I don’t know, hanging out? And she’s super funny, you know? In this crazy dry way, but ugh, she’s so–” She stops herself, realizing at the same time as Lance that she’s gushing about her. “For my birthday, she came to visit me, and she’d nearly decapitated half of a ginkgo for me. ‘Flowers for me’ was what she called that mess.”

Lance laughs, trying to imagine the look of mortification on his sister’s face at the display. “That’s surprisingly thoughtful,” he sputters, lifting his glass to his lips to drink the rest of it.

“I thought it was romantic as hell, so I guess I just decided to up the ante a bit.”

“And you asked her out?” Lance probes.

Veronica shakes her head softly. “Not yet, but I’m hoping for a sneaky dance tonight.”

“Good luck.”

“I won’t need luck, pretty sure I won’t even have to try.”

Lance smiles. “That’s even better.”

When the speeches are over, half of it that Lance hasn’t even listened to, too caught up in what his sister was telling him, she has to get back to actually working. “Regular diplomatic awfulness,” she’d said.

So Lance is back to square one, alone and sulking, ordering drink after drink.

He’s long since surpassed the level of tipsy when Keith finally finds him again.

Keith orders a singular gin and tonic, heavy on the tonic, hands shaking as he reaches for the glass on the counter.

“How are you feeling?” Lance asks in a quiet murmur. 

“Fuckin’ nervous,” Keith responds. “Think the attention’s getting to me.”

It takes all of his mental strength to not lean into Keith’s side and press a kiss to his jawline. Desperately so, Lance wants to wrap his arm around Keith’s waist and pull him in close. And honestly, he could probably use the same treatment. His head is spinning from the alcohol and unacknowledged emotions swirling inside of him in a steady stream.

“I’m gonna probably have to talk to a shitload of people,” Keith says then. “Can you come with me? I don’t think I can do this alone.”

Lance really doesn’t want to do that. “Of course,” is what he says out loud.

The first person he’s introduced to (“This is my friend, Lance”) is a Blade general that Lance already forgot the name of. She asks what Lance does, and Lance only smiles half-heartedly when he tells her that he used to be the Red Paladin.

The next one (“My friend Lance”) is a New Altean representative who sends their warmest greetings from Allura, and he’s already drunk enough to ask if it’s true that Lance used to date her. Keith doesn’t pull him away quickly enough.

The next one (“My friend”) doesn’t even look at Lance, much less shake his hand. He’s fully focused on Keith and whatever the fuck they’re talking about. Planets upon planets they’ve worked on together. That one time on–

The next person (“Friend”) at least nods at Lance before asking Keith about his plans for the new Blade HQs. Is he going to move permanently? Someone will need to lead from there. Keith doesn’t answer that.

Soon, with Lance’s rising alcohol level, the next faces (“Friend”,”Friend”,”Friend”) begin to blur into a muddy, uncertain smudge of color in his mind. His mood drops drastically with every new person Keith has to talk to. All he wants to do is hide away from the world and from Keith’s stilted voice as he introduces him as his friend. 

Lance pulls himself together until someone asks him something a little too invasive for his taste.

He tries to tell himself it’s just for tonight, but the more time passes, the more he feels like his actual sanity is fraying.

It’s a sharp, painful realization: that Keith knows everyone here, and everyone here knows Keith. They’ve worked together, they’ve saved lives and whole galaxies together. They all have history that Lance could never even imagine having. And all of them wonder what the fuck Lance must be doing here, and why Keith is even letting himself fall down to this level to introduce someone who’s basically a glorified civilian to them. Lance, who can never answer when someone asks him what he’s doing these days. Lance, who’s swallowing down every bit of dismissive behavior from people who are more important than him. Keith tries to involve him, he really does – quickly ending a conversation when he realizes what’s going on, but it’s somehow still not enough. He knows it’s not Keith’s fault either. He knows. He knows. It still feels like it is.

Lance feels bruised and raw and guilty when he finally bites out a, “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” to the question. 

It’s what makes Keith snap, too.

After a too strained smile, Keith pulls him into one of the bathrooms. Checking to see if any of the stalls are occupied, his shoulders only slanting downwards when he sees they aren’t.

The situation is all wrong. Keith’s not radiating anything but stress, and Lance thinks he might start crying at any point now. It’s all fucking wrong. 

Keith pulling him into a bathroom was always because they just couldn’t keep their hands to themselves in public anymore. It always was a blistering heat that drew them together, to shed their clothes and slot their mouths and hips together, mindlessly rutting against each other for friction. Closer and closer and closer.

But now, Keith’s not even making a move to touch him, keeping his hands balled into tight fists by his side.

“What was that?” Keith asks. It’s hard to overhear the accusatory tone swinging within his voice.

Lance doesn’t know what to say. He’s feeling like an overflowing glass, like the surface tension finally let go and now he’s getting everywhere, sticking to every surface instead of being where he’s supposed to be. “I don’t know, Keith, I’m– It’s not easy.”

“I know some of the people here suck, and I’m so sorry about that, but do you seriously think this is any easier for me?” Keith counters, gesturing with one of his hands. There’s still a tremor there that Lance can’t unglue his eyes from. “I hate this, Lance.”

“Well, so do I!”

Keith’s face twists, expression falling. “But it’s my evening,” he says. There’s so much emotion behind the words, every single one of them forming jagged ice shards that burrow themselves between Lance’s ribs. “So why can’t you just be fucking happy for me?”

“I–”

“At least pretend you are. Fuck. I– It’s just one evening.”

Lance feels powerless, untethered. 

He swallows down all that hurt, ignoring the bitter taste of alcohol coating it like rotten candy. He sways on his feet, Keith’s words a blow to the head.

The edges of Keith’s uniform become blurrier by the second.

“I’m sorry,” Lance hiccups. It’s baring weakness, and it makes Lance feel sick. He thinks he might have to throw up.

“If you need to leave early,” Keith starts, the words turning Lance’s stomach even further in on itself, “ask my mother to drive you, alright? You’re not gonna have to talk to anyone else.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it myself. You can go back to the hotel, Lance.”

“I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” he sputters. He despises the way Keith’s talking to him right now, he despises the resentment he feels when he looks at the man he loves. 

Keith scoffs, a bitter thing, and maybe his eyes are shining with unshed tears too. Lance can’t see it through his own. “You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it.”

—35.09, Iylsed, Mirtral

“You really think those are a good choice to go hiking in?” Lance asks, lip curled in distaste as he eyes Keith’s beat-up boots. He’s pretty sure the stitching is coming undone at the heels.

Keith elbows him, shaking his head, but not slowing in his pace as to not fall behind the group. “First of all, you’re kind of crazy to bring hiking boots to a diplomatic conference,” he says, pointing at Lance’s shoes. “And secondly, I wasn’t supposed to be here anyways, remember?”

“Excuses, excuses.” Lance tightens the straps of his backpack, rucking it up a little further up his back. “And also, I bought these sweet things like, two days ago. Hiking’s on the menu, that’s what I’m preparing for.”

Hiking is indeed on the menu. As in, it’s their last big excursion, set to take up the whole day and give them a good view of Iylsed’s fantastic nature to take home and into their next alliance discussions with them. Lance appreciates it. The last few days were lots and lots of meetings, very decision-heavy and full of hypotheticals. Not a lot of free time to deflate, but whatever he had, he found himself spending with Keith – sometimes just being in his room and watching TV while Keith worked on that super mega confidential Blade thing he’s got going on. It’s familiar, and this time it’s good. It feels good.

Soft chatter from their group around them drifts through the air as their boots crunch on the soil. It’s peaceful, marching through the open woods, trees hanging low enough to graze their heads walking past, the sky and mountains still easily visible through the spongy blue leaves. 

Every once in a while, Keith’s knuckles brush against Lance’s, but neither of them really pull away from it. If Lance isn’t reading into it, it feels, at times, as if Keith is trying to tangle their fingers between them but isn’t quite sure how to do it right. Lance smiles to himself. He doesn’t mind, instead enjoying the warmth it causes to bloom in his chest.

They’re currently headed towards the Iylsedin version of a ski lift. As far as Lance is aware, the mountains here are a lot higher than on Earth, and he’s absolutely not gonna say no to a lift that skips the first 1000 meters for them. The mountain range they’re hiking on today is no Himalayas and they’re certainly not gonna go very far up, but it’s sure to make his calves burn like hell either way.

“I’m pretty sure our boots are going to be the least of our problems,” Keith says, outstretching his arm to point up at the peaks that disappear behind the clouds. 

Sahirya has her arm looped through Lance’s, leaning in. “How so?” she asks.

“Humans can run into trouble breathing at higher altitudes,” Lance explains matter-of-factly. “Atmosphere gets thinner the higher up you get, and it comes with like, a whole barrage of other problems.”

“That’s horrifying.” 

“Do you guys not have that?”

Sahirya shrugs, looking at the diplomat next to her. “Don’t think we do,” she says. “Do you?”

The diplomat shakes her head, furrowing her brows. She’s one of the representatives for a planet that just recently joined the alliance, and Lance never caught her name somehow. “We do not need an atmosphere,” she answers. “This makes space-travel much easier, too. No need to breathe like your species.”

“Huh,” Keith hums. “We call it altitude sickness.”

“Have you ever had it?” Sahirya asks, nearly knocking Lance over as she leans closer to Keith.

“Couple of times.” He shrugs. “I think it gets me a lot faster than most others.”

Huh, Lance didn’t know that. 

“And yet you still chose to come along on this excursion?” the representative asks. “That is commendable.”

Keith’s eyes meet Lance’s, lips curling into a soft smile. “I guess I thought it might be nice to be here with everyone before we part ways.”

And there it is again, that bittersweet warmth in Lance’s chest. He coughs, trying not to break eye contact. “Did you at least take an emergency supply of oxygen with you?”

Keith stops in his tracks for a moment, blinking. “Where would I even get that?” he asks.

Lance stops with him. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m just not over prepared, you ass,” Keith shoots back.

The others in their group step around them as they stand still, caught in a staring contest. “I think you woke up this morning and forgot we were hiking until I knocked on your door.”

Keith narrows his eyes, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Bold claim,” he says.

“Am I right?”

The staring contest is an easy win for Lance.

“Maybe.”

“Glad to hear you admit it,” Lance teases, a grin tugging at his lips. “I’ll give you mine, okay?”

“You really don’t have t–”

“I want to.” He takes his backpack off to rummage around in it. “Just because don’t wanna have to carry your heavy ass back to the hotel if you decide you wanna pass out before we’re even halfway there.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Fine. Where did you get yours, even?”

“I have like seven of these on my ship. Figured one couldn’t hurt to take.” His fingers curl around the bottle he’d conveniently shoved down to the very bottom of his bag. “Et voila! She’s all yours.”

“Thank you,” Keith stutters. As he reaches out for the bottle, their hands meet, skin brushing. It feels almost electric for a second there, leaving Lance a bit breathless.

He closes the zipper, shouldering his backpack again. “What would you do without me, huh?” Pretending to be annoyed, Keith sighs, but Lance doesn’t miss that flicker of fondness peeking through in his eyes. “Guess you’re lucky you have me.”

“I am,” Keith says, smiling now, as if it’s been waiting underneath this entire time. “It’s funny, Shiro used to say the exact same thing.”

“What do you mean?” Lance asks as they fall back into step, a little faster to catch back up with their group.

“Dunno, I guess he just thought I was kind of a mess back then before we got together.”

Lance grins. “I mean, judging by your hiking gear”– he gestures broadly to the entirety of Keith, finally catching up to the others –“he’s not wrong.”

“Enough about my hiking gear,” Keith complains through a laugh. “We should be enjoying all this beautiful nature around us.”

Lance only shakes his head, letting the others take over the rest of the conversation for him. They’re about to queue up for the lift anyways.

It takes him a moment to realize, too caught up in the euphoria of making Keith laugh, that he hadn’t even–

His blood freezes in his veins, pooling around his heart, icy shards threatening the integrity of it, and– What?

Why would Shiro know?

Did Keith–

Half formed thoughts race through his mind, fast enough to almost make him feel dizzy as his feet take near-robotic steps forward. One after the other.

He looks at Keith, still next to him, their arms still pressed close together, and Keith is still smiling as he talks to someone next to him, like he hasn’t just off-handedly shattered a very old, load bearing structure inside of Lance.

It has to mean that Keith told Shiro about them, right? Right?

Lance feels like he’s going to vomit up his heart right here into the crunchy soil.

The soles of his boots glue themselves to the ground. He stares forward, barely sees Sahirya walking in his direction, away from the group, to ask him if he’s alright. Keith keeps walking.

“I–” Lance begins, gasping for air. “I don’t think I’m feeling all that well.”

“What is it? Do you need help?” Her concern bleeds into the words, her hands steadying him by the shoulders. 

“I think it was maybe something I ate this morning?” he lies while his ribcage feels like it’s about to splinter. “Came on very fast somehow.”

“Want me to get Keith for you?”

“No, I– Don’t. I’ll just go back to the hotel, I think.”

“Okay,” Sahirya says, nodding intently. “I’ll tell him that, yeah?”

“Really, no need,” Lance answers. He blows out a slow exhale. “Just– Enjoy the hike.”

The way back has Lance’s head feel like it’s about to start smoking, kicked into the highest gear. He walks fast, trying to blur out everything he sees. All he wants to do is curl himself up in bed and find out what the hell happened in the process.

Because there’s no other explanation, is there?

And it would make so much fucking sense in hindsight: Shiro always asking him about Keith, telling him to talk to each other, to figure things out together. 

Shiro knew.

He had to have known.

Lance’s hands shake as he lifts his phone to his ear, feet carrying him on autopilot.

It rings three times before the call connects.

“La–”

“Did you know?” Lance blurts out before he can think better of it.

“Know what?” Shiro asks, genuine confusion in his tone.

Lance sucks in a breath, steeling himself. “Did Keith tell you? Back then? Fourteen years ago?”

It’s almost vague enough to talk himself back out of it if Shiro actually doesn’t know what Lance is talking about. If he’s overreacting, if his thoughts are giving him the worst possible outcome without an inkling of truth in it.

Shiro pauses. Lance can hear him breathe.

“I think you need to talk to Keith about that,” he says carefully.

That’s as much of a confirmation as Lance needs, really.

He rounds a corner, soil transforming to asphalt underneath his feet, buildings popping up left and right again as he leaves the confines of the woods.

“I– I just need to know, Shiro,” he pleads, uncaring of how pathetic he sounds. “Did Keith tell you?”

“Lance…”

“No, I can’t talk to Keith right now– I– I want to know what’s going on before I do.” He blinks, squeezing his eyes shut against the heat behind them. “I can’t go in clueless.”

Silence meets him in response.

“Please, Shiro.”

Shiro sighs and Shiro breaks.

According to him, Keith had spilled their secret the day he found out about Lance’s lightning scars. They’d gone on that walk after dinner, and Keith had been beside himself with anxiety and no outlet for it. His eyes had been brimming with tears. So Shiro had to ask. Anything else would’ve been unthinkable. And Shiro had to prod and push, because Keith wouldn’t tell him.

Half an hour into the walk, after more targeted asking, Keith had finally opened up.

“He told me that you got hurt in space and he wasn’t there to do anything about it,” Shiro explains. 

Lance barely feels the pang of relief that Keith hasn’t gone on to share every single bit of the story, too muddled by this angry bitterness. 

“And he told me he loved you so much that he didn’t know what to do with himself.” A pause. “It wasn’t hard to figure out from there.”

“Ah,” Lance manages to choke out. He thinks the splinters from his ribcage are slowly traveling up his windpipe. 

“He begged me to keep it a secret, Lance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like that.”

“That’s great,” he answers, voice cold and cutting. 

He knows it’s not Shiro fault, but the sting of betrayal sits deep. Because Shiro had known this entire time.

Shiro had been a place for Keith to confide in about their relationship for fourteen years. 

All the while Lance had fucking no one, taking all that hurt with him, carrying it every day without a helping hand to lessen the weight.

“I guess Keith slipped up,” Lance says bitterly.

He wakes up what must be a few hours later in his hotel room, blanket drawn up over his face.

There’s a series of harsh knocks on the door, and Lance stomach turns when he remembers why the hell he’s even here in the first place.

“Lance? You in there?” 

Of course it’s Keith. All worried and oblivious to the damage he’d caused.

“Leave me alone,” Lance shouts towards the closed door. 

“What?” Another quick row of knocks slams against the metal. “Lance, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on. Are you okay?”

Here’s the thing: Lance has had some time to calm down, some time to adjust to this new knowledge of Keith breaking the promise that he’d put between them in the first place. He knows this happened over a decade ago, and it’s been so long since they broke up that it shouldn’t even matter anymore.

He supposes it would be different if Keith had told Shiro two, three, four years ago. Then Lance could shrug, because he’d been head over heels in love with somebody else. It wouldn’t have mattered as much as it does now.

It’s stings now because Keith had told Shiro while they were still together. While Lance had to lie to his family and friends. That’s what’s pissing him off.

He’s going to try to be an adult about it, and later he’ll apologize to Shiro for being so rough on him earlier. He can’t help the way his chest hurts, though. The wound is fresh to him.

“Lance? Come on, I searched everywhere for you, and I swear you weren’t in your room when I checked two hours ago. What’s going on?” Keith sounds increasingly anxious, enough for Lance to drag himself out of bed and walk towards the door. 

He squeezes his eyes shut as he lifts his hand to open it, contemplating, walking this through in his head. Keith unknowingly delivers the perfect opening for him. “What’s wrong?” he asks again.

The door slides open to reveal him with reddened cheeks, his braid falling apart where it rests over his shoulder.

Lance instinctively takes a step back. “You told Shiro.”

The color drains from Keith’s face almost comically fast. “What?”

“You told Shiro that we were dating back then and you kept it to yourself.”

There’s nothing but the noise of the elevator down the hallway driving past as Keith takes in what Lance said. 

“I did,” Keith eventually admits. “And I regret every day that I didn’t tell you about it.”

It’s not the answer that Lance was expecting. A lot softer, barely a blow. 

“But what– How did you find out?” Keith cocks his head to the side in question, slinging his arms around himself. 

“You said that thing about Shiro and– I don’t know if I overreacted, but it just connected in my head,” Lance explains slowly. “It was the only way it would make sense, so I called Shiro to check.”

“Probably gave that old man a heart attack,” Keith jokes, careful around the edges. 

Lance laughs at it despite himself. “Yeah,” he mutters. “I think I’ll have to apologize to him later, I was–” 

For a moment, he considers how vulnerable he wants to be here. 

He’d finally opened up to Keith. It took him almost twenty years of his life to do that. To throw all of this away now would be wasteful, it would be a disservice for the both of them. 

And if they part ways tomorrow, it’s going to leave a bitter taste in his mouth if this goes unsaid. At the very least, they have to be honest. 

“It shook me to find out that you told him,” Lance says. “Like, you’ve had all these years to talk to Shiro about what happened with us, and this entire time I was honoring that shitty promise you made us make.”

“I know,” Keith answers. 

“It made me feel like shit, Keith.” Lance scuffs the heel of his sock against the floor, looking down. “It makes me feel like shit. I’m so mad at you right now, and I– You– All I really want to do is yell at you, but I’m not going to do that because– I don’t even know.”

“I understand.”

“It’s new to me, right? This knowledge that I don’t even want to have. And now I don’t know what to do about that.”

“Can I do anything?” Keith asks, genuine concern there in his voice. 

Within that frustration, Lance’s chest squeezes tightly. He’s going to miss Keith when this is over. 

“Did you tell anyone else?” 

Keith swallows. “No, just Shiro. And if he told Adam, he never brought it up with me.”

“Good,” Lance mumbles, nodding, planning, weighing his options. “I don’t think I want to see you right now. I– I need some space.”

“Okay.”

“When this is done with, I don’t want there to be any bad blood between us either. So, maybe tomorrow before we leave, we can talk again, yeah?”

“Lance, this doesn’t have to be done with,” says Keith, taking the smallest of steps forward, the tips of his boots barely breaching the line into Lance’s room. “I don’t want to give this up this time. I want–”

The heaviness lacing Keith’s words pulls Lance back into reality, an anchor at his feet.

“I think you should go,” he says, cutting Keith off in the middle of his sentence.

He brings his right hand up to place it against Keith’s chest, softly pushing him backwards. Keith’s heart beats near frantically underneath his palm, only one layer of fabric separating them. He can almost feel every burst of blood through Keith’s system. 

The movement pushes Keith away just enough that Lance could slide the door shut between them. His other hand hovers over the button to his side.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Lance says, looking back up into Keith’s dark eyes. They flick down to his lips just for a fraction of a second.

“I’m not going to be here tomorrow,” comes the answer, gaze meeting his again. “I’m leaving tonight.”

That startles him, makes him blink. “What is it?”

“It’s– Ugh. It’s the Blade, but I– Lance, I can’t tell you yet why.”

Of course. 

It’s grounding to hear. Where Keith’s stupid smile and dark eyes and caring nature made Lance feel all floaty and god, almost like he was falling in fucking love all over again, this slams him back into the dirt. 

Keith’s always a Blade first. 

“I’ll tell our friends about back then,” he says instead of probing more. It’s only going to hurt his feelings otherwise – he’s had enough of that today. “Is that okay with you?”

“Of course, Lance.”

His head hangs low when he says, “I guess I’ll see you around then.”

Lance slides the door shut without waiting for an answer. He can’t bear to keep this going any longer. His resolve is thin, already porous and easily breakable.

Maybe Keith says his name again, but Lance can’t hear it because he’s trodding over to the bed again, burying himself underneath the covers. 

Through blurry vision, he types out a message to a solid half of his contacts. 

Lance [02:03PM]: Keitj and i used t date

The first call that comes is from Veronica, who definitely takes the brunt of Lance’s emotional force. He’s a sniffling mess by the end of it, walking her through what happened then and after and what happened the past month. 

“I mean,” she says afterwards, “I kind of figured it out myself? Just all this time you were spending together, and I certainly didn’t forget the big crush you had back when you still went to school with him. It seemed to line up so well. And because you weren’t saying anything or opening up, I kinda tried to give you other openings to tell me, but yeah, you know how that went.”

“Not like I didn’t want to tell you,” Lance answers, rubbing at his eyes. 

“I know.” The sound of footsteps on wood comes through the speaker, as if Veronica is pacing from left to right, maybe going somewhere else in their house. “Not going to lie, now I’m starting to feel bad about telling you to fuck him about it.”

A laugh bubbles up from Lance in response. “Oh, don’t. It was great advice, I even followed it for once.”

Veronica laughs too when she says, “Probably the only time you shouldn’t have done what I’m telling you.”

“Yeah, maybe not.” Lance shrugs even though his sister can’t see it. “Kinda stupid in hindsight.”

“I’d dare say very stupid.”

“I get it, I get it.” He lets himself fall back into the pillows, looking up at the rounded ceiling. The light from outside dances across it in long streaks. “What do I do, Vee?”

The pacing stops and Veronica takes a couple deep breaths.

“Once you’re back here, you give him a call and you sort things out,” she offers. “He wants to fix this too, you know?”

Lance groans. “What does sorting things out even mean for us? Because he’s still– I don’t want to have a repeat of what happened ten years ago because he’s just away all the time. I can’t do that again.” He drapes his arm over his eyes, squeezing them shut underneath.

“It’s not going to be a repeat. He’s different, and more importantly, you’re also a very different person from who you were when you were twenty-six. You could work well together this time around. It’s possible if you let yourself have it.”

“What if it isn’t, though?” Lance asks. 

“And what if it is? You can’t let hypotheticals make the rules for you.”

“I– Fuck.” He lifts his arm, instead rubbing his hand down his face, holding his mouth shut. “I really– God, I really like him.” The words slip through his fingers like water.

“Then let yourself have this.”

Lance texts a lot of people back during the next few hours. Some, he calls back.

Turns out Hunk thought something was going on between them, but since Lance never brought it up, he didn’t want to push. Pidge thought they were hooking up and decided that she didn’t want to know anything else about that. Allura thanked him for telling her. Rachel said it was “twin intuition” and that she just got the “dating-vibes” off of them (which Lance thinks is complete bullshit and she actually didn’t know at all). Matt sent a winking emoji and nothing else. Adam told him he put it together by himself, said they were never good at subtlety.

He calls Shiro to apologize after the worst of it is over.

And when he asks Shiro what he should do, his answer is scarily close to Veronica’s.

—25.08, Earth, Arizona

Lance and Keith break up on the hottest day of the year in late August.

It’s a bad day to start with and an even worse day to end with.

The clock on Lance’s nightstand tells him that it’s six o’clock in the evening. It’s hard to see, since Lance has the blinds of every window shut tightly, not a bit of natural sunlight coming through. All three fans in the house are set up around the bed where Lance lies curled up in just his boxers and a puddle of his own sweat as he tries to wait out one of his worst pain flares yet. His hair sticks to his face, soaking wet, but for now he thinks the worst of it is over. At least he can hear his own thoughts again.

It started yesterday around noon, shortly before the AC broke from the constant overuse, and Lance has been sleeping on and off trying to get through the pain – only mildly successfully. He hasn’t eaten since the flare-up started, the untouched plate of dinner Keith had brought upstairs some time ago sits on the ground next to the bed. The smell has become much worse ever since it’s gotten cold, but Lance hasn’t had the strength or the mental capacity to do something about that.

He feels like complete and utter shit when he eventually peels himself out of bed. His head is full of cotton, and residual tiny shocks of electricity that wind through his nerves down his spine.

Sluggishly, he pulls on a pair of sweatpants and the lightest, most comfortable tank top he owns, still wincing as it slides over his back, and eventually makes his way down the stairs. Small step after small step. Lance clings on to the handrail for dear life.

Most of the blinds are closed too down here, but without the fans, the air is stale and stagnant, thick where the heat lingers within the rooms. Lance inhales and nearly has to swallow the air down like water. It sends a painful shiver through his entire body.

Keith’s nowhere to be seen, at least not the living room or kitchen, so he’s either in the office or the garden. 

A long, careful look into the office reveals that Keith’s not here, though. The office is tidier than it’s been in weeks, papers stashed away into boxes, stacked on top of each other in the corner of the room without the desk. A packed duffel rests on the desk chair. 

It’s a sight that has a low, waiting anger and crushing disappointment simmering in his veins. Keith hasn’t brought up when he has to leave – He avoids Lance’s questions when he asks how long he’ll have to stay away this time. 

Though, if Lance is being honest with himself, he already knows the answer. 

Admitting what’s going to happen soon would make it real, and Lance has yet to want that. Neither does Keith, if the way he’s been skirting around questions is any indication. 

However, that limbo they find themselves in as a result has caused nothing but damage for the both of them.

They’ve seen each other a lot more since his inauguration, the Blade having offered Keith a bit of downtime before he dives in entirely. It just hasn’t been what Lance had hoped it to be.

A lot more arguments, a lot more silence between them. Lance resents it. He can see that whatever’s still holding them together is fraying. The fuse is short. He doesn’t know what the final cut will be, but it now feels inevitable – like it’s right there, a sword waiting to be unsheathed and draw its first blood.

All of that, packed into a duffel bag sitting in his office. 

He’s sure that if he were to check the closet, most of Keith’s clothes would be gone too. 

Lance steps out into the garden, assaulted by scorching heat and unbearably bright lights from above. He brings his hand up to shield his eyes and give them a moment to adjust. For a while, everything is shades of white and bright blue.

Through his fingers he spots Keith, yanking at weeds with nothing but his bare hands, digging his nails in to get every bit of root out.

“What are you doing?” Lance asks as he steps closer.

Keith flinches, dropping the handful of uprooted dandelions he’d been gripping to the ground. “Fuck, you scared me,” he breathes. “How are you feeling?” 

He gets up, dusting his hands off on his shorts. It doesn’t get rid of the thick line of dirt underneath his nails.

“Been better,” Lance answers with a half-shrug. His eyes still haven’t fully adjusted to the light, almost as if he’s not yet fully awake. 

Keith hums in response, bending down to grab the dandelions and throw them in the bucket next to him.

“And you’re taking care of the garden?” Lance asks as silence lapses. It’s been feeling painfully sticky lately, clinging between their fingers like molasses.

“I guess I’m keeping myself busy,” Keith says. “Had a lot on my mind the past few days.”

It’s already veering into something Lance doesn’t want to have to hear. Still, he asks, “Does it have anything to do with your packed bag?”

Keith’s shoulders slack noticeably. “Lance…” He doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“So it does.”

“Yeah,” Keith answers, but he still refuses to look at him, instead staring at the bunch of weeds still growing between the vegetables. Beneath the earth, in the heat of summer, the roots must be overheating and dying off already. “But I didn’t want to bring it up while you’re feeling like this. It’s not a conversation to have when you’re–”

“Just say it, I don’t need to be babied, Keith.” It comes out a lot harsher than Lance wants it to, but he’s frustrated and he’s hurting and he always feels like this. A little extra pain doesn’t change much about it. 

“It’s not about that,” Keith says, a certain bite to this words. “I wanted to have a real conversation with you, where we both can take some time to figure things out, but Kolivan’s been on my ass and pushing me.”

Lance blows out a breath, blinking. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m leaving in two days. Saturday morning.”

“And when are you planning to come back?”

“That’s the fucking problem, Lance,” he finally whispers. There they go. There it frays. 

This is where it ends. 

Standing in Lance’s garden, plants shriveling because Lance didn’t have the energy to water them, heat sweltering, sweat dripping from their temples. Not a cloud in the sky. Sunset a few hours away. The threat of a shared bed later. Keith leaving. And Lance–

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” Keith admits. “It’s a permanent move.”

The admission feels cold in Lance’s system. An ice-bath, his head dunked underwater for too long. Nails and knuckles purple and unfeeling. His heart beats fast to combat the strain. 

“How long have you known?” Lance asks. The crack in his voice is loud in the air. “This isn’t news to you, right?”

“It’s– Kolivan told me when I made leader that I’d have to move eventually.”

“Over half a year ago, then,” Lance brings out. “You’ve known for half a year and thought it’d be a good idea to tell me two days before you leave?”

“I– Lance–”

“You didn’t even tell me! I had to see your packed bag and ask!” 

“I wanted to find the right moment to talk to you about it!” Keith raises his voice in tune with Lance’s. 

“Right, when I’m not feeling like shit. I gathered that much.” Lance crosses his arms in front of his chest, taking a step back. “No wonder you weren’t planning to ever tell me anything.”

“I was!”

“Yeah? And then we’d do what? Have a talk about you leaving and me staying behind, just waiting for you to come back to me and tell me all about the wonderful year you spent in space?”

There’s splinters in Keith’s frown, breaking apart to show anger and hurt and frustration and all the things that Lance can’t read. 

“That’s not what– No, Lance.” Keith sucks in a breath through clenched teeth, jaw working underneath skin. “I was going to ask you to come with me.”

It stuns Lance into silence for just a moment. 

A bitter laugh works its way up his throat. They’ve had this conversation before. After all, Lance could be up there with him. The Blade always needs someone like Lance. Or at least, someone like Lance used to be before he became this goddamn mess. 

“Right, because it’s worked so well the last time you asked,” Lance hears himself answering. 

Keith nearly reels back, shying away from the words. “That’s unfair. That’s so fucking unfair,” he says, so very clearly hurt. “I want to be with you, Lance, and I’ve got everything up there, all of it except you. And you’ve got–” Keith stops himself, appearing unwilling to step over the line just yet. 

“And I’ve got nothing down here,” Lance finishes for him. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Fine,” Keith says. He adjusts his stance, eyes fiery as they bore into Lance. They lack their usual softness. Now harsher even in the sunlight, his thick brows a set line above them, furrowed in the middle. “Then what’s fucking keeping you here?”

And sure, Lance could tell him. 

But fuck, everything about this makes him feel like should never ever bring it up in front of Keith. 

Like he should never bring anything up in front of him ever again. 

He’s hurting all over, down to the marrow of his bones. 

He hates this.

He wants this to be over. 

“Maybe it’s that I won’t just jump when you tell me to,” Lance spits. 

Despite everything, it’s easier to reach an end than he’d thought. Keith is finally as angry as he is. 

“Maybe it’d do you some good every once in a while.”

All he needs to do is lash out. And all Keith needs to do is the same thing in return. 

Their past proves how skilled they both are at that. 

“Oh yeah?” he seethes. “I’m not your fucking dog, Keith.”

Lance would never ask Keith to stay. 

He wouldn’t ask him to stay in the same way he’d never ask fireworks to stop brightening up the sky, the same way he’d never ask the sun to shine less bright, the same way he’d never ask a gunshot to be less bone-shattering on impact. 

Because Keith can do everything Lance can’t, and Keith can do it up there. He doesn’t need Lance for that. 

Tears well up in his eyes, hot and angry and it makes him even more frustrated. 

“I’m not going with you,” Lance says when Keith doesn’t answer. He wipes at his eyes with his forearm. “I’m not going out there.”

“Great,” Keith responds, throwing his arms out in exasperation. “And where does that leave us?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The words are out faster than anything Lance has said so far. He can’t think about what this will mean or he’ll choke on it. “There’s no ‘us’ here. You have the Blades up there and I have nothing down here. It’s clearly–” The sob catches up to him. His breath hitches, his voice falters. “This clearly isn’t working.”

Keith’s expression twists so violently that Lance feels it in his chest. His eyes grow wide as Lance’s words settle in, his lips part, glistening despite the heat. His body shudders. 

“Clearly,” he echoes. His hands tremble visibly. “Is that really what you think?”

“You think it works? That we work? This endless fucking cycle that just keeps getting worse?”

“Obviously not! That’s why I’m asking you to come with me and–”

“Oh my god, are you even listening to me?” Lance interrupts. “I’m staying here!”

“If you would just listen to me, we could–”

“Don’t you dare give me orders,” Lance bites out, voice cold and sharp. “Just–” He takes a shaking, wet breath before deciding to cut deeply. “Do what you’re best at and leave, Keith.”

The look on Keith’s face hits harder than any punch could. Lance had drawn blood. 

“I love you,” Keith whispers, shaking hands wound up tightly. 

“Fuck off,” Lance answers through the taste of tears in his mouth. “Just go.”

“Lance.”

“No,” he says. He doesn’t care anymore just how much of a mess he must look. The tears are coming freely now, uncaring of Lance’s will. “I want you to leave.” Another sob shakes him. It doesn’t get better. “You can do Kolivan a solid and join back up with him two days earlier. Take your bag and leave.”

Keith’s eyes stay fixed to him for what must be the longest minute of Lance’s life. He can feel the heat of the sun splitting his skin, the dry grass under his naked feet. He can feel fabric dragging over his scarred back with every breath. He can feel every millimeter of skin on his body. He can smell the heavy scent of rain long overdue that’s not yet coming. The air is too thick. 

And he can feel his heart rip apart in his chest. Sent through the wood chipper over and over to make sure there’s really nothing viable left. It’s a gruesome sight, Lance thinks. And anyone who’d take a look at him and Keith right now would say the same. 

Without a word, Keith walks past him back into the apartment. And Lance can’t move. He can’t. It’s like he’s growing roots far down into the soil.  

He stays there for a while. 

So long that he hears doors opening and closing. So long that he knows that Keith stands at the edge of the garden behind Lance, breathing in and breathing out, thinking whether or not to say something and ultimately deciding against it. 

He stays until he’s sure that Keith’s gone. 

And when he stumbles back into the living room to find all of Keith’s stuff gone – really, truly fucking gone – he cries until his throat feels raw. 

There are no winners here today. 

Chapter Text

—25.12, Earth, California

Lance’s backpack clinks loudly as he sets it down on the floor of Pidge’s living room. He should probably remove the three full bottles of rum he’d brought before he stumbles over them and eats shit, but it seems like a lot of effort right now. Instead, he kicks the bag halfway underneath the sofa. He’ll get them later.

Although, later comes much faster than anticipated. Two hours pass as nearly everyone else trickles in for their reunion. The first one to arrive is actually Pidge’s girlfriend of six months. She’s a whole head taller than Lance and shakes his hand with a death grip that nearly makes his knees buckle. He loves her immediately. 

Allura, Romelle and Coran are next to arrive, bringing probably near-lethal amounts of nunvil with them. Matt almost knocks down the door half an hour later, which makes Lance wish that Veronica would’ve had time to join them. 

Hunk’s last, but he’s bringing most of the snacks for tonight and tomorrow, so Lance helps him carry everything into the house.

There’s no sign of Keith, even as the evening bleeds into night, after they’ve collectively video called Shiro and Adam, and Lance doesn’t think he’s going to ask about him. Maybe it’ll come up on its own.

The first bottle of nunvil is opened after their very late dinner. As soon as the first sip hits Lance’s tongue, he finds himself relaxing, nearly melting into Allura’s side. She easily wraps an arm around his shoulders, clinking their glasses together.

He doesn’t have much to share this time around, so he sticks to listening to his friends laugh and bicker across the dinner table. Somehow, he’s still in the same place both mentally and physically as he was when he last saw them, and there’s not really anything that he could tell them about. 

Sure, he could tell them that he broke up with Keith. 

He doesn’t do that, though. 

Pidge is applying for PhD programs, Hunk’s thinking of investing some money into opening up his own culinary school, but really he’s just working on an intergalactic cookbook right now, Allura has her hands full with guiding her people on New Altea, barely ever having any time to breathe, Romelle and Coran by her side for every step of the way.

“You’re looking at the youngest divorcee in the great state of California,” Matt says with a big bright smile as the group starts to split up and mingle in the living room and on the porch. He’s in a too large hoodie, with his hair in a loose ponytail, looking a lot more relaxed than usual. It may be because Lance usually only sees him when he’s involved in some sort of work project.

Lance doubtfully eyes him up and down. He leans back in his chair. “I don’t think that’s true, actually.”

“Hell yeah I am, married and divorced at the sexy, sexy age of twenty-nine.” Wiggling his eyebrows for good measure, Matt fills both their glasses up to the brim again. “Just didn’t wanna embarrass myself in front of Allura with that story.”

“I still don’t think that’s true.”

“It is.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Bullshit.”

“Are my own feelings not worth any merit?”

“Fuck off. I’m honestly just mad you didn’t invite me to the wedding,” Lance answers, half-serious. “When the hell did that happen?”

Matt laughs, motioning for Lance to pick up their glasses, link their arms, and down them somewhat smoothly. The glass clinks as they untangle their limbs. 

“September the 2^nd, the happiest day of my life,” he says, clutching at his chest with a whole lot of dramatics. “Kidding.”

Lance doesn’t deign that with an answer, instead just squints at him. This table is turning into an interrogation scene pretty quickly. With just the two of them sitting here and the single light hanging low above them. 

“Kidding because it was maybe the okayest day of my life. Like, a very normal-ish day.”

“So…?”

Matt drags his finger along the rim of the glass, trying to procure a sound. “So… My girlfriend and I– You remember Bec, right?”

Lance thinks for a second. “Yeah.”

“Right, so Bec and I got suuuuper sloshed on this casino planet in September. I don’t even remember the name now, that’s how hammered I was, but like, we thought it would be a good idea to get hitched,” Matt explains, nearly crushing his glass with how hard he’s trying to get a fun little sound out of it. Lance slaps at his hand to get him to give up on that very, very fruitless endeavor. “We thought ‘We’ve been dating for three months, what could possibly go wrong?’”

“Famous last words,” Lance jokes, earning himself a laugh for that.

“You can say that again.” Instead of now playing around with his glass, Matt props his head up on his hands, leaning across the table. “Took us exactly four days to realize that we weren’t working. And I mean like, absolutely did not work. We immediately turned out to be a train wreck. And I called Pidge, I was like, ‘Man, what the fuck do I do?’. And she said some ultra-wise shit like, ‘I don’t know, you’re the genius. Figure it out yourself.’” Matt shakes his head. “Obviously, she was right.”

“So your genius idea was to get divorced?” Lance asks, brows raising in question. “I could’ve also told you that. They’re really handing out that title to anyone these days.”

“I’m certified, you asshole!”

“Certified by a toddler maybe.”

“Bah, suck a dick, man.” He scoffs. “Actually, my genius idea was it to change our names and go undercover forever, but Bec said we could just get it annulled since we were wasted when we signed the contract. Legally speaking, it wasn’t really binding.”

“Does that still count as a divorce?”

“In my eyes? Totally.” Matt grins. “The freshly divorced look is great for me, I’m not gonna lie to you. People dig it.”

Lance can’t help but snort at that. Without thinking, he reaches for the bottle of nunvil again and fills their glasses. Modestly, this time around. “I’m sure they do.”

“They love the sadness in my eyes when I tell ‘em my ex wife took the ship in the divorce.”

The nunvil is starting to taste like sweet berries instead of nail polish remover on Lance’s tongue, which is never ever a good sign. As soon as it starts tasting good, it’s going to hit his system at any minute now.

“Did she really?”

“Dude, yeah! I had to crash with Keith for a solid two months before I could get a new one.”

Just the mention of Keith’s name makes Lance shiver. He doesn’t want it to. They’re all still friends, they’re all still close, and just because he can’t bear to even think about him, that doesn’t mean that the world surrounding them is going to stop turning anytime soon. It makes sickness bubble up in his throat.

“Which, by the way, did you get a chance to visit the new Blade HQ yet?” Matt continues prattling on. “It’s sweet as hell, dude. Keith’s captain’s suite is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. He’s got this crazy extendable bed and–”

Lance’s brain pretty much turns to static. It may be the nunvil finally hitting all at once, it may be his own personal way of dealing with it. 

He shakes his head no. 

No, he hasn’t gotten a chance to visit the HQ. (No, he probably never will.) No, he hasn’t been off-planet lately. (No, he probably never will again.)

“You always struck me as the type to get married in a pretty stupid way,” Matt says, and Lance has no clue how they got here. He must’ve missed at least two or three steps along the way.

Either Matt’s just drunk and oblivious, or Lance has gotten much better at hiding his discomfort around others. He doesn’t know which one he’d prefer. 

“Like, either do what I did, or have this very thoughtful, planned-out love of your life type deal.”

To this day, Lance isn’t sure if what Keith asked him back then was a sort of proposal. A plea to stay together. “Galra mate for life,” he’d said. But is that what he was asking of Lance? 

He doesn’t know, his memory of the evening already fizzing out at the corners. He doesn’t remember what he said in response, not in detail, at least. 

“You think I’m the type to get hitched at a casino?” Lance repeats, shuddering.

Matt shakes his head, crossing his arms. “I think, with the right person, you’d do some dumb shit like that.” He shrugs. “When you and Keith went on that road trip ages ago, Pidge said you two would probably end up getting lost in Vegas and wake up married or something. Like, would do that on a dare.”

Why the fuck are they talking about Keith and him right now as if there’s anything at all to talk about in the first place?

“I don’t think we would,” Lance says, hoping that his voice doesn’t shake. If it does, he’s gonna blame it on the nunvil. He takes another larger than necessary swig. “There’s no way.”

He would know. 

Lance isn’t made to be on the receiving end of soul-crushing devotion.

Lance isn’t made to get married on a fucking whim.

Lance isn’t made to do anything right, really.

He stumbles out onto the porch to catch his breath. The walls very slowly started feeling like they were going to close in on him, and Matt smiled like he knew too much. With the added nunvil in his bloodstream, it made for a terrifying combination.

He breathes in and breathes out, tries to compose himself. 

It only works for a little while, because his life can’t seem to stop throwing shit at him and beating him with comically large hammers.

When he hears footsteps in the distance, his heart rate picks up to a concerning degree. They’re light and almost inaudible but the asphalt crunches underneath familiar rubber soles and Lance can’t believe he recognized the weight to the steps.

Of course – of fucking course – Keith decides to show up now. As if he clawed his way out of Lance’s nightmares to make tonight another special kind of hell.

Keith hasn’t even noticed Lance yet, but his hands are white-knuckling around the strap of his bag, easily illuminated by the sparsely placed street lights and whatever residue glow is coming from the other houses’ windows down the street. 

Lance’s chest feels impossibly tight, like he’s being squashed down by gravity itself.

As Keith finally reaches the house, he notices Lance as well. Their eyes lock.

That alone feels so different than anything Lance has ever experienced. With the nunvil turning his nervous system into a thick, unmoving sludge, he can barely get his lungs to expand accordingly.

In movies they tend to focus on the eyes, how they widen, how they sparkle. But all Lance can feel is how the sharp, bitten-down edges of his nails dig into his palms, and how his heart drops low into his gut with a sharp twinge of pain as if it had ripped itself free from the arteries and sinew and muscle holding it in place. 

It doesn’t feel good. It steals his breath away for what must be a lifetime.

Keith steps into the porch light, too bright and yellow beating down on him, and only now Lance sees the purple bruise along his jawline, the red-blue edges of it, the swollen bump latching around the bone. It looks painful. Looking at it feels painful.

“Hi,” Keith croaks, stopping in his tracks halfway up the stairs, his free hand running through his hair, brushing it out of his face where it’s gotten too long. “Sorry for showing up so late.”

Lance wishes he could apologize for showing up at all.

He doesn’t answer, instinctively taking a few steps back, his mind trying to place every little movement in a neat little box in his mind, cataloguing and categorizing each one. He pushes the door behind him open and wordlessly lets Keith inside, unable to breathe in as he walks past him.

There’s only his rushing pulse in his ears until Pidge’s voice cuts right through it. 

“I mean, you’re cool with sharing, right?”

His head whips around to look at Keith, so fast that he almost pops a disc out of place, but Keith’s nearly fucking smiling at Pidge, and the very edge of his bag brushes against Lance’s arm when he says, “Of course we are.”

Needless to say, when Lance lets himself fall onto the bed, barely managing to pull his sweatshirt over his head, he’s fucking plastered. The room spins, turning in circles even as he’s lying down and unmoving. 

He thinks he even dozes off as he tries to process the day. His feet are still firmly planted on the ground. He curses Allura for opening another bottle of elderberry flavored nunvil. 

On the other hand, it’s probably the only thing that got him through the evening without actually throwing a fit. He’d spent the entire time glued to Allura’s side, avoiding Matt who was cuddling up way too close to Keith for the whole evening, and tried to ignore the bad aftertaste it all left for him.

He’d really wanted this evening to be good. To be something – genuinely just anything – he could celebrate and think back on for the next weeks. 

It’s the creaking of the door that wakes him back up, lets that simmering anger bubble hot under his skin. 

Squinting against the light of the bedside table, Lance pushes himself upward to glare at Keith. 

The moment their eyes meet is charged once again; Lance is unsure if that’ll ever stop from now on. Electricity is crackling in the air. 

Keith had closed the door behind him and is now leaning against it. It looks a little too cool for Lance’s taste. His face and neck are flushed red too, having knocked back shot after shot earlier. When Lance had looked at him then, caught a glance once or twice or too many times, he’d hoped that Keith would just pass out on the couch instead of coming up to the room. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lance bites. Those really are the first words he’s spoken to Keith since their break-up, huh? That’s unnerving.

His tongue is way too heavy in his mouth – as if it had soaked up all the rum and nunvil from earlier like a sponge. Maybe Lance shouldn’t say anything at all. Talking to Keith like this feels nothing short of clumsy and humiliating.

“Going to bed,” Keith answers flatly, a little unsteady on his feet. 

“Absolutely not, you can take your shit and sleep on the couch downstairs.” 

“Matt crashed on there,” he defends himself as he’s stepping closer towards Lance. “Hunk and Allura are passed out on the air mattress, Coran and Romelle got the other guest room. This is all there is.”

Lance takes a deep breath and gestures towards the ground. “There’s the floor.”

“I’m not sleeping on the floor, Lance,” Keith says, pushing his hair out of his face. It stands up in places, messy and unruly as it’s always been. Lance wants to smooth it down. 

“You’re not coming in here.” He tries to stand his ground, but there are already fractures forming in his façade. With the way Keith’s dark eyes struggle to focus on him, him shuffling forward in almost careful steps. “Shouldn’t have told Pidge that it’s fine if we’re sharing. You only got yourself to blame.”

“It is fine if we’re sharing,” Keith insists, now standing right in front of him. Through his haze, Lance hadn’t noticed him coming that close. 

“Is it?” 

He decides then to stand up, meeting Keith head-on. What he hadn’t expected was the alcohol still in his system almost immediately sending him off-balance. 

Keith’s hand darts forward, wrapping tightly around Lance’s upper arm. The touch burns him. 

“It is,” Keith breathes. Maybe Lance is hallucinating it, but Keith’s eyes flick down to Lance’s lips. They stay there for a moment, a little too long before they drag upward again. 

Lance’s tongue darts out to wet his lips almost subconsciously. 

“Have you ever considered that, just maybe, it’s not fine with me?” 

“Figured you didn’t want to look like an asshole in front of everyone else.”

Keith is too close to him. He can feel his breath on his face, and he smells too much like whiskey and that stupid cologne he always used to wear. 

Lance huffs indignantly. Sure, he would’ve looked like an asshole and Keith may be right, but at the same time he would’ve much rather shared the bed with literally anyone else. 

“I meant it when I told you fuck off,” he says.  Keith’s hand squeezes into the flesh of Lance’s arm. 

“Alright, I’ll kick Matt off the couch.”

“You’re an asshole,” Lance spits, twisting his arm free and using the open space to push his hands against Keith’s chest. He’d hoped to get some sort of distance between them, but Keith just stands there, doesn’t stumble, a steady rock in the shore.  “Don’t do that.”

Underneath his palm, Keith’s heart is beating fast, almost frantic, utterly betraying his calm exterior. 

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t wake him.”

“Matt’s beauty sleep that important to you?”

His own heart mirrors Keith’s, as if it’s trying to break out and get to it, right through both their chests. 

“No,” he whispers. God he’s so fucking nervous right now, nerves strung tightly underneath his skin. “I want y–”

Lance’s breath hitches as Keith’s lips stretch into a small smile, exposing a sliver of white teeth. Their eyes meet again, and Lance swears this time he can feel the crackle in the air. It’s like everything around them slows down and Lance hates it, because it’s Keith and he never wants to see Keith again. 

He wants to be a million light years away from him. 

At the same time –

Keith’s the center of every universe, his gravitational pull great enough to pull Lance in even from his spot on Earth, even from where he’s standing, trapped between the bed and Keith with his hand planted firmly to his chest. 

Lance wonders when his eyes drifted down Keith’s lips again as he forces them back up. It takes a while though. It’s as if words fail him. All he can think about is wanting and needing and aching. 

He wants Keith.

He gathers every bit of willpower he has not to lean in. Not to give in to that molten, burning sensation of desire that seems to run through his veins instead of blood. 

“Fu– Mmph.”

Only to be cut off so swiftly by Keith’s mouth crashing against his own. 

His blood rushes in his ears, roaring over the sound of everything else, and all he can focus on is Keith kissing him. He’s too stunned to react for a split second, motionless before Keith’s hands settle on the sides of his neck, thumbs pressing into his jaw and Lance can’t help but sigh into the kiss, pressure melting, lips parting on instinct. 

Heat crashes over him like a wave. It pulls him under, restricting his breath until he’s kissing Keith back, desperate and unabashed. 

He lets Keith in and lets him take whatever he wants. 

It feels as if barely a second passed when Lance finds himself on the bed with Keith pressing him into the mattress.  

Keith’s all but yanking Lance’s tank top off. Impatiently slides it over his sides with hot, scarred hands gliding over his skin. Those very hands nearly short out something in Lance’s brain, overloading his circuitry even with just the slightest brush of palms against Lance’s ribs. 

At the same time, Lance tries to hold on to something, something, anything, attempting to get Keith’s shirt over his head too. There’s barely any cooperation, he hears thread ripping through his haze. And maybe they should cool it, but right now he wants everything but that. 

When Keith’s finally undressed, the button of his jeans popped, Lance has to take him in. It’s been a few months after all, hasn’t it?

To let his eyes drag over Keith’s skin hurts. It hurts badly. 

Keith lets himself fall back, kneeling between Lance’s spread thighs, taking him in just the same. His eyes are dark with desire. His chest heaves with heavy breaths. 

As Lance allows himself to look, to trail, to map, he finds purple bruising matching that on Keith’s jaw. Right across his ribcage in what must’ve been a crushing hit too close to Keith’s heart. The bruise is settled underneath with the outlines of his ribs visible if Lance squints. 

It’s mottled blue and purple, streaks of red and still patchy swaths of pale skin. It looks like galaxy somewhere far away. This time around, he can even make out an H II region, somewhere closer to Keith’s pecs, a fraying splotch of deep red encasing his pierced nipple. His eyes follow the spiral arms of the nebula. They map every star and every constellation he can see. 

The only word that comes to mind is breathtaking. It’s almost beautiful. It must’ve stolen Keith’s breath for a few seconds at least to get injured like this. It must still be painful. 

Lance doesn’t get time to think about it too much, because his pants are yanked down his legs before he even has the chance to protest. He wouldn’t, but he’s sure if he did, Keith would end this within the same split second. There’d be no hesitation.

With everything exposed, Lance tries to gather himself, tries to relax. He sucks in a series of shallow breaths.

The sound of a bottle uncapping snaps him back into reality. Where Keith leans forward and captures Lance’s lips with his own once more, eagerly licking into his mouth. Lance lets him. He sucks on Keith’s tongue like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do in his life. 

Flicking his own tongue against the bottom of Keith’s and closing his lips around it, bobbing his head as he sucks it into his mouth, disregarding the spit that dribbles past the corners of his lips as he does. He doesn’t care for any of it, his mind closing in on the sensation of something of Keith inside of him. He’ll take it all. It doesn’t matter that Keith’s tongue tastes like whiskey, still spicy in the aftertaste and smokey as it goes down. 

Wholly lost in thought, entirely gone to the sensation of it, he feels Keith’s fingers between his spread thighs. 

They’re wet with lube while somehow still warm. His dry thumb rubs small, soothing circles into where his thighs meet his ass, just teasing, maybe even asking for permission to go further. 

Lance pulls away from Keith’s lips, eyes glued to the string of spit still connecting them. It catches on the light of the bedside table, sparkling bright. 

Keith seems too caught up in Lance though. He presses their foreheads together. Breathing in Lance’s exhales. 

“Okay?” he asks into Lance’s open mouth. Too careful and too tender. 

“Please,” Lance whispers. It comes out as barely more than a gasp. 

The first finger Keith eases into him feels almost like relief. It feels like old gears finally turning again. It feels like a puzzle piece slotting into place. It’s elation. 

Lance whines through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut so he doesn’t take apart Keith’s searching gaze above him.

He arches into it, urging him deeper, adjusts to the stretch of Keith’s thicker fingers rather than his own. 

It’s only been a few weeks since he’d let someone else do this, but he’s not going to tell Keith that. He’ll tell Keith to use a condom and he’ll shut up right after. 

No matter how something very ugly and selfish inside of Lance wants to see Keith’s face when he tells him that he’s been fucking other people. Something even more ugly knows that Keith’s been fucking other people too.

But Keith doesn’t need to know that Lance got fucked by a guy who’d already known his name before he’d even introduced himself. Keith doesn’t need to know about the pretty girl who’d challenged him to an arm wrestling competition at a bar and then claimed her winning prize against Lance’s kitchen island later. 

Keith doesn’t need to know. 

When Keith adds the second finger, he meets Lance in the middle to kiss him again, quite literally taking his breath away. 

It’s all so overwhelming. Where the room still spins around him, Keith is a constant, and Lance clings on to him as tightly as he can, hoping he wont spin out of his control as well. 

He tries to relax around the intrusion, but it’s not easy. Keith keeps his fingers still until Lance stops squirming, then pushes in deeper. 

It’s unnerving how Keith can, even now, even drunk, still remember all of Lance’s tells. How he knows exactly when to stop and when he gets to up the pace. With Lance desperately wrapping his arms around Keith’s shoulders to pull him closer, Keith never stops slowly pumping his fingers into him. Gentle and steady, lube soaking the sheets underneath, carefully twisting and crooking his fingers to make sure that Lance can adjust. 

He doesn’t think they’ve gone this slowly in years. Maybe Keith’s trying to drag this out. 

Lance has lost all sense of time by the time Keith works the fourth finger into him. They must’ve been doing this for at least an hour by now. God, maybe longer, now that he looks at the alarm on the nightstand. He doesn’t mind either way. He’s lost to it, tears clinging to his lashes, mouth dry from every gasp. Keith’s name is on his tongue like a prayer. 

His neglected dick is weeping pre against his stomach, completely untouched, only occasionally feeling a hint of agonizing friction when Keith brushes against it. It’s a test for his patience and the best possible type of torture. 

“Feel like you’re ready?” Keith asks quietly, brushing the hair off of Lance’s forehead in a small gesture of comfort. 

Biting his lip as Keith crooks his fingers just right, Lance nods, almost frantically now. 

A breath of air fans across Lance’s cheek. Keith’s laughing softly. “Words, baby,” he says, like it’s a secret just between the two of them, “I need you to use your words.”

If it weren’t for how dissolving within the pleasure Lance feels, he’d hang onto how familiar and caring those sentences sound. 

He doesn’t. Tries not to. Instead he chases Keith down for another bruising kiss. 

“Yes,” he whimpers into the space between them, his voice breaking on the vowel. “Please, Keith, I–”

And Keith doesn’t waste any time. He gives himself a few strokes before he rolls the condom on, adds another generous helping of lube to make sure he really doesn’t hurt Lance, and lines himself up. 

Their eyes lock when Keith pushes inside. Lance can’t bring himself to look away. 

Keith’s pupils are so far dilated his eyes look almost black, his mouth falling open in a silent gasp as he buries himself deeper, his body trembling. 

Lance figures he must look at same, his face is flushed with heat and beading with sweat, his hair clings to his skin, his lips feel sore and he tastes blood as his tongue darts out to wet them. 

It’s true that no one else compares to how Keith feels inside of him. It’s true that no one makes him feel the way Keith does. It’s a crying fucking shame. 

Keith fucks him slow. Their bodies stay pressed together the entire time, chest-to-chest, face-to-face, Keith’s hand entwined with Lance’s above his head. Every noise Lance makes is swallowed down by Keith’s gorgeous mouth, almost as if it would hurt to stop kissing him. And maybe it would. Lance doesn’t want to find out. 

They’re quiet, they don’t speak. It might be more for the benefit of everyone else in the house, but Lance is afraid his chest might rip open and spill everything if he decides to give in. All that’s audible is the steady creak of the old bed-frame, them trading breaths between them, the rustling of the bedsheets pooled by their feet and the slick sounds of Keith thrusting in and out of Lance. 

Intimacy with Keith has never been so silent. 

Lance can’t tell how long they’ve been at it, but it slowly gets to the point where all Lance can feel anymore is Keith’s cock moving inside of him. The occasional shiver of blinding pleasure when Keith hits his spot just right threatens to push him over the edge, but he never quite gets there. There’s purpose to it, in the same vein as why Keith’s not yet giving Lance any relief and why he’s not telling Lance to chase his own bliss. 

It’s heavenly. Lance’s worries about them doing this start melt away and all that really matters is that Keith will thrust back into his sore hole. Anything else he can worry about later, but now he just clings to Keith, pulls him in as closely as he can, kisses him as deeply as he can, trying to memorize how his skin feels under his fingertips. 

Keith begins to tremble, and he slows down even further, pouring all he has into kissing Lance in favor of moving his hips. 

But Lance doesn’t want him to stop – he wraps his legs tightly around Keith’s lower back, tries to pull him back in, whining when Keith resists it. 

There’s a lapse in movement where Keith pushes himself upwards, separating their sticky bodies from one another while still staying sheathed in him. And Keith’s just breathing, just breathing with his eyes closed, a crease appearing between his thick, furrowed brows. 

Lance watches him tremble, watches the way Keith’s muscles lock up. 

“What’s wrong?” Lance rasps. He lets his fingers glide across Keith’s collarbones, over the jagged scar by his right shoulder. 

Keith exhales slowly. “‘m close,” he whispers, strained, control fraying. 

Lance’s mouth runs dry as his hand travels downward across the slope of Keith’s pecs, innocently brushing over his nipples. A single digit trailing down to his abs and right back up. 

The edges of his vision are fuzzy, a little dream-like. 

“You can let go, Red,” Lance says. He uses his legs to pull Keith in deeper again, until his hips are flush against Lance’s ass. “You’ve been good.”

And it’s true. Right now, he’s making Lance feel so full, so fucking good. He feels like he’s being split open, like he’s being shaped to accommodate Keith. 

“I can’t–” Keith gasps, letting his head hang low. “Not yet.”

Nearly delirious with want, Lance’s fingers land on the bruise across Keith’s ribs. He doesn’t apply pressure, just rests his hand there for a moment. Just waiting until Keith slowly, shakily pulls out of him, just short of leaving him empty before he snaps his hips forward. He’s a little bolder with it now. Just a little faster. 

Lance rages a battle against himself, wanting to touch himself to get closer than he already is, but his hand stays against Keith’s side. 

The pace picks up just a bit more. More. More. More. And Lance’s eyes stay on the bruise, how it moves with every ripple of Keith’s muscles, with every snap of his hips. 

Lance is desperate. And he doesn’t think he’ll ever get to see the universe like this again – so close, embedded underneath Keith’s skin. 

Inhibitions lowered, both their hearts screaming with the gravitational pull they’re subjected to, Lance digs his fingers in. 

He pushes harshly between Keith’s ribs, right into the red and purple. As if he could leave his fingerprints in Keith’s skin – somehow make them permanent, have Keith carry them with him. 

What he doesn’t expect is the shudder that crashes through Keith’s entire body like a tsunami. What he doesn’t expect is the noise, something that could never sound like pain, to escape Keith’s mouth. What he doesn’t expect is the pleading look in Keith’s eyes right before he buries his face in Lance’s neck, panting against the soft skin there. 

Lance can’t explain what’s driving him to dig in even harder. He can tell it hurts, but Keith’s pace stutters, the rhythm shatters, and how could Lance possibly stop himself?

With Lance’s hand splayed across the universe, Keith comes undone. In all their time together, Lance has never heard Keith moan like this, all ragged and broken, never with this much force behind it. 

“Lance, I– Fuck.” 

He’ll never recover from this. It’ll be seared into his mind forever – a shining star tucked between the rest of his memories. 

Keith’s breath comes hot and wet against Lance’s neck, spit dripping onto his skin as Keith shakes apart, riding out his high. And Lance feels too sensitive, too close, every sensation sharpened.

“I love you.”

Keith’s words are a hand wrapped around Lance’s throat.

They choke him. They white out his senses entirely. They sober him back up.

All he feels, all he can register is Keith still inside of him. And Keith still fucking loves him.

He doesn’t feel the wave that’s crashing his way until it pulls him under. With a loud cry smothered into Keith’s hair, Lance comes apart – untouched.

The burst of pure pleasure seems to drag itself on forever as Keith begins to stroke him through it – the added friction almost doubling the intensity of it and sending him headfirst into a second orgasm. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything like this before in his life. 

His back arches deeply, Keith’s hands there to offer support, and he’s only dimly aware of the warm splatter that lands across his stomach and chest. His heels dig into the mattress, his nails cut into Keith’s sides with how tightly he’s curling his fists. 

He must be louder than he’s ever been, because Keith, halfway through, decides to shut him up with another heated, wet kiss.

Slowly, agonizingly so, Lance’s head clears, still prickly through the haze of the descent. The glow of his stupid marks shines bright blue even through his closed eyes.

It’s a brutal landing in the dirt.

Lance breaks the kiss as fast as he can. Both of his hands push against Keith’s chest to bring space between them. 

Confusion paints his beautiful features – lips bitten red falling open in a silent question, dark eyes wide, cheeks flushed. His hair is sticking to his damp skin. He’s cast in Lance’s blue light, shadowed by the orange of the lamp of the nightstand. 

A few months ago, this exact scenario wouldn’t feel like being doused in ice-water. 

Usually, Keith would stay buried inside of him for a while longer, enjoying the bliss of it all together. He’d pepper Lance’s face and his shoulders with kisses, he’d whisper compliments into his skin. Usually, Keith would drag his fingers through the still-warm come on Lance’s chest and press them to Lance’s lips before licking them clean himself, careful not to miss a drop.

This– “I’m pulling out, ‘kay?” –is different.

This– “What the fuck was that, Keith?” –hurts.

There’s emptiness creeping up on him in more ways than one as Lance pushes himself up to sit, struggling with how shaky his limbs still are, trying to piece together what the hell just happened. He grabs his shirt and wipes the come off of his chest. He can’t have this fucking conversation like this. Not while there’s jizz on him and lube dripping down between his thighs and his head spins out of control.

“What?” Keith asks in response. There’s a harsh edge around his voice, even if he’s not really looking at Lance. Instead, he’s tying the condom off and throwing it into the trash next to his nightstand.

The response elicits an unwanted, unbridled anger in Lance’s veins. 

“Why in the ever-loving fuck did you just tell me that you love me?”

“Because I do,” Keith answers. “Simple as that.”

Oh, and Keith says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like it’s instinct – like Lance is stupid for not figuring it out himself. There’s a self-assurance in there, a fucking confidence that only drives the hurt deeper into him. 

After all, they didn’t break up because there wasn’t any love there. Maybe there was too much of it, back there in August. Overflowing and crushing and suffocating.

Lance sucks in a sharp breath of air, mentally bracing himself for the impact. If only it could soften the blow.

“Don’t you dare to ever tell me that again, Keith,” he says, enough venom in the words to deal lasting damage. “I’m serious.”

Keith looks hurt, shell-shocked. He scoots back on the bed, finally removing every part of them still touching. It was about time.

“Is that what you want?” he asks silently.

Lance doesn’t even think about it. “Yes,” he answers. “I– We’re broken up. I’m not yours to love anymore. Just– Ugh! Don’t tell me that, okay?”

“Fine.” Keith crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Then don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you still love me too.”

Lance’s face twists, he feels it outside of his control. He blinks hard against the onslaught of heat behind his eyes. “Consider it done.”

“Good.”

“Don’t kiss me ever again, either,” he demands then, and he knows this is a big ask. His voice shakes. “Don’t kiss my lips like that means anything to you.”

Keith swallows. Lance watches his chest and shoulders rise and fall with the next breath he takes. In the dim light, Keith almost looks like a painting come to life, and he wants nothing more than to never have a thought like this again.

Keith says, “Okay.” Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.  

“I get to shower first,” Lance adds.

And all Keith does is nod.

In the shower, Lance thinks he doesn’t cry. His eyes burn, but he might’ve gotten a lot of shampoo into them, he can’t be sure.

How can you miss someone who’s right there?

He thinks this question may become the end of him.

As he stares at his feet in the ceramic tub, he thinks something will have to change.

And maybe they should never do this again.

Things do change. For the better.

But five months later, it happens again.

At Lance’s birthday bash, it happens again.

Three weeks after that, when Lance moves out of the state, it happens again.

It happens again. It happens again. It happens again.

It becomes a pattern. 

They stick to the rules.

It happens again and again and again.

The rules become stricter, more convoluted. 

It happens again. It happens again. It happens again. 

And neither of them can seem to let go entirely.

—26.10, Earth, New York

Shiro’s hair is whiter than it used to be. 

Sitting at Lance’s rickety old dinner table, he takes a good look around the kitchen, messy and cramped and so much smaller than the one back in Arizona. This time around, Lance only has to think for himself, he doesn’t need much more space than this. Outside, the leaves are turning bright shades of red and yellow as October comes to a colder close than expected. 

The kettle on the counter turns itself off. That’s Lance’s signal to pour it into his ancient french press. 

He watches the ground coffee take in the boiling water and inhales deeply. The scent fills his nose, layers of something chocolate-y and almost earthy taking up his senses fully. 

Lance knows Shiro likes his coffee strong, going for a robusta blend in the café down the street this time instead of his usual. Poor guy hasn’t had proper coffee in a while, probably. 

It’s been about three months since Shiro and Adam had touched back down on Earth. 

Their team had made sure to celebrate it properly. Hunk had talked Lance into hosting, even with the packed moving boxes strewn all over the place. It just made sense, with Shiro and Adam staying at the Garrison until they could move into their new bigger place, and Lance, at the time, living closest to them. 

Despite not wanting to, Lance had caved. 

Even if it meant that Keith would be there – in the apartment they’d shared for well over three years, now very nearly empty. It had made them both snappy and on edge, and when everyone left the next morning, Keith had fucked him on the dirty floor of the empty living room. Lance’d had bruises on his shoulders and hips a week later, still. 

He shakes his head to rid himself of the thought, shuddering at the memory while he pours Shiro his cup of coffee. 

“So,” Shiro begins the very second that Lance sits down. This doesn’t bode well. “Double majoring just to hear me give a talk? I guess I’m flattered, but–”

Lance didn’t know he’d been holding this much tension in his shoulders until it releases as he laughs. “Shut up,” he groans. “In your dreams, maybe.”

Shiro grins back at him, hands wrapping around the steaming cup in front of him. Lance wonders how cold the Altean steel feels in the winter. If it’s anything like his pierced ears, where can feel the titanium of his helix piercing letting cold seep into the rest of his skin. He guesses he’d never thought of it before. 

“No, seriously, what prompted that switch? Was one major not enough on your plate?” 

Lance shrugs. He lets his fingernail trace along the wooden indents on the table, following the grain. “I talked to my therapist about it,” he admits, digging his nail in until the skin underneath turns white.

It’s still scary to say that out loud. So far, he’s gotten nothing but positive reception on it, nothing that would indicate disappointment or disdain. But, well– It’s still– For a while, he hadn’t even known where to start.

He got his high school diploma by taking evening classes and he signed up to go to college and he somehow managed to condense his experience from the past few years into bite sized chunks that made for a good application essay. Made those chunks sound so fucking delectable that he got into nearly everywhere he’d applied to, some even offered a full ride. At least there’s a silver lining in being a former child soldier somewhere.

And of course, both Pidge and Matt just happened to know a guy who knows a guy who could hook him up with a great therapist who specializes in dealing with veterans, without landing on a waitlist. Once Lance (semi-successfully) fought through the guilt of taking the spot away from someone who actually really needs it and isn’t just working himself up over nothing, he starts going there. And, somehow, it helps.

He’s only been seeing Dr Paolo for a few months and it’s hard to open up around her, but it takes some weight off his shoulders. Gram by gram, rice grain by rice grain, slowly chipping away the mountain he’s been carrying with him for years now. He hasn’t even scratched the surface of dying out in space around her yet, hasn’t brought up Keith, but he’s taking baby steps. One thing at a time.

“And what did she say?” Shiro inquires, voice soft. Careful.

“She asked if I missed the stars,” Lance answers. “And then asked if this was me trying to pave my way back to them.” 

“And? Is it?”

“I–” He swallows around nothing. Why do his hands feel like they’re shaking? “Maybe.”

Shiro watches the steam rise from his cup for a few seconds, little droplets pulled upwards, before his eyes flick up to meet Lance’s again. “I’m glad.”

“I think I just missed learning about the stars,” he says quietly. “Being there was an experience and a half, but just– I loved learning about the planets we visited, I loved learning their histories, I loved looking into our scanner’s readings to try to figure out why the sky was green above us. There’s so much out there and”– his breath hitches dangerously –“even if I might never get to see it again, I still want to make an effort to understand, you know?”

Shiro’s smile doesn’t fade at all. It seems like his eyes light up, fine lines at the corners deepening. “Yeah, I know. I think you’ve chosen a good combination there.” He nods, as if to underline his words. “Intergalactic communications and astronomy is a double threat if I’ve ever seen one.”

“True,” Lance laughs. “I keep scaring off all the hot babes when I tell them I’m doing a double major.”

Shiro doesn’t pull a face, not really, but the corner of his mouth twitches almost imperceptibly. “Hot babes?” he repeats, a little shocked maybe. “Are you trying to meet someone?”

The words nearly make Lance flinch. They’re certainly enough to get him to stop tracing the wood grain. 

“No,” he says, because he’s still in love with his fucking ex, and that’s not really fun at all, is it? “I’m focusing on getting all my shit in order first, I guess.”

He can’t help but wish that he also had a glass of water or even this insanely strong coffee, just to give his hands something real to do. 

“Dr Paolo is definitely helping with that, but I think just getting myself out here at all is, you know, something,” Lance continues word-vomiting when Shiro stays silent in contemplation. “Don’t think there’s a lot of time to think about dating between all of this, even if it’s probably fucking with my social life here.”

Shiro tilts his chin downwards, further encouraging Lance’s stream of hot garbage. He knows the unspoken question is, ‘Do you have any friends here yet?’.

The answer to that is, ‘Not really’.

“It’s harder to open up to people if they already know you before you’ve met them,” he says instead, tip-toeing around a soft no. “Everyone looks at me and they see the Red Paladin who saved the universe and all that jazz, but I’m not really that person anymore, so it feels like I’m just–” He catches himself just in time. “Someone in my planetary geology class asked me for my autograph.”

“Try being a substitute teacher for a class and having to take selfies with every single student there.”

Lance snorts despite the bad mood he’d talked himself into. “Yeah, it could always be worse. Still, it was weird, I’m not going to lie. Like, I don’t really want to befriend someone who had a poster of me on their wall.”

“You had a poster of me on your wall,” Shiro juts in.

“First of all, who told you that? Second of all, that’s different!”

“Your mom told me when we celebrated New Years in Varadero, and second of all, how’s that any different?”

“Cause you’re you, man!” Lance defends. He mentally jots down a note to call his mother later. “You were like this hotshot pilot! I’m just some guy.”

“Hate to break it to you, Lance, I wasn’t even twenty-four when we launched to Kerberos. I was also very much ‘just some guy’.”

Lance bristles, even though he understands what Shiro’s trying to say. He was younger then than Lance is now, and knowing him, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Shiro wasn’t ready back then either. 

Their walk to the classroom is fast-paced, both of them having gotten too lost in talking about absolutely nothing at all to each other. To Lance, it’s been refreshing to finally have someone back around who will talk to him about anything but his classes, it’s been a much needed reprieve.

Cold wind slings around them, cooling them down even with their jackets zipped up all the way to the top, big scarves wrapped around their necks. 

Lance is carrying Shiro’s backpack for him, slung over his left shoulder, while his own dangles from his right hand. He’d picked up on Shiro having a bit of trouble with his prosthetic as they were getting dressed, just the slight furrow of pain that showed on his face while picking up his bag, and Lance had simply taken it from him. It was nice to see that relief in his expression. Shiro would probably rather die than ask for help. And it’s the least Lance can do.

In front of the building, Shiro asks for it back. 

“Do you wanna go in separately?”

“What?” Lance asks with a laugh. “Afraid people will see us and think we’re friends? Yeah, that’d be kinda embarrassing.” 

He willingly glosses over the fact that Shiro’s most likely offering him to pull himself out of the picture, to make him less recognizable. Honestly, though, he cares more about having his friend here with him than the opinions of others, even if there’s a chance it’s only going to make things harder on him.

Shiro takes the hint. “Wouldn’t wanna tank your reputation,” he says, bumping his shoulder against Lance’s.

“Can’t get much worse, old man,” Lance answers, shouldering his backpack. “I’m already known as the guy who fumbled an alien princess. I’ll never live that down until I die.”

Shiro smiles. As he does, a little bit of white fog escapes his mouth. “I guess I can at least try,” he jokes. “Maybe I’ll call you out by name during my talk.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Eh, we’ll see, won’t we?”

Shiro doesn’t call him out by name. Thank fuck.

But Lance sits in the third row and asks question after question, just because he’s interested in what Shiro’s talking about.

There’s a weird sort of disconnect happening – to know that he could’ve gone on this journey with Shiro, that it could be him doing this talk instead, that Lance could be the one answering questions. 

It’s a missed chance. A lost connection. A diverging path. 

And maybe it could’ve turned Lance’s life around for the better.

If Shiro had asked him to come on this journey today, Lance isn’t sure if he would’ve said yes.

But as he looks at the pictures and graphs on the screen, he doesn’t feel the same inkling of sickness brewing in his gut. As he watches Shiro talk about something he could’ve been a part of, he feels strangely okay with it.

—28.12, Earth, Arizona

“How chivalrous,” Lance mutters mostly to himself. 

His backpack is heavy where it hangs off of one shoulder, his eyes are probably the driest they’ve ever been and he has not slept a wink tonight. Shoutout to that four-month old baby in the row behind him who had the probably healthiest set of lungs Lance has ever had the displeasure of hearing. He doesn’t think he’s ever been on a flight that sucked this bad, and this time, he didn’t even have to throw up. (That was a win, though! He’d spent ten minutes on the phone with Dr Paolo while he was waiting at the baggage claim to tell her about it.)

Still half asleep, he rubs his knuckle into the inner corner of his eye, just to make sure he’s really seeing this right.

The arrivals area is mostly empty, except for smack-dab in the middle –  slouched against a kiosk chair, in dark jeans and a leather jacket, hair up in a (goddamn) ponytail and sunglasses low on his nose – Keith. 

Leave it to this guy to be the first person in the universe to somehow manage to look good picking someone up for a 5 AM flight.

Keith looks cool, cool, cool. With long, lithe limbs, effortlessly holding himself up in a way that should look horribly practiced. Lance despises that little swoop in his gut when Keith lifts his head to glance up at him. His dark hair falls into his eyes, messy and right behind the sunglasses, and makes him appear just so much cooler. Although he looks a little pale around the edges, his face a little more strained than usual.

“You look like shit,” Lance says when he finally makes it into hearing-distance. It’s nowhere near the truth. Yet, it’s still somehow better than just vomiting up every steamy thought he has when he sees Keith like this. 

He has some pent up energy, alright? Not even Lance, known master of his mind and body, is immune to the bodily craving of getting his rocks off from time to time. And, not to forget, as much as he loathes to admit it, thirty is a good fucking look on the guy. Jeez. 

Keith frowns, evidently not in the mood for any of Lance’s games, and lets his eyes slowly drag over Lance’s body from his untied sneakers up to his hair that’s growing all over the place these days. (In his defense, with midterms going on, Lance has barely had any time to take care of himself.)

Then, like some sort of asshole, Keith smirks. Only halfway, the right corner of his lips tugging up, cheek dimpling slightly. 

“I don’t think you have a lot of room to talk,” he answers.

Lance scoffs, affronted. “You could pretend to be a little more excited to see me.”

Neither of them make a move to hug or even greet each other with a handshake. It leaves a somewhat bitter taste on Lance’s tongue. The ritual of picking someone up at the airport apparently couldn’t be less sacred to Keith if he tried.

“Drew the short straw,” Keith says with a shrug. “Matt’s still too drunk to drive and Hunk’s asleep.”

In Lance’s world – the ideal one – he’s being picked up by someone who’s genuinely happy to see him. Their eyes lock, a smile brightens both their faces, and Lance will let go of his bag to be scooped up into the other person’s arms. There’ll be hugs that last forever and teary-eyed kisses after not seeing each other for almost four months. 

There’s none of that here. Only the same underlying tension that’s been there since their break-up: that push-and-pull, that double entendre of every word shared between them. Either they get along and end up sleeping with each other, or they do not get along and then sleep with each other to somewhat balance it out again. Lance has a feeling which one it’s going to be today.

“At least I have an excuse for looking like shit,” Lance mutters as Keith makes no offer to take his heavy-ass bag from him. “My flight was supposed to leave four hours earlier! And there was a crying baby behind me the entire time.”

“The only crying baby I’m hearing right now is you,” Keith says, clicking his tongue.

Motherfucker.

Lance just rolls his eyes, taking care to walk just a little bit ahead of Keith the entire time as they make it out of the airport.

It’s still dark outside, but the air isn’t cold at all, despite what Lance had falsely come to anticipate. New York had newly accustomed him to freezing his ass off after being spoiled by the warm Arizona winters for years. 

The first thing he does when they reach Keith’s truck is to shuck his jacket off and throw it into the trunk along with his backpack and his carry-on suitcase. That seems only reasonable.

He maneuvers his limbs into the front passenger seat after, immediately toeing his sneakers off and connecting his phone to the speaker, like any good passenger would do. It’s for his own sanity too, because Keith has exactly one ancient CD in his car and that’s a Bruce Springsteen album from approximately one billion years ago. He’s had it here for endlessly long and Lance doesn’t think he can fully stomach hearing that right now. 

Keith starts the car without so much as another word to Lance, visibly grinding his teeth into powder. And he still hasn’t taken his sunglasses off, which really only truly adds to the asshole-picture Keith’s painting today.

Lance’s pick of music is only agitating Keith further, and maybe Lance is beginning to delight in it. Just something about watching the muscles in Keith’s jaw tighten and work underneath his skin that really does it for him.

Ten minutes into the drive, Keith fumbles for the thermos in the cupholder between them, pops it open and– wait a minute.

“Coffee?” Lance questions, eyebrows raised up into his hairline. “You don’t even like–”

“It tastes great,” Keith answers and takes a sip for extra effect. He doesn’t do a very good job of hiding how much he does not like it. His shoulders shudder, his lip curling up in distaste.

It takes very little after that to put two and two together.

“Holy shit,” Lance breathes. “You’re hungover.”

Keith glares at him in response, fingers tapping against the steering wheel.

“I don’t get hangovers.”

“You’re fucking hungover,” Lance repeats and crowds himself into Keith’s space, halfway across the console. “That’s why you’ve been acting like a total dick this entire time!”

“Your presence isn’t helping.” Keith sets the thermos back down, doesn’t even spare Lance a sideways glance. 

“I can’t believe I had to come just one day later and you guys decide to get completely sloshed without me.” In despair, Lance throws his head back. Heavy on the theatrics, heavy on being as annoying as possible. “This makes so much sense, man. No wonder you’re wearing these dumb”– (read: hot) –“sunglasses and acting like you’re–”

That’s what finally gets some sort of reaction out of Keith. He groans. “Listen,” he snaps, “if all you’re gonna do is bitch and moan you can walk the rest of the way.”

Lance grins.

He’s sure he said something quite tasteful that led to him finding himself in his current position: with his knees pressed down at the sides of his head in the backseat of Keith’s truck. 

It must’ve been very elaborate, and probably among the best and most eloquent things Lance has ever said. Just an educated guess, because Keith apparently loved it so much that he’s fucking into Lance at a breakneck speed that has Lance’s head bumping against the hard plastic of the car door with every thrust forward.

His jeans are crumpled up somewhere in the front seat, his boxers barely shoved down his legs, still dangling somewhere around his left knee. Keith’s got one gloved hand pressing down on Lance’s thigh, the other one tightly curled around the handle above the window. Lance loves seeing the way Keith’s thick fingers press deep indents into his flesh. He hopes it leaves a mark, something that he can look back on later, something to dig his own fingers into until it hurts.

Something about the downright pissed look on Keith’s face and the dead-on precision that Keith somehow conjured up to hit Lance’s prostate with every snap of his hips is so fucking hot that Lance would genuinely let Keith do whatever the fuck he wants to him.

“You’re so–” Keith nearly splits Lance in half with how hard he’s fucking into him. “So–” Another one. “Fucking–” Lance almost screams this time. “Insufferable.”

Lance tries to catch his breath to respond, but it’s nothing short of impossible like this. It’s like Keith keeps setting a new goalpost for himself with every passing minute and blowing clean past them each time. 

“You– ah, fuck–“ Lance gasps, “You have no idea– hngh– no fucking clue how insufferable I ca–”

Somehow, Keith manages to force Lance deeper into the stretch, cutting him off mid-sentence. Lance has to blink tears out of his eyes. He’s certain he could come like this if Keith kept it up long enough.

But Keith can only keep the pace for so long, even with his freaky Galra strength, and he slows down eventually. Instead, he makes it worse: He opts for slower thrusts this time, makes sure that Lance really fucking feels every centimeter that leaves him, that he feels the pull of the head of Keith’s dick when it catches on his rim, and pushes back inside hard. Lance is pretty sure he needs to worry about some sort of head injury as his head bangs against the door for the thousandth time in the past thirty minutes.

The hand on Lance’s thigh wanders towards his jaw and just for a second, Lance thinks Keith’s going to kiss him – break one of the rules that they cling to so desperately, trembling with the effort of it. Horrifyingly, Lance realizes that he would let Keith. Maybe he’s not in a spot to be doing this right now.

His lips part on instinct, eyes growing wide as Keith says, “Open up.”

Lance does.

The kiss doesn’t come, but instead, he feels Keith’s breath fan over his skin.

Keith spits into his mouth. 

And barely pulls away before immediately picking up the pace again.

Lance’s skin flushes hot across his entire body as he swallows, the taste of coffee and Keith and rancid alcohol coating his tongue and throat. He trembles, wrapping his hands around Keith’s wrists, trying not to look at the string of spit still dangling from Keith’s mouth, trying to keep himself from pushing himself close to lick it off of his glistening lips. He thinks he’s going to go crazy with want.

He’s got Keith fully sheathed inside of him, Keith’s spit in his mouth, but hell, he wants more.

The realization fires through his veins like lightning. In a short moment of clarity, right between an agonizing pull and an ecstasy-filled push, he catches Keith’s eyes. 

Keith had pulled over somewhere into a darkened rest spot without any lights and not a soul in sight anywhere. It’d been dark when they started, when Keith had grabbed Lance by the neckline of his hoodie and nearly growled at him to get on the backseat. But the first rays of light are shining through the fogged-up car windows, illuminating Keith’s face. The streaks land across his dark eyes, his brows furrowed in deep concentration, and his bared teeth glint white, canines sharp. 

Lance blows out a breath as Keith’s rhythm stutters. The tension in the air, just for a few seconds, is thick enough to cut. He can’t do this. 

“You love when I’m insufferable,” Lance says, like it’s an insult. Everything else is getting too close for comfort. “Otherwise you wouldn’t still be fucking me.”

Keith blinks, struck by the words. His grip on Lance falters. 

“Right,” he answers. 

And Lance doesn’t like that fucking tone. They’re supposed to be having fun, they’re supposed to just be hooking up for the hell of it. And sure, maybe Lance still loves Keith, but that’s shoved somewhere deep, deep, deep, deep down in his psyche to make more room for wanting Keith because he’s hot and because he knows exactly what Lance likes. 

He doubles down instead. “You think it’s sooooo fun to put me in my place, don’t you?”

And hey, there’s that hungry glint in Keith’s eyes again, as if he’d caught himself, pulled himself out of that dangerous space they both manage to barely step around.

“Shut up,” he hisses, finally sliding back into Lance, knocking the breath clean out of his lungs.

“Ha– Try making me.” 

Instead of shutting him up, he makes Lance scream his throat raw. Eyes squeezed shut, back arched, both of Keith’s hands gripping tightly on to his hips to pull him back onto his dick whenever he squirms to get away from the ledge of too fucking much.

It takes one stroke with Keith’s stupidly skilled hands to make Lance come all over himself, very nearly hitting his favorite hoodie that Keith had haphazardly shoved up Lance’s chest.

Without much preamble, Keith pulls out once Lance stops twitching and shaking, and strips the condom off. Lance wants to scoff at Keith just throwing it into the empty cupholder because that’s nasty as all hell, quite frankly, but he’s still too out of his mind, barely coming down. If all else fails, he’ll say something later. Just to get on Keith’s nerves. 

He’s still catching his breath when Keith climbs over him, bracketing his shoulders with his thighs, denim rubbing against the fabric of Lance’s sweater. He takes hold of his cock, angling his hips down just until Lance’s lips come into contact with it. 

Keith shudders. His whole body trembles, and Lance thinks he may be having some sort of out-of-body experience as he blinks up at Keith with wide eyes. 

He doesn’t know what else to do but stick his tongue out, laving at what he can reach, because Keith’s legs are pinning down the hood of his sweater, keeping him from moving at all.

Keith tastes as he always does, mostly like him, like warm skin and salt and slightly bitter. There’s a terrible aftertaste of latex somewhere, but underneath it all, it’s still distinctly Keith. Once Lance gets that taste, he feels his mind dive head-first into a frenzy. He wraps his lips around anything he can get, hollowing his cheeks and sucking down as hard as possible, set on giving Keith the best head of his life with what little movement he has. Fuck, he really tries. 

With how Keith sounds like he’s actively falling apart, Lance thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of that – just whines and whimpers like it’s his job, and it’s music to Lance’s ears. He can’t get enough of it. Of Keith jerking himself off into Lance’s mouth, of being caged in by his legs like this, of being fucked by Keith in the backseat of his car. 

It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but there’s a very real chance it’s the last time. Lance savors it.

Keith comes fast, heat spilling into Lance’s mouth and past his lips, almost getting into his nose with how awful this angle is.

Lance coughs after he swallows, sputtering and trying to regain his breathing. He twists himself out from under Keith, or more like, pushes Keith backwards.

“Watch where you aim it next time,” he says. “Fuck, dude, do you have any tissues?”

Keith’s still staring at him from where he’s awkwardly sitting across the seat, and, yeah– Lance must be a sight to behold right now. There’s still Keith’s come smeared across his face and his own is drying on his chest, half naked except for this stupid blue hoodie covering not much more than his arms and shoulders. With the morning light streaming in, it probably makes quite the visual.

And Lance genuinely tries to not give Keith that very same treatment, but it’s hard when he looks so exceedingly beautiful. It sucks. And it sucks that his hair is all over the place, and that his face is red from exertion, and that he still has all of his clothes on, except for his pants which he’d hastily pulled down just under his ass to get his dick out. All of it sucks.

“Hey,” Lance snaps, because he’s already so over it. “Tissues, man.”

“Yeah,” Keith croaks. 

When all is said and done and they’re driving the rest of the way home, Lance tries not to glance at the clock on the dashboard to figure out how long they were at it and how late they’re going to be. He hopes all the others are still asleep when they get there.

The inside of his mouth still tastes like Keith’s spunk, turning more and more bitter and stale by the minute. It’s a too familiar taste, and he needs it gone soon.

He eyes the thermos in Keith’s hand, politely pretends to ignore the tremors in Keith’s fingers. 

“Give me that,” he says, holding his own hand out.

“I’m not giving you my coffee,” Keith answers, somehow already irritated again. (Lance doesn’t have any right to complain here, he’s just as on edge. It’s not the first time that having sex didn’t balance them out but made them worse instead. That’s been the case more and more lately.)

“You came in my mouth and you taste like battery acid,” Lance lies about that last part specifically. “Least you can do is give me something to wash it out.”

“I don’t taste like battery acid,” Keith says, like it’s something he needs to defend for some reason.

“How is that the one thing you choose to answer to?” Lance reaches over and snatches the thermos out of his loose grip. “It won’t kill you to share.”

When Lance drinks, he places his lips right where Keith’s had been along the opening. Quickly, he realizes that, in some weird, twisted way, it’s like kissing Keith. It feels like he’s muddling a boundary there somewhere. 

Keith’s cock resting heavy between his lips was fine, Keith spitting into his mouth was nothing short of hot, but sharing a drink? It makes him feel too close and shaky all over.

The coffee tastes awful, as he should’ve expected, but at the very least it rids him of the constant taste of Keith, Keith, Keith.

When he hands the thermos back wordlessly, Keith’s eyes, too, land where Lance had put his mouth to drink. He also pretends to ignore that.

Shiro’s and Adam’s house is quiet when Keith unlocks the front door and holds it open for him. It’s an almost eerie silence, only experienced in the very early morning hours. Like the Earth stands still for a while, like it’s going to be in that state forever.

“You want the sleeping couch or a bed?” Keith asks quietly, backlit by the morning sun rays streaming into the living room. 

Lance recognizes it as the temporary olive branch it is. Around everyone else, they’re fine, even if they’re not awake yet. He peers through the open door past Keith. “Who am I sharing the bedroom with?” 

They both toe their shoes off, Keith leaning against the wall with one arm while Lance tries his best to balance. The hallway is narrow, with everyone’s shoes strewn all over the floor. Theirs fit right in.

“‘Lura,” Keith answers. “We shared the room yesterday, I don’t mind taking the couch today.” 

“Okay,” Lance murmurs. He hangs his jacket onto one of the many coat hangers, somewhat struggling to get it to fit between the others. 

Walking past Keith, he has to suppress the old embedded urge to touch him as he passes him. Maybe he lingers too long, maybe his fingers brush against the denim of Keith’s jeans. 

Keith caves instead of him.

There’s a moment of familiarity where Keith’s hands wrap around Lance’s waist, fingers curling into fabric like they belong there. He pushes Lance back against the wall behind him, gently, almost, and presses himself up against him. 

Keith’s lips are hot as they land against Lance’s jawline in a way that’s always a guarantee to make him crumble in on himself. Lance leans into the touch, hands coming up to wind themselves into Keith’s hair, undoing the ponytail that was already barely holding up anymore. Every kiss sends liquid fire through his veins, sends it pooling low in his gut again. 

It’s different now than earlier. Now, it’s almost relaxed. Like seconds could stretch endlessly and all of his thoughts could be dedicated just to Keith’s mouth alone. 

Hands wander, uncaring of being out in the open hallway, even with the door to the living room standing wide open, even with the staircase right next to them. Nothing seems to matter as Keith’s fingers dip past the waistband of Lance’s boxers for the second time in under an hour, curling around his half-hard dick.

Lance’s hand flies up to his mouth, so he can bite down on his knuckles to stifle any noises he might make. They need to be so, so careful here. If anyone were to hear them– Yikes, Lance doesn’t want to have to explain that to anyone. 

They’re pressed up close to each other, Lance’s thigh shoved snugly between Keith’s. He can tell it’s taking Keith a great deal of effort to not just mindlessly grind his hips forwards, taking care of his own high. Instead, Keith focuses all his attention on Lance, slowly building pressure and speed, his free hand yanking Lance’s pants out of the way so he has a little more range to work with.

Lance registers nothing but pure bliss that easily bleeds into oversensitivity. He’s panting against his knuckles, spit gathering on the skin, his teeth digging in until they meet bone underneath his flesh.

“Fuck,” Keith whispers, stroking him faster, dark eyes on Lance’s the entire time. And this time, Lance can’t look away.

His head falls forwards, forehead knocking against Keith’s. It’s so close, so close, and Keith’s lips press against Lance’s pinky, their noses almost touch, and Lance cannot think about just how fucking close they are right now – how close he is to coming for the second time this morning. If he were to stop tearing his knuckles to shreds and just set down his hand, he could kiss Keith. He could. Easily. Drag his tongue against Keith’s bottom lip until he opens up, lick into his mouth until Keith meets him in the middle and shows him which one of them is actually in charge. Lance would let him. It’s only reinforcing the conclusion he came to earlier. He’d let Keith. He’d let Keith. He’d let him do anything, ask anything, take anything.

He’s teetering towards the edge way too fast, even faster than usual with Keith’s eyes on him.

Something above them creaks.

Both of them freeze right where they are, Keith pulling his hand away. Their heads turn as they stay as quiet as they can, looking towards the source of the noise. 

It sounds like a door opening. Feet pad across the wooden floor.

Lance’s heart is in his throat, beating frantically, adrenaline bursting through his system. 

But when he realizes that whoever’s up there is just moving towards the upstairs bathroom, he whispers, “Keep going.”

Keith’s lips part in surprise, brows raising as he takes in Lance’s face. 

It may be desperation winning out for Lance – he doesn’t know when they’ll ever have a chance to do this again. Yet, still, at the same time, he thinks this may be the worst idea he’s ever had.

Despite what almost looked like apprehension earlier, Keith’s lips tug up into a truly devilish smile. He nods, questioning.

Lance nods in response.

Without wasting any time, Keith pushes in close again, three fingers immediately bullying their way into Lance’s mouth. They press down on his tongue, forcing him to suck on them to keep his spit from spilling everywhere. He tries so, so hard not to moan at the sensation, tries stay quiet. It’s near fucking impossible with how hot it feels. The leather of Keith’s gloves slides past his lips on every push back in, soft and used. When his tongue laves over them, the sensation of it etches itself into the very forefront of his mind. How the seams feel, how they cling to Keith’s fingers, how it stings when they rub across the bitten open spot on his bottom lip. He traces what he can with the very tip of his tongue. He drools all over Keith’s knuckles. He doesn’t break eye-contact.

Keith’s other hand wraps back around Lance’s cock, fingers closing tightly and immediately picking up speed. Lance moans out loud. Keith’s fingers push deeper into his mouth in punishment, his brows furrow.

Lance feels frantic, a single-minded focus in his thoughts just for Keith to get him off. He’s so, so aware of every movement on the floor above them, of how close they are to getting caught like this. They were never this careless when they were together, and Lance supposes that a casual hook-up may be easier to explain, but either way, it sends a shiver of sheer desire down his spine.

He can’t help but rut his hips forwards, fucking into Keith’s tight fist, spit and pre slicking the way, and he once again builds a rhythm of blinding pleasure for himself.

It’s so fucking good like this, every nerve ending sparking like live wire, every point of contact bursting with light.

And then there’s movement at the top of the staircase.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He doesn’t think he’s ever tucked himself back into his pants so fast in his life before (not even when they had sex before breakfast in his childhood bedroom and he had to hide Keith under the blanket; that’s really saying something). 

His hands shake as he wipes his forearm across his mouth, getting the spit off of it while Keith wipes his fingers on his shirt, dusts off his pants and picks up his bag to hold it in front of his still very prominently tented jeans. 

There’s a short lapse in noise, probably among the most terrifying moments in recent years before Pidge pokes her head around the corner. She doesn’t even come all the way downstairs – thank god.

“Was about time you two got here,” she mutters. “Good to see you, Lance.”

He nods, dumbfounded, scared out of his mind. “Yeah,” he mumbles, “good to see you too, Pidgeon.”

“Baggage claim took longer than expected,” Keith says shakily, although no one had asked for an explanation. “Otherwise we would’ve been here an hour ago.”

“Right,” Pidge answers, rubbing her left eye. 

Small mercies: she’s not even wearing her glasses, even though her sight has gotten much worse in the past five years. It’s about the only thing that keeps Lance from breaking out into hysterics. 

“I’m gonna go pass out again. See y’guys at lunch.”

“See ya,” Lance answers, watching her figure retreat back up the stairs.

They stand stock still until the noise of the door closing floats back down to them. It clicks into place and both of them exhale in unison, panic subsiding. 

Keith looks back at him over his shoulder. Now, instead of looking like he’s about to devour Lance alive, he just looks, well, tired. Skin tight around his eyes, dark circles more prominent now that Lance is actually paying attention to it. 

“We should probably–”

“Sleep. Yeah.” He nods solemnly, willing his dick to stop throbbing for attention. “Good idea.”

The muscles of Keith’s jaw tighten underneath his skin. “Yeah. I’ll just–”

Keith walks forward while Lance slowly makes his way up the stairs to their left.

Lance briefly considers jerking off in the shower but ultimately decides against it. He just lets the water run colder than comfortable and stays under the stream until his skin hurts.

In the mirror, he realizes he should probably shave, but really can’t be arsed to do that right now either. He drags his hand down his face, pulls at his cheeks, digs his fingers into the Altean marks underneath his eyes and watches them turn white under the pressure before he lets go and color swells back into them. 

What the fuck is he doing?

He pulls his hoodie back on and slips into a pair of sweatpants and goes back to his room for the day. Between not sleeping tonight, being on the world’s most annoying flight, and his rather tumultuous morning, Lance is ready to pass the hell out for a solid twenty-four hours.

Allura is sleeping on the left side of the bed, facing the window. It’s a familiar sight that makes Lance’s heart clench fondly in his chest. He quietly pads over to her side.

The morning light that scatters into the room through the half-drawn curtains bathes her face in a certain glow. She looks deeply relaxed with her hair all over the place and halfway covering her eyes. 

Lance sits down on the edge of her mattress, figuring it might be a good idea to at least alert her to his presence so she doesn’t wake up to someone who isn’t Keith and wonders just what is going on.

Disturbing her peace feels criminal. Like a bunch of guards will show up out of nowhere the second Lance gently touches her arm.

When he does, though, nothing happens.

Allura stirs, long lashes fluttering and casting shadows over her cheeks. When she peels one eye open, her expression softens even further.

“–ance?” she mumbles, one hand reaching out to curl into the sleeve of his sweater. 

Her big blue eyes adjust slowly to the light. She’s still blinking fast, brows furrowed, face flushed with the warmth of sleep.

“Hi,” answers Lance, smiling as she catches his gaze. “You feeling okay?”

“Tired.”

“Figured as much.” Lance reaches out to brush a strand of hair out her face. “Just wanted to say hi before passing out. Keith’s taking the couch.”

Her eyes flicker shut again, lips curving up into a smile. “Mh.”

“Alright,” Lance says, mostly to himself at this point. “Sleep well.” 

He leans forward to press a kiss to her warm cheek before standing back up.

Allura, very half asleep, pulls a face. “You smell like him,” she mumbles. “And your face is prickly.”

“What?”

“You need to shave.”

“Not that.”

Allura buries her face deeper into the pillow. Her voice comes out muffled. “You smell like Keith.”

“Oh.” Lance’s heart is somewhere in his body where it’s not supposed to be. It’s fallen out of place. He sometimes forgets how weak the Human sense of smell is in comparison. Even though he’d showered, Keith still lingers on his skin and in every thread of the fabric he wears.

God. There’s something very vulnerable in it. He wonders if Keith can smell himself on him too.

The kitchen is full of people by the time Lance comes downstairs. The sun is already past its highest point, based on how orange the light looks as it streams through the windows. He doesn’t know how long he slept and he didn’t bother checking before getting up.

His head feels like someone’s in there, just absolutely tearing apart his synapses with a chainsaw. 

But, hey, he blinks twice, announces his presence with a yawn, and is immediately assaulted by his friends running at him to envelop him in the tightest hugs Lance has gotten in a hot minute. There’s that warmth budding in his chest again as everyone talks over each other, trying to get his attention first. They’re asking how his last exam yesterday went (bad), how the flight was (also bad), just how nice it was for Keith to offer to pick him up (Lance tries not to think about that one too hard), even though they got hammered last night, and Shiro and Adam deserved to sleep a little longer, and oh god, just he wait until Shiro comes downstairs, he’s going to lose his mind! 

He’s overwhelmed and elated at the same time, even with his head pounding and that weird sinking feeling he gets when he sees Keith hanging back, head held low as he scratches at something on the stove. A weird juxtaposition of people actually happy to see him and– Whatever Keith feels.

Adam is the last one to greet him, his smile nervous and almost giddy as he scoops Lance into another tight embrace. 

“What quest did you send your husband on?” Lance asks jokingly, clapping Adam on the shoulder.

“I wouldn’t wanna ruin the surprise,” he answers. “It borders on being a miracle that Hunk hasn’t spilled it yet.”

“Hey!” comes Hunk’s voice from behind him. “No fair!”

“What surprise?” Lance asks.

No one says anything. All he sees are various degrees of holding back smiles and trying to not look too excited.

“Fine. You guys are all going on my personal shit list,” he threatens, but it’s to no avail. 

All he gets is a, “Be patient,” from Adam. Then he’s left to sulk at the kitchen island with Matt and Pidge while a couple of the others prepare lunch (or dinner? Maybe he should’ve checked.).

They end up playing cards for a few rounds. That’s never fun – not with Pidge and definitely not with Matt. Lance suspects they both eat their cards when he isn’t looking, or have some crazy counting technique that he could never even hope to replicate with his regular-sized brain. But he bides his time, pretends to not want to scream when he loses again and even holds himself back from kicking Pidge’s shin. Not Matt’s though. He makes sure that guy’s shin is thoroughly dented after they’re done. (At this point, Lance is about 90% certain that Matt’s hooked up with Keith at least twice. So, he deserves this, really.)

“Lance?”

Shiro’s voice pulls him out of it a little later. 

He lifts his head. Turns around. His friend is barely standing inside of the living room, rather just leaning against the door frame, holding a small bundle of orange cloth in his arms.

Squinting, Lance leans forward. What’s–?

“Adam and I want you to meet someone.”

He drops his cards face-up on the kitchen island.

“Holy shit,” Lance says, immediately covering his mouth after. “Holy crow,” he tries again after drawing a bout of laughter from the people around him.

Laser-focused on the tiny, tiny, tiny thing in Shiro’s arms, Lance steps closer, hands shaking.

“Oh my god,” he breathes, trying to wrap his mind around it.

The tiny thing in Shiro’s arms is easily the smallest baby Lance has ever seen in his life. His chest swells so violently with affection that he’s scared it’s gonna seep out through the cracks.

“Oh my god,” he repeats. He thinks his eyes fill with tears. “You guys are dads?”

His head whips around to see Adam walking their way too, face brightened by a permanent smile. He turns to Shiro again, waiting to hear the obvious but needed answer.

“Yeah,” Shiro tells him almost breathlessly. “Lance, meet Akari.”

With trembling hands, he inches closer to look at her. Dark eyes blink up at him, loveliness painted into her long lashes, a patch of inky black hair already growing on her head. She’s also probably the roundest baby he’s ever seen, pudgy cheeks and pudgier fingers, her hand reaching up, grabbing at Lance’s face. He really can’t hold himself back here. He’s going to start crying.

He sniffles wetly as he holds a finger up to touch her little hand with it. She doesn’t quite grab it, but she seems downright delighted by the interaction. Her toothless grin spurns the waterworks on a little more.

“Hi Akari,” he coos. Sniffles again. “You’re the cutest little thing ever. Are you aware of that?”

Adam wraps his arm around Shiro’s waist from behind, his head settling on his shoulder. “She’s on her best behavior right now. Let’s just hope she’s not going to cry for the time being, then she stops being quite as cute.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.” Lance wipes at his eyes. “Congrats you two. I’d go for a hug, but I’m not trying to squish her between us.”

Shiro chuckles, shaking his head. “Do you want to hold her?”

“Do I want to hold her? Absolutely I do! Yes! One million times yes! Are you crazy?”

He ends up on the couch with Akari tucked against his chest.

Her breathing patterns soothe him immensely as he watches the commotion in the open kitchen from his quiet couch-corner. His hand is splayed across her back, holding her firmly in place while she dozes off time and time again. He’s tempted to join her.

He probably would, if he didn’t somehow keep catching Keith in the act of looking at the two of them. 

Not that he isn’t guilty of that very same thing. It takes looking his way to see him looking first. But Keith just keeps looking up from the vegetables he’s chopping with a strange expression lining his features. Lance can’t for the life of him figure out what that’s supposed to mean.

After the tenth time, Keith finally walks over to them, relieved from his kitchen-duties. He pulls one knee onto the couch, making himself comfortable facing Lance from the side.

“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Keith asks, voice quiet, reaching out to very, very, very gently brush her hair down. 

Lance can’t help the smile forming on his lips. It spreads without his permission. Maybe there’s something in the air.

“That’s a mild way to put it.”

“I know,” answers Keith. He leans his face a little closer to hers – closer to Lance’s by proxy. “I think– Maybe there really aren’t any words to describe her. It feels big.”

It does feel big. In many weird and scary and exciting ways. Shiro and Adam have a kid. A baby. A tiny, breathing Human. 

“It does.”

His chest squeezes at the thought.

Shiro and Adam are a family, and all of them, every year, are the extension of it. Through bone and soul, they’re connected. 

Lance blinks away tears. 

“They put me into their will,” Keith whispers, his hand moving to her shoulder instead, stroking up and down in small spirals. “I haven’t told the others yet, but–” He looks up at Lance. “They want me to take care of her in case anything happens to them. Be her guardian.”

Something about the thick emotion in Keith’s voice makes Lance’s breath stutter. Something about it feels deeply unfair. He’s happy for Keith – genuinely so. And he knows Keith would do a great job should the worst happen, but–

“I hope it never comes to that,” Lance says. It comes out a little too sharp, so he has to sand down the corners. “I don’t mean it like that,” he tries. “I think you’d take good care of her, but I just– I hope you never have to step in.”

Keith’s smile turns wooden, drooping a bit. “Me too, Lance. All I could do then would be to make sure she doesn’t end up like me.”

“Would it be so bad if she did?” Lance says before he has the chance to think it through. It feels unfair. It feels so unfair and he has no idea why.

“In some aspects, yeah. Probably.”

“I don’t think so.”

The light streaming in through the windows is a deep orange-red by now, coating Keith in it. It makes the shimmering emotion in his eyes seem all the more intense.

Lance knows what the answer could be, and he knows what it should be, all pretenses and walls kept up. ‘You make it hard to believe,’ is what Keith should say.

“That makes at least one of us,” is what Keith chooses to say instead. “Can I hold her for a moment?”

Lance nods because he’s not even sure what to answer. They’re both on a tightrope, one false move and they’ll both fall.

But when Keith holds Akari in his arms, Lance slips. Something clicks into place that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. His heart beats so harshly that it throws him off balance and plunges him into a free fall.

He’s careful with her, almost reverent. His hair is long enough for her to pull on now that she’s somewhat awake again. She probably pulls hard enough for it to hurt, but Keith doesn’t stop smiling at her, as if she’s the only thing in the world that matters to him.

Lance thinks the falling was the worst part, but in actuality, it’s the impact.

He thinks his bones may crack under the gravitational force of it.

He understands why Keith kept looking at him and Akari. He understands why Keith broke his resolve of hanging back and instead searched him out.

God, they’d talked about this, haven’t they?

That at some point in the future, they wanted to have kids together?

An echo of ‘Where do you think we’ll be in ten years?’ slams into his eardrums so hard that it makes him feel unbalanced. They hadn’t even made it to the fucking halfway point. Maybe the impact had concussed him. Maybe the impact had put him in the hospital.

Their whole conversation had felt like an imitation of a different time. A play someone else had put on. They’d gotten the voices wrong, a lot of the details got lost in translation. It felt unfair because it could’ve been them. Maybe not yet, but a few years further ahead. 

The image strikes Lance right between the eyes because it’s quite literally right in front of him.

It’s unfair of him to imagine it, it’s unfair of his mind to give him incentive to, it’s unfair to Keith, it’s unfair to Lance. 

Keith, maybe a couple years older, and he’s basking in the glow of the red evening sun back in New York in their living room. He’s tapping his foot to music playing from their old radio, holding their baby girl against his chest, kissing the top of her head and–

Lance thinks he’s going to throw up.

When everyone else has gone to bed and Keith’s using the bathroom to shower, Lance makes a choice.

Because he can’t keep doing this. He cannot keep starting fights with Keith only to be dragged into an approximation of his deepest fantasies and he cannot keep having sex with him and accidentally saying things that mean too much. This way, he’s never going to stop being in love with Keith. This way, he’ll never get over him.

He knocks on the door and lets himself in.

The room is fogged up from what must’ve been an extensive and hot shower. The mirror is completely unusable, the air feels thick and watery. 

Lance tries not to think about the time that Keith had fucked him against that very same mirror last year. That they’d spent a solid five minutes afterwards doing their best to remove all the evidence of it.

“We need to talk,” Lance says before the door is even closed behind him. Otherwise, he’s never going to say it.

Keith looks up from where he’s standing in the middle of the room in only his sweatpants and one sock, clearly halfway through getting dressed. He raises his eyebrows, but decides to come closer anyways.

One of his hands lands on Lance’s waist as if it were connected through a magnet. An easy pull, a harder push. Lance’s mouth runs dry despite the humidity.

“What is it?” Keith asks, keeping quiet to avoid waking up anyone else.

Under his touch, Lance squirms, physically fighting to not give in to it. Keith’s skin radiates heat, flushed red from a warm shower and Lance wants nothing more than to bury himself into it. Into ropes of thick muscle. He wants to have a taste of what divinity feels like. 

Keith catches him looking. It’d be hard not to. 

“I still owe you one from this morning,” he says, voice raspy and syrupy, and leans in close enough for Lance to feel his breath against his lips. “Can I? We can talk after, if you want.”

Despite everything, Lance finds himself nodding. 

But when Keith sinks to his knees in front of him, hands laying claim over his hip bones, Lance can’t stop himself from saying it anyways. 

“This has to be the last time,” he whispers, reaching down to card his hands through Keith’s hair. 

His eyes widen, his smile drops in surprise. Resignation creeps into his features. For a moment, Lance believes that Keith’s been expecting this too. A mutual understanding that it went too far today, that they have to change things unless they want to stay like this – scattered and hopeless – forever. 

“Okay,” Keith says. His fingers twitch against Lance’s skin. “This’ll be the last time.”

They should’ve been fine after this, really. But every time they saw each other had still, somehow, felt too close. Even so much as a tiny smile, the quietest laugh – it was all too much.

So, Lance did what he was best at. He brought an axe down between whatever was still lingering between them. Severing sinew and bone to bring as much distance between them as possible. He lashes out. He scratches. He bites. 

Keith retaliates. Keith gets harsher. Keith gets angrier.

And only then, once Keith doesn’t even look at him anymore once he enters a room – once they’ve both hurt each other just enough – he thinks the bloom in his heart begins to wilt and shrivel up.

Years pass, and it doesn’t ache to see him anymore. It’s still weird, every time around, it still feels wrong, but Lance can prepare and he can plan ahead. Keith’s gone so much he barely even gets to see him anymore.

When Keith had shown up with a boyfriend, it barely left a bitter aftertaste on Lance’s tongue. When the guy’s tail had protectively wrapped around Keith’s thigh, Lance had to bite the inside of his cheek.

Lance moves on.

—33.05, Earth, South Korea

Lance is in his fucking element. He’s on a roll. He’s un-fucking-stoppable.

He’s so good at this shit.

“And then I asked him, ‘Why would we need a converter in the first place?’” Lance says to astounding, roaring laughter from the group of ambassadors and representatives around him.

They’re eating up every single word he says. It strokes his ego just right, makes him feel solidified in every choice he’d made that led him here.

“Did he have an answer for you?” one of the reps asks, clapping his hand down on Lance’s shoulder. The expensive fabric of Lance’s Altean-made suit rustles underneath his hand.

He chuckles. “Of course not,” he says, “he just wanted it for the sake of having it.”

“That borders on being preposterous!” another ambassador chimes in, grinning at Lance’s story. “I’d hope you wouldn’t let him have it.”

“Certainly no–” 

He’s interrupted by a hand wrapping around his wrist, turning to see where that’s coming from. Only to come face-to-face with his lovely fiancée. 

God, she looks distressingly beautiful in that blue dress, the seam matching the color in his own suit and both of their marks. Lance blinks twice to make sure she’s not just a mirage, wondering how he ever got so lucky in the first place. Her shoulder-length brown hair is tightly curled, falling over her collarbones, her blue-grey eyes looking right up at him.

He should probably smack himself to get rid of that stupid, dopey smile on his face.

“Queen Allura just arrived,” Sola says, voice thoroughly in work-mode. 

It makes Lance straighten his back almost on instinct. “Thanks,” he answers. “Wanna go together?”

Her expression softens as she entwines their fingers. “Of course.”

He’s so lucky.

He’s barely a year out of grad school, with only a few internships under his belt, and here he is, at one of the biggest diplomatic conferences of the year, already working as one of the many representatives for the federation on Earth. 

He doesn’t want to credit just his time with Voltron for this, but he thinks that probably a lot of his luck with getting a job like this boils down to that. So does his fancy degree that he got through too many sleepless nights. So does the fact that he’s dating (now semi-freshly engaged to) the daughter of two very high-ranking New Altean diplomats. It all helps, probably.

Although, most likely, they just like to have him on their team because introducing him as the former Red Paladin has a good ring to it. Even if the mention still makes him shiver from time to time, he manages to not think about it too deeply most often.

He hears Coran over the ship’s running engines on the landing pad as soon as they exit the elevator.

The wind whips against them outside, messing up their meticulously styled hair as they walk towards the ship. From below them, Seoul glows with life and light, windows and billboard sparkling. The Han River is the only thing that cuts a rift through the sparkle, flowing dark and sparsely lit between.

“Number three!” Coran crows when he finally sees Lance. His arms spread wide to embrace him tightly enough to make his bones creak.

“Jeez, old man,” Lance coughs, tapping out by helplessly slapping against Coran’s back. “Human bones are fragile enough as is.”

Coran pays him very little mind, too excited to pull Sola into a hug as well, finally having someone who easily matches his strength. Lance lets them have it. He’s not very eager to get grievously injured for once.

While the two of them talk, he steps closer to the ship to meet Allura and Romelle at the hangar. Romelle is fiddling with Allura’s earrings while she’s smoothing down her dress. 

It’s good to see them. Devastatingly good, if he’s being honest. They’re all getting busier, Lance included, and it’s getting harder and harder to make time for each other.

They catch up as they walk towards the elevator, allowing themselves a small moment of silliness, with Lance’s arm tightly wrapped around Sola’s waist, his hand gesturing wildly as he tells the others about his near-death diplomatic incident back in New York last month. He had thought his Altean was fluent enough, but it turns out he only really understands Sola very well, and as soon as a dialect comes into play, Lance was left floundering a little. Fish out of water, Rulwyek in the rock-rain. All that. 

He takes extra care to gesture with his left hand, making sure the glint of the beautiful Altean gemstone on his golden engagement ring catches the light of the city. 

So far, only his family, Hunk and Pidge know, because he’d called them the night that Sola had proposed to him in true Altean fashion: with a ceremonial dagger that he now keeps on the wall of their shared loft. The ring was just an extra to appease Lance’s want for something to show off everywhere. 

No one notices until much later, until the speeches are done with, dinner’s over, and drinks are being poured, when the actual working part is over and they’re allowed to mingle before they head into the actual meetings tomorrow. 

It’s when Shiro and Adam have joined on behalf of the Garrison, Acxa is there as a Blade rep with Keith in tow. Although Keith has fucked off somewhere with Akari on his arm, saying that they should maybe have a dance while the others talked. It’s fine with Lance.

Adam notices it first, when Lance reaches upward to get his hands on two of the champagne flutes being carried by the waiters in sleek black suits. He hands one to Sola, clinks their classes together, and she leans in close, whispers something about how excited she is to get back to their hotel room later. Lance grins, moving to tuck her hair behind her ear, and then Adam has his finger on Lance’s hand with little care for whatever else is going on right now.

“Is that an engagement ring?” he asks, eyes wide and excited.

That’s what makes everyone else perk up, too, scrambling to lean in to get a good look at the ring on Lance’s finger. He feels a little caught off guard, because this time he really hadn’t expected anyone to see it. There are a lot of eyes on them right now.

“It’s so sparkly!” Allura comments, reaching out and taking his hand, twisting and turning it in the dim lights to see how it shines. 

Lance laughs, fighting a blush under the attention. “Yeah,” he answers Adam. “It is.”

“That’s quite a rock there,” Shiro says and whistles lowly. “Congrats, you two.”

“It’s a Kural,” Sola answers. Her smile is nearly blinding, Lance can’t help but stare at her. “Not the rarest, but the cut is very special. If you look at the stone from the bottom of it, you’ll be able to see eight of the facets shaped like perfectly symmetrical hearts. The jeweler made sure to include a small hole underneath, so Lance would still be able to see it.”

His mouth curves into a smile. “It’s a good fucking rock,” he says, underlining her words. “I couldn’t love it more.” For good measure (simply because he wants to), he presses a kiss to her cheek.

“Sooooo…” Allura is one second away from twirling her hair. “Do you guys have anything planned for the bonding ceremony?”

And it’s– yeah, of course it makes sense to ask this. But it’s a bit of a topic they’ve been pushing ever since actually getting engaged three months ago. The engagement had just felt like the correct next step; though now neither of them really know what comes after.

“Not really,” Lance answers, squeezing his hand around Sola’s thigh as he feels her tensing. “We’ve both been like, actually crazy busy.”

“Exactly,” Sola says, nodding decisively. “With Lance settling into his new job and me trying to step into my mother’s rather large footsteps, it’s been quite the stressful time lately.”

“We haven’t really gotten around to it,” they both end up saying at the same time. It sounds scarily practiced. Maybe due to the fact that they’ve had to explain this exact thing two approximately two thousand people by now. They just haven’t had time. It didn’t help that her parents are actively pushing them too, a little too up in their business for his taste.

Lance nearly shoots back his champagne to combat the bout of silence that lapses in their group. “We’ll let you know as soon as we have a date though,” he says. “Wouldn’t want you guys to miss it.”

“We wouldn’t want to miss it either,” Shiro answers. He sounds genuine, but Lance has known him long enough to see the strain around his smile. It sends a pang of anxiety through his body against his will.

Lance fights tooth and nail with his own body trying to figure out what to say and how to diffuse the situation, because it suddenly feels scary and wrong, only to be ripped out of his thoughts by Akari running his way. 

She all but slams into his arm, hugging it against her, resting her chin against it to look up at him.

“Hi,” she says breathlessly, her little cheeks flushed red. 

She’s five years old now. That seems crazy to Lance, honestly. Where the hell did the time go?

Her dress is a sparkly yellow tutu – probably Shiro’s doing, that guy can’t contain himself when to comes to spoiling her – and she’s got a plastic tiara sitting crookedly on her head.

“Hey,” Lance answers. “What’s a pretty girl like yourself doing all alone at this party?”

“I’m not alone!” she protests, letting go of his arm. “I danced with Keith.”

“With Keith, huh?” Lance looks up, trying to find the man in question. He briefly scans the area behind her, but then finds him sitting down next to Shiro already.

Keith looks nothing short of imposing in his ceremonial attire, especially with Acxa by his side. They make a scary duo, but for the other people here, seeing Keith dance with Akari probably took some of that scare-factor away.

“Did you like dancing with him?” Lance asks her, reaching to set her tiara straight again, but then deciding against it. Knowing Keith, he’d probably tried doing that earlier too and got told off by her. 

“No,” Akari pouts. “He’s too tall.”

“You wouldn’t like dancing with me either then, probably.” Lance resigns himself to his fate. “I’m even taller.”

“You’re okay, I think.”

Lance turns to Sola, her eyes alight with mirth as she watches their interaction. “She said I was okay, did you hear that?”

Sola snorts. “High praise. Don’t let it get to your head.”

“Thank you, Akari,” he says to her again. “Is there anything you wanna do? You want to dance some more?”

“I want to sleep. My feet hurt.”

“Ope,” Shiro cuts in, already moving to get out of his chair. “That’s our cue to go, I think.”

And when everyone else suddenly starts getting up too, Lance catches Keith staring at his hand. Not looking in passing, but brows furrowed, gaze cemented to the glint of the Kural sitting on display on Lance’s left ring finger.

He can’t help but clench his hand under the weight of Keith’s stare. But it doesn’t help to let it linger.

He reaches for Sola’s jacket and helps her into it, entwining their hands once he gets his own resting over his shoulder. Lance doesn’t look back even once, instead leaning into his fiancée’s side as they make their way out of the room.

They say goodbye to Sola’s mother, they say goodbye to the others, more than excited to see them again the next morning, even if it’s just for work. When they finally get back to the hotel room, they’re floaty and giggly, the noise of the city outside barely audible as high up as they are.

By the time they call off their engagement and end things a year later, Lance is pretty sure he saw it coming from miles away. The constant pushing and pushing, and they’re just too busy to actually plan something, and everyone just won’t stop asking, why do we have to explain ourselves to everyone? 

It ended up explaining itself pretty easily.

They’re in bed on a Sunday morning, and they’ve stayed in bed for way too long already, when she asks if they’re ready for this.

And Lance thinks he tears up when he tells her he doesn’t think they’re ever going to be.

He crashes with Shiro and Adam for a while after moving away from New York, trying to find a new apartment closer to them. They listen to him cry for hours and days until Shiro kicks his ass and drags him to a realtor.

The evening he signs the contract for his new place, they hire a babysitter, hit the bars in town and get so drunk that none of them really remember how they got back to their house.

All in all, Lance thinks he handles it well.