Chapter Text
In his lifetime, Lance had heard a good handful of people threaten to hurl him into the void. Suspect one: his older sister when he would coyly wriggle his way out of doing his chores every week. Suspect two: Pidge, back at the Garrison, each time Lance had attempted to steal their headphones. The list goes on and on. Of course, they had all meant it in a purely metaphorical manner. There was absolutely no way Lance would ever actually get hurled into the void, right?
Fucking wrong. Lance’s slams painfully against the roof of his lion as he bitterly curses the pitiful existence of seatbelts on the pilot’s seat. As his lion spins around maniacally, Lance struggles to fight his way back into the chair, to get his hands back on the gears, regain some control of this thing. The view from outside the window is an absolute blur, flashes of white, purple, dancing in a spiral far too quickly for Lance to comprehend.
His stomach lurches. Dios, I’m gonna puke, he thinks miserably. A sharp forward tug of his lion sends Lance colliding with the control panel, a stick shift digging painfully into his stomach. And here we go. Lance doubles over, narrowly missing his feet as he pukes into the cockpit.
While he was bent over, the world outside had gone a blinding white. The glare makes Lance shut his eyes, hands pressed against his forehead, throat burning.
Suddenly, he is filled with an inexplicable amount of panic. Once he realizes that this overwhelming sensation seemed to be pouring straight from his lion, Lance tugs his head up. A flash of green landscape is hurtling towards him at an alarming rate from outside the window – he’s crashing.
Only one word runs through his mind as his hands scramble onto the gears, pulling back, pulling his lion up: fuck. The momentum is too strong and he only barely manages to stop himself from nose-diving into the ground, struggling to guide his lion towards its side.
The impact happens too quickly. A boom rattles through Lance’s bones, compresses his chest, sends him tumbling against the left wall of the cockpit. He hits his head – again – and his left arm goes numb.
Great. Everything is definitely going great. Lance slides down onto the floor and crumples. His head is fucking pulsing. Someone is beating on his brain with a goddamn hammer, he can feel it. It’s vibrating his entire skull. Gingerly, Lance puts a hand onto his forehead, convinced that he’d feel it physically throbbing intensely under his palm. He doesn’t, but he draws his hand back and finds blood.
Here we go again, Lance thinks, as bile rises up in his throat. He hunches over towards the side, gagging. He can barely feel his head slick with blood, merely a small tingle as it runs down his hairline, but it still makes him terribly nauseous.
He pukes for the second time, his stomach clenching painfully. I’m dying.
After a few minutes of spluttering and gagging, hunched over, Lance manages to pull himself back up into a sitting position. He stares up at the roof of the cockpit, sweat beading down his forehead, making his wound sting sharply. He’s dizzy, fighting for consciousness.
Through his hazy eyes, he can make out a dark blur at the doorway. Confused and bleary, Lance wills his vision to focus. He almost wishes that he hadn’t. Something is peering it’s head through the doorway at him.
Lance’s mind, however fuzzy it may be at this point, began racing and drawing conclusions. First, Lance crash-landed on an alien planet, one that he got stranded on after being viciously flung through a wormhole. Additionally, he didn’t know where the rest of his teammates were. They could be anywhere in the entire galaxy. They could even be in an entirely different dimension. Conclusion: Lance should be all alone now.
Except he wasn’t, because some alien monster was staring at him from the doorway.
Naturally, Lance starts screaming.
Naturally, said alien monster starts approaching.
This is it, it’s over.
“Adiós, mundo cruel,” Lance moans, raising his arms in a final attempt to shield his face. “Dios, ayúdame.”
Heavy footsteps draw nearer. There’s a beat of silence. Lance holds his breath, probably the last breath he’ll ever hold.
Then, “Relax, it’s just me,” the alien monster grumbles.
Wait.
“Keith?!” Lance cries, eyes widening.
Through his fuzzy vision, Lance can make out the boy’s long, dark hair and his heavy eyebrows, sitting low on his face.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Keith confirms.
For a moment, Lance is relieved. He’s safe! He’s going to live to see another day! He has managed to escape dying at the hands of an evil alien, once again!
Then… he realizes that it’s Keith. Keith is here! And Keith has those eyes… He’s staring down at him with his stupid dark, dark eyes – eyes that had Lance mesmerized. And they’re starting to make Lance feel weird, like he’s going to throw up again and he really does not want to throw up again. Especially not in front of Keith.
Naturally, since Keith is here, Lance starts screaming again.
This makes Keith stiffen, eyebrows knitting as he continues to stare down at Lance, taking in the way he leans limply against the wall. He looks disheveled; his hair is tossed in all directions and caked in dark blood, his face is badly bruised, and his feet are limply splayed next to a pile of throw-up. It’s pitiful.
“What the hell?!” Keith snaps, squatting down in front of Lance and putting his hands on both his shoulders. “Laaaance. Calm down. It’s me, KEITH. Stop yelling, now.”
As Keith’s hands meet his shoulders, Lance promptly shuts his mouth and wriggles away from Keith’s grasp, his left arm flaring. “Owowow, don’t do that,” he says.
Lance catches his breath for a second as Keith pulls back an inch. He notices that Keith isn’t in his fighting gear, only his usual stupid black skinny jeans and dark t-shirt.
When did he have time to take off his red suit? Lance wonders. Keith looked awfully put-together, showing no sign of recently crash-landing. How long has he been here?
“Sorry, I-” Keith stammers.
“Whoa! You’re face is bleeding,” Lance interrupts abruptly, noticing the gash on Keith’s left cheek. “…Looks like it hurts, dude.”
Keith squints at Lance for a moment before touching his own cheek in disarray. He looks shocked, like he hadn’t noticed the wound before.
He’s an idiot, Lance thinks to himself, amused.
“Oh. Well, your face is bleeding, too,” Keith says, pointing up at Lance’s head.
“Mierda. Don’t remind me!” Lance moans. “Gonna throw up. Can’t think about it.”
“Evidently you already have,” Keith says, staring pointedly at the mess beside Lance’s feet.
Defensive, Lance shoots him a withering look and spat, “I get nauseous really easily, okay, tough guy?”
For the first time in his life, talking is a chore. The thrumming between Lance’s ears grows heavier as his vision keeps going black around the edges. Probably not a good sign.
“Hey!” Keith says, much too loudly. The word sends a painful drum through Lance’s skull.
“Stop yelling,” Lance manages to choke out, doubling over.
He swallows hard, his throat raw from puking, and clutches at the wound on his head. Was it weird that he couldn’t feel his head bleeding? Everything was going numb, he didn't feel any pain, save for his aggravating headache. Did this mean the bleeding stopped, or was he beginning to lose feeling in his body? Did this mean he was going to die? He’s probably going to die.
“Are you okay?” Keith asks.
“Uh? I don’t feel pain?” Lance responds, dumbfounded. “It’s gone.”
“That's just the adrenaline. Just… hang in there. Lance, can you walk?” Keith presses. His voice is still raised. Why is he talking so loud?
Lance kicks Keith’s shin weakly and shushes him, deciding then and there that he wasn’t going to speak to someone who wouldn’t stop yelling at him. He glances up, finds Keith staring at him worriedly, brows drawn tightly over his dark eyes. For a moment, Lance reconsiders his choices.
Hesitantly, he responds, “Yes… you’ve seen me? Walked since I was, like, one.”
“No, I meant… like, right now,” Keith says, his voice strained.
Keith smacks a hand across his forehead and Lance can’t help but stare at the gash on Keith’s cheek. It looks painful, but Keith shows no sign of being bothered by it. Lance wonders if Keith could feel pain. Though this was a new development for Lance, he feels like maybe Keith has been able to withstand pain his whole life. Keith is probably really strong… and pain-less.
“Look, we need to clean your wound. I have water and supplies on the ground. So, can you walk right now, or what?” Keith asks again.
Lance made a noncommittal noise, shrugging his good shoulder. “How about you go and clean your wound?” he asks instead.
“Okay, I will. Now get up, I’m taking you with me,” Keith says, rising to his feet.
Turns out, Lance can’t walk anymore. He’s not sure when he forgot how to, but his legs went all wobbly the moment he tried to push himself off the ground and everything started spinning around, like he was trapped in the wormhole again. And he really, really didn’t want to be reminded of that right now.
“Swear, dude… knew how to an hour ago,” Lance insists as Keith slung Lance’s right arm around his shoulder, letting Lance’s injured arm hang limply at his side. After lugging Lance’s deadweight off the blue lion, the thin fabric of Keith’s black t-shirt was damp with sweat. His back was soaked; Lance could feel it against his skin as he draped himself against Keith’s shoulder. He tells Keith so, earning no response.
Keith drags the pitiful Lance, who was stumbling on his weak, useless feet, across the ground, leading him to a group of tall boulders in the distance. Lance wonders if he lost the ability to walk in exchange for his new ability to not feel pain. Though, he was beginning to doubt this newfound skill, because, while he couldn’t feel the injury in his head, he could very much feel whatever the hell it was that was drumming against the inside of his skull.
As Keith sat Lance down against a – what was that, a tree? – and began rummaging around in an ugly knapsack, Lance asks, “Hey, can you see my head moving?”
“What?”
“Like. In that old cartoon. Tom and Jerry. When the mouse, can’t remember if that’s Tom or Jerry… maybe Jerry, hits the cat with a hammer. And then there’s a giant bump on his head. And you can see the bump, like, throbbing,” Lance explains, weakly throwing his hand out for dramatic effect. “Is my head like that? It feels like that.”
“No, it’s not like that, Lance,” Keith mutters, pulling out a silver bottle and a rag from the ratty knapsack.
God, what the hell. That little bag thing was so ugly. He tells Keith this, and earns a wilting glare. Better than nothing.
Keith asks, “Can you take your gear off?”
This makes Lance’s heart jump, his mind instantly wandering off to the wrong place, one where he pictures Keith peeling off his gear with those steady hands, his eyes eager…
“Woah, there… isn’t this a little too sudden?” Lance jokes loudly, desperate to cut off his thoughts.
It wouldn’t be too sudden. Lance knows Keith doesn’t mean it like that in any way, but Lance can’t help but pretend that he does. It wouldn’t be too sudden – Lance has wanted it since the first time he laid eyes on him, has thought about Keith saying something like this to him for so, so long…
Lance blames it on his injury. He hit his head too hard, that's why he was thinking these things.
Keith is blinking at him in confusion. “Well, I think your shoulder’s probably hurt, too, and it’ll be better if you’re not in your heavy gear.”
“Yeah,” Lance agrees quickly.
Lance tries to rid himself of the pilot suit, adamantly refusing to let Keith help him. It takes a while to disassemble and pull off all the pieces, and Lance’s head is spinning angrily by the time he gets to the last portion of gear on his injured arm. Finally, he lets Keith help him carefully slide off the gear, avoiding contact with his flaming shoulder, until Lance is left in his jeans and tee.
Keith begins pouring water from the can onto the rag and tells him, “I’m going to clean your head up now, okay?”
“Ah, okay – AAAAAUUUGHHHHH!”
Lance’s previous belief that he could no longer feel pain has officially been disproven. Lance could definitely feel pain, alright. In fact, he thinks that this very moment is teaching him the definition of pain. Never, in his entire life, before this moment, had Lance felt something as painful as the burning sensation that the wet rag pressed against his head injury was sending through his body.
“KEEEEITH!” he screeches, grabbing onto Keith’s arm with his right hand and desperately trying to yank the wet rag away from his face.
“Stop!” Keith cries, his voice a hard hit against Lance’s skull. God, Lance’s entire head was on fire.
Keith wrestled against Lance’s weak grip, insistently pressing the rag against the wound on Lance’s head. The damp towel fucking stung like a motherfucker and Lance was going to die. For real this time. The sharp, burning feeling pulsed from his wound, forcing his eyes closed.
“Basta, basta! Por favor,” Lance whimpers, jaw clenched. Sweat dribbled down the bridge of his nose. “Stop… That really, really hurts.”
“Sorry,” Keith grits, his face contorted, chewing on his lip in worry. “I have to.”
“Nooooo, you don’t,” Lance moans, eyes misty, wiggling away from the rag.
He stops struggling abruptly as one of Keith’s hands comes up to the right side of Lance’s face, holding his head in place. Wide eyed, Lance watches Keith’s concentrated face, barely feeling the rag still burning against the top of his head.
Not only was his head on fire… so were his cheeks, hot under the palm of Keith’s steady hand, aflame under Keith’s touch. He winces as Keith starts dabbing at the blood caked over the side of his forehead, but doesn’t flinch away, pressing his cheek into Keith’s palm.
After thoroughly wiping at the injury again several times, Keith finally pulls away, dropping his hand and leaving Lance’s cheek cold. Lance didn’t realize that he was still gripping Keith’s forearm until Keith gently guided his arm away from Lance’s grasp. They caught each other's stare, briefly. Those dark eyes bore into Lance’s soul.
“Don’t cry,” Keith demands tersely, looking away.
“Not gonna,” Lance murmurs, though he knew he probably had tears in his eyes.
Lance slumps back against the tree he was propped up against, shutting his eyes. He hears Keith rummaging around some more in that knapsack of his, and, for a moment, he’s filled with panic. He really didn’t want Keith to do any more painful cleaning shit to his head again.
“What are you getting?” Lance asks, warily.
“Nothing. Rest.”
Lance doesn’t argue, because suddenly, his eyelids felt too heavy to open. Resigned, Lance leaves them shut and begins patiently waiting for his head to stop burning.