Work Text:
“Four guards, three sentries,” Lance murmurs, looking through his scope. He can feel the heat of Keith’s body at his side, squatting low beside him. It’s an odd feeling, because it feels like it’s been forever since Keith has been a part of the team.
Even before he left to join the Blades, he was distant. Constantly between them and Voltron, running missions with them half the time and completely absent the other half. Keith used to be a familiar figure at his side in battle, the two of them working together seamlessly, a leader and his right-hand man.
Lance isn’t so sure they’ll mesh that well this time around. He isn’t so sure about anything about Keith, these days.
For Lance, weeks have passed. A few months, maybe, since Keith started to feel distant. A little more than a month since he ditched Voltron for good, leaving the Black Lion to Shiro and joining the ranks of the Blade of Marmora. Less than a week since he returned.
But for Keith, it’s been two years.
Every time that thought crosses Lance’s mind, he wants to throw up. In just the few months that Keith was gone, Lance missed him so much it felt like his body was betraying him. He’d lay awake at night, restless and exhausted and wondering why he couldn’t sleep. His stomach would hurt for no reason, his chest aching, and it took an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was sad.
Keith was gone, and Lance missed him. Keith was gone, and Lance was in love with him — yeah, that one was a shocker.
But then Keith was back. For one, exhilarating second, Lance had been elated. He’d felt like everything was about to return to normal. Like his aches and pains were being rewarded with the return of the man he was in love with.
And then he noticed that Keith was taller. His hair too long, his face too grizzled. His eyes darker.
Lance doesn’t know how to bridge the gap of two years. He doesn’t know how anything could ever be the same. It’s a terrifying, disgusting thought, and if he’s being honest, he’s been doing his best to avoid Keith. To avoid being alone with Keith, especially.
Except the war is demanding and there aren’t as many troops as there should be. The universe is huge and sometimes they get stretched thin. Sometimes multiple missions need to be done on the same day, forcing them to split up and run them in smaller teams.
Shiro, apparently, still trusted that Lance and Keith could work well together. Lance isn’t so sure. They haven’t trained for two years in Keith time. How could he possibly remember the drills they used to run? How could he remember Lance’s fighting style, able to sync up with him without a thought and move like their bodies were one?
He can’t, Lance thinks. It’s an unshakeable thought, but he does his best to ignore it. Regardless, he and Keith are here now, on this mission, and they have to be successful. The only blessing is that it’s a stealth mission, so at least Lance doesn’t have to keep a conversation going.
(And God, isn’t that thought laughable? Normally, Lance doesn’t have to keep any conversation going. It’s the kind of thing that comes naturally. In the past, he could talk to Keith for hours without interruption. But Keith is different now and Lance is scared of him. He’s scared to find out what’s changed about him and what’s stayed the same. It’s better, he thinks, to not know at all.)
“Should we go through or around?” Keith whispers back. Lance clicks his tongue, still thinking. They could take out the guards, easy, but the sentries are programmed to alert the commander the second there’s a disturbance. Even if Lance shoots ‘em dead, they’ll still get off a warning in time.
“Around,” Lance decides. This is a stealth mission, after all.
He stands up, keeping his bayard activated and his gun ready. He ignores the fact that he seems to stop standing up too soon. He should still be going, still be rising, until he’s above Keith. Or eye level with him, at least.
Lance doesn’t look up at Keith, because he refuses to, and he slides along the wall and out of the alcove, back into the hallway they came from. It’s long and dark, the upper levels of the ship basically abandoned. A skeleton crew is running this cruiser, which is probably a good thing. For one, it means that should Lance and Keith be caught, there’ll be less people for them to fight. For another, it likely means that the Galra forces are thinner than they thought. They’re stretched out, forced to steal soldiers from elsewhere in order to fight their battles with as much man-power as usual.
“It’s eerie,” Keith says, earning Lance’s gaze. He regrets it immediately. Once he looks at Keith, it feels impossible to look away.
Broad shoulders. Long hair, currently in a bun and hidden under his helmet, except for the strands invading his face. Stupidly chiseled jaw, annoyingly big triceps, disgustingly illegal thighs — like, is he kidding with those?
“What is?” Lance says, remembering how to speak.
“This ship,” says Keith. “I’ve never seen one this empty.”
Lance nods, silent. He hasn’t either, but Keith wouldn’t know that. Not anymore.
“Are you mad at me?” Keith says suddenly, and it’s so surprising that Lance’s finger twitches toward the trigger of his blaster. So alarming that his heart-rate spikes, his brain screaming at him to shoot something.
“What?” Lance says.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said,” Lance interrupts. “Just — no. I’m not mad at you. Now’s not the time for this conversation.”
Keith huffs. It’s the same huff he’s always had, the same impatience he’s always faced. Lance feels a teensy bit better, maybe, realizing that not everything about Keith is different.
Suddenly, up ahead, there are voices. A low, unbothered conversation, clearly shared between two people unaware their ship is being invaded, and Keith grabs Lance’s arm. He tugs him to the side of the hallway and finds one of those stupid, hidden maintenance panels in the wall just in time. The two of them slide into the cramped darkness — a glorified closet, basically — as the Galra turn the corner. They’re discussing the stock market, it sounds like, and Lance feels his eyebrows raise. He hadn’t realized there was a stock market in space. You really do learn something new every day.
“When is?” Keith whispers, and Lance turns toward his voice despite the fact that he can’t see even a sliver of him.
“When’s what?”
“When is the time for this conversation?” Keith clarifies.
Lance splutters, somewhere between disbelief that Keith is trying to push this conversation right now and resignation, because Keith has always been this obstinate.
“I don’t know, maybe when we’re not on an enemy ship?” Lance says.
“Seems like the perfect time to me,” Keith says. “You avoid me everywhere else.”
Lance makes an offended sound — something that could probably and unfortunately be called a squawk — and comes to the realization that he and Keith are standing way too close.
Keith’s huge. Like, his whole body — his entire being — it’s fucking giant. Keith’s breath is hitting the bridge of Lance’s nose, which pisses him off. He’s taking up too much space in the closet, too fucking jacked to fit comfortably in here with another person, and Lance wants to punch him.
Stupid giant, older, muscled Keith. You’re supposed to get uglier as you age, isn’t that right? Twenty-two… that’s ancient. Where are his wrinkles?
“Lance?” Keith whispers, because Lance has definitely been silent for too long when normally he’d be running his mouth off, going at lengths to defend himself. Keith’s hand touches Lance’s hip and he would jump away if there were room. Instead, he holds his breath. Lets it go when he realizes he still needs to breathe.
“What?” Lance snaps.
“I… thought you were going to deny it,” Keith says.
“I am denying it,” Lance decides, in just that moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Keith huffs out a laugh — his breath better stop touching Lance’s nose — and says, “There’s the Lance I remember.”
Lance scoffs. “See?” he says. “This is why I’m avoiding you.”
Keith is silent. His hand is still on Lance’s hip for God-knows-why and he finally breaks the quiet with a confused sound in the back of his throat. “What are you talking about?”
“You,” Lance hisses. “You’re so—” he gestures and his hand hits Keith’s chest. Lance groans. “Old,” Lance finally says. “You spent two years without us. How am I supposed to— What are you even—” He huffs, giving in and letting his head rest against Keith’s chest, just for a second. “How am I supposed to relate to you?”
“The same way you always have?” Keith suggests.
Lance scoffs. Keith’s the head of Voltron again, even after they rescued Shiro-who-turned-out-to-be-a-clone-but-is-good-now, but Lance doesn’t know where he stands. He doesn’t know if he’s still his right-hand man. He doesn’t know anything and he hates it.
“Fine,” Lance says, because at least then this conversation will be over and tomorrow he can go back to hiding in his room and ignoring the fact that the rest of their teammates have welcomed New Keith with open arms.
Of course he’s glad that Keith’s back. Of course he’s glad that he’s safe. But Lance can’t bear to face him and realize that everything’s different. What if he references an inside joke that Keith no longer remembers? What if he suddenly seems too childish to hang out with? Keith, once one year his senior, is now three years his senior.
Lance doesn’t want to spend time with him in fear that he’ll discover he isn’t the same friend he’d had before. In fear of realizing that Keith isn’t the same man he fell in love with.
“I think they’re gone,” Lance says, and he pushes open the panel before Keith can respond. The hallway is empty, thankfully, and then they’re back in mission mode. Their footsteps are trained and silent and their weapons are held at the ready.
The mission is supposed to end with their retrieval of the new Galra cruiser blueprints. They have the old ones, which is why traversing this ship is like child’s play to them. They’re all designed the same, all with the same engines to blow up and the same headquarters to infiltrate.
It’s likely because of the ease they’ve had with invading these ships that new fleets were designed. The ships look different and the insides of them are treacherous, practically mazes, and they realized after the third one that they were going to need to figure out their design.
Ideally, they’ll be able to get the blueprints and get out of here without having to raise any kind of alarm, but Allura made it clear that their mission would be a success as long as they got the blueprints regardless of whatever else happened. It won’t really matter in the long-run if the enemy realizes they know what the inside of their newest ships look like since they can’t exactly create and deploy an entire new fleet anytime soon.
“Here,” Lance says, stopping before the entrance to the main control deck. The blueprints will be in there, either tucked away with the other engineering materials or hanging from the hip of someone in charge. Honestly, Lance hopes it’s the second option. He doesn’t really feel like searching through a stack of papers. He’s never been too good at analyzing blueprints anyway.
Keith waits for his signal as Lance peers around the door, into the empty room beyond.
“Dammit,” Lance mutters. He nods and Keith taps, signalling his readiness to continue, and they stroll into the room unopposed.
“Split up?” Keith suggests, and Lance nods his assent as they head to opposite sides of the room. Ships as big as this one, with as many crew members, usually have more than one engineer. Ergo, more than one engineer station.
The one Lance finds himself at is cluttered. There are papers on the desk as well as in the drawers. From what Lance can tell, most of them are for weapons, this ship and its engine, and not the blueprints they’re actually looking for.
“Find anything?” Lance calls.
“Nothing we need,” Keith says. Minutes pass as they search, the tension growing the entire time. The control deck can’t stay empty for long, and it doesn’t. After Lance has looked at every blueprint at least twice, he hears the sound of footsteps on metal.
Keith hears it too, his head jerking up across the room, and they communicate silently.
Fight? Lance thinks, cocking his head toward the entryway.
Keith nods, determined, and Lance spins on his heel and sinks to his knee, resting his elbow against his thigh as he aims for the doorway.
The first person to walk in — a sentry, dammit — gets shot. Alarms go off immediately, the rest of the crew-mates with it immediately on alert, and they notice him and Keith within seconds. They split up, pulling guns and swords, and charge toward both of them.
Lance prefers to fight either from above the scene or beside his friends. He likes to pick off the people they’re fighting to protect his team, or at least be standing beside them during the chaos so he knows when they’re in danger.
Being on the same level as Keith, and all the way across the room, doesn’t bode well for Lance’s peace of mind. Especially because, once upon a time, he fought best when he was back-to-back with Keith.
Killed quicker. Moved faster. Always had a counterpart moving with him, fighting those closest to him as he picked off the reinforcements, the enemies with blasters aiming at them from afar.
He can’t get to the other side of the room just yet, but Keith is already on the move. Slicing someone down and jumping over the table. He’s easing closer to Lance, so Lance does the same. Shooting at the enemies running toward him as he ducks behind tables and twists away from their returning fire.
More of them are coming, flooding into the room, and it’s going to be a bitch and a half to find the commander in this mess, to grab the blueprints off of him, but that’s low on Lance’s list of worries right now. He reaches Keith’s side after several agonizing, drawn-out moments, and feels the tension bleed out of him when his back bumps into Keith’s, all too familiar.
“I missed this,” Keith pants. Lance can feel him moving, stepping away and slinging and slicing, then stepping back to bump into Lance and confirm he’s still there.
“Me too,” Lance admits. When they fight like this, he does most of his fighting stationary. Standing in one place so that Keith never has to turn his head to look for him, only needing to back up a step to find him.
Maybe two years of a space whale adventure can’t make all your memories go foggy. It doesn’t erase instinct, at least. Because when Lance shifts a step to the side, Keith shifts with him. Like that, they fight in a slow circle, Keith taking out the people around them as Lance works with a longer range, shooting those closest to him only when he has to.
It’s overwhelming, though. The mix of Galra and sentries is intense, and the annoying thing about sentries is that one shot rarely takes them out. Maybe a head and a chest shot, but anything slightly misplaced means they’re still coming, even if they’re sparking at the circuits and waving their weapons jerkily.
The crowd around them grows thicker. Lance can hear Keith grunting behind him. Each time he bumps back into Lance, it’s a little bit harder. He’s growing tired, and it’s starting to feel like he’s leaning into Lance not just to confirm he’s there, but to take a second to breathe.
Lance scans the room, his eyes more on the move than his body is, and that’s when he sees the blaster emerge from the crowd. An enemy with a gun having slipped through, avoiding Lance’s notice until now. This close, a shot from a blaster will go right through their armor. Maybe it won’t kill them, but it’ll still do a lot of damage.
The soldier takes aim at Keith, the tip of the weapon glowing as it charges up, and Lance moves without thinking.
He swings his arm, his bayard changing as he does, and it glows brighter than the Galra’s blaster. A second later, both the Galra’s hand and the blaster itself are laying on the ground, Lance having sliced right through them with his sword.
After that, he moves instinctively. His fighting style changes instantly as he drops into a lower crouch, matching Keith’s style as he lashes out.
“Wait,” Keith pants behind him. “What?”
Lance swings, attacks, backs up into Keith, this time.
“Oh yeah,” Lance says. “You didn’t know.”
“Lance!” Keith barks out. “You have a sword!”
“I know,” Lance says, laughing. Keith sounds the same, even after two years. His back feels the same against Lance’s, too.
“And you didn’t—” Keith grunts, swings, “think to — tell me?”
“It slipped my mind!” Lance protests.
“We have to spar,” Keith says.
“Right now?” Lance jokes, and Keith’s laugh — that sounds the same, too.
Keith is, for lack of a better word, awestruck. Lance can feel his gaze. Can feel the way it’s drawn to him, whenever he gets the chance to look. Lance fights better because of it, knowing Keith’s eyes are on him, knowing he can’t take out the enemies further away from them, now.
But it’s a skeleton crew, Lance remembers, and the enemy is quickly thinning out. Maybe it’s that hint of optimism that distracts Lance, that lets an enemy into his guard.
They’re quick, but Lance is ruthless. Their sword slashes at him, glancing off his armor and slicing into his stomach. Lance doesn’t register the pain until the enemy’s on the ground, along with all the other bodies, all the bright red blood against his shoes.
Lance switches back to his blaster, holding the wound with one hand and shooting with the other. Keith is the one who spots the blueprints — its owner already dead, laying among the other bodies — and Lance covers for him as he ducks down and wrestles the paper out of the corpse’s belt.
“Time to go?” Keith says once he pops back up, the blueprints clenched in his fist.
“Definitely,” Lance says. He takes a step toward the exit and then Keith is beside him, the two of them running from the room and leaving the dwindling amount of enemies behind.
Red is parked underneath the cruiser, clinging to the edge of the ship as they’ve explored it, and Lance runs just a little bit faster at the thought of being safely inside her once again. He stumbles as they turn a corner, pressing his hand harder against the wound in his side, and that’s when Keith notices.
“Are you injured?” he demands, still running.
“A little,” Lance admits. He grins at Keith, unable to help it, and Keith has that usual pinch of worry on his face. That annoyance that Lance used to think was directed at him for getting injured, but is actually directed at himself for letting Lance get injured. “Guess I still have some training to do with the sword.”
“Some?” Keith scoffs. “I’m not letting you off the training deck until I can’t get past your guard.”
Lance laughs, because Keith is such a worrywart — even now — and then they’re back where they started, back at the door they managed to sneak in through.
When they’re back in Red, the adrenaline wearing off, the pain of the injury finally makes itself clear. His side is throbbing, and when Lance reaches for the controls, he leaves them covered in blood.
“Shit,” Keith murmurs, already digging around in Red’s compartments. “Where’d you put the first aid kit?” he says. “Why’d you move it from here?” He’s pointing at the compartment beside the pilot’s seat, where the first aid kit used to live when Lance had taken over as Red’s pilot.
“I put snacks in there instead,” Lance says. “It’s in the back.”
Keith grumbles something about Lance being an idiot as he disappears into the back. Lance ignores him, directing Red away from the cruiser as he plugs in the coordinates for the castle.
When Keith returns, he’s holding the first aid kit and glaring. He doesn’t say anything as he drops to his knees in front of Lance, holding the white box on his lap.
“Take off your shirt,” he says.
“We’ll be at the castle within an hour,” Lance points out. “I can just hop in a pod.”
“And what if something happens before then?” Keith says. “It’s better to be prepared.”
Lance huffs but doesn’t argue, stripping off his armor and hiding his wince of pain. He shucks off the upper layer of his undersuit, revealing a not-too-good-looking cut on his abdomen.
“Yikes,” Lance says.
“Shut up,” says Keith. “You’re gonna be fine.” He shuffles closer and Lance watches the ceiling as Keith works, prepping the area with alcohol wipes and wrapping it in gauze. “So,” Keith says. “What else has changed since I’ve been gone?”
“I should be asking you that,” Lance says. “You’re the one who was gone for two years.”
“And yet it’s you who unlocked a new weapon from your bayard,” Keith says. “C’mon, is there anything else?”
Lance hums, letting his eyes slip shut. Keith’s fingers are warm, but that might just be because Lance’s stomach is cold. Hunk said something about that, once. How the blood in your body draws away from your stomach when you’re working out, flooding the muscles in your arms and legs instead.
“Let me think,” Lance says. “Hunk beat the record on the Mario Kart time trials.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it took him a whole day. And Pidge convinced Coran that humans can see more colors than Alteans.”
Keith snorts, taping the gauze in place and standing up. Lance looks down at his torso, finding the area clean without any trace of blood. He keeps his shirt off, not wanting to agitate the injury by putting it back on again.
“But seriously,” Lance says. “What about you?”
Keith’s sitting on the bench that acts as a passenger seat, now, his helmet in his hands. Lance can see his bun, smushed flat from being tucked into his helmet and far longer than he’d ever seen it before.
“Not much happens on a space whale, Lance.”
“Two years happen,” Lance says. He’s bitter. He can hear it in his voice. Taste it in his mouth.
“I mean, it was two long, boring years,” Keith says. He leans forward, looking at his helmet instead of Lance. Tapping his fingers along the surface of it. “A lot of it was spent inside of our own heads, you know? We kept experiencing memories. It made the time pass faster, I think.”
“Woah.”
“Yeah,” Keith says. “I knew I was on the space whale. I knew I was cooking dinner with Krolia, or going on runs with Kosmo. But whenever I wasn’t actively doing something, it felt like I was somewhere else. Back on the castle-ship with you guys, or somewhere in Krolia’s memories. They felt so real.”
“Kosmo,” Lance says. “Is that your dog’s name?”
“He’s a wolf,” Keith says, looking up at Lance. He blushes, his gaze sweeping to the side. “And yes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“That’s because you haven’t stayed around to meet him,” Keith points out. And then, “Are you going to keep avoiding me after this? Am I the only one who remembers—” Keith cuts himself off, squinting at the ground.
“What?” Lance says.
“Nothing.”
“What? You can’t just say that and stop! What are you talking about?”
Keith’s blushing again, darker this time. “I don’t know if it actually happened,” he mutters.
“You’re gonna have to clue me in here, buddy.”
“It wasn’t just — memories,” Keith says. “On the space whale. There were also some things from the future.”
“And you… aren’t sure,” Lance says.
“Yes.”
Lance stares at Keith, at the red tips of his ears and his fingers tapping faster at his helmet, now.
“That was real,” Lance says. He’s staring straight at him when Keith looks up, alarmed. As if he just said whatever he was thinking out loud.
It’s not that, though. It’s that Lance is pretty sure they’re thinking of the same thing.
Maybe the biggest reason Lance has been avoiding Keith.
It was a few months ago, Lance-time. Back before Keith had gone to join the Blades, before they’d found Shiro-who-turned-out-to-be-a-clone, even. It’d been a late night, and Lance had been restless. Tossing and turning and unable to sleep, probably for a myriad of reasons, and he’d ended up in the kitchen, looking for a distraction.
Halfway through making the batter for Hunk’s space-cookies — and probably doing it all wrong, because Hunk’s recipes were practically impossible to follow unless you were Hunk himself — Keith had appeared in the doorway.
“Lance,” he’d said, blinking like Lance might disappear, some kind of hallucination. “Think of the devil.”
“You were thinking about me?” Lance quipped, and Keith had shaken his head, more to ward away that topic of conversation than in denial.
“What are you making?” he’d asked.
“Probably disgusting cookies,” Lance had said. “Wanna help?”
There’d been no discussion of the late hour, of why either of them were awake, because there wasn’t really any need to. They were soldiers. Their sleep schedules were weird and constantly changing, thanks to the shifting timezones of the different planets they visited and the battles that were in no way regulated to waking-times only. Not to mention the general mental distress from being in the midst of a war.
Instead, Keith had joined him in his midnight baking, handing Lance the ingredients he needed and mixing the dry batter while Lance mixed the wet one.
At one point, Keith had broken into Coran’s liquor stash. They’d passed the bottle back and forth as they cooked, and then sunk to the ground to sit beside each other while the cookies had baked.
The following conversation was one that Lance barely remembered, come morning. They’d consumed quite a bit of alcohol — Altean stuff, at that — and their conversation had hardly followed any kind of structure that made sense.
He knows that they’d talked about Earth, and about the war. They’d talked about something funny that had happened planet-side a few days before, where they’d been recruiting a telepathic species. They’d talked about math, Lance thinks, though he can’t remember how that topic came up in conversation nor what exactly it consisted of.
His memories are clearest — and yet still hazy — from when they talked about love.
There were feelings involved. Keith mentioned being gay, which Lance hadn’t realized before, and Lance had retaliated by coming out right after him. At one point, they’d ended up holding hands. At another, they’d kissed.
Just for a few seconds, Lance is pretty sure. It’s not the clearest memory, and what’s sharper than that is the memory of the oven going off mere seconds after their lips touched. Of Keith’s red face and parted lips and hazy eyes and then Lance burning his thumb on the tray.
The cookies were black, burnt beyond recognition, and yet they’d both tried to eat one anyway, the kiss somehow having seemed like not a big deal at the time.
The next morning, when Lance woke up, he felt disgustingly hungover. He didn’t remember that they’d kissed until he was in the shower, his mind having somehow made that connection and brought that memory back to light, and he’d simply stood there and tried to remember it in as much detail as he could until the water ran cold.
He’d convinced himself that it was nothing. That they’d both been drunk — stupid and emotional thanks to the alcohol and the hour — and told himself he wasn’t going to say anything.
Except he wanted to say something. Him kissing Keith (or was it Keith kissing him?) hadn’t been a spur of the moment thing, for Lance. That was something he’d thought about often. Something he’d wanted to happen for a long time, at that point.
Lance kept telling himself he’d bring it up at some point when the time was right. When they weren’t exhausted from a battle, or planning for the next one, or surrounded by their friends. He would bring it up when there wasn’t some pressing manner to attend to. Maybe when he got a chance to drink with Keith again, just to loosen his tongue (and not for kissing, this time).
Except Keith joined the Blade of Marmora. He started going on missions more and more often. He started leaving for longer periods of time. They found Shiro, and everything was great until Keith left for good, and then Lance couldn’t say anything at all.
A little more than a month passed, and then Keith was back — two years older — and there was no way he was still thinking about that kiss. No way he felt anything about it now. No way Lance should bring it up, ask if it meant anything, because for something that was still knocking at the back door of Lance’s mind when he laid in bed at night was now ancient history for Keith.
That’s what he’d thought, anyway.
That’s what he’s been thinking ever since Keith came back.
That’s what he’s thought up until this very moment, with Keith staring at him, the tips of his ears red, and his gaze flickering almost minutely between Lance’s eyes and his bare chest.
“What was real?” Keith says. His voice is quiet, just on the verge of trembling.
Lance opens his mouth to talk and now he’s the one blushing, realizing that to say this out loud is humiliating. That there’s a reason he put off talking about it for so long that Keith up and left before he got the chance.
But Lance is tired of waiting. He says it all on an exhale, in a rush. “The kiss,” Lance says. “In the kitchen. We were drunk.”
Relief floods Keith’s face. “That really happened?”
“Yeah,” Lance says. “And the cookies were terrible.”
Keith laughs. “They were,” he says.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Of course I remember,” Keith says. “I thought that—” he cuts himself off, looking embarrassed again, and Lance glares at him. He wants to know what Keith’s trying to say. He’s tired of waiting. And God, Keith must be too, after two years of it.
“Just spit it out,” Lance says, sitting forward quickly enough that he gasps, grabbing his side.
“Shit,” Keith says, reaching out to help. Lance swats his hand away.
“I’m fine,” he insists. “Say it. Whatever you were going to say.”
Keith rolls his eyes, but he talks. That’s different. Past Keith probably would’ve put up more of a fight. “I thought that was going to be the start of something,” he says. “A relationship, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Me too,” Lance says, casually. Keith stares at him, looking guarded and nervous and hopeful and excited.
“Really?”
“Really,” Lance says. “That’s why I’ve been avoiding you. I still think about it a lot, and I thought it’d be in the past for you, now. Inconsequential.”
It feels weird, talking about their feelings this casually. Everything out in the open and known.
Except it feels good, too.
It feels like Lance might’ve been stabbed worse than he realized, and he passed out and is being carried through the Galra cruiser right now, dreaming, since all of this is too good to be ture.
Keith looks… relaxed. Not so embarrassed anymore. Not so tense. He’s sprawled out on the bench, his elbow on his helmet and his legs kicked out in front of him. Lance slouches a little too, despite the twinge of pain from his abdomen, so he can kick his leg out as well. He tries to make it as casual as possible when he lets his foot rest against Keith’s.
“I thought you’d feel that way,” Keith says. “I thought I’d come back and find some girl wrapped around your arm, that night long forgotten.”
“I know I’m a flirt, but you’ve had to have noticed that I’ve never ended up actually dating anyone, right?”
“Sure, but I thought two years passed for all of us. Honestly, finding out you’d started dating someone else was the least of my worries. I was afraid you guys might be dead.”
Lance falls silent. A sense of dread sinks in his stomach as he imagines it.
Two whole years, stuck in a void. Sitting there and waiting. Thinking. Worrying over what was happening to his friends, wondering if they were still fighting, if they’d won the war — or lost it.
If they’d gotten hurt.
If they’d died.
Keith had sat through that, the dread and the waiting, only to discover that almost no time had passed for them at all. That they were fine, hardly changed, while he’d spent two years worrying about their demise.
How must that feel? Having spent all that time worrying about them, only to come back and for Lance to avoid him completely?
Lance feels sick to his stomach. He feels a pain deeper than the wound in his abdomen, and his eyes slide from their feet — still resting against each other — to Keith’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t even think about that.”
Keith shrugs. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Lance says. “I missed you for the few months you were gone. I can’t imagine how you must’ve felt.”
“Well, at least I got a dog out of it,” he jokes.
“A wolf,” Lance corrects, grinning. The dashboard beeps at him and Lance presses a hand to his side as he leans forward to look at it. They’re approaching the castle-ship, nearly home, and Keith must pick up on this because he stands a moment later, gathering Lance’s armor for him.
“What a gentleman,” Lance teases, but he really is grateful. The thought of bending down to gather his supplies isn’t a pleasant one, and he’s relieved when they reach the castle, eager to hop into a pod.
Everyone’s waiting in the bridge when they get there, Hunk and Pidge evidently having finished their mission before them, and Allura sighs when she spots Lance.
“You’re injured?” she says.
“Actually, I’ve decided I just like to walk around shirtless,” Lance says. “I think that’s a new fun personality trait for me to have.”
Allura scoffs, but she’s grinning anyway, probably relieved that Lance isn’t hurt badly enough to warrant an end to his joking.
“Make sure he gets to the pod okay,” she tells Keith. “We’ll debrief once Lance is healed.”
“Got it,” Keith says.
Lance lets him do all the work when they get to the infirmary, leaning against the table as Keith messes with the pod’s settings. Kosmo teleports in as Keith’s in the middle of asking Lance a series of questions — pain on a scale of 1-17 (odd, they know), how long it’s been since the injury occurred, whether it’s still bleeding (yes) — and he reaches down to pet him on the head without looking away from the screen, obviously used to this behavior.
Lance, on the other hand, has never seen this before.
“Sorry,” he says. “Did your space-dog just teleport?”
“Space-wolf,” Keith says. “And yeah, he does that.”
“How?”
Keith shrugs. “Space?” he guesses.
Kosmo barks, pressing his nose into the back of Keith’s knee and making it buckle, not that Keith even really seems to notice. He just straightens up, patting Kosmo absentmindedly.
“Teleporting,” Lance murmurs.
“He can teleport me, too,” Keith says. “The first time he did it, I almost threw up.”
“What a good boy,” Lance says, dropping to his knees, and Kosmo takes notice of him immediately, invading his space and panting in his ear. “Oh my God, I’m in love with him.”
“He’s taken,” Keith says, surprising a laugh out of Lance, and then he’s sliding the pod door open. “In you go.”
His fingers brush Lance’s as Lance steps past him. He turns around in the pod, letting the door slide shut, and smiles at Keith. Almost immediately, the pod starts filling with cold air and he grows tired. Moments later, he’s asleep.
—
It’s not until the next night that anything happens between them.
The debrief goes smoothly, everyone in good spirits after two successful missions, and Lance joins the rest of his friends for the first time since Keith’s return in a team bonding night. They gather in the rec room to watch a movie and Lance sits beside Keith, but that’s about it.
He’s painfully aware of the pressure against his side all night, but he distracts himself by petting Kosmo, who cuddles up against Lance’s side, which Keith deems the ultimate betrayal.
The next day is normal, too. They eat as a team and practice in the training room and separate to do any tasks required of them. But it’s not until night, when there’s nothing expected of them and the time is actually theirs, that Keith approaches Lance.
To be completely honest, Lance has been avoiding Keith again.
Just a little bit. Not like before, when he tried to stay away from him at all times, tried to avoid looking at him, even. This was more of a result of nerves. He’s liked Keith for so long, and now he can’t help but realize that Keith has liked him since at least the night they kissed plus two years.
That’s a lot of expectations to live up to.
But when Keith knocks on his door, Lance answers. Which is probably why it’s so surprising when what comes out of Keith’s mouth isn’t what Lance was expecting at all.
“Wanna go train?” he says.
“Sure,” Lance says, and then he’s following Keith to the training deck without even changing out of his pajamas.
They square up in the middle of the floor, Lance in his socks and PJ pants and t-shirt, Keith still in his day-clothes, and fight.
It’s fun. It’s like Before, when Keith lived here and they sparred sometimes. Lance’s socks are both an advantage and a disadvantage to him, making him slide across the floor both when he intends to and on complete accident. It makes for a few cool moves, though, Lance sliding past Keith and surprising a win out of him.
They’re laughing for most of it, Keith swatting Lance’s weapon out of his hand so many times that it should be embarrassing, honestly, but it isn’t. Keith just picks it back up, hands it to him, and points out what he did wrong.
On the few occasions where Lance bests Keith, it’s mostly because of luck, or because of Lance’s thinking outside of the box, but Keith praises him anyway.
They fight until they’re sweaty and exhausted, until Keith’s managed to trip Lance and then pin him to the floor, and Lance just stares up at him, panting, and grins.
“You win,” he admits. “Again.”
“C’mon,” Keith says, standing back up. He reaches a hand out. “Let’s go again.”
Lance groans, tired, but Keith doesn’t retract his hand. Lance ends up reaching for him, but when Keith’s fingers latch around his, he pulls him back down. Keith falls to his knees, on top of Lance once more. Lance raises an eyebrow, waiting.
“This works too,” Keith croaks. He shifts back, so that he’s sitting on Lance’s thighs rather than hovering over him on his knees.
Keith’s two years older, but he’s no more experienced than when he left. Lance isn’t sure whether he’s even kissed anybody besides Lance before, but he clearly doesn’t pick up on the fact that that’s what Lance is waiting for. So Lance pushes himself up to his elbows, closer to Keith, and Keith doesn’t move back.
“C’mere,” Lance says. Keith stares at him for a minute, not knowing where to move, and Lance grabs him by the middle of his shirt and pulls. He leans back as he pulls Keith forward, until Keith is forced to put his elbows on the ground or risk crashing into Lance face-first.
“Okay,” Keith says.
“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Lance informs him.
“Okay.”
So Lance leans up, reaching for Keith, and Keith ducks his head at the last moment. It’s similar to how it was that night, soft and tentative, slow and sweet.
Something inside Lance aches, because he’s wanted this for so long and now he has it, has Keith, and he can only imagine how Keith feels. Can only imagine how many times their kiss cropped up in the memories he relived on that space whale.
When Keith pulls away, his face is flushed. His lips are still parted, like he’s ready to dive back in for a kiss at any moment. Lance tugs at the strands of hair that escaped from his bun, hanging in front of his face, and Keith ducks back down for another kiss.
They end up in Keith’s room later, simply because neither one of them is ready to put an end to the night. Kosmo is beyond excited, thinking all the attention is for him, and he’s not entirely wrong. At least one of them has a hand on him the entire time they spend talking, first sitting on the floor and later sprawled on the bed.
Keith tells him more about the space whale, about finding Kosmo as a puppy, learning about his parents, about tallying the days and dreading the passage of time. Lance tells him about everything he missed when he was gone. It isn’t two years worth of stuff, but it’s still a lot — more seems to happen in a single day when you’re in the middle of a war.
They end up at the top of Keith’s bed, at some point, limbs intertwined and Keith’s chest playing the part of a pillow. Lance is obsessed with Keith, with running his fingers over his stomach and arms, playing with his fingers. He admits, begrudgingly, that he was intimated by him when he got back. That he’d already thought Keith was hot and was alarmed that he found him scarily hotter.
Keith is embarrassed by this — by any positive attention, really — but he eventually returns the compliment. Admits in a stammered sort of way that he finds Lance attractive too, obviously (his words).
Lance feels stupid, for being so wary of Keith. Grateful that they got sent on that mission together. Giddy and excited that he’s in Keith’s bed, now, pressed up against him with Keith petting his hair almost as often as he pets Kosmo.
He doesn’t even regret staying up all night just to talk to Keith, even when the alarms blare a mere two hours after they accidentally fall asleep. Granted, it’s not a real threat — Pidge just managed to trip the system while trying to hack the ship and create space-wifi — but it’s fine. He and Keith just sit closer than normal at breakfast and wait for the rest of their friends to catch on.