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The mission was fine.
It wasn’t even a big one. It wasn’t even complicated. There were hardly any stakes.
Keith is exhausted.
He doesn’t know where it comes from, to bone-deep fatigue. Maybe it’s the way he’s struggled to sleep right his whole life, maybe it’s the tumultuous nature of being a paladin, maybe it’s the will of God. Who fucking knows. Not Keith.
He feels leaden. He doesn’t know how he summons the strength to walk to his room, doesn’t even remember doing the walking. He presses a heavy hand to the lockpad and keeps it there as the door open, because he realises abruptly that this is it, this is where it ends. The lockpad is currently holding him up. He can go no further — there is not a kilowatt of energy left in his body.
“Keith? What took so long? We landed at the same time but it’s been nearly fifteen — oh, baby.”
Keith’s vision is deeply unfocused, so he can’t see exactly, but he hears the soft thump of something set on a surface, then the familiar slide of Lance’s slippers against the floor.
Cold fingers resting gently on the side of his face shock him somewhat out of his stupor, and he blinks away the blurriness, focusing now on the face of his partner in front of him, eyebrows creased and brown eyes clouded in worry.
“‘M so tired,” Keith croaks before Lance can ask. He pitches forward and he’s damn lucky Lance is there to catch him, to stabilize his head on his collarbones and run gentle fingers through his tangled, sweaty hair.
“I see that,” Lance murmurs, troubled quality to his voice. He’s stunningly careful with his hands, taking time every time his fingers curl around a knot to untangle it without pulling, without hurting. He scratches the back of Keith’s scalp softly and Keith thinks he might just turn to liquid in Lance’s hands.
Lance presses a kiss to the crown of Keith’s head and then stays there, lips pressed to skin, hands falling down his sides to rest at his hips. “D’you know why?”
Keith shakes his head, exhaling long and slow, sagging deeper into Lance as he does.
Sometimes he just…gets like this.
He remembers how it would cost him at the Garrison. He would sink into these episodes of pure, endless, soul-leeching tiredness, weighed like a rock in his bed, asleep but aware of the hours and hours passing. When he shuts off like this time feels like thick honey, and he is trapped in the thick of it, trying desperately to yank his way through and only succeeding to get himself stuck further. He is a fly in a glue trap; the life is leeching out of him and he’s too groggy to panic about it.
Lance knows this, and Lance has never faulted him for it. It’s more than Keith has ever had before, more than he knows he deserves, deadweight as he is.
“C’mon,” he says, and then Keith is being tugged. Boneless as he is he does not resist, stumbling after Lance into their room, door sliding shut behind them. Lance tugs them further than expected, past their bed and to the ensuite, and he must read the distress in Keith’s face because he laces their fingers together and says in the same voice he uses when everything has gone to shit and Lance is their last hail mary: “Trust me.”
And Keith does.
Lance stops them a couple steps into the small room, moving Keith’s limbs for him so he’s leaned against the counter. He’s already down to his underclothes but doesn’t bother with himself for a moment, instead making quick work of the latches of Keith’s armour. He starts on the chest plate, unlatching it and pulling it off, letting it clatter to the floor. Keith is surprised at the relief it brings, at the extra breath that settles into his lungs.
Altean armour is made to be lightweight, but as Lance meticulously peels off every pieces of it from his shoulder pads to his boots, Keith feels as if one of the dozens of rocks on his shoulders has been removed, as if things are just a little bit lighter. Brazened by the newfound relief, however minuscule, he lifts his hands and reaches behind him to unzip his flightsuit, only to be stopped by fingers wrapped around his wrist.
“Let me,” Lance says quietly. Keith wants to protest but there’s the look in Lance’s eyes again, a bid for trust, an assurance that he can handle it, so Keith lets his hand drop back down to his side. Lance looks pleased, tugging down the long zipper and pulling the skintight fabric over Keith’s shoulders, down his hips, all the way down to his feet where he pauses for Keith to step out of them. Keith’s face burns, humiliated at his own babyishness, at his inability to undress himself like an adult; hell, like a kid. He knows Lance and he knows there are no unkind thoughts in his head right now, knows Lance has done this and more and for people in worse states than Keith, knows Lance has played nursemaid and clinician and sober friend and every other role where someone couldn’t function on their own and needed someone steady to function for them, because at the core of him Lance is whoever people need him to be. Because Lance will stretch and mold himself to help and help and help because he is painfully, endlessly, unbelievably kind, for all his brashness and bravado.
But the humiliation still warms him from head to toe, still makes acid churn in his stomach, still makes something crooked and twisted sneer in the back of his mind and whispers you think he will still respect you after this? after weakness? and Keith lets it echo because he can’t fight that sentiment off even when he has the energy to undress himself.
Skin still heated with his mortification, he watches as Lance quickly strips himself, stepping to the shower and turning the dials with great concentration. The sight makes Keith’s lip twitch involuntarily, at the furrow of his brow and tongue peeking out between his teeth. He stands with his hand under the water for well over a minute until he’s satisfied with the water, nodding to himself once before shaking out his wet hand and turning back to Keith.
Wordlessly, he links their fingers together again, squeezing three times in quick succession. He pulls Keith in and closes the curtain behind him, manoeuvring him so he’s under the stream, water soaking into his hair and pelting his bent neck and tense shoulders. It’s hotter than how he would usually have it, but surprisingly the extra heat is like a balm to his worn muscles, and it’s a struggle to keep himself upright.
He has no idea how long he stands under the spray. The only measure of time he has is Lance’s humming and the steam that slowly fills the shower.
Eventually though he forces himself upright, jaw set. He needs to wash off, needs to push through. He has been coddled enough — he is a grown man. He is a paladin of Voltron, whom others depend on for survival. What would they say if they saw him like this, struggling to wash himself, to move on his own? The faith in the universe’s strongest weapon would crumble in an instant. The fate of the universe would rest even heavier on Keith’s shoulders.
He counts to three in his head then forces himself to move, tried and true method. He catches Lance’s eye when he lifts his head, and Lance smiles at him. (He’s beautiful, all the time, but when he smiles he becomes for a moment the most stunning thing in the universe. Keith has seen so much of it and so he is sure.) He offers a weak smile back, because it’s almost impossible not to, and reaches around him for the shampoo bottle. For the third time that evening, Lance fingers wrap themselves around Keith’s wrist, stilling him.
“Let me,” he says again, and his voice is equally as quiet, equally as steady. “Let me help you.”
He holds Keith’s gaze and his expression is unreadable not because Keith can’t understand what emotion it conveys, but because it doesn’t fit, it isn’t right, what has Keith ever done to warrant that gentleness? What has Keith ever done to bring out such an intensity, such a single minded focus on taking care of Keith, as if he hasn’t been the one to care for himself his entire life? As if he isn’t the one who is meant to be doing the protecting, the caring? Keith is supposed to be strong. He is strong. He doesn’t need to be handled like strained glass, like the tip of a prince rupert’s drop, explosive under pressure. He can handle himself. He can.
“Please.” Lance’s grip loosens, slick anyway with soap, and he slides his fingertips down the palm of Keith’s hand, tracing small circles on the calloused flesh. “I want to.”
Keith makes a noise he’s never made before, a punched-out, hollow kind of sob. The last dregs of strength, of stubbornness that kept him standing, leave him. He slides to the floor, knees first and then they aren’t enough to hold him either. The tile is icy cold on his thighs, at direct odds with the heat of the water still raining hard down his back.
Keith starts to cry, and no amount of steam or water flow will hide it. The sobs and wails that rip their way out of his throat and chest are horrible, broken things, painful in the way they jerk him around, louder and more wretched than anything he’s ever sounded like before, ever. He knows he cried when he lost Shiro and he knows he cried when Shiro lost Adam and he knows he cried when he lost his Pa and a million times before and after. Keith has spent a lot of tears; they come when he’s frustrated or hurting or frightened and he hates the way they make him look small. But never has he ever clutched himself desperately together as hurt tears itself out of his lungs and burns his eyes, never has his body wracked with the effort of expelling this hurt from him.
He doesn’t understand where it’s come from.
The mission was fine.
There’s a click and a squirt, loud enough to be audible even over Keith’s cries. Seconds later Lance’s hands are in his hair again, fingers combing out the tangles, palms lathering soap deep into his roots. He takes his time to massage the soap deeply into Keith’s scalp, every so often moving his soap-covered hands to rub into his neck, his shoulders, his back. Over the course of Keith’s tears he hears the click of the bottle again and again as Lance moves to a different place in his body, spending careful amounts of time cleaning and caressing until the tightness in Keith’s muscles recede by pure loving force. Keith knows Lance is satisfied when his hands stray away for a moment and the stream of shower water is shifted, high-pressure stream shifting to feel more like the trickle of a creek, drizzling in rivulets down the dips and hills of his spine, his hips, his thighs. No soap ever stings Keith’s eyes, and soon the sound of Lance’s humming soothes some of the wound-up ache in his chest. The floral scent of the soap, of Lance’s soap, plays a part in the relief, too, a scent he has associated with security for longer than he has realised.
Soon Lance’s love is pressed into every inch of his skin, and the bonelessness laden in his body feels less like a sapping of energy and more like a moment of rest.
The steam still wraps warmly around Keith when the shower head turns off, and the weight of Lance’s hand on the wide expanse of his back is heavy and reassuring, rising and falling with each of his stuttered breaths. His finger traces a line across the base of Keith’s ribs and up the side of his chest, making him shiver, hugging the curve of his pectoral and travelling over the swell of his shoulder, running a line down Keith’s arms until it rests finally at the base of his wrist, where it circles once before linking around Keith’s pointer finger, tugging him gently to his feet, steady, and out of the shower. He stands eyes closed on the soft bathmat, water dripping steadily from his soaked hair, eyes burning from his tears and lips trembling.
Something soft and warm brushes against the curve of his ribs, tickling him slightly, making his muscles twitch and quiver. Lance drags the towel over his skin, mapping it in the same, slow, gentle way he washed it, soaking up the water and exchanging the wet towel for a new one three whole times before he finally gets to Keith’s hair. His fingers are deft then, too, digging the towel through his locks to squeeze out the water, pull it back from where it was stuck, soaked, to his skin.
Lance leaves the towel draped over his head as he begins to tug Keith out of the bathroom. Keith still has — he keeps his eyes closed, because he doesn’t think he can open them, because right now, he truly is fragile. He is tittering on the edge of somewhere he’s never been before, and he knows opening his eyes will send him careening over, and he’s not ready to fall quite yet. He trusts Lance to guide him, anyway.
Lance’s soft humming never breaks as he stands Keith in the middle of the room and then putters around; fabric rustling, more tubes and bottles clicking, some other sounds Keith can’t identify. When he comes back to Keith his hands are coated in something creamy and cool and fragrant, and he takes his time working the lotion into Keith’s skin like he did the soap; meticulous, fingers moving in small tight circles from area to area. He doesn’t miss a single square inch of Keith’s skin. By the time he finishes the stutter in Keith’s breath has faded and he’s steady, now, every time he inflates his lungs. He no longer feels the dried tear tracks on his cheeks.
He moves where Lance’s hands guide him, eyes still closed, stepping into soft pyjama pants and a loose t-shirt. When Lance pushes gently on his shoulders he sinks to the floor, feeling Lance settle on the bed behind him, leg on either side of him and fingers tilting back his head to rest against his stomach. He starts the comb at the end of Keith’s hair, carefully working through the thinner and more knotted pieces, before slowly making his way up to the roots and combing it all back. The drag of the teeth along his scalp is nice, but it’s nicer when Lance switches back to his hands, nails less abrasive and impersonal. He thinks Lance ties his hair back into a French braid, strands of hair pulled taut but not tight, not painful.
When Lance pulls gently on his shoulder, kindly asking him up, is when Keith finally finds within himself the strength to open his eyes, to fall, to careen off that edge. Lance is looking at him so lovingly, eyes dark as packed Earth, and inside them Keith melts and crumbles and rises again.
“Thank you,” he whispers, hoarse and crackling.
Lance smiles until crinkles form at the corners of his eyes. He cups Keith’s face in his hand and presses the softest of kisses to his lips, unexpectant and open and inviting. He pulls away but doesn’t go far.
“Of course,” he says, and it doesn’t escape Keith’s notice that he says it instead of you’re welcome, instead of no problem; of course, I will hold your weight, of course, I will help you remove your armour, of course, I will wash you, cleanse you, caress and anoint you. Of course, of course, of course. I would consider no other options. “I love you.”
You are not the first to love me, Keith thinks, impossibly, as he crawls into the sheets Lance has turned over for him, curls into him as Lance flicks off their lamp, tucks their sheets around them. He thinks of fathers and brothers and distant distant distant mothers, of teammates and father-uncle-figures and sisters and brothers, as Lance wraps his long arms around him, tucks his face into his neck. Keith thinks, No one has loved me like this.
“I love you too,” he says, pressing his lips to the hollow of Lance’s throat, and he thinks You are my centre of gravity. He thinks there is no weakness in the way he is loved. He thinks all he has left after being stripped to his soul is the strength Lance has wrapped around him.
He thinks he is so, so grateful, to love and be loved by Lance.