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lxasjf-z · 1 year ago

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PART 2

part one

———

Lance keeps his word — it doesn’t take long for him to really get the hang of his telepathy thing, and then he really is in Keith’s head more often than he isn’t.

That’s not entirely fair, Keith supposes. He has a pretty good hang of the telepathy thing too, and Lance showed him early on how to put up a pretty thick mental block if he needs some privacy, or even just a break. He knows how to keep his mindscape quiet and personal, if need be.

But the thing is…he rarely bothers.

He likes having Lance in his head, or vice versa. It’s crazy, and he never would have expected it of himself, but having the constant presence of his best friend in the back of his head; talking, humming, or just being, has turned into a massive comfort.

The desperate loneliness he grew up with, although slowly disappearing over the years he’s had Voltron, has faded into almost nothingness. He likes Lance’s noise in his head. It makes communication during battle a lot easier, too.

He’s yet to feel the rest of the team as strongly in his head — he certainly can’t hold conversations with anyone else — but he feels as if the connection that has been constantly present since they formed Voltron for the first time is stronger, maybe. As if he feels a little closer to all his friends.

That’s really mushy, Lance informs him in his mind. You’re a massive softie marshmallow. I can’t believe I ever thought you were cool.

Keith sits up, abandoning his fourth set of push-ups to find Lance across the training room, doing some sort of gymnastic routine (blatantly showing off for some of the younger members of the Atlas. He’s not even trying to pretend he isn’t, smirking whenever they point at him and whisper to each other in awe when he does a quadruple in-air backflip or something that serves no actual training purpose).

Keith frowns at him. I am so cool.

Are not. You’re a squishy softie marshmallow that cries during Finding Nemo.

Everyone cries during Nemo! Keith defends huffily. It’s a heart-wrenching movie!

Lance doesn’t say anything back, but Keith can feel the impression of his laughter. It’s a hard thing to conceptualise, because he’s not really laughing, and there’s no sound of laughter even in his mindscape, but Keith feels the teasing joy bleeding from him. The best way he’s come to describe it, after weeks of trying to put words to the feeling as he falls asleep, is the feeling he gets when a joke lands, combined with the kind of raw freedom that comes with running in a dead sprint for no reason other than the pleasure of running. Something concentrated and all-encompassing and heart-turning. That’s what Lance’s laughter feels like.

And Keith won’t stand for it. It’s one thing for Lance to tease him with his words, poking fun at him with his wide, sparkling grin, but to make fun of Keith for the thoughts he’s thinking in his own head?

He will not lie down at the dishonour.

Grinning in anticipation, he scoops up his luxite blade, lining up the shot and throwing with deadly accuracy. The blade spins through the air, so fast it whistles, directly at Lance’s head. If he doesn’t dodge, it will kill him.

But Lance will dodge. He knew Keith was going to throw the blade before he even made the decision to throw it.

Gasps ripple through the training room, several people shouting in alarm as the blade comes closer and closer to killing the Red Paladin of Voltron. Milliseconds before it hits, just as someone opens their mouth to scream a warning, Lance moves, faster than the eye can track, pulling out his bayard and transforming it in the same moment, batting Keith’s blade out of the air with his broadsword like it’s a baseball.

He grins, wide and manic and jumping to the challenge, to the spar.

“That all you got, Mullet?” he calls, swinging his blade like the cocky shithead he is. Keith can hear the impression of his laughter again; he’s dizzy with it, drunk off the heady feeling.

“Not even a little bit,” he says, activating his own bayard. Without needing to say a word, they both charge forward at the same time, arms drawn back and swords heavy with potential energy, meeting in the middle of the training room with a clash of their blades, so hard it sends vibrations up their arms.

The shouts of alarm from the rest of the crew turn into whoops of excitement, as people fan out into a circle to give them space. Keith is relatively certain he sees Pidge and Matt organizing bets out of the corner of his eye.

Ready for a show? Lance’s voice echoes in his head. Distantly, he hears Red’s howling roar, the proud lion wrapping her energy with her paladin, gleefully telling Keith how much she looks forward to seeing her cub wipe the floor with him.

She is a very competitive entity, Red. It sparks something in Black, too, who gets up from her perch in a rare display of headstrong pride and wraps her energy around Keith to match.

You’re going to lose, Keith taunts.

Fat chance, Mullet.

Their strikes are less choreographed, now that a real challenge has been issued, and more than their own pride is at stake. There is no real fight here — whether or not Keith wins, he doesn’t truly care.

(But he’d fuckin’ love having something to hold over Lance’s head for a bit. Better if he could be smug in Lance’s head, where he can’t stomp away with a sulk and a claim that Keith was cheating.)

Swordplay with Lance is difficult. It’s always difficult, because Lance uses a sword in every way except how a sword is meant to be used — Keith has seen him use it as a javelin, a bat, even a vault stick — but it’s only gotten harder since Lance has had access to his mind, because Lance hears and feels his every move, anticipating his every trick. Neither of them have managed to win the upper hand for long, and it won’t be long before the other resorts to dirty tactics.

Keith eyes his forgotten luxite blade. He might be the first, actually.

Forcing himself to think of a flurry of random things, practically throwing a wad of unconnected, unsorted thoughts in Lance’s presence in his head to distract him, he dives to the side, reaching for his blade. Lance realises a split second too late to stop him, and his broadsword comes millimetres away from the skin of Keith’s ribcage as he dodges. He closes his fingers around the softened leather of the blade’s handle, and whips around to face his opponent, bayard in his right hand and luxite blade in his left. By the time he’s ready again to fight, even though he’s only taken mere seconds to grab his weapon, Lance has already flipped several meters back, bayard in his hand transformed to his blaster.

Cheater, the both think at the same time, identical smirks on their faces.

Lance fires six quick shots, aiming at vital places in his body. His shots are all true — Lance doesn’t miss — and Keith barely manages to slide out of the way, one of the laser blasts grazing the side of his neck, burning him.

Lance hasn’t bothered to set his gun to stun. Keith can’t blame him. It’s more fun with the risk.

He rushes at Lance, both swords extended, aiming a slash at the Cuban’s arm with one blade and a stab through his torso with the other — he’ll only be able to dodge one. He’ll either have to yield or take a slice, get a painful hit that will slow him down.

Somehow, though, Lance contorts himself, bending his body in a way that it honestly should not be able to bend and narrowly avoiding both blades, hitting the floor with a heavy slam and aiming a sweeping kick for Keith’s knees to take him down with him. Keith jumps to avoid his powerful legs, somersaulting over his head.

“Oh, boo!” someone, who is most definitely Shiro, calls from the crew. Keith almost forgot they were watching, he’s so caught up in the fight. “Come on, Lance! Get his ass!”

If Keith had the time — that is if Lance let up his assault for even one second, which Keith knows he won’t — he’d roll his eyes. Since he doesn’t, he settles for making a mental note to raid Shiro’s room later and steal the last of the Reese’s he packed from Earth.

Oh, that’s diabolical, Lance thinks at him.

Keith grunts, swiping at the hand holding his blaster. If you help me I’ll give you half.

The offer startles a laugh out of Lance, distracting him for just long enough that Keith gains the split-second advantage, placing the blade of his bayard under Lance’s wrist and twisting until Lance is forced to drop his gun or lose his hand.

“Fuck!” several people yell at the same time. Next comes the unmistakable sound of money changing hands.

“Sucks to suck”, Keith taunts, because he can’t help himself.

But Lance looks undeterred. “It does, doesn’t it.” He aims a heavy kick right for Keith’s sternum, and since Keith is too close to move away and not flexible enough to dodge, it lands square where Lance aims it, the heel of his foot knocking the breath from Keith’s lungs and blurring his vision. He drops his swords when the sudden lack of oxygen makes his hands to weak to grip them.

Lance takes advantage of Keith’s momentary weakness, catapulting forward for an assault. Unfortunately for him, his intentions bleed loud and clear through their bond, and Keith hits the floor with a gasp so Lance can’t wrap his legs around Keith’s neck to choke him out.

Lance curses, falling forward with a flail when his assault doesn’t hit, momentum completely overshot. He barely manages to catch himself before his head smacks into Keith’s, and for half a second he stays there, hovering above where Keith lays flat and tense, ready for the next move.

You come here often? Lance teases, and it’s genuinely such a horrible line that Keith groans out loud. They tussle on the ground for several moments, each trying to gain the upper hand, but it’s literally impossible — neither of them is particularly stronger than the other, so there’s no advantage there, and not only are they completely matched, stroke for stroke, punch for punch, but every move they try is completely anticipated by the other. There’s no way that Keith can win. He can try to spend the next who knows how long exhausting Lance, but they’ve already been training for a while — they’re both tired as all hell. And as much as Keith kind of likes Lance’s hands on him, he can’t forget that there are people watching. He has a reputation.

Truce? he offers.

Yeah, Lance concedes, sighing melodramatically. I suppose I’ll let you call a draw.

Keith rolls his eyes as hard as he can — leave it to Lance to be such a goober about it, even though Keith can literally feel that he wants to call it as much as Keith does.

At the exact same time, they spring apart, setting some space in between them to catch their breaths. Once they’ve had a minute to recover, Lance stands, stepping over to Keith and offering his hand. Keith takes it, pulling himself up.

All the gathered crew groans out loud.

“Another draw?” one of the MFE pilots mutters.

“At least they’re wicked cool to watch,” her friend says.

Keith would be able to feel how much Lance preens at that even if they werent telekinetically bonded.

In minutes most of the crew has dispersed, no longer interested now that there isn’t a fight to watch. Some of them go back to whatever equipment they were training on earlier, but many of them file out of the training room entirely, moving onto other things. Keith and Lance make their way over to the rest of the team, collapsing down to the floor next to them.

“You guys are super duper lame,” Pidge informs them, offering them both a water pouch. Keith takes his gratefully, not bothering with the straw and tearing off the top, chugging them whole thing down in one go. Allura looks at him in mild disgust, which makes Keith grin, because if he’s being entirely, one hundred percent honest, he really only did that to get a rise out of her because he knows she hates it when he does that.

“You’re a liar,” Lance responds, sipping on his juice pouch much slower than Keith does. “We just provided you with what was essentially a full-stakes WWE fight, except Keith and I are both way cooler than any of those losers and there were weapons involved.”

“Weapons, but no drama,” Hunk argues. “You guys barely even spoke to each other. Just fight, fight, fight. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the nuance?”

“I didn’t hear you clown Keith even one time,” Shiro adds, because he’s safely out of range of Keith’s pinching fingers. “Two out of ten Keith and Lance fight. I’m disappointed.”

Keith snorts. “Oh, he clowned me plenty.”

The second the words exit his mouth, he feels Lance go rigid beside him, and a sense of panic comes through their bond.

Shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up, Lance tells him desperately.

Keith looks at him strangely, but Lance doesn’t provide any more context, looking at a particular spot on the floor as if it’s endlessly fascinating.

“He did?” Coran asks. He looks at Keith with a mix of intrigue and something he can’t place, something almost knowing. “I heard nothing of the sort.”

“Well, you wouldn’t hear it, per se,” Keith says slowly.

Lance screams unintelligibly in his head. Keith gets a distinctive picture of him in his own mindscape, yelling in anguish, as the Red Lion laughs herself to tears beside him.

What is your problem? Keith tries to ask, but mind-Lance ignores him in favour of his misery.

Pidge narrows her eyes at the two of them. “Clarify yourself immediately.”

“The mind bond?” Keith says, voice turning up at the end of the sentence like it’s a question. “You know, that Lance worked on with Red. So that we could communicate with each other using our existing emotional bonds with Voltron, just a couple steps farther. I know you guys haven’t used it much, but I just figured you weren’t into it.”

Silence.

Heavy, disbelieving silence. Each other member of the team looks at Keith with dropped jaws and wide eyes, like what Keith just said is something out of a science fiction novel rather than something they all should have been able to do for weeks, since that meeting with Iverson.

Keith suddenly gets the very distinct feeling that he has, perhaps, fucked up.

“Yeah, no shit,” Lance says, a little hysterically. His face is so red that he rivals his own lion. Keith can actually feel the heat pouring off of him, and the feeling from the bond is worse — Lance is dripping with mortification. “How am I in your fucking head and you still can’t follow my instructions?!”

“You didn’t tell me it was supposed to be a secret!” Keith defends, rapidly going red himself.

He can scarcely believe what is happening right now. Lance has told him that the point of the bond was to make the whole team get closer, but he’d only ever bothered to build something with Keith.

The whole time, from the very beginning, his goal was to share his deepest thoughts and feelings with Keith, no one else.

Oh, God.

“Oh, God,” Shiro repeats, but his tone is vastly different from the way Keith was thinking it. His expression can only be described as evilly and maniacally delighted, like every horrible hope of his has come true at once. “This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Oh my God,” Lance says, the third person to say it. His face is buried in his hands, body half-curled up, like if he compresses himself small enough he can disappear into nothing.

“So that’s why it’s like you two share one half a braincell!” Hunk exclaims. “You actually do!”

Pidge and Allura crack up at Hunk’s joke, or maybe it’s Lance they’re laughing at. Either way, Keith feels his head spin.

Lance has literally manipulated the quintessence of Voltron specifically and only so he can talk to Keith in his own brain, communicate the emotions he doesn’t have the words for.

Manipulated. The quintessence of the universe’s greatest and most mysterious weapon. To find more ways to talk to Keith.

Keith is generally kind of a dense person, but he’s sure as shit not that dense.

“Hey,” he says, shifting away from the rest of his team that has rapidly lost their minds and is laughing themselves hoarse, placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Look at me.”

I am going to kill you dead, Lance threatens in his mind, too embarrassed to make his mouth work.

No, you’re not, Keith replies, and pulls Lance’s hands away from his face, yanking him close and finally pressing their lips together, no longer waiting for some obscure and future proof that Lance loves him. It’s obvious, with the way he softens, melts into Keith’s hands, and the way something warm and soft and floaty flows through their bond.

Lance changed reality for him.

His love could not be more clear.

#hella gay

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lxasjf-z · 1 year ago

Text

In all the love songs Keith has heard (and he’s heard many, both his Pa and Shiro were big ballad fans), he’s always heard laughter described as angelic.

That’s how it is. Over and over again. When you fall in love with someone, when cupid’s arrow strikes, their laughter will be like musical bells, like windchimes, melodic and beautiful and entrancing, and you will never want to hear anything else.

Lance sounds like a hyena on crack when he laughs.

Keith is obsessed with it.

The love ballads got one half of it right, he supposes. He does shut the fuck up and listen when Lance laughs. It is like the only sound he can hear.

It’s just not…musical.

“Your sighs get any dreamier and he’s going to hear you,” Shiro says idly, colouring his nails with Sharpie.

Keith drops his chin from his hands, turning away from where he was watching Lance laugh with Hunk and Allura and scowling at his asshole brother. “He is not.”

Shiro snickers, not even bothering to look up. Keith wonders if it’s morally acceptable to smack the shit out of someone with only one arm, or if Shiro will call foul and convince everyone that Keith is somehow the asshole here.

“Is so. You’re so besotted that even I’m embarrassed for you, and I usually just laugh when you’re being humiliating.”

Keith decides that the potential reputation tarnishing is worth it.

“Ow!” Shiro cries, clutching his flesh arm with way more drama than necessary. “My arm!” He glances over at the scattered stares he receives, from various uniformed officers, and pitches his voice louder to get more attention. “My only remaining human arm!”

“Keith, stop trying to kill your brother,” Coran admonishes. “He’s sensitive.”

Shiro shoots him the tiniest smirk before returning to his fake pout. Keith’s jaw drops in indignation. “Wh — he antagonized me — it’s not my — Coran!”

Coran only raises his eyebrows. “Is there a problem, Number Three, or shall I get your mother involved?”

Pidge makes an obnoxious oooooooooh sound, wiggling her eyebrows at him, because she and Shiro are the worst, actually, and for good measure Coran is too.

“I hate this family,” Keith mutters, sinking into his seat. “All of you suck.”

“Okay, emo boy,” Shiro says patronizingly.

Unfortunately, Iverson walks in and starts the Atlas briefing before Keith can smack him again. He settles for glaring at his dumbass brother, who sticks his tongue out at him like the toddler he is, and then vows to pay attention to the meeting. He is the black paladin, after all.

He lasts four whole minutes.

It’s not his fault. If anything it’s Iverson’s fault. The meeting is boring as hell, and a quick glance around the meeting table shows that the only person paying attention is the note-taking robot Pidge made, and that doesn’t even count ‘cause it’s a robot. Several senior officers are outright sleeping. The MFE pilots are quietly passing around a game of dots. Hunk has blatantly pulled out an engineering project of his and is working on it in full and total view of Iverson (he still hates the man for what he did to Lance when they were cadets, claiming that since Lance has forgiven him, someone needs to hold a grudge). Pidge and Matt seem to be communicating in Morse code. Allura is directing her mice in some kind of acrobatic performance, and Coran is helping her. Shiro is trying to see how many spitballs he can land on Iverson’s blind side before he notices (he’s riding the line with 34). Lance is staring at Keith.

Lance is staring at Keith?

He startles when he meets Lance’s brown eyes, but Lance only smiles, wiggling his fingers in a little wave. Keith tilts his head in confusion, trying to wordlessly ask Lance why he’s staring, and also manage to keep his rapidly creeping blush under control.

(He likes it when Lance stares at him).

Lance squeezes his eyes shut instead of answering, and a moment later Keith feels a prodding in the back of his mind; a familiar presence, hot and fiery and all-encompassing.

Red.

He lets her in, lets her familiar feeling envelop his mind. She struts primly in his mindscape, nosing at Black as if to say I was here first, so just remember who’s boss.

Black lets her prance around with fond amusement.

Before Keith can ask her why she’s pushed her way through — not that he minds, he’s happy to have her, but she hasn’t felt the need to visit him in a while so he’s curious — he feels another presence almost knock on his subconscious, request access to his mindscape.

Red has…brought someone else?

Can she do that?

Red looks at him flatly, like his doubt is a personal offence. Before she can start admonishing him, the presence pushes again; not urgent, but insistent, almost as if someone is knocking on the door of Keith’s mind and doesn’t want to be ignored.

Beyond curious, Keith lets them in.

The second Keith opens his mental door, it’s like they rush in, flowing in like the white rapids of a river, strong and fast and excited, cool and bubbly. There’s so much of them that it takes Keith a good couple of minutes to conceptualise just who exactly has followed Red into Keith’s mind. The rushing water takes shape into a person; tall, gangly, broad-shoulders with a mop of curly brown hair and bright brown eyes, freckles spotted over their nose and grin wide and sparking.

Keith gapes.

“Lance?!”

“Is everything alright, Kogane?”

Keith blinks open his eyes to find the entire meeting table staring at him, expressions ranging from confused to knowing to outright teasing. He realises all of a sudden that he’s spoken aloud, and not only spoken but called Lance’s name out, loudly, for seemingly no reason, in the middle of a crowded meeting.

His face flames.

“All is well,” he chokes out. “Please carry on.”

Iverson narrows his eyes at him for a moment, but eventually shakes himself and continues. Keith stays bright red for several minutes, staring pointedly down at the table, ignoring the various sniggers he can hear with every ounce of his effort. Unfortunately, some of the teasing laughter is inside his actual literal brain, what the fresh fuck, so it’s a fruitless endeavour.

Are you still freaking out? the Lance inside his head (???) asks.

What in the gall brained fuck is going on, Keith thinks back at it, looking at Real Lance in a decent mix of panic, confusion, and the actual phonetic sound that an exclamation point mixed with a question mark makes in your brain. Real Lance has his eyes closed, brows creased in concentration, and the tiniest of smirks pulling up at his lips.

Close your eyes and meditate, doofus, Mind Lance tells him. I’m using a lot of energy right now so I don’t have the space to try and reign you up here.

Despite the fact that Keith is so confused that a thousand professors could not explain his current situation to him in any way that makes sense, he listens, closing his eyes tightly and visualizing his physical bond with Black, like he does when he flies. It helps him sink into the semi-astral plane of existence, usually so he can meld with his lion and the rest of the team when they’re forming Voltron, but whenever he’s trying to reach his own mindscape, too. He’s still aware of his physical body, he’s not quite projected out of it, but he’s not wholly in it, either. Most of his essence is focused on seeing as his mind sees, without the constraints of the physical plane.

“Took you long enough,” Lance huffs.

“What the fuck,” Keith responds.

He packs quite a lot of questions into that what the fuck, he thinks. Like ‘what the fuck are you doing here’, for starters. Or ‘what the fuck just happened with the water and Red and everything else’, if he wants to be specific. Or, if he really just wants to cover everything, ‘what the fuck is happening’ might just do it.

“Your internal monologue fascinates me,” Lance informs him.

Keith flushes. (Does he flush in his mindscape? Does he have the blood and physical body necessary in order to flush? Or is he just embarrassed, so his perception of himself is blushing because that’s the only way he knows how to conception use the feeling? God, Voltron magic shit is so weird. Keith lowkey misses mapping energies alone in the desert and wondering if he was delusional.)

“Stop hearing my internal monologue,” he orders.

Lance pouts. “You’re no fun. I want to hear all the juicy gossip you think about me because you’re too emotionally stunted to say it.”

Lance is only joking, Keith knows he is. He’s leaned forward slightly, like he always does when he’s teasing, and his smile is close-mouthed, unserious.

But Keith of course panics anyway.

A million snapshots of Lance flash through his mind — Lance laughing, head thrown back, barely holding himself up; Lance dancing around the briefing room at two in the morning as he plans a mission; Lance with his tongue stuck out of his mouth, concentrating hard on tiny knitting needles and tiny little mouse-sweaters; Lance with tears shining in his eyes, glancing at a projection of Earth, long before they finally made it home; Lance dirty and hurt, cradled to his chest as Keith runs him too a pod after Sendak. A thousand moments of Lance when Keith was fondest of him, when just looking at him made the ballads Keith grew up with play in his head.

He hurries to shove the memories in an obscure corner of his head and prays that Lance doesn’t see them.

“Can you actually hear my thoughts,” Keith asks, a little desperately.

Lance waves a dismissive hand. “Nah. I get emotional impressions, but that’s about it. I can’t even see anything in here expect you and Red, basically. And Black. Hi, Black!” He waves excitedly to the lion, who sits regally in the dead centre of Keith’s mindscape. She turns to the red paladin in amusement, nodding her head once. Lance beams.

Keith feels a rush of fondness for him so potent it makes his heart hurt, a little.

“Woah,” Lance says, looking at him a little wide-eyed. “I felt that, Willie Nelson. Holy softie.”

“How and why are you here,” Keith says, blatantly changing the subject and not giving even one single shit about being subtle about it. Lance is looking at him too closely.

Luckily, Lance indulges him, or is too excited about being here in general to resist talking about it.

“Isn’t it so cool?” he gushes. “I’ve been working on it with Red for ages! I figured since we all have that emotional bond with each other and the lions during Voltron, and we keep our lion bonds outside of Voltron, we should be able to communicate with each other outside of Voltron, too. Red wasn’t sure if it was possible but she helped me try, and I figured I’d try with you first because it would be the easiest, since we’re so close and all. And you’re more likely to let me in your head.”

He says it so matter-of-factly. Like it’s obvious that they are so close, and that Keith loves him so much that he wouldn’t mind Lance in his head, not really.

The worst part is that he’s right.

With anyone else, this would feel like an invasion of space. Keith would be defensive immediately, angry even, throwing them right the hell out of his head and yelling at them as he does it.

But with Lance?

He’s a little shocked, sure. And worried, that Lance is going to see all the parts of him that Keith isn’t ready yet to show him; the parts that he doesn’t yet know how to say, how to show. The parts of Keith that soften every time Lance smiles at him, the parts that light up with gleeful competition whenever Lance eggs him on, the parts that chafe and ache but smooth over when Lance sits with him quietly when he’s hurting.

Keith knows that Lance knows that he loves him. He doesn’t exactly hide it. He’s not sure he would, even if he could.

But he’s not ready to tell him. Not yet.

He takes a deep breath. (Or whatever the mindscape equivalent is).

He knows Lance won’t go looking.

“And you decided to pull this telepathy shit in the middle of a random meeting?” Keith teases, allowing some of the worry to slip away.

This is, after all, cool as shit, even if it’s weird.

“It’s not an important meeting!” Lance defends. “It’s boring, and I needed entertainment! Besides, Pidge’s bot will give us all the notes anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. Slacker. Some right hand man you are.”

Keith spends the rest of the dead-boring meeting teasing and chatting with Lance in his mindscape, which is great because he both gets to mess with Lance, which is always a net positive, because he has the upper hand in his own head, and because he gets to look like he’s paying attention in the meeting and actually be completely checked out.

“Oh, hey, I think the meeting’s ending,” Lance says. “I can hear Iverson winding down a bit.”

“Time to get out of my head then, you squatter?”

Lance rolls his eyes, waving to Red to get her attention. She stalks over, nosing him in the head like a mother cat to her kitten. Lance bats her away. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll head out. But only because I’m not practiced enough at this thing, so if I stay in your head it’ll look like I’m frozen or something. Once I figure out how to look normal and still beam my thoughts into your head, you’re never going to be without me even once in your life.”

Lance is teasing again. Keith can tell. But still, he’s totally helpless to stop what comes out next.

“I’d be okay with that.”

He sounds so besotted he wants to smack himself. But before he can even have the space to be embarrassed, he feels a wave of emotions that aren’t his — Lance’s, from the other end of their connection, a mix of embarrassment and selfish pleasure so thick that Keith can feel it even though they’re in Keith’s mindscape.

His jaw drops.

Lance wants Keith’s undivided attention. He’s preening over it.

“I gotta go,” Lance says hastily. “Uh, meeting ending and everything.”

Before Keith can so much as stop him, he feels the same strange feeling as before, the cool, rushing water of a river, only this time it’s flowing out of of his head rather than into it. Lance has retreated hastily from his mindscape, and Red follows, much slower and much more smug, visibly laughing at her paladin.

When Keith opens his eyes again, Lance is bright red, and won’t meet his eyes.

Keith smiles. Maybe he’s not the only one who’s not quite ready to spill his guts.

———

part two

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lxasjf-z · 1 year ago

Text

post where there's post-war klance

keith: i'm really excited to meet your family lance.

lance: as you should be! they're awesome and they'll love you.

meeting the family

lance: this is inez! she's my brother luis's daughter, so she's my niece. that's how nieces work.

keith: i know how nieces work lance. hi inez. i'm keith (offers handshake)

lance: ahem...

keith: oh right. i'm your uncle's boyfriend

inez: (gives him a patented Niece Once-over) (does not accept handshake) hm. have you ever killed anybody

keith: (is a literal war veteran) (hates lying) (unless it's funny) (this isn't funny) oh um. only bad guys?

inez: ... what (in the smallest voice you can imagine)

lance: he's kidding!! he's joking. oh keith you're such a jokester haha

keith: no? we both--

lance: (staring at him so so intensely) you. are. kidding.

inez: oh. well he isn't very funny.

lance: yeah... he's not

lance has pulled keith aside now

lance: keith when a kid asks you that you tell them no!

keith: but that's lying?

lance: then dodge the question!

keith: i don't understand what you're asking me

lance: (poking keith in the chest for each word) dodge. the. question.

keith: repeating it with more emphasis has never made anyone understand anything better in the history of time ever

lance: ok. keith. ask me if i've killed anyone.

keith: but i already know that?

lance: just ask me!

keith: ok ok fine. lance, have you killed anyone?

lance: have you?

keith: ...yes? you were there.

lance: no! answer like you're inez.

keith: but... i'm keith?

lance: (heaviest of sighs)

lance: ...

lance: marry me.

#i am in love #why is this amazing

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lxasjf-z · 1 year ago

Text

this is so beautiful, i dont think ill ever find something like it again.

“You’re nervous.”

“Hnnngh,” Keith says, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He looks straight ahead, left leg bouncing, hair pulled back into a ponytail but flyaways everywhere. He keeps having to push up his glasses when they slide down his nose, nudged forward by all the tension in his eyebrows. “Being stressed before a stressful situation is not being nervous, Lance, it’s just my brain responding like a brain.”

Lance hides a smile. “You’ve met my family before, baby.”

Keith slows to a stop as they approach their turn, looking at Lance instead of the road for the first time in twenty minutes. His indigo eyes are wide and pleading. Lance is distracted by the tiny mole beside his nose.

“I’ve met your mom,” he says emphatically, breaking eye contact with Lance to crane his head to the left, checking over the hill for any cars. He’s far more careful than he needs to be — there’s never anyone on this road. But Keith is always endlessly careful when he’s driving other people around. “I’ve met your siblings. I’ve met your abuela. I’ve met the twins.”

“Mighty number of people,” Lance agrees. He looks at his boyfriend pointedly. “All of whom love you.”

“Because they love you,” Keith stresses. “You’re, like, their favourite person. You hyped me up so of course they have a nicer view of me. But this is like — your great grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and, I dunno, second sister in law five times removed —

“Not how that works,” Lance interjects, amused.

“—and now I gotta impress them all? At once? I still don’t know how I did that with everyone else! I panicked! I forgot all my lines and conversation starters! I just — was awkward, and they were cool with it because your family is cool!”

“Ah, yes, you were yourself and people liked you,” Lance says, nodding sagely. “How bizarre.”

Keith looks at him imploringly. He has a — really cute nose, holy shit. It’s crooked from the three separate times it’s been broken and Lance is kind of obsessed with it. All he can think about is pressing a kiss to the bridge of it and watching how Keith will crinkle it on reflex. He has to fight back a giggle.

“I am going to get eaten,” Keith says miserably. “My luck is going to wear out. I’m gonna say something stupid and offend your third cousin or trip over someone’s toddler and destroy your mother’s flan by crashing into the table and upending hot coffee on an elderly person. Then I’ll get arrested for assault and you’ll have to visit me in prison and my cellmate will make a comment about you or something and I’ll have to kill him and then I’ll get retried and the death sentence, probably, and then Red will bust me out of prison and cause intergalactic meltdowns and —”

Lance can’t hold back anymore. Quick as a dart he reaches out, fisting Keith’s collar, and yanks him over the gearshift, kissing him softly and soundly until Keith sighs, surprise fading into something calmer, relaxed. His hand comes up to cup Lance’s cheek.

“You need a Xanax,” Lance says gently as he pulls away.

Keith huffs, the manic look in his eyes replaced with something much softer. Relieved, even. “Yeah, probably.” He tears his eyes away from Lance, rechecking his turn and finally actually putting on his blinker and moving onto the right road. His free hand reaches over the gearshift and Lance grabs it, tangling their fingers together and resting them in his lap. “I just — I want your family to like me.”

Lance smiles, a wide one that brings a flush to his cheeks and makes him shy, even though he’s not self-conscious; a smile that makes something flutter so intensely in his stomach that it feels so intensely private.

“They’ll like you,” Lance says simply.

Keith exhales. His hand tightens. Lance squeezes back.

The rest of the drive is easy.

———

By the time they make it to Lance’s great-grandmother’s farm, he can tell that some tension has crawled back into Keith’s shoulders. But he’s always been brave, when fighting dictators or meeting parents, and doesn’t hesitate to pull into the gravel driveway and park the car. He squeezes Lance’s hand again before letting go, stepping out of the car and heading to get their stuff.

“Tío! Tío!” scream two voices, and Lance doesn’t even have half a second to brace himself before Nadia is launching herself at his stomach. He manages somehow to spin them both around to offset the momentum, keeping them both upright. Keith is not quite so lucky — Lance hears a slam, a startled oof, and then he sees their bags go flying out of the corner of his eye.

“Jesus Christ,” Keith wheezes, flat on the ground with Sylvio crowded on top of him.

“I got you!” the boy crows, scrambling off Keith’s body in order to adequately dance around in victory. “You went splat!” He whirls around to face Lance, still dancing around. “Tío Lance! Did you see?”

Lance adjusts Nadia on his hip, making no attempt to hide his amusement. “I did. You got him good, buddy.”

Beaming, Sylvio turns back to Keith, who’s finally managed to get enough breath back in his lungs to stand.

“You got me good,” he wheezes in approval.

“Just like you showed me!”

There’s no mistaking the smugness in Sylvio’s voice, the challenge, the I’m-little-you’re-big-and-you’re-a-loser.

Keith recognises the challenge easily, eyes glinting, and before Sylvio can run away Keith scoops him up, tossing him over his shoulder and whirling them around ‘til he’s dizzy.

“Just like I showed you, champ. Think you can get out of this one, though? It’s easy!”

Sylvio shrieks, pounding on Keith’s back with fists weak from laughter. Nadia squirms in Lance’s hold, so Lance sets her down, and in seconds she’s run and attacked Keith’s other side, climbing up his legs to try and free her brother. Keith scoops her up, too, throwing her over his other shoulder as she laughs just as shrilly.

“Clearly neither of you learned very much!” he shouts, grin so wide it practically splits his face. His already precariously dangling glasses slide right off his face but Keith doesn’t even spare them a glance, stepping over them easily and shaking the twins as he goes. “You’re trapped!”

It doesn’t take the bright twins very long to unite forces, attacking Keith with renewed vigour all at once. Lance bends down as they wrestle, scooping up Keith’s glasses and their discarded bags.

“He’s good with them,” Lisa says, sidling up beside him and sliding her hand around his waist. Lance mirrors her, squeezing.

“He thinks they’re hilarious. He loves them to pieces.”

“Believe me, they love him too. I heard about Uncle Keith so much on the drive down that I was tired of him before you two even got here.”

Lance snorts. “Yeah, right, dweeb. No one else here reads Jane Austen. You need your nerd buddy.”

“Indeed,” she says, grinning. She pats him on the hip, pulling away and taking one of the bags slung over his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get your stuff dropped off. Marcela will want to fuss over you, I’m sure. She hasn’t seen you since your last mission.”

Lance looks back at his boyfriend before following her, making sure he doesn’t need Lance’s help. The twins have wrestled him into doing their bidding, it looks like, or more likely he didn’t even put up a fight, and sit on one shoulder each, guiding him around the property with shouts and points and frenzied gesturing. Keith has his hand locked firmly over each set of knees, careful not to let them fall, as he wobbles around to make them gasp and laugh.

Lance smiles. He’s fine.

———

Keith finds him within the hour, Nadia and Sylvio off to play with their cousins.

“You abandoned me,” he pouts, hand wrapped around his elbow.

Lance notices, idly, that he’s slouching again; that his ponytail has been abandoned entirely and his hair curtains his face.

Hm.

“You were busy being a doofus,” Lance teases, brushing his hair out of his face. He nobly resists the urge to quote Regina George. “One of us has to be the mature one. We wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong impression about the saviours of the universe.

“You’re hiding out on a random couch on your phone,” Keith deadpans. He glances down at the screen. “You’re watching a seven year old vine compilation. On mute.”

“Like an adult,” Lance says primly. “Watch with me.”

Keith rolls his eyes fondly, but slides on the couch behind Lance, arms wrapped around his waist and chin hooked over his shoulder. Lance digs in his pockets until he finds Keith’s glasses, twisting around to slide them on his handsome face. His hands linger on Keith’s temples. Keith’s smile is small and crooked and bares the tiniest peek of crooked incisors, and Lance’s heart flutters.

He leans back into Keith’s chest as he plays the video, watching a compilation of dorky videos he’s seen a thousand times. He feels Keith’s grin press into the juncture of his neck as he starts to mumble along. His hand rests just under Lance’s shirt, flat on his stomach. Lance fights the urge to squirm.

You Are In Your Abuela’s House, he reminds himself firmly. Your Ancestors Are Watching You. And Jesus, Probably.

Luckily, someone calls out their names before Lance really needs to find a vat of ice water to dunk himself in.

“Leandro! Keith! Come eat before your hog of a brother takes it all!”

The two of them don’t even need to pause for a moment before throwing themselves off the couch, scrambling towards the kitchen at top speeds because Marco absolutely will eat their portion of the food. Not even because he’s hungry for it, just because he’s a butthead who thinks it’s funny.

“This is your fault,” Keith informs him, careening around a questionably placed side table.

“Nothing is ever my fault ever in the entire universe,” Lance shoots back.

(Is it Lance’s fault? Possibly. But in his defense, the several years he spent as a child waiting for Marco to be distracted before eating his favourite thing on the plate still make him crack up when he thinks about it. Marco just got so mad, every time. Plus his eyes bulge a little when he loses it. How was Lance ever supposed to avoid poking that bear?)

Luckily, they make it in time to wrestle a plate away from Marco’s snickering ass.

“Keith, Lance,” Lance’s mother greets warmly before Lance can crack a plate over his brother’s head. “I’m glad you made it!”

“Mother,” Lance squawks dramatically, hand flying to his chest, “I am the second to be greeted? You’re son? You’re youngest angel? The one who went missing for several years and returned to you, prodigal?”

She reaches over and flicks Lance in the forehead. Keith snorts. Marco cackles.

“Keith called me on the flight home,” she explains, ruthless. “So he is the son, and you are the son-in-law.”

Keith flushes as he always does when Mamá pairs them like that, when they’re both her sons, when she implies what it implies. Lance lets the warmth of that expression soak into his bones, deep in through his back, from every point Keith is touching him.

“I was sleeping off being maimed!” Lance despairs.

It does him no favours. Mamá waves her hands wildly, setting down her own plate in favour of placing her hands over her ears. “Gah! Sh! Do not tell me of these things! I am meant to pretend your job is nothing more than ornamental! Do not ruin that for me!”

“It was the slightest ever maiming,” Lance mutters, sullen.

Keith visibly bites back a retort to that, no doubt out of respect for Mamá.

(Lance knows that Keith would have been the world’s biggest mama’s boy had he grown up with Krolia. He has shared this hypothesis with Shiro, who had laughed so hard upon hearing it that he had sprained a muscle in his neck, and then explained later with a heat pack and a wryly smiling Adam that Keith used to scold Shiro for pushing himself with exact quotes from Shiro’s mother herself.)

“Nobody ever wants to hear my side of the story,” Lance laments.

Keith bends down to kiss him on the cheek.

“That’s because you are a liar,” he says kindly.

Lance catches his chin before he can pull away, kissing him to shut him up.

They head outside to join everyone else, plates stacked high with food and plastic cups balanced precariously with spare fingers. Keith starts to slouch again as they walk out the sliding screen door, but he keeps his hair out of his face, eyes flitting between different people. It helps that hardly anyone spares him half a glance, too used to random new people in such a big family.

“Hey, Patito! Over here!”

Lance whips his head up at the familiar voice, breaking into a wide smile when he sees his sister’s wilding waving hand. Keith, too, seems relieved when he catches sight of Veronica, rushing over almost faster than Lance is.

“Hey, losers,” she greets, flicking water from her cup at them as they sit across from her. “Took you long enough to get here.”

“Lance is a distraction and danger to the road,” Keith says immediately, because he is a snitch. He is also unfortunately very quick and manages to duck away from Lance’s pinch.

Veronica snorts. “Believe me, I know. Every ride back to the Garrison on weekends was a near death experience because he kept smacking me every ten seconds. A menace.”

“You manipulator!” Lance accuses. “I slapped you because you teased me! Constantly!”

Keith and Veronica share sharp, matching grins. Lance takes a nanosecond to ponder what he ever did to deserve the sufferings of their friendship.

“That’s because you’re so goddamn easy to rile up, sweetheart,” Keith says with a wink.

Lance attempts to shove him off his chair. Unfortunately, while he does flail backwards, he manages to stay upright.

“You two were supposed to hate each other,” he mutters into his congrí. “This friendship thing is bullshit.”

Neither believe him for a second.

They’re barely into their meal when the nosiness starts. In fact, Lance is honestly surprised it has lasted this long. Luis probably said something to convince everyone to tone it down, because he is a saint and also Lance’s favourite.

“So,” says his Aunt Vena, “…Keith.”

Keith freezes, cheeks bulging. Lance tries very hard not to laugh at him.

“Hi,” he says, swallowing. He says nothing else and looks agonized about it. His memorized conversation starters have no doubt fled his brain.

“You know, I feel like I already know you,” jokes Aunt Vena, never bothered by awkwardness. Or boundaries. “I only see Leandro a few times a year were the only thing he talked about for ages.”

Lance goes pale. Oh, please God, no. Please let Aunt Vena be suddenly gifted with the ability to read Lance’s mind, or at least notice him waving his hands frantically behind Keith’s head, making cutting motions at his throat.

“Keith this, Keith that. Keith Keith Keith.”

Lance cradles his face in his hands. So much for miracles.

“He did?” Keith asks.

“Stop investigating immediately or you’re sleeping on the floor tonight,” Lance threatens under his breath. Keith’s hand finds it’s way to his thigh and rests there, as if laughing at him.

“Oh, yes,” laughs Aunt Vena. “Every other word was about how you sat in class or walked in the hall or flew your planes. He was always angry about it, but he was quite focused on you. Oh, and your hair.”

Aunt Vena turns away to chatter with someone else like she didn’t just ruin Lance’s life. Lance would hate her if he didn’t find her so goddamn loveable, but he does, so instead he looks up and suffers Keith’s wide, shit-eating grin, and ponders deep in his heart how he will re-humble his boyfriend so they’re back on even ground.

“…You were big on the hair, huh.”

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll chop it off as you sleep.”

———

“Keith.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You dorkbrain.”

“I’m just saying!”

Keith’s hair is in a knot at the crown of his head, glasses pushed all the way to his face. He’s got Lance’s hand in his but he’s not paying attention to him in the slightest — he cycles between leaning back, then forwards, then craning his neck and shifting his eyes. Every few seconds he lets out a muted gasp.

A group of children run yelling in and out of the house, heedless of doors and stairs.

“You are such a mother hen,” Lance says with great amusement.

Keith is too distracted to even roll his eyes. “Some of them are very little,” he says worriedly. “Maybe they should play a game outside. There’s more space.” He looks around at the various adults sitting and chatting, aghast. “Should me maybe get a — pool noodle, or something? Just for the corners. So there are no head injuries. That’s the most common way they happen, you know. Tripping during play.”

Lance hums, leaning into his side. “Reading a lot of parenting books, are you.”

Keith is very deliberately silent. Lance flicks up his gaze to watch his face redden.

“…Akira.”

“It’s Shiro’s!” he says defensively. “It was — he had it on the shelf! I read it when I was younger! It was traumatizing! Do you know how easy it is to fuck up a kid? Very easy, Lance! Their heads are very squishy! They don’t know balance yet! They repeat everything you say!”

“Was this book,” Lance starts, choking back laughter with everything he has, “perhaps about raising toddlers?”

Keith’s jaw snaps shut.

“Children under two? Hm?”

Keith glances away. “It didn’t mention.”

Lance loses his battle, burying his cackling in Keith’s shoulder.

“How was I supposed to know that ‘A Guide To Raising Healthy Children For New Parents’ was about — babies? Shiro was the dumbass who had it!”

Lance laughs harder. “Did he — did he buy it when he —”

Keith puts his head in his hands. “He bought, like, forty books when he first started fostering me, they were all basically the same, he’s such a dumbass —”

“Stop, stop,” Lance begs, grasping his aching stomach. The image of Shiro, twenty years old, panicking after impulsively deciding to apply to foster the delinquent who stole his car, frantically googling advice for new parents only to unknowingly receive information about toddlers is the best mental image he’s had in a while. He’ll have to share with Pidge and the rest of the Holts the second they get home.

“You’re such a butthead,” Keith grumbles, but it’s half-hearted. His attention is still mostly on the way Mateo, Lance’s four year old second cousin, very nearly brains himself on the corner of the brick entryway trying to swerve away from his older sister. Keith’s sharp inhale would have been comical if Lance didn’t feel his own heart drop.

“Okay,” Lance concedes, “maybe it’s time for a new game.” He pats his boyfriend on the knee. “You’re up, champ.”

“Wait, me?” Keith asks, bewildered. “You’re their cousin.”

Lance shrugs. “You’re the worried one. Plus, I want to go get wine drunk with Rachel. Mamá said she just got here. She’s been avoiding my calls all week which means she has Information to share and doesn’t trust herself not to tell me immediately. I have to know what’s up.”

Keith still doesn’t look convinced. “But I’m a stranger to them, basically.”

“So start with Nadia and Sylvio, dummy. Once the rest of the kids see a cool newer and accidentally safer game to play, they’ll join fast. Plus, the stranger aspect is intriguing, probably. You’re like a new toy.”

To solidify his point, Lance calls his niblings over, gesturing to Keith. The twins light up, immediately abandoning whatever they’re doing — trying to shove a sleeping Luis’ finger up his own nose — to sprint over to them.

“Tío Keith has a game for you two,” Lance whispers conspirationally.

The twins burst into howling cheers.

“Game! Game! Game! Game!” they chant, each grabbing one of Keith’s hands and tugging him away.

Keith looks back at him, panicked. Lance blows him a kiss, then turns back into the house to go hunt for his sister.

She finds him first.

“LANCE,” she shouts, whipping around to face him. Lance immediately shifts backwards slightly, knees bent, legs widened, arms held out protectively in front of him. He smirks. She matches it.

She charges.

She aerials into a heel kick, as always, aiming for his skull. Lance back handsprings out of her reach, careful of the various relatives around him, who are well used to their brand of bullshit and don’t even pause their conversations as they lean away.

He comes back up just in time to throw up a block to her fists, aiming a kick to her stomach that she can’t fully dodge. She gets him right back, though, like she always does, aiming a sweeping kick for his ankles that he has to flip on his hands to avoid.

“It’s good to see you, fucker,” she pants, roundhouse kicking the dip of his waist.

“Likewise, asshole,” he grunts, grabbing her ankle and flipping her to the ground. She drags him down with her.

They’re both grinning.

“Tomorrow morning we box for real,” she proposes as they lay there, getting their breath back.

“Deal,” he agrees.

By the time they finally get back on their feet, they’re both parched, and since they also make frequent poor decisions, they head straight for the bad boxed wine. Lance pours them both heaping glasses and Rachel guides them to an open lawn chair, which they both sprawl on, a hundred percent in each other’s space.

“So,” Rachel says, chugging half her glass, “my grades are in. I’m graduating top of my class.”

Lance gasps. “Rachel!”

“And,” she continues, building up suspense with a grin, “I got word back from all my residency applications.”

Lance thinks he might explode. He remembers them when they were little, huddled on the floor of their bedroom at one in the morning, glow sticks guiding their planners, mapping out heir lives together. Where they would go to school, when they would bother with dating, how they would do it all together. Lance, best pilot to come out of the Garrison next to Shirogane. Rachel, the first surgeon to successfully transplant a brain.

“I got in,” she says, beam so wide it forces her eyes shut. “Lance, I got in!”

“Rach!” he screams, eyes blurry from tears and heart full to bursting. “Rach!”

He wraps his arms around her shoulders and squeezes, weeping with joy and elation and buzzing from his head to his toes. This is what Rachel has wanted since she was old enough to talk. This is his sister, his first and best friend, getting everything she has ever wanted, as she has always deserved.

“I’m so fucking proud of you!”

She squeezes him right back, her own tears wetting his t-shirt. Her relief is palpable, and Lance knows it, the indescribable feeling of finally crossing that goddamn mountain, finally getting what you’ve been working for for longer than you can remember.

“Everything is falling into place,” she says softly, pulling back and holding up her cup. Lance laughs and clinks them together.

They settle back into their shared chair, too happy for words, gathering themselves. Lance catches his mother’s eye and returns her soft smile, wine making him warm and happiness making him bright. He feels like he’s swimming in sun-warmed water.

He settles back with a sigh.

Rachel nudges him. “Hey, Loverboy. Look.”

Lance follows her pointing finger. Away from the tables and lawn chairs, in a wide, open space, there’s Keith — surrounded by every single child on the property, ordered in neat rows. Each of them has a hefty stick, held carefully in their hands, watching Keith with great intensity. Keith himself has his bayard out, stretched out in a battle position, back straight and shoulders loose. He has the same bright look on his face that he has during Lion training, or riskier missions. Excitement, steadiness, and a hint of cockiness that has Lance shivering. He demonstrates a move, and with a single minded focus, the children repeat it.

It has always been impossible not to want to be a part of everything Keith does, Lance has found.

“…You kind of scored,” Rachel observes.

Lance’s laughter is breathy, high-pitched. “Believe me, I know.”

There’s a rousing shout from the kids, then a cheer, then Keith shouts, “Ready?” and at their raucous response, chaos breaks out. Sticks are strikes and parried and children throw themselves dramatically on the floor in pantomimed deaths, scrambling to their feet seconds later to get back into the fray. Every few seconds Keith calls out rules and reminders, weaving through the children to point out places for improvement or congratulate someone for doing something right.

“I have never seen them all gathered this long without any crying or fighting,” Rachel says, something like awe in her voice. She pauses. “Well, real fighting.”

Lance smiles, something small and secret and over which he has no control. He catches his boyfriend’s eye and waves, which is returned at twice the enthusiasm.

“Keith’s good with kids,” he says quietly. To himself, he wonders if it’s possible to have a heart so full it bursts.

———

The blankets are scratchy but warm, and Keith smells as he always does, and Lance is half asleep. But the words come leisurely out anyway.

“You awake?“ he whispers, words tucked into the spot above Keith’s heart.

Keith hums. Lance feels the rumble of it in his cheek.

“Barely.”

His eyes are too heavy to keep open, so he lets them slip shut. He breathes deeply the smell of his boyfriend’s body wash, and traces meaningless patterns on his chest with his fingertips, breathing slowly, taking his time. He might fall asleep, but that’s okay. They have time.

“‘M glad you came, today.”

Keith’s breathing is slow and even, just like Lance’s, but he can feel the heavy weight of his gaze, those indigo eyes.

“I go where you go.”

Lance quirks his lips. The blankets rustle softly as Keith slowly slides up his hand, encircling his fingers around Lance’s wrist, palm resting on his forearm. After a minute Lance can feel his heartbeat, at the same time that he hears it, head pressed to Keith’s chest. “You’re good with the kids.”

Keith’s breath stutters. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I like them. And your family.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, you did.” He’s silent for a minute, palm heavy on Lance’s skin. “I wanna — do this, Lance. Forever.”

Lance turns his head slightly, just enough to press his lips to Keith’s sternum. “I will love you until the end of time.”

He feels Keith’s smile, sweetening the air.

“I love you, too.”

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