#also i realized i think him and lance were both wearing the same hoodie tonight!!

[skitskatdacat63]

Radiant old man, I'm tired of his ass

[echotovalley]

we rule the kingdom inside my room // king of my heart

modern royalty au

“Wait, you’re a what?”

The word has more bite than he means, the sound causing Lance to flinch as it slaps awkwardly against Shiro’s clean, off-white walls. Keith’s fighting panic - not because of the word itself, but the possibility that this is some horrible prank he’s being slapped on the end of.

Wouldn’t be the first time he just walked right into one of Lance’s jokes or puns. But they had stayed pretty tame, Lance never took it past a certain degree and Keith had gotten Lance to fall for a few of his own. It was some personal mantel Lance had taken up against Keith that turned into their one and only outlet for flirting before they had the Good Ol’ Feelings Talk.

This isn’t how he wanted to end their night, he demands soft and comfortable and fucking adorable because they deserve this.

Their date was supposed to be dinner with Shiro, then cuddling on the couch while they bummed off of Shiro’s Netflix account and Shiro washed the dishes (he adamantly insisted on them not helping him - in hindsight, it was blatantly obvious as a ploy to conveniently be absent at the scene of the crime). They were supposed to watch a few episodes of a show and kiss intermittently until Shiro kicked them out of his apartment to go make out on one of their own couches. Even though they did a pretty good job about keeping themselves in check as guests or if other people were around them together at either his or Lance’s. They didn’t just disappear behind a bedroom door every time someone turned around and that’s supposed to mean the universe meets them halfway because honestly, have people seen Lance???

Keith deserves a medal for this kind of self-control.

For what it’s worth, Lance looks physically pained by the audible gulp as he swallows around a lump in his throat. The one in Keith’s damn near cuts out his breathing entirely.

“I’m a prince?”

Keith raises his eyebrows, bites the inside of his cheek. “Are you asking me?”

Lance scrubs his hands over his face - Keith bites back the urge to tell him his face is going to get red and splotchy, catches himself from reaching into Lance’s hoodie that he’s wearing for the stem toy in the pocket or from handing over the good hair tie on his own wrist. A part of Keith enjoys seeing Lance sweat so much because if this is a joke...if this is Pidge and Hunk barreling out of the closet with the washer and dryer armed with a camera in the next twenty seconds, he wants this moment to not be easy.

Eventually, they were going to have their first fight.

So like, if it’s tonight, Keith’s...He doesn’t wa-

He ignores another urge to beg Lance to just forget it and call the ultimate forever truce on the joke-rivalry thing they used to exhaust the unresolved tension they stored up. He feels heat flush the back of his neck because this is dramatic, he’s being dramatic, everything’s going to be fine. Lance will backpedal and Keith will stand to punch him in the arm and call him an asshole for all of the grief and Shiro will quip in with some sage dating advice that assists Lance and Keith in the development and maturity of their relationship because his life is a sitcom.

That’s not what happens when Lance abruptly goes back to pacing Shiro’s living room, muttering under his breath in Spanish. “Verónica hizo esta mirada fácil.”

Shiro’s head pops around the corner of the kitchen, sweeping his gaze over them and Keith begs, wills, him to understand and do what Keith needs without him verbalizing it.

To tell Lance this isn’t funny.

Demand to know how he thought it would be okay.

To kick him out.

To make him stay until Keith could sort out whatever nightmare he was in and for reality to fall back into its rightful place where Lance would kiss him just short of breathless and ask if he wanted to go out for ice cream or have an impromptu sleepover in their PJs watching cartoons until they fell asleep.

Or tell Keith that class and work had reduced him to a feverish haze that induced hallucinations.

Instead, Shiro is Shiro.

“Hey.”

Keith holds his breath, lets it out and allows his heart to break a little when he realizes he isn’t talking to Keith, but to Lance. With that soft, “Go, be great.” look that softens the corners of his eyes and stretches the scar across his nose.

“Deep breaths, Lance.”

It’s just so...hurtful.

The way it instantly gets Lance to relax his lanky frame in a whoosh before he’s squaring his shoulders again. Shiro doesn’t offer anything for Keith before he’s ducking back into the kitchen and the sound of the tap echoes throughout the room.

“I...Well technically, Rachel and I, are- We won the birth lottery? Fuck, I’m doing the question thing again. Okay, so. I’m a prince. My parents are the King and Queen of my home country, but not as absolute monarchs? We encourage our people to vote for their leaders in a government that was formed when my great-great grandparents were kids and make their homeland a good place and we do fancy shindigs with really old money and jewels to raise money or bring attention to issues we care about and build relationships with other world leaders outside of UN proceedings. We’re just figureheads with antique china, but I digress.”

Keith drops his head in hands and swears.

“Language.”

He glares in the direction of the kitchen before cutting his gaze back on Lance. “H-how did you keep this a secret? Why did you keep this a secret for so long?”

Lance shrugs, a moment of nonchalance weaving through his frame before the tension settled back over his shoulders. “England shoulders most of the spotlight, but also, we’re a small Latino country most people aren’t aware have a royal family. Especially Westerners.”

Grime paints the inside of Keith’s mouth as he breathes out an, “Oh.” He recovers, scowls. “That only answers one of my questions.”

“Well, it wasn’t just my secret to tell now, was it? Rachel and I are here for school, this university has one of the best engineering programs out there and we wanted to travel without the hassle. Plus, I was dying to go to Disney World. It isn’t something I just want to tell people right off the bat, you get treated differently. People expect perks of being chummy with a royal. Gets even weirder when you’re being hit on by one. Also, I’m pretty sure you would have punched me if I hit on you then followed that up with the ‘I’m a Prince’ spiel.”

Keith folds his arms and flops back on the couch. “If memory serves, you got my number from Pidge’s phone to ask me about an assignment for a class I wasn’t even in.”

A small smirk tips the corner of Lance’s mouth up and warms his eyes. “I had to get creative with you, you were exceptionally good at deflecting and I have a desperate need to embarrass myself in front of you - if your memory serves more than one dish.” Lance takes a step toward the couch and nods to the spot beside Keith, waits for Keith’s whatever shrug in return before sitting down heavily. “I wasn’t going to bring necessary drama into it if by chance we didn’t work out and you blocked my number and stole all of my friends with your bad haircut and cool fingerless gloves in a few weeks.

“I knew if and when I started seeing someone, I would wait until a certain point to make sure mutual attraction and dating interest were still a thing. But I also knew that waiting longer would make it worse and hurt someone I really care about. Kind of sucks because in action, I’m hurting them either way. I didn’t want to just shove all of this onto you if I didn’t have to, but this-” Lance points at the space between them, hand staying a measured distance from Keith’s. “-is going somewhere, so I need to. This isn’t some grandiose plot for me to live out some Disney prince fantasy where I whisk you away on some breathtaking journey.”

“So, what is this then?”

Lance takes a deep breath and nods his head in the direction of the kitchen. “I wanted you to be somewhere you’d feel safe and familiar, near a person that has managed to get through your thick skull how validated your convoluted, mullet head is in everything you think and feel. You deserve to steer the course of your life and, if you’re with me, I can’t promise either of us will be in charge at any given time because of my responsibilities and the scrutiny that comes down with it. And like, as much as it would hurt to watch you go...if you don’t want to see me again, I can do that too.”

Keith knows his eyebrows are doing that thing where they disappear behind his bangs, opens and closes his mouth a few times hoping the words would rearrange and settle in his head long enough for him to unpack it...somehow. Shiro with his winning timing and eavesdropping abilities saves them both the trouble with a long-suffering sigh from around the corner.

“Dial it back a bit, Lance.”

The breath Lance sucks in shakes and rattles in his chest, jerks his knee in a disjointed reflex that knocks against Keith’s. “Right, yeah. Promised I would try being less dramatic.”

Keith feels the right amount of sorry for himself - he figures he’s owed that because they’re either breaking up or well, Keith honestly has no clue what the other option means. What it will lead to. What it will do to them. But the aborted laugh Lance tries for sounds wet and his dumb heart twists violently in his chest, tries to drop kick one of his lungs, and beats at his ribs like a xylophone.

Even after Lance has run his fingers through his hair so many times by now that it sticks up at odd angles and his color looks a bit off, there’s still the smart press of his shirt and subtle hints of cologne that Keith would die for at this point. He thought this would have been easy, he managed not to beat around the bush with Lance - even though he was terrified Lance wouldn’t feel the same way and it would grind their friendship into dust. God, the first time they kissed?

The first time Lance ran his fingers through Keith’s hair and brushed his nails lightly over his scalp at the base of his skull?

Earlier that day when everything had still been simple and the only surprise was the full body shudder that caught both of them off guard at the press of Keith’s mouth against the soft corner of Lance’s jaw.

He needs to realize this was never simple, especially for Lance. It means Keith has to deal with a lot of feelings a lot sooner than he anticipated. But now there was this time crunch? Keith needed to either get very serious very fast or end this with Lance.

And he really, really, really did not want to end this.

Keith takes a deep breath, buries a hand in the pocket of the hoodie to ghost his fingers over the familiar stem toy. “You’re giving me an out at any time?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to take it?”

“To protect you? Yes. Honestly, though? I can be pretty damn selfish when it comes to you. I want you to stay. I want to work through this so I can take you back home to make out in the huge hall full of period artwork. There’s a pretty comfy antique couch that’s right under this huge painting that was gifted to like my sixth great-grandparents.”

And there was the magnetic energy that had Keith’s fingertips buzzing under Lance’s hooded gaze, just like that.

“I figured we could keep doing this, y’know? We have four more months of the school year left and if we survive finals week, that’d put us at six months of dating. That’d be okay-ish time, I think, to ask my boyfriend of six months to spend his first week of summer vacation with me to meet my family doing cool rich kid stuff to impress the shit out of him.”

That gets Keith to smile, Shiro’s chuckle rounds the corner. “Much better.”

Lance presses their legs together as he shifts closer to Keith. “If my family doesn’t drive you up the walls or run you out of town, then we could do some public outings as a group with my siblings to see how you feel about press and stuff. Then....we’ll see?”

He watches Lance pick at a loose thread in Keith’s jeans, near his knee. Stares the movement down instead of meeting Lance’s gaze and catching his fingers when Lance starts to make the pulled thread longer. He wants so badly to voice his thoughts, communicate his fears and the crushing weight of nervousness on his chest and comfort Lance, but he isn’t that brave or well-spoken. He feels a little bit better when Lance pulls his hand out from Keith’s to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him awkwardly into his side, a quiet understanding that neither of them has a clue what they’re doing.

Keith melts into his touch, welcomes the warm fuzz that takes over his brain when Lance begins to brush his shaggy bangs away from his forehead and ghosts his thumb over Keith’s temple.

Lance ducks his head closer to Keith’s to whisper in his ear. “Hm, I do want you to know that I’ll never be sorry for beating your top score in Space Invaders at the arcade, though. Royally handing you your ass will be one of my - if not the - greatest feats on the mainland.”

Things don’t really change all that much.

At least, not yet.

Lance still invites him over to eat ungodly amounts of junk food while binge-watching shows on Netflix and they wind up hopelessly tangled up on the couch after fervent kisses. Rachel still comes back to their shared apartment precisely at times like those and teases Lance relentlessly until he’s burying his flushed face in the crook of Keith’s neck.

Rachel still talks to Keith and they study together for a statistics course they share.

Lance gets onto him occasionally for trying Not To Inconvenience His Royal Highness. For example, he stopped texting or calling Lance in the middle of the night if he couldn’t sleep because insomnia or stress from school because he knows Lance would always drive over to Keith’s apartment, crawl into bed with him and let Keith talk it out or talk to Keith about anything and everything - sometimes in Spanish if Lance was too tired to notice the dialect swap and Keith didn’t point it out. It’s cathartic for both of them, but that was also when Lance was just a tired undergrad like him that enjoyed lavishing physical attention on Keith when he wanted it.

‘If you stop texting me for midnight cuddling, I will literally move into your hallway closet and never leave. I’ll eat all of your snacks and take back my hoodie.’

The only thing that did change that is driving Keith insane?

The floodgates to prince/royalty puns have opened and Keith is this close to never speaking to Lance again because they’re godawful and constant. It takes Keith a few weeks to pick up on a portion of them being to normalize the situation and to remind him that Lance is still Lance.

Oh, and apparently their ‘uncle’ that lives in town is actually a chaperone/bodyguard Joe-from-The-Princess-Diaries type. Keith had met him before and they got along, he liked Keith as far as he knew but now he’s rethinking every single interaction and every possible wrong step he could make because while Joe was wise and patient and kind and supportive - it was apparent he’d cut a bitch for the Queen and Mia.

Keith doesn’t want any trouble.

Weirdly enough, Lance and Rachel will randomly complain about royal things in front of him that he doesn’t really get, but it’s an opportunity for Keith to hit them back with snarky comments about royal life versus his as a mere commoner. Those always have Rachel and Lance laughing at themselves and begin the round of stories of increasingly convoluted social situations they’ve been in or had to witness.

This is the easy part, the calm before the storm, but Keith thinks he’s making great process accepting the fact that he doesn’t actually know a huge chunk of Lance’s life while simultaneously working through the minimal pain of needing to relearn the person his boyfriend actually is.

Their biggest hiccup to date was one night while they were all three crammed into Shiro’s kitchen cooking dinner, Lance asks for some seasoning and Shiro produces it with a cringe-worthy flourish, adopting some terrible combination of accents. “Your wish is my command, Your Majesty.”

Keith is willing to accept that this has to be how Nick felt the first time he heard Gatsby say Old Sport and every thousandth time after and move along with their evening when Keith looks over his shoulder to see Lance’s hand still outstretched for the shaker and his eyes resolutely glued to the floor. A second later, Lance shakes his head to pull himself back into the moment and offers a stilted grin to Shiro in return.

“Can we, uh, not do that? I-uh. Yeah.”

It gets them a free pass at cuddling on the couch, wrapped together like a burrito under Shiro’s good blanket, and Lance’s favorite dessert as an apology. Keith gets Lance to joke in hushed whispers, making up new dialogue or doing bad lipreading over the show they’re watching as he runs his fingers through Lance’s hair.

Things He Has To Relearn About His Boyfriend, A Prince

just because he wanted to go to Disney, doesn’t mean he wants to live there