Keith gets stuck waiting for Lance on missions where their rooms connect and it comes out one day as a biting insult on the same measure as mullet began "we're running late princess"
Lance HATES it he is not that high maintenance! They bicker for weeks about it and Everytime lance chooses to do something dramatic or exuberant the insult falls from Keith's lips
Princess and Mullet get tossed about more biting and often than usual even if it makes Allura turn her head ever so often in confusion
"Princess huh?" Pidge says with laughter much to lances distaste
"Lance is rather dramatic isn't he–" hunk adds with joy
Lance fumes
Keith smirks
It's funny, until it isn't
Until lance gets hurt on a mission and Keith holds him in his arms for the second time. A bonding moment lance will likely forget just the same as the first
"Stay with me Lance, open your eyes princess" but lances eyes only flutter weakly at the nickname
Lance gets out of a pod much later and says nothing to Keith but a soft "you called me princess."
To which Keith only says "I always do."
After that it's not said fully as a joke anymore. It's become the same level as mullet has, grown and shifted until it's something sort of endearment.
It's still a jab from time to time but lance has grown used to it. Used to hearing it in Keith's rasp or his laughter. Used to hearing it in Keith's rage or fear
It's something lance holds close to his heart now, not that he'd ever tell Keith that of course. Though... Lance is sure Keith knows anyways.
Dedicated to me calling my cat son princess (he's a diva and dramatic it suits him) and also to Lucy and I having the Convo on insta about it
in the post-war period where lance stays on earth with his family, keith finds that lance is now his sole tether to the planet. nothing else he needs is there. nothing else he loves is there. space is full of deserts like the sonoran, shacks like the one he grew up in, skies like the ones he looked up at as a hopeful kid. there’s no one in the universe like lance, though.
so he comes back. again and again. and he becomes kind of like a crow, bringing things back to the nest that he’s found in lance.
he collects trinkets, stories, words in other languages, candies. he never comes home (because lance is home) empty handed. he takes to sporadically keeping a journal of things he wants to remember to tell lance when connection gets spotty. entries include “got kolivan to say fuck like you dared me to. made mom laugh” and “saw an ocean the exact color of your eyes. pretty” and “gave food to a kid who looked weirdly like silvio but purple”. lance doesn’t know about the journal, doesn’t know that keith is always looking forward to how to tell lance about every new thing he sees.
and keith has no ulterior motive to this, he really doesn’t, it’s just how he’s learning to express his love (small wins for shiro’s pseudo parenting) but it has the natural effect of expediting lance’s readiness to go back to space. he loves hearing these things from keith - loves hearing him talk - loves the shelf in his room filled with little things keith and his friends have brought back for him - loves being remembered - but he wants it back for himself too, not just secondhand.
what solidifies this for lance is the time keith brings him back a necklace. it’s strange and beautiful and obviously valuable, not something you can shell out twenty gac for at a market. he asks keith to put it on for him and he does and as his hands lock the clasp lance feels like this is some sort of promise for forever, but the forever he wants is more free than what he’s giving himself. he kisses keith (and kisses him, and kisses him) and decides that he’s not giving up on his lifelong dream. war and loss have wounded him but beautiful things still exist - this man in front of him is proof - and he deserves a chance to see them, experience them, feel them.
he’s rooming with keith in a bom shop by the next week, and everything keith has ever given him comes with. there’s a new shelf of things from space, and they add to it together. shells and foreign coins clutter around pictures of their families. home isn’t just things, it’s not, but knowing that the two of them have made something together, own something together, even if it’s small, makes their tiny corner of the universe something special.
Lance pauses, hands stiffening where he had been carefully bandaging Keith’s stab wound. He looks up to meet indigo eyes, hazy with pain and whatever poison the blade had been doused in.
Adoring, as they stare into him. Lance swallows.
“What makes you say that?” he asks, entertaining it. His fingers tremble a little on the cloth he’s using, and he wills them to go still.
“I dunno,” Keith slurs, and he manages a huff of laughter at that. “You look like the love of my life.”
or, team leader and his exasperated right hand talk about love, in the midst of stab wounds and cave-ins
link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70001246
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“Lance,” Hunk said, and the utter solemnity of his voice caused Lance to look up. Hunk met his gaze and said, “I know you like to play hard to get, but this is one of those times where I need an actual answer. You can't gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss your way out of this one.”
Clenching his jaw, Lance looked away and picked up the fork.
“Do you want to contact him?” Hunk said plainly. “Regardless of whether you want to say goodbye, or clear the air, yell at him, whatever, is that something you want?”
Swallowing thickly, Lance set down the fork. And with a bracing breath, he said, “Yeah.”
nearly a decade after breaking up and cutting ties like an earthquake followed by surgical removal, an unaddressed letter reaches its intended recipient by chance. Lance resolves to get closure. unexpectedly, he gets more than that.
“They’re gonna last forever,” Lance says, knowing and breathless at once, still heaving a little from their escape. He closes his eyes, smile still big as he greets the air. “Just like us, right?”
Forever.
The small box in the pocket of Keith’s jeans thrums, the Altean magic imbued in the stone of the ring inside reacting to the beat of his heart.