Keith knew it was coming. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Lance doesn’t mind his own business regularly, but this involves him directly — of course he’d interrogate Keith about it. Keith can’t blame him.
“You know what this is about,” Lance says softly, walking over to sit next to Keith on the bed. It speaks volumes to how miserable Keith must look for Lance to approach this so calmly. Lance is great in a crisis, sure, but he isn’t usually gentle about it. He’s usually very firm when he’s explaining exactly how you fucked up. (And then endlessly kind in the hours he spends helping you fix it. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Keith sighs, forcing himself to look over at Lance even though all he wants to do was crawl under his bed and die in a puddle of mortification.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Talk to me, hotshot,” Lance prods, patting Keith gently on the hip. “One second you’re growling at everyone who smiles at me, big bad Galra fangs out and everything, and now you’re running away from me. We can’t have that, Red. We’re a team, now.”
Keith swallows roughly. He wishes more than anything, right then, that Shiro was back, and he didn’t have the burden of team leader on his shoulders as well as… this.
“I talked to Kolivan, like you said,” Keith whispers. “Uh, turns out we were both wrong. Apparently I’m going through Galra puberty, and presenting as a —“ he makes a face — “as an alpha.”
Lance blinks. “An alpha? Like a… wolf?”
“Kind of?” Keith huffs miserably. “It’s sign of sexual maturity, I guess. A secondary gender. Some present as alphas, some as betas, and some as omegas.”
“Okay…” Lance says slowly, “so you’ve presented. How does being an alpha equate to you acting all bonkers?”
Keith winces. Lord above, he wants to do anything but have this horrible conversation. “The whole point of the secondary genders is to mate, basically. Um.”
Lance starts to grin, very clearly taking a good amount of pleasure in Keith’s misery, because he is the king of schadenfreude.
“Oh, I see.”
“Shut up and let me finish my explanation,” Keith says hotly, but Lance only laughs.
“As I was saying. Because the whole purpose is to mate, we gets these — things. Mating periods, called ruts or heats.”
Lance giggles. Keith smacks him.
“Stop it. It’s not funny.”
“S — sorry,” Lance says, clearly not very sorry.
Keith rolls his eyes. “Whatever. The gist of the matter is that since I have presented as an alpha, I am in my first rut, and my dumbass monkey brain has decided that you’re a picturesque omega. It feels like my brain has latched onto any and all feelings I have for you, turned the horny meter up to eleven, and went ham, so I’ve admittedly been a little jealous.”
“Oh, Keith,” Lance says, and promptly loses his shit.
So much for being Keith’s right hand. So much for having his back.
God, why is Keith so gone on this asshole again?
“This is betrayal. I’m feeling very betrayed right now.”
Lance wheezes.
“I bare my most embarrassing conundrum to you, expecting sympathy —”
He wheezes harder.
“You — you dumbass —”
“And instead,” Keith says loudly, “I get mocked about something I cannot control. You are the worst.”
“Aw, baby,” Lance coos, finally getting himself under control. And, like. Lance calls Keith ‘baby’ all the time. It shouldn’t be a big deal.
But apparently, now that he’s a stupid alpha, it is.
Keith melts, slumping completely forward into Lance, and starts basically purring.
Lance snorts. “This part of that alpha shit too?”
“I don’t know,” Keith wails, reaching blindly to grab one of Lance’s hands and place it on his head. Thankfully Lance gets the hint and starts gently playing with his hair. “I just know that I’m horny all the fucking time, I get blindingly jealous every time some jackass looks at you wrong, and I want to simultaneously whisk you away somewhere where no one can ever hurt you and bend you over the nearest fucking table. Fuck.”
“Well, that last part isn’t new,” Lance says, and Keith can hear the stupid grin in his voice. “But I assume the rest of it is your brain deciding that I am your omega, and as such, the mate you must protect if your potential children are to survive?”
“I guess so,” Keith mumbles. “Sorry.”
“‘S’okay,” Lance assures, leaning down to press a kiss to Keith’s cheek with an exaggerated ‘mwah’ noise. “It’s the sashay, I think. I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass. Mamá always told me it would attract unwanted attention.”
Keith snorts. “Once again, Mamá McClain knows everything.”
“Mhm.”
Lance is quiet for a while, running calloused hands through Keith’s hair. He’s quiet for long enough that Keith is half asleep when Lance suddenly gasps, accidentally yanking on his hair in his excitement.
“Ow, babe, Jesus shit —”
“I have a plan!” Lance announces excitedly, ignoring Keith’s complaints.
Despite himself, Keith grins.
“You always do.”
“Yep! I know how to solve your whole big bad alpha schtick. C’mon. Up you get.”
Keith would love to say it’s because of his newfound weirdo hormones that he gets up and follows Lance immediately, without question, or pause. But unfortunately he knows that he was whipped as hell before presenting as an alpha, and will remain whipped as hell long after.
“Where are we going?”
Lance turns back to face him from where he’s dragging them out of Keith’s room and down the castle’s hallway, brown eyes
twinkling with mischief.
“To the training room.”
Keith narrows his eyes. “How is that going to help? Is it — are we going to do the sparring foreplay thing again? I thought Hunk said that was forbidden after he caught us making out.”
“We’re not going to do that,” Lance says, rolling his eyes like Keith is somehow the dumbass here, “duh. Even though it was kind of fun. But you’re getting all grisly and jealous because you’re ultra-protective right now, right?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“Well, then how about I lay you out on your ass fifteen or so times in the ring, and then your hindbrain knows I’ll be perfectly fine protecting myself?”
It’s not a bad plan. Lance has always been the logical one to Keith’s rampant emotion, and this plan is no exception — if Lance were to prove that he has no problem kicking ass, then Keith doesn’t have to worry anymore! It makes perfect sense!
But Keith knows that’s not all it is. For all the alpha-protective garbage his brain is doing is annoying and probably demeaning, Keith knows it comes from a protectiveness over Lance. A desperation to keep him safe. A huge fear of anything happening to him — a valid fear, with them on the front lines. There’s nothing that’s going to dim Keith’s intense need Lance to be okay, all the time; it’s just something he’ll need to fight until his rut is over.
But… Keith will never admit it, but he kind of likes it when Lance pushes him around. Futile or not, he’s not going to object to his boyfriend, sweaty and smug, kicking his ass for a couple hours.
“Sure, Lance. Let’s try it.”
Lance’s dorky cheer makes it all worth it.
