shinsou and kirishima, hurrying through the common room with a ladder and several different power tools: cmon, cmon we gotta hurry before he starts screaming again
aizawa: what are you two doing
shinsou, not looking back: kaminari got his head stuck in the ceiling
broke: allura sacrifices herself and lance lives out the rest of his life on his depression rancho
woke: lance is recognized for his amazing abilities as a pilot, becomes a teacher at the garrison with keith, the love of his life, and grows a small patch of the flowers outside the shack so that every time he sees them he remembers to call allura and the love of her life, romelle, to ask how being queens of the new altea is going
keith, wordlessly sitting down at the table with his hair in multiple braids and ribbons:
lance, looking up from his magazine and snorting: what happend to you, princess?
keith, shrugging before stealing the bowl of food goo away from lance and shoveling spoonfuls into his mouth: romelle was sad so i let her play with my hair to distract herself
lance, lovingly sighing and wiping some of the goo off his chin with his thumb: you’re my sun and stars, y’know that?
lance thought all the noise his armor was making would have announced his presence when he was on the ground, but he reaches the top of black’s head, finally pushing himself to stand, and keith isn’t looking back. he’s putting the hand he’d been using to scratch kosmo’s back back on his lap. lance can only see a shadow of his profile with the way the sun’s hitting his face and he looks--
good. he looks so, so good.
lance squeezes his eyes shut and takes a breath.
“man, you can be a real hard guy to find when you wanna be.”
the dazed look in keith’s eyes fade away as both he and kosmo make the small movement of a glance in lance’s direction. “hey, lance-- woah!” his head jerks back, eyes going wide. lance has half the mind to call him cute.
he doesn’t. he still has the other half, thank god.
“what are you wearing?”
he dismisses him with a hand, “don’t worry about it.”
“what, uh... what?”
lance loves a confused keith. lance loves a keith, period, and that’s a totally different problem, but a confused keith gets this little divot between his eyebrows and his mouth goes slack and it makes lance’s brain go ga ga. he lets himself grin, holding his arms out, “it’s my attempt to break into the fashion world with my bold new ideas. am i succeeding?”
“oh, definitely,” keith responds, the side of his mouth quirking up.
lance drops down to sit, his helmet falling over his eyes. keith reaches out to tip it back up and lance might die, right then and there, just let himself fall of the damn lion. “anything sprung on this sudden need to make a statement or you’re just feeling a little bit tin man-esque today?”
“i’m an ally to lesbians everywhere, keith,” lance says, leaning back on his hands let his head fall in keith’s direction. he raises his eyebrow and keith blinks at him. there’s something on his face lance can’t place and it might just be the fact he thinks lance is being weird as hell.
he snorts, looking back at the horizon, “romelle’s using me as her model. she wants to start ‘properly courting’ allura and apparently, in order to do that, coran says she needs to look like altean royalty.” he shimmies his shoulders for the pots to do their thing. “you’re looking at grade-a altean royalty, buddy. you should be kissing my ring or whatever.”
“i’m pretty sure your ring’s supposed to be holding keys, but okay.”
lance spreads his legs out so he can bump his foot against keith’s, “shut up. it’s for a good cause.”
“I won’t fight you on that,” keith says honestly. his eyes look like glass with the sun hitting them from behind. clear and depthless, god, lance wants to drown in them.
it’s hard to believe there was a time when they would fight about that. honestly, flashback a few years, lance would’ve gone full thunderdome just because of the keyring comment. now he wants to get his hands on keith, just in a different way.
keith taps the side of lance’s foot with his and just leaves it there like he knows what he’s doing, the bastard, “any reason i’m being found, lance?”
lance doesn’t stare at their shoes. he doesn’t. the sun’s a good enough view, throwing everything between orange and red and yellow. he’s forgotten earth but not its colors.
he sighs, takes the makeshift helmet off and puts it aside to lean his elbow on it, “what, i can’t just want to spend time with my buddy?”
“lance,” keith says. it’s not soft, but it means to be. his eyes do the rest of it for him, sun slipping behind them from the side since he’s decided to look at lance directly. they’re so awfully molten. lance wants--
“just in a funk today ‘s all,” lance says quietly, tucking one leg up to rest his chin on his knee. he doesn’t meet keith’s eye despite how blatantly he’s been glancing at his face because he really doesn’t think he can manage it at the moment.
he’s so happy for romelle and allura. god, he’s ecstatic, honestly, because allura is one of his best friends and she looks at romelle with all the stars she can possibly cup in her hands and romelle melts whenever allura smiles and lance wants them to be happy. he’d model hundreds of different dumb things if it meant they felt like they were doing things right.
he’s not jealous in the slightest. but he aches for it; for something like that. for someone to look at him like he’s really all they want to look at.
and he knows who he wants it to be, but honestly that seems like too much of a reach.
he bites his tongue. the deserts starting to paint itself purple and pink, the sands swirling the colors. “you up here to watch the sunset?”
lance feels keith’s eyes finally peel off him. he wants to rub at the spot on his cheek where they’d been burning.
“yeah,” keith murmurs. he’s mirroring lance’s position now except he has his arm perched on his knee instead of his chin (lance had read somewhere, once, about what mirroring means, but remembering that makes him feel dumb). “i just... i’m gonna miss it, i guess. might be a while before we get to see it again.”
lance nods. he had to say bye to everybody tonight. raquelle had made him promise to send out a message to ronnie at least once a week, which really meant if it wasn’t daily, she’d deck him when they got back.
when they got back, certainly.
“me too, man.”
“that’s why we’ve gotta end this war,” keith continues, half tired, half all that determination he has spilling from the seams.
lance is about to open his mouth to give a team cheer or something, his mind still actively churning to find some kind of tried and true way to make keith at least smile. he hasn’t done much of that, lately, and lance’s starting to forget which side his dimple was on.
(he hasn’t. it’s right beside his scar, deep and winking.)
(lance has wanted press his lips to it for so long--)
(he can’t actually forget.)
but keith makes him go quiet when he says, “and we’re gonna do it with the lance that’s the paladin of the red lion.”
lance’s back teeth click together.
the real kind of soft, then, “the lance that’s always got my back.”
he holds his breath because he’s pretty sure if he tried to make air go into his lungs right now, he’d breathe in keith’s words and they’d disappear.
“the lance who knows exactly who he is and what he’s got to offer.”
he looks. it’s a mistake, but he does, because christ, how can’t he?
keith looks back at him. his cheeks are pink, the sunset seeping in.
(more than the sunset. lance knows it’s more than the sunset.)
he can’t fathom how he’d ever thought keith as distant and cold as the dark side of the moon, an isolated body of rock to their dynamics.
he was so, so clearly the sun. close to it, at least, a star burning and burning and burning, red paladin proper still intact.
“what if i don’t?” lance hears himself whisper. he can whisper, now, because keith’s closer. he doesn’t know who made them closer. kosmo’s cocking his head at them curiously. “know, i mean?”
keith’s mouth parts. lance really only has to lean forward a little bit if he wants to kiss the confusion wrinkle this time.
“i’m secure as the red paladin. it took me a second, but i am. and i’ll always have your back, keith. that’s a fact. no matter what, i’m your right hand man and your partner, so i don’t have a doubt in my mind i’ll always be at your side.”
lance doesn’t know what the fuck possesses him to say it but he feels it, like a physical thing, less egging him on and more telling him to suck it up and grow a pair. bravado thrums under his hands.
“but i’m not so sure about the third thing.”
keith’s eyebrows grow homogeneous before slipping apart again. his face goes darker than pink, but there’s no shade of red in the sky to match it anymore. maybe his garrison suit jacket. or red herself.
“then...” his eyes dart down but lance doesn’t catch what he looks at because they lock again and lance forgets.
oh.
their fingertips brush.
“then we can help you,” and lance doesn’t feel disappointed, and keith must see the non-disappointment because he says with his full, raspy voice, “i-i can. i can’t tell you who to be, but i can tell you who you are. at least to me.”
just the fact he is someone to him.
lance might make their first knuckles overlap. he wants to tell him it rhymed, his instincts tell him to derail the conversation because keith’s knuckles are flames licking up his skin, he’s sticking his hand in the fire and it can’t be long before he--
“what am i to you?”
he pilots red. what’s a little fire?
keith’s breath hitches and lance-- he sees it, feels it, tactile as he never thought he’d be allowed.
“you’re,” keith says. oh, lance can feel his words. “you’re lance.”
they’re so, so heavy, meaning and purpose and intent, all in this package of lance’s name, five letters.
“and you’re keith,” lance echoes and prays he isn’t reading it all wrong.
one second. just his lips touching keith’s, barely, tasting like nothing and feeling like everything.
two and keith’s arms are being thrown around his neck to pull him back when he starts to lean back. lance gasps and keith gasps and he can’t tell the difference between the two. he has to use one hand to support himself but the other goes on keith’s waist, fingers settling into the spaces between his ribs.
they manage to adjust the angle so their noses aren’t bumping together anymore.
lance’s hand migrates upwards, he’s never been able to stay still for long, and he feels along the scar to tuck his thumb into the dimple, there, there, there.
“i gotta have you, y’know, “ he laughs breathlessly, because all of his is in keith’s lungs now, stolen to keep, please and thank you, “actually answer the question later--”
“lance,” keith says. it’s almost the old warning one, lance, but it’s too fond, now.
(it’s not actually that different, once lance thinks back. god.)
so lance smiles, pressing it to the corner of keith’s, we match, “keith.”
“we can’t do this,” keith warns and lance feels something lodge in his throat until. “we’re not making that a thing. i can’t feel that everytime you say my name.”
lance presses their foreheads together, “feel what?”
“don’t enjoy it.”
“how can’t i enjoy something with you,” he ducks down to kiss the spot on keith’s neck guarding his heartbeat, “keith.”
it stutters. just like keith, then, warming up and going, “dude, come on--”
lance raises his head, “you aren’t allowed to call me dude, man, we’re making out.”
“dude,” keith repeats with a smirk to boot and doesn’t dive, because lance doesn’t think he has the coordination to dive, at least not yet, but certainly surges forward to slot their lips together again. lance does not make that embarrassing noise when keith bites his bottom lip gently, kisses it, “don’t tell me what to do. also man’s not much better.”
lance recovers because he has to, gleefully tipping keith back with another kiss, trailing along his jaw with each name, “okay, fine. you prefer babe? sweetheart? buttercup? pumpkin? mi amor, mis estrellas--”
“all those are good,” keith says faintly and lance laughs. keith joing in a second later and hauls him back up.
they only stop because of the physical act of almost rolling off of black’s nose. kosmo grabs the back of keith’s collar and their suddenly on the desert ground, keith in lance’s lap with the stars crowning his head beautifully.
“holy shit,” lance wheezes and sits up, sucking in breaths against keith’s shoulder. “i was so sure we were gonna go splat.”
“black would’ve caught us,” keith says without an ounce of worry, the motherfucker (lovely motherfucker as he was), looking up at black. his eyes seem to glow for a second before dimming.
the same thing that told him to grow a pair nudges him again.
lance feels his eyes widen a fraction.
oh. okay. alright.
he shakes himself out to get back on the topic, looking at keith in full.
“well, now that we got our minds jogged up,” he squeezes keith’s sides under his hands. keith pulls at the hair on the nape of his neck. “we, uh... boyfriends?”
keith’s nose scrunches with his smile, a double combo smackdown with the dimple that lance had only seen once or twice before and, oh, i want to make you look like that all the time, baby.
“if we get to do more of that... boyfriends is good,” keith nods.
lance grins and stands, whirling keith around. the pots bang.
he stops. keith’s thinking the same thing and he knows it.
lance sets him down and takes his hand, calloused as his but rough in different parts. it’s sort of sweaty and it’s perfect.
“so we’re not mentioning the part where i had sausages around my neck and pots on my shoulders to people when we tell them what out first kiss was like, right?”
keith raises an eyebrow, “why would we tell people in the first place?”
“you’ve met the rivieras, no?”
“we’re absolutely not leaving that part out,” keith says seriously. kosmo nudges lance’s hip and he drops his other hand to scratch behind his ear as they start walking. “for posterity.”
“babe,” lance whines and keith swings their joint hands once, looking forward. the dimple betrays him.
lance wants to kiss it and he does.
keith turns his head at the last minute to catch him back. just a moment. sweet and final.
“i’ll tell you what you are to me later, okay? when i can... organize the words better in my head.”
lance snorts and takes a step back to keep walking, kosmo bounding ahead. “you don’t have to. i get the message well enough.”
“i want to,” keith insists. and he looks at lance--
like--
the things he would do for this boy. the things he wouldn’t, really, would be a shorter list.
“okay,” lance says. he’s smiling.
keith is too, soft and perfect on his gorgeously flushed face.
lance felt like he could end any war for that face. they walked back to everybody else and lance didn’t feel worried, if not for a night.
