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part one

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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.