Keith is well and completely aware that his boyfriend is, objectively, a bad bitch.
He’s seen him shoot through the crook of someone’s arm to disable an entire warship. He’s seen him wink and brush by seasoned Blade and send them stumbling. He’s seen him choke someone out with his legs alone. (He’s been choked out by Lance legs. Several times. He’s even instigated that happening.)
But one thing Lance is before anything else; before he is a paladin, before he is a friend, before he is a badass, before he is anything, he is a complainer.
“You never take me anywhere,” he is fond of whining, as if they are not on a floating hunk of metal and polymer in dead space at all times. Or getting shot at. They are in the equivalent of the cross-Atlantic highway at three in the morning in a century old car that breaks down every two hundred miles like clockwork, and also sometimes they just get bombed out of nowhere. That is their life.
We never do anything, he says. Bah. Sometimes he thinks he is going to scoop his boyfriend up and — throw him at something.
But he knows that would never. Not really. As much as Lance drives him batty (and he does drive him fucking batty — he’s been huffy at Keith for a week because Keith didn’t listen to him on a mission, in a dream, and died. He has had an attitude for six days), he really and truly loves Lance more than anything. He loves the way Lance snorts when he laughs and trips over his own two feet more often than not and talks in his sleep and forgets English words and shrugs about it. He loves the magnitude of Lance’s smile and the endless brown of his eyes and the way he always kisses Keith’s clavicle before bed and doesn’t know he does it. He loves the way Lance leans into him without thinking when they sit next to each other and holds his hand when they walk. He loves how Lance fights for a way to meet his eyes when missions go to shit and asks him what to do next just to help Keith focus on something. He loves the way that his jacket was mysteriously fixed the time the old thing wore a hole along the seams and Lance played dumb about it like it could have been anyone else. He loves the way Lance coos over every animal they stumble across, no matter how horrifying, the way he cries his eyes out at every single movie and smacks anyone who looks at him. He loves the way Lance’s entire person always just seems to bubble out of him, like he’s holding his bleeding heart with open fingers.
Keith loves him in a way he didn’t think he deserved. And so it bugs him, really, that he can’t take Lance places, can’t buy him every ugly flower he wants or take him to hole-in-the-wall clubs to dance like Keith knows he wants to or even just go to the space mall with him.
Floating junkmobile in space or not, Keith is going to treat him or die trying. He is.
“So we’re not even close to something with gravity?” Keith clarifies, perhaps a touch desperate.
“Farther than your brain can conceptualise to even an asteroid,” Coran confirms, with no subtle amount of amusement.
Keith purses his lips. “Could we, like…travel there?”
Coran holds his gaze for a moment, eyebrow raised, then returns to the medical supplies he was sorting through.
“I’m quite fond of not getting ambushed.”
“What if you just dropped me off? Then you can go back to not getting ambushed.”
“I’ll keep my comm on! For real this time! Just a couple vargas.”
“Unfortunately not, Number Three.”
Keith does his best to widen his eyes the way Lance does it when he’s trying and succeeding at getting his way. He somehow dilates his pupils on command, which Keith doesn’t know how to do, but he figures he can most certainly try. Coran likes him, anyway. He said so.
“Child.” Look of amusement still slotted firmly on his face, and also somehow sporting a piece of wizened reading glasses that he was not wearing three seconds ago, Coran carefully sets down the equipment he’s holding, standing to walk over to Keith. He places a hand on Keith’s shoulder and leans in. “I am not dropping off one of the leaders of Voltron alone on a swap moon for a ‘couple vargas’. You understand why.”
Keith sighs petulantly. “I would get super murdered.”
Coran hums. “You would get super murdered, yes.”
He claps Keith’s back heartily, nearly sending Keith sprawling, then turns back to his sorting. Keith waits til his back is turned to silently and dramatically fall to his knees and mime screaming like Troy Bolton in the third High School Musical Movie (Shiro has too much of an influence on him). He had really hoped Coran would magically have a solution.
“Although,” Coran says, making Keith jump and scramble to his feet (thank every deity to ever exist that Coran keeps his back turned or Keith would crumble to humiliated dust), “if you’re looking for a change of scenery for whatever reason, there are lots of secluded places in the castle.”
Keith flushes red. He knows that’s not how Coran means it — only Hunk knows about them, having magically been able to keep his mouth shut after the whole found-your-lion debacle — but he can’t help where his mind goes, and he’s standing in front of someone who is for all intents and purposes his father, basically, or at least one of them, and it’s horrible and embarrassing and the worst. Imagining that in front of Coran, who once cried and told him he’s just so proud of the man he’s becoming, is just — no. He can’t handle having a father figure again. He’s going back to being a sad orphan.
“Okay bye Coran,” he says loudly and tellingly, practically sprinting out of the room in mortification. He considers ducking into his room to see if Lance is there, but he knows Lance will ask what’s up, and the idea of explaining to him and then hearing him laugh himself to tears adds a beautifully shiny cherry to his sundae of suffering and he decides otherwise.
He ducks instead into the kitchen, hoping it’ll be empty at this time so he can eat his feelings away, but of course that’s not the case. Hunk stands with his hands on his hips at a counter, knife clenched in his right hand, glaring at what Keith hopes is a vegetable of some kind.
“Hey, Keith,” Hunk calls, slowly moving his knife so as to not startle the vegetable.
The vegetable twitches. Keith pretends it doesn’t, choosing to ignore its existence and hoisting himself up to sit on the counter while Hunk is too distracted to stop him.
“I have a dilemma,” he whines when Hunk fails to ask further questions.
“You and Lance are slowly morphing into the same person,” Hunk comments idly. “I have to deal with two of you now. It’s exhausting. Go back to hating each other.”
“Ugh.” He makes a sudden move towards the nightmare vegetable and it panics, throwing itself off the counter in sad vegetable suicide and splatters on the floor. Hunk sighs for a very long time, then reaches for a rag. “Tell me about your dilemma then, catboy. I am looking forward to clowning you.”
“I need to take Lance on a date,” Keith says. “An amazing one.” He tries to be cool and normal for three seconds before remembering that Hunk caught them making out on a moon when they still pretended to hate each other and knows there is no worse shame. “One that is worthy of him, you know? I want him to feel treasured.”
Hunk raises his eyebrows. “Take him to the space mall to commit crimes again. He loves doing that.”
Keith tilts his head to the side, considering. “Well, maybe. But we do that all the time. Plus anyone could just walk in on us.”
Hunk groans loudly, chucking the dirty rag at Keith’s face. Keith manages to dodge but only barely.
“You two and your stupid sneaky shit. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to cover for you two so you can giggle about your secrets?”
Keith grins guiltily. “Love you, Hunk.”
“Shut up. I hate you. When everyone finds out I’m going to point and laugh. I don’t even understand why you bother.”
Keith shrugs, twisting the rag sound his fingers. “It’s not…” He sighs. Hunk must sense the shift in the air, because he stops what he’s doing and hoists himself up next to Keith, even though he hates it when people sit on the counter, and leans against him. Keith shoots him a small, grateful smile.
“There’s something special when it’s just the two of us, I guess. Like being in our own little blanket fort. The lighting’s low and every sound feels muffled and it’s hard to breathe and everything else fades, for a bit.”
Keith doesn’t know how else to describe it. His Pa used to build him blanket forts, when he was really little, and he would stay in there until it collapsed on top of him. The same safe feeling settles in his chest when he lies in bed with Lance, when they stand back to back in battle, when they’re as closely pressed together as they can be. Like he’s wrapped in blankets and floating on air.
“Do that, then,” Hunk says softly. He grabs Keith’s hand and squeezes it softly. “Lance loves you, dude. He just wants to spend time with you. He complains because of who he is as a person, but he doesn’t…he swoons about you, man. It’s honestly kind of embarrassing.”
For all of his poking and whining, Lance was the one to move his stuff into Keith’s room. It was Lance who pulled him in with a smirk when Keith knocked on that door, asking what they were next. Lance who pulls him back under the covers in the morning and peppers kisses to his skin, Lance to whisper their first I-love-you, fast and near silent like a gasping inhale, Lance who thought Keith was asleep when he whispered you make me happy like no one else into his hair.
Lance wants him. Plain and simple. In whatever way they have, floating piece of junk or not.
“You got something?” Hunk murmurs.
“Yeah,” Keith says softly. He smiles at his friend, eyes crinkling when he grins right back. “Yeah, I got something.”
He thinks about blanket forts and low lighting and feeling like floating. He thinks about the first time they were ever a team on the castle. He thinks about all the picnic dates in all the romcoms Lance makes him watch.
Suddenly he can’t sit still for another moment. His blood feels like it’s buzzing, and his fingers twitch. He has an idea and if he doesn’t implement it immediately he’s gonna die.
“Get out of here,” Hunk says tiredly, shaking his head in amusement. “You stress me out. Go bother Lance.”
Keith presses a smacking kiss on his cheek because he is, at the core of him, annoying. The action startles a laugh out of him, because at the core of him, Hunk is not nearly as much of hater as he pretends to be.
He runs out of the room to Hunk’s rolled eyes and his own wide grin, heading straight for the pool — he’s got some prep to do.
He’s shifty the whole day and he knows it. Lance knows it too, based on the narrowed, judgemental eyes, long, considering glare, and the way he flicks Keith on the forehead mid-spar and says “You’re being shifty, weirdo.”
Keith grabs his hand and kisses it just to make Lance smile on reflex and then scowl about smiling when he’s trying to be mad. It’s all very predictable and amusing.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says lightly. He even pitches his voice to sound more innocent and everything, just like Adam taught him.
They go back to sparring, and Keith can’t keep the smile off his face for the life of him. He’s just — so excited. He can’t wait. (And, also, his refusal to answer Lance’s questions is visibly pissing him off, and that’s always fun.) He makes an excuse after a couple hours, kissing Lance loudly and obnoxiously on the cheek before running off, leaving him in the training room and circling the castle three times to make sure he’s not being followed before ducking into the kitchen. As Hunk had promised yesterday when Keith had explained his plan, there are dozens of supplies laid out on the counter and a detailed instruction manual. Keith makes a mental note to clean Hunk’s tools until they are shining in thanks.
Keith, says a pink post-it note on the manual, you’re a whipped loser. Love, Hunk.
Keith grins, folding up the note and tucking it in his pocket. He takes inventory of the supplies, making a special note of the weirdo lump shaped fruit that Keith knows taste like strawberries, that Lance is obsessed with and Hunk often has to literally claw out of his hands when they’re on ship so that Lance doesn’t eat them all. (Actually, now he just puts a lock on the fridge. It’s a problem. Lance loves those strawberries more than Keith, probably.)
Confident that Hunk will keep Lance distracted and praying that no one comes into the kitchen and asks him what the hell he’s doing, Keith gets started. He chops up vegetables, whisks up batters, cuts sandwiches into cool shapes (a sword, Mothman, and an elaborate brachiosaurus) for three straight hours, tucking everything away into a basket and then into the very back corner of the fridge and hiding it behind a case of soda that no one but Keith likes. He barely manages to finish cleaning up the kitchen by the time Shiro and Pidge stroll into the room to get dinner, and both of them eye him suspiciously.
“You’re early,” Pidge says, eyebrows raised.
“You’re never early,” Shiro adds. “I usually have to go send someone to drag you.”
“I’m hungry,” Keith says primly. He’s not, really, since he’s been snacking on stuff as he’s been cooking, but he marches over to the goo machine and squirts himself a bowl anyway. He’ll pull a Lance and feed half of it to the mice, it’ll be fine.
The rest of the team files in a few minutes later; Allura with her hair stuck up in a million places and her nose nearly pressed to her tablet, Coran guiding her by the shoulders so she doesn’t walk right into the counter (again); Hunk and Lance side by side, Lance aggressively swinging their joined hands.
“Hello!” he announces loudly to the room, and it says something about him that every single one of them smiles on reflex, saying hi back.
Lance takes his usual spot next to Keith, Shiro on his other side, Hunk across from them. Under the table, Keith links their ankles together, because no one will look for it and every time it makes a pleased flush grow on the back of Lance’s neck.
“Guess what,” Lance says twenty seconds into a comfortable silence because nothing makes Lance squirm like not talking for ten seconds.
Allura sets her tablet down because she is nosey. “What?”
“I beat Keith at sparring today. Twice,” Lance brags.
Keith scowls at his goo. That’s true, but only because he fought dirty. Keith had him pinned and Lance kissed him, and what was Keith supposed to do, shrug that off? Unlikely. And unrealistic. It’s not like Lance is going to be doing that to fight enemies.
“Because you cheated,” Keith mutters.
“Nope, nuh uh, didn’t happen. You are just old and grey and losing your abilities.”
“I’m barely one year older than you!” Keith cries.
Lance smirks. “Elderly, basically. Geriatric. I went easy on you today because I was worried about your knees.”
“Boys,” Shiro interrupts sharply.
“One meal,” the Black Paladin sighs, hand sliding down his face. “Just — one fucking meal, where you two don’t fight.”
“I don’t get it,” Pidge comments, irritated furrow to her brows. “You guys hang out, like, all the time. You’d think you’d be able to talk without jabbing at each other.”
“I think they’re just weirdos,” Hunk says flatly looking at them with a very pointed expression. “I think they just enjoy going at each other. Like weirdos.”
Beside him, Lance averts his eyes, biting his lip to hold back laughter. Keith looks away so he doesn’t have to do the same.
“Sorry, Shiro,” Keith says, working hard to keep his tone neutral. “I’ll do my best to not rise to Lance’s bait.”
“And I’ll try really hard to be okay with stinky mullet’s presence as a whole,” Lance promises.
Shiro only shakes his head and sighs harder. Keith reaches over and pinches his boyfriend’s thigh in revenge.
After dinner, and an aggravated pinching contest that ends with them straight up brawling beside the table and the team looking like they wanted to pelt food good at them, they wait for everyone else to head out to the common room before making their way down to their rooms.
“We’re not joining everyone else?” Lance questions, looking pointedly at their joined hands, blatant as they are in the hallway.
Keith hums, lifting their joined hands and looping around Lance’s shoulders, pulling him closer. Lance stumbles into him, laughing as Keith manages to catch him and keep them both upright.
“Nope,” Keith says, smiling into his hair. He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively — God, he really is becoming Lance. “They’re all tired of us, I think. Perfect opportunity for us to have some time without any interruptions, I was thinking.”
Lance grins. “Sounds good to me.”
The stumble into their room giggling.
Hours later, Lance is half asleep on his chest, and Keith traces lazy shapes onto his back. The hallways are quiet, even if he strains his ears. The only thing he can hear is Lance’s even breathing, and the steady thud of his heartbeat. He checks his watch — ten thirty. Everyone else is asleep or close to it.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, lips pressed to Lance’s hair. “Wake up.”
“Good.” Keith shifts slightly, forcing Lance’s head to move, which earns him a sharp smack on the arm. He grabs Lance’s wrists and holds it there, rubbing a thumb on the palm of his hands. “Up you get.”
Lance groans loudly. “I am comfortable,” he laments. “Your tiddies are comfortable. I’m not moving, Pillow. Lie down in silence and be grateful you have the honour of sleeping with me. I’m a delight.”
Keith snorts, but doesn’t back down. “Get up or I tip you over.”
“Yeah, right.” Lance settles right back in, confident in the knowledge that Keith would do nothing of the sort.
Careful to tuck his hand over the back of Lance’s head and neck, Keith flips them over at whip speeds, sending them sprawling over the side of the bed and onto the floor in a heap of skewed blankets and flailing limbs.
“You’re such a butthead!” Lance shrieks, smacking him repeatedly on the chest. Keith once again grabs both his wrists and holds tight, pinning him to the floor with his own body weight. He knows Lance isn’t really mad because he hardly puts up a struggle.
“I love you,” Keith says in response, leaning over to peck his boyfriend smack between the eyes. Lance huffs, grinning. “Come on. We’re going somewhere.”
“Ugh,” Lance groans again, but he grabs the hand Keith offers and pulls himself up anyway. He mutters derisively the entire time he gets dressed, but Keith wisely decides not to push it. “Let’s go, dingus. You better be bringing me to a five-star restaurant and then hotel.”
Keith bites back a grin. He knows his line.
“And where the fresh hell am I meant to find that, bastard?” he responds dutifully, wrapping his arm around Lance’s waist and tucking a hand into his back pocket as they walk.
Lance smiles coyly, leaning into him. “That sounds like a you problem.”
Keith rolls his eyes, smiling. “C’mon. We gotta stop in the kitchen first.”
Ignoring Lance’s pestering questions, which is one of his favourite hobbies, Keith steers them towards the fridge and grabs the basket he prepared, tucking it under his arm before Lance can steal it to look.
“If you peek I’m tossing it in the incinerator,” Keith warns.
Lance pouts. “That’s biphobic.”
“Nope. I just found out the love of my life doesn’t accept me for who I am. I’ll try to choke it down, try to get over it, but it’ll eat me alive. Every night after you fall asleep I’ll cry until I pass out. Resentment will build. Eventually I’ll start turning away every time you kiss me. And then we’ll fight, and I will be too heartbroken to defend our relationship, and then all will crumble and we’ll be bitter exes until we die. I see it all now.”
“There are actual playwrights that are less dramatic than you,” Keith observes, looking at Lance’s gesturing in amusement. “I’m pretty sure most of them would beg for lessons.”
“They would be lucky as hell to have me.”
“They would be, baby.” He’d aimed for mocking, but his voice comes out fond and gooey and whipped and he knows it. Lance knows it too, judging by the shy little smile he sports, the pleased flush on his cheeks.
“Where are we even going?” he asks, a clear change of subject. “We’ve been walking the halls for ninety years.”
Keith scoffs. “We have not. And we’re going to the pool.”
Lance stops them mid-step, groaning. “Aw, come on! It’s nearly eleven, Keith!”
“And?” Keith asks, tugging him forward. He goes, but not without whining.
“You are the worst pool partner. You never just want to chill and float. Oh, no, it’s gotta be laps, you fuckin’ jock. Fuckin’ — olympic tryhard ass.”
Keith doesn’t even try to hold back his laughter, and through all his groaning Lance is laughing, too, and even when he’s complaining and being ridiculous and mocking Keith, Keith loves him. There’s not a second of the day when Keith doesn’t.
“Just come on,” he says, finally pulling them into the pool. “You’ll like it. I promise.” He holds his hands up to Lance’s eyes, raising a brow in question, then laying his palms over the top of Lance’s face when he isn’t told to stop.
Lance sighs, but he lets himself get manhandled, let’s Keith guide him up the walls like Coran showed them until they’re finally settled at the edge of the pool. Keith sets down the basket, takes a deep breath, and removes his hands from Lance’s face.
“Happy everyday,” he says quietly.
It takes Lance a moment to register the set up in front of him — the giant blow up kiddie pool floating on the real pool, layered in pillows and blankets. The projector on the wall, queueing Lance’s favourite movie — 10 Things I Hate About You, even though Keith can’t stand that movie and never lets it get picked during family movie nights. The soft lighting sending waves of dappled light reflecting all over the room, making the browns of Lance’s eyes shine gold. The scent of chocolate covered strawberries coming from the now-open picnic basket in Keith’s hands.
Lance m, predictably, bursts into tears.
“You — you jerk,” he cries, flinging himself onto Keith, who barely manages to catch him with an oof. “You are — the worst person alive. I despise you.”
Keith grins, setting down to basket to hold Lance in his arms properly, squeezing him as tight has he can, trying to — say, what he feels, with his body alone. Because there aren’t words for it, he doesn’t think, the way Lance is the first person he seeks out in any room he’s in, the way one touch from Lance has the tension melting from his body in bad days. How even when they’re at their worst and screaming in each other’s faces, there’s a voice in Keith’s head three times louder than anger that booms, don’t you dare hurt him. How he hasn’t felt this kind of safe with a person since his Pa; since he was tiny and young and not afraid of the world yet.
“I take it I win this dating thing?” Keith teases, face tucked into the crook of Lance’s neck.
Lance laughs wetly, breath still shuddering and tears still leaking out of his eyes, and turns his head to kiss him slowly, hands pressed to either side of his face.
“You’re a dickhead and I love you more than air,” he says, smile wide and breathtaking. Keith has to bite back to urge to do something insane like ask him to marry him. God. He’s so — hngh. How is Keith supposed to explain. What he is to him.
“C’mon,” Keith says instead of any of that, voice kind of hoarse. He wraps their hands together and pulls them closer to the edge of the pool, kneeling down and reaching out to steady the floatie and holding it as Lance crawls in. He hands him the basket and tumbles in after him, falling onto his chest, and he feels it shame as Lance laughs, quiet and fond, and he knows he won’t be able to move away. So he settles into him and Lance’s hands come up automatically to rest in his hair, and Keith fumbles for the remote and plays the movie and hands him strawberries and watches Kat and Patrick fall in love and thanks anyone who is out there, from every atom in his body, for getting Lance’s dumb ass tied to a tree and having Keith the only one available to save him. And for the magnetism, between them, and the way Keith has never been able to hide himself from him.
“I love you,” Lance whispers as Kat reads her poem, fingers tangled around locks of Keith’s hair. “I mean it. I do.”
Keith turns his head slightly to kiss the inside of his knee, eyes closed, breaths heavy. “I know.” He lets himself bask in it, Lance’s love, and smiles. “I love you, too.”
