Keith coughs. “We, uh, we got married.”
“Accidentally,” Lance pipes up, because he can see the Stress Muscle in Shiro’s eyebrow start to twitch, and doesn’t want him to start freaking out which will make Keith get defensive and put his foot in his mouth — he’s as bad as Lance, really — and then the whole thing will be more difficult to handle than it already is. “It’s a whole big thing.”
Shiro stares at them for several minutes, then sighs, sitting heavily onto the kitchen floor with his bowl of goo. He shovels a bite in his mouth, then reaches blindly for the intercom switch on the wall, slapping around until he finally manages to hit it.“Team,” he says tiredly as it crackles to life, “please make your way to the kitchen. Keith and Lance made something stupid again.” He drops his hand back down, returning his full attention to his goo, committing to pretending Keith and Lance aren’t in the room.
“I resent that ‘again’,” Keith mutters petulantly. “We’ve been remarkably well-behaved lately.”
“No,” Shiro says, without a second of hesitation. He doesn’t bother arguing.
It doesn’t take the rest of the team long to get here — Hunk and Allura have appeared to have sprinted, drama loving bastards — and they join Shiro on the floor, turning expectant eyes to the Red and Black Paladins. After a look of deliberation, Keith and Lance sit down, too.
“Tell them what you just told me,” Shiro says, voice garbled through his food goo.
Lance knows he should feel nervous. Or worried, or scared, or embarrassed, even, about getting literally magically bound to his self-proclaimed rival (once a rival always a rival) because he got brained by the jacket that he left unattended. It is, objectively, a sitcom-level ridiculous situation. He knows that he is going to be shamed, and possibly gently bullied.
Keith’s hand still grips him tightly. Lance doubts the Black Paladin has noticed, but every so often he runs his thumb over his knuckles, and every time he does his lips twitch up in the slightest smile. Lance couldn’t feel anything but ludicrously happy if he tried.
Plus. He and Keith just, like, made out in the hallway a bunch. If Lance is being honest, his brain is still kind of fuzzy. He’s half focused on everyone else and half focused on replaying the feeling of Keith’s hands pressed to his cheeks, cupping his face, kissing him like he was drowning and Lance’s lungs were the only place he could get oxygen. He’s still kind of lightheaded, and keeps having to fight off giggles.
“We got married,” Lance says, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face.
As much as the team is used to their shit, that visibly shocks them. Coran squints at them and types something rapidly into his tablet. Pidge cusses and hands Allura a handful of GAC, which she pockets with a cackle. Hunk is the only outlier, the only one with a reaction Lance can’t place: he straightens up, looking between them with narrowed eyes, mouth flattened into a line.
“It was an accident,” Keith assures, much like Lance did earlier. But instead of expressing is understanding, Hunk’s eyebrows only climb higher. Lance gets the same distinct feeling he gets when he knows he pressed the Wrong dialogue option in a video game.
“I hope you didn’t marry my best friend on accident, Kogane.”
Lance puts his head in his hands. He can physically feel the panic leeching from his husband’s (!!) body. He considers all the ways he can murder his best friend and make it look like an accident. He honestly doesn’t think he’s ever been this mortified in his life.
“No no no, I didn’t mean accident, well I guess I did —”
“Hunk,” Lance says through grit teeth. Hunk gives him a ‘what did I do’ look, stubborn set to his shoulders. Lance vows to take a seam ripper to his shirts.
“— like it was technically not a planned sequence of events, per se, if you want to look at things technically —”
Hunk continues to stare at Keith with his eyebrow raised and his arms crossed. Lance digs around in his pockets for something to chuck at his face.
“— if it went according to how I’d planned it in my head there would be more flowers involved, probably, and we’d be on Earth at least, but it kind of just happened, you know? It was so fast I swear I couldn’t have done anything —”
Lance tears his gaze away from Hunk and stares at his rambling mess of a husband. Any annoyance practically evaporates from his system as the implications of Keith’s words set in.
“You thought about marrying me?”
Keith flushes redder than he already is. “I’m not answering that.”
Lance barely manages to shove down the giddy laughter that bubbles up his throat. Keith, his crush, his rival, his husband, spent time daydreaming about marrying Lance. And kissing him, probably, and holding him and building a future with him. Keith maybe even got just as flustered as Lance did when they got too close, back off when sparing got a little too close, breathing heavy. The knowledge is exhilarating. Lance leans over, pressing his beaming smile to Keith’s lips. He softens immediately.
“I thought about marrying you, too.” He smirks. “Among other things.”
Keith’s gloved hand finds it’s way back up to his cheek, for the second time today, and the blood rushing in his ears downs out the sound of Pidge gagging.
“Gross. Can we force them to divorce? This is worse than the pining.”
“Physically impossible for me to divorce him,” Lance murmurs, distracted. “Since he technically owns me, now. Kind of.”
Keith makes a face. “I hate that a little.” He presses one last chaste kiss to Lance’s mouth before pulling away. It’s casual, and small, but the novelty of it is not lost on Lance.
He was not kissing Keith this morning, that was for certain.
It’s not until Lance manages to blink away his ga-ga eyes that he realizes that the rest of the team is looking at him in shocked confusion, and it clicks that his sentence would, sans context, be kind of horrifying to hear.
“Oh,” he blurts, without thinking, “I’m a Selkie.”
“You’re bad at this whole revelation thing,” Keith notices. “I think my Galra thing was somehow handled better.”
To his credit, Keith’s observation isn’t too far off. If anything everyone’s shock has only worsened, and it’s clear that Lance’s messy, half-explanations aren’t going to do much. The Alteans could probably do with some actual historical context, but for now, Lance thinks a demonstration is the wisest choice. And since he doesn’t have an ocean available to him, he decides to do the next best thing.
He slips his jacket carefully over his shoulders, spreading it out over his legs and gently running his fingertips over the rough canvas. Just as in his room, the fabric begins to blur, warp, change. He understands the change that is happening — it is his coat, after all; his own flesh — but he cannot find the words to describe it. There may not be. The coat simply changes in a way that is not comprehensible by non-Selkie eyes, as evidenced in the various strangled noises of bewilderment around him. Even Keith looks at the pelt in awe, unused to Earthen magic.
“How long have you been a seal person?” Pidge asks, hands twitching like she’s itching to touch.
“Two decades,” Lance says drily.
It doesn’t take long for the shock to melt away. That’s due in part to everyone’s curiosity, and the rest is because, as Lance suspected, their lives are just so goddamn weird — this Selkie thing just doesn’t even make top ten.
“So was that what the whole dramatic running out of the common room was about earlier?” Hunk clarifies.
Lance nods. “Yeah. I didn’t…I got too comfortable. Left my pelt out, Keith tossed it at me, boom, it’s not longer mine. Luckily I was wrong about how dangerous that is, ‘cause I didn’t lose my free will or anything, but I am essentially married to Keith now. So.” He turns to his husband and grins. “I don’t think he minds.”
Ignoring Pidge’s mutter of “here we go again,” Keith smiles back, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek.
“I’m sorry you weren’t comfortable before.”
Lance looks up at Shiro, startled by the seriousness in his voice. His tired look from earlier is gone, replaced with something narrow-eyed, serious.
“You said you got too comfortable.” He gestures to Lance’s lap. “With your pelt. I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell us.”
“And I’m sorry for threatening you, Keith,” Hunk adds. “Well, it was barely a threat, but still.”
Keith reaches over to pat his shoulder. “All good, man. It was understandable. Lance probably warrants some threatening on his behalf.”
Lance narrows his eyes. He’s sure that’s an insult, somehow.
“Hunk, do not scare my husband away with your foolishness —”
“I know you’re just saying that to have an excuse to say ‘my husband’, you whipped simp —”
“Fuck off, no one asked you —”
“Pardon my interruption,” Coran says, holding up a hand. “But what is a Selkie?”
Allura raises her hand as well. “I would also like to know!”
“If I’ll be honest, I’m not that familiar with the legend either,” Pidge admits.
Lance pauses for a moment, considering. He knows that explaining everything would take a long time, and he knows he doesn’t have the energy for that. It’s something you learn over time, anyway, over years of stories at the right time. He can simplify some information, though. Get the point across.
“I’m not human,” he starts carefully. “I’m also not alien, not not-human. It’s complicated.” He runs his hand over the soft fur of his coat. “My pelt is like…a physical manifestation of my soul, I think. My quintessence? I’m not entirely sure. But when I wear it, I become another form of mine. Kind of like your shapeshifting, maybe? I turn into a seal, but I’m still very much me. And it’s not like I’m a seal with a human brain, or whatever. I’m a seal, I’m a human, I’m a Selkie. I’m never not those three things.”
Pidge cocks her head. “So you’re a seal right now?”
“Yeah. I’m a Selkie, I have to be. Unless my pelt were to be truly lost, I guess. If someone set it on fire I wouldn’t be a Selkie anymore. I’d lose my soul.”
Keith looks determinedly at him. “I won’t let that happen.”
“No shit,” Lance says, raising an amused eyebrow. “That’s your job now, Mullet. The pelt is yours to guard. You took it, it’s your responsibility.”
Keith’s determined expression does not change. Lance is just a little endeared but it. As unconventional as this has been, Keith genuinely seems to be excited to be with him. And if Lance trusts his word — which he does — then Keith has wanted to be with Lance for a while. With his space family’s approval, and the certainty that he will have the same from his Earth family when he makes it home, the weight he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying finally drops from his shoulders.
“God, I can’t wait to human marry you.”
Shiro sighs. This time, it sounds significantly more amused. He gets to his feet, dusting off his hands. “I guess that falls to me, huh,” he says, waving them over. “C’mere.”
Keith and Lance scramble up, running over to where Shiro stands, at the head of the table. He holds two twist-ties in his head that he has formed into rudimentary rings.
“I feel contractually obligated to remind you about Adam’s stance in elopement,” he says, looking pointedly at Keith. “And Lance, I don’t know your mother personally, but your sister and I were colleagues. You are also going to get into leagues or trouble when we get home.”
Lance grins brightly. “I am going to get in leagues of trouble anyway!”
Keith nods. “I left Earth against Adam’s specific instructions. I’m toast no matter what, so I might as well do the best thing I will ever do in my life before then.”
Lance’s ears burn. He glances down at his sneakers, embarrassed and pleased all at once.
He’s the best thing that Keith will ever do in his life. God.
“Well, that answers my first question, then.” Shiro turns to Lance. “Since Keith obviously does, do you, Lance, wish to take Keith as your lawfully wedded husband, so long as you shall live?”
Lance grins. “I would love nothing more.”
“Then by the power vested in me by the five dollar certificate I got online, I pronounce you wed. Congratulations. You may kiss the groom.”
Neither of them wait for Shiro to finish his sentence, surging forward immediately, colliding in the middle like magnets. Lance feels the weight of his pelt on his shoulders and Keith’s hands on his face in equal measures. It feels like swimming free.
