in the post-war period where lance stays on earth with his family, keith finds that lance is now his sole tether to the planet. nothing else he needs is there. nothing else he loves is there. space is full of deserts like the sonoran, shacks like the one he grew up in, skies like the ones he looked up at as a hopeful kid. there’s no one in the universe like lance, though.
so he comes back. again and again. and he becomes kind of like a crow, bringing things back to the nest that he’s found in lance.
he collects trinkets, stories, words in other languages, candies. he never comes home (because lance is home) empty handed. he takes to sporadically keeping a journal of things he wants to remember to tell lance when connection gets spotty. entries include “got kolivan to say fuck like you dared me to. made mom laugh” and “saw an ocean the exact color of your eyes. pretty” and “gave food to a kid who looked weirdly like silvio but purple”. lance doesn’t know about the journal, doesn’t know that keith is always looking forward to how to tell lance about every new thing he sees.
and keith has no ulterior motive to this, he really doesn’t, it’s just how he’s learning to express his love (small wins for shiro’s pseudo parenting) but it has the natural effect of expediting lance’s readiness to go back to space. he loves hearing these things from keith - loves hearing him talk - loves the shelf in his room filled with little things keith and his friends have brought back for him - loves being remembered - but he wants it back for himself too, not just secondhand.
what solidifies this for lance is the time keith brings him back a necklace. it’s strange and beautiful and obviously valuable, not something you can shell out twenty gac for at a market. he asks keith to put it on for him and he does and as his hands lock the clasp lance feels like this is some sort of promise for forever, but the forever he wants is more free than what he’s giving himself. he kisses keith (and kisses him, and kisses him) and decides that he’s not giving up on his lifelong dream. war and loss have wounded him but beautiful things still exist - this man in front of him is proof - and he deserves a chance to see them, experience them, feel them.
he’s rooming with keith in a bom shop by the next week, and everything keith has ever given him comes with. there’s a new shelf of things from space, and they add to it together. shells and foreign coins clutter around pictures of their families. home isn’t just things, it’s not, but knowing that the two of them have made something together, own something together, even if it’s small, makes their tiny corner of the universe something special.