I’m drawing mock cover art for some of my favorite fics.
If by some wild chance you haven’t read these already, it’s time to remedy that.
there, nestled against his pulse
"Found you!" Lance says, vaulting over the back of the couch. He lands with a soft thump that bounces Keith up in his seat. "Hey, I've got a question for you. You don't have to answer it, but, uh, have you met your soulmate?"
"No," says Keith, "I haven't."
I shouldn't.
Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15040385/chapters/34867535
this is what love looks like
Unlike Keith, Lance has to be dragged by his feet, bound and gagged, into this love. If there was a contest for the art of self-denial, he’d be the reigning champion.
-
Companion piece and sequel to 'there, nestled against his pulse.'
Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178187/chapters/50411423
you know how in tiwlll lance was still getting used to the fact that he was allowed to think/say gay things about keith?
or like flirt seriously with him
well now with the link, every time lance sees keith do sth stupitt or cute, his gay thoughts are blasted in surround sound for keith to hear
can u imagine just going about your day and suddenly, this overwhelming sense of pure, unadulterated adoration gets directed at you? like for no reason? like someone just loves you bc you exist?? like can u believe??
the first time that happens, keith just starts crying what the fuck
(you know that love-starved boy would)
keith’s like doing sth at his station on the bridge, his hair’s too long and it gets in the way of his screens and he’s like periodically huffing and puffing at his fringe and then it gets so annoying that he pulls at it and threatens to cut it with his knife. like he’s just talking to himself
and at his own station, lance witnesses that and it’s just so--fuckign adorable oh my god holy FUCK keith can you not???? be so lovable?? fuck??? and his entire chest aches and he’s smiling unwillingly and his hands fist, nails biting into his skin because he just wants so badly to walk over there and pick keith up in a huuuuge hug and spin him around and crush him to his chest and cry over him or sth equally dramatic
and alllll that gets beamed over into keith’s head in real time
and keith just fckn. bursts into silent tears
HE FEELS LOVED OKAY
like it’s so warm and good in a way he’s been unable to feel before, like it’s strange it’s foreign but it feels like he’s been waiting for this forever, like he’s just now realizing he’s been missing a sixth sense or sth, and it’s almost too much like something expanding in his ribs and keith’s breathless he’s curling in his seat just gasping
cuz it’s one thing to be aware that people love you, like when they say it to you, ofc you believe them
but it’s a whole ‘nother thing when you have a mindlink that cannot lie, that shows you so vividly how much they love you
anyway that was the day everyone freaked out because keith kogane started crying on the bridge for no reason. they thought he was dying or sth
lance gets scolded by the others for surprising keith like that and worrying people and he’s like WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO??? NOT FEEL LOVE FOR HIM??? WAS I SUPPOSED TO HOLD IT BACK??? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE
and oh there goes keith’s tears again. dammit lance
right so you know how kl got accidental married in tiwlll?
it happens again on another planet
and again, on another. and then on another and again on another and–
it happens multiple times, really.
it’s just–some aliens have weird customs about trustworthiness and loyalty and want the co-leaders of voltron bonded in their way to show dedication to the cause or w.e, it doesn’t make sense to them, but w.e gets people to sign on.
and then some of the aliens think it’s a blessing that a soulmate pair is leading voltron and kl can’t escape their enthusiasm like they did with the levertans
and eventually, some of the aliens turn out to have just heard through interstellar gossip about kl getting married over and over and over and they…kind of just want in on the universe’s most famous love story
and it is a famous love story. somehow, the events on olkarion and levert get leaked and people are just eating that shit up
(you can blame ryder and lu’hr for this. they just really wanted to share the happiness! and in a world like this, people could always use a hopeful story)
the team finds it so fuckign funny, shiro especially. he accuses them of collecting marriage certificates like some people do stamps. allura is torn on the fact that voltron is known for a star-crossed love story just as much as they are known for their very serious saving-liberating-people-thing. coran thinks it’s good PR, hunk gets really emotional about it but also won’t stop referring to lance and keith as romeo and juliet even though that’s the furthest thing from what they are, and pidge jokingly makes a shitty Windows Movie video about kl’s journey from rivals to friends to lovers, full of lame transitions and effects and set to the soundtrack of high school musical and somehow it leaks out to the rest of the universe and is unironically considered an important part of voltron history, years later.
lance is mostly baffled by the whole thing, if a little flattered, and keith just refuses to acknowledge his celebrity status. you know him, he’s private about this stuff.
one time a nosy alien asked him what it was like to lead voltron with lance, his soulmate, their story literally history in the making and keith was so done that he just said, ‘who the fuck is lance’ and walks away, and for days the interstellar network is full of rumors about them fighting.
coincidentally, that week, zarkon’s army tries to attack them multiple times. the team collectively agrees not to think about the idea that the galra pay attention to that sort of stuff. nope. no way.
talking about galra, when keith finds krolia and catches her up on everything, she promptly arranges and officiates a galran marriage for them. lance is too afraid to stop her and keith just lets her do it because, well that’s his mom, and this makes her happy.
she tells him that his dad would’ve liked lance. no, keith doesn’t cry. lance, who has access to his literal mind, would say otherwise. their mindspace was so emotional during krolia’s speech lmao
so yeah, by the time the war ends, lance & keith are legally married in almost every conceivable way.
then they return to earth, and do it one last time, the human way.
(right after they’re pronounced husband and husband, lance turns to keith and goes ‘do you think we could get into the Guinness world records with our marriage certificate collection?’ keith threatens to divorce him)
About the mindlink in tiwlll.. Is it active when they sleep? Can they share dreams? If one of them is already awake can they tell when the other is waking up? Sorry, I imagined Lance talking to Shiro and Hunk over breakfast and suddenly getting up halfway through their conversation and going, "Sorry I’ll be back in a bit. Keith’s going to wake up in a minute and I want to be there. He’s really cute when he’s not fully awake. 5 mins, tops,” so he can kiss him as he wakes up and now I need to know
omg........oh my god......lance’s that so cute.....i’m beginning to think y’all should just write your own tnahp spinoffs clearly y’all got bombass ideas dkfsdjf
ok but also consider: lance talking to the team and then freezing and the team’s like ‘😒 keith’s awake huh’ and lance says ‘yes--slav can i borrow you for a second’ and then he yeets it to keith’s bedroom with slav tucked under his arm like a sack of potatoes and slav’s like ‘in twelve universes this ends in catastrophic failure’ and basically this is all to say that when keith wakes up from his nap--he’s expecting a kiss from lance right, maybe a hand carding through his hair right, like he’s used to it after all these months and honestly it’s 80% of the reason why he even goes to sleep these days--but what he gets instead is slav, hovering over him, with his six arms and his mustache things, jsut fucking glaring down on him with his shadowed face and bloodshot eyes and keith SCREAMS AND LANCE WHO WAS HOLDING SLAV UP LIKE SIMBA IN THE LION KING FUCKING DROPS SLAV ONTO KEITH’S FACE and that’s how lance pulls off the longest con ever
Keith and lance don’t talk anymore they just think and it drives everyone nuts bc lance will just stare at pidge like “????” And pidge will go “I CANT HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS DUMBASS”
DSFHAKJDFKASDFKASD at least once a month lance randomly says “dude i sent you a meme pls reply” and every time, without fail, hunk has to remind him “lance i am not married to you. you need to actually send the meme to me” “well, that’s no fun. i made that meme in my head.”
keith on the other hand, delights in giving shiro shady looks and snickering for no reason, bc that makes shiro think he and lance are making fun of him for sth
keith, glancing purposefully between a potted plant and shiro:
shiro: what?
keith, looks intensify:
shiro, sweating: what??? what???
keith, pauses. shakes his head: oh, forgot you wouldn’t get it.
shiro: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???
lance, walking by, not even looking up from his datapad: oh keith dude, you make a good point.
sorry to ask, but i saw u shared hc for the sick anon, im going thru a rough patch and ur fic rly cheered me up. Can i get some hcs as well?
this is how keith asks lance to marry him:
so we all know how from the beginning, from the moment things got resolved at the end of tnahp, that keith’s been upfront about never leaving lance. everyone knows he’s going to put a ring on that. he’s said it to lance’s face. “what else am i gonna do with you?”
it’s not until six years later that he actually does anything though. mostly bc of the war and the aftermath.
the team are in a meeting with the coalition, boring stuff, routine stuff, and the mind link is closed, bc sometimes keith and lance need breaks. he’s lucky that it was, though, because what happens next in his mind would’ve been enough to make lance fall out of his seat and ruin the meeting and coran would’ve killed them both lmao
lance is paying attention even though he looks just as bored as keith. diligent, as always. he’s even got a holoscreen projected, taking lazy notes. there are faint little sketches of the coalition members and the team. one is of shiro, snoring, comical Zs above his head. keith bites down on his cheek.
lance is twirling the pen in his left hand.
keith looks at that and thinks, loud and clear, there should be a ring on his finger.
he sits back.
huh.
it should be a surprise, he decides after a quiet minute. lance deserves that. it should be at the right moment, the right words, the right place. it should be soft and genuine and such a sweet shock that it takes lance seconds to reply. it should make his blue eyes fill with tears, it should make him curl into a ball before keith, who’ll still be kneeling, ring box open and laughing at him because wow, that’s nice reaction, lance. it should be a proposal so perfect that it makes lance kind of mad, makes him shove keith, makes him pout that frustrated-loving-happy pout.
(bros, as a gay, this is kind of really fucking gay)
keith spends the rest of the meeting laying out proposal plans. lance gets exasperated when he finds out keith remembers nothing of the meeting. “dude, you--tell me again, who’s the leader of voltron, here?” “it’s allura.” “....okay, but who flies bl--”
and some people might ask, what’s the point, if you’re already levertan-married? if you’ve mind-linked and basically achieved the pinnacle of ‘joining hands in holy matrimony’?
keith’s answer would probably be something like ‘fuck off, i love him that’s why’
(ngl that’s hella romantic. no? just me?)
the long answer is that he knows lance is a romantic. that he really likes gestures of affection, that his face gets all rosy and he always tries to bite back his smiles, and he gets so pleased and flustered and also adorably angry every time keith does anything for him. keith’s in love with that. he goes absolutely dumb over making lance happy, he’s fucking obsessed with it. every neuron in keith’s stupid head is devoted to lance like 24/7.
(it’s a given that lance is the same, if not worse. how tf do they get anything done?)
plus, levertan-married doesn’t really mean the same as human-married.
so keith--somehow--manages to pull off thinking up proposal plans without closing the link, without lance knowing--maybe bc his thoughts are purposefully fragmented like ‘white chocolate? milk?’ or ‘speakers? mic?’ or ‘beach sand feels sandy’ and yes it sounds absolutely dumb but it’s clever because after a while lance tunes it out. though, at the beginning, it really fucking worried him because it sounded like keith was having a stroke LMAO
over the next couple months, keith steadily puts his plan together: get the ring, figure out what to say, speak to allura about detouring to earth for some r&r, speak to shiro about not fucking things up for keith because i know you’ll do that somehow shiro no are you serious of course you would you’re evil do you even remember that time i said no to inviting people for my fourteenth birthday and you did it anyway even though i was looking forward to just playing video games for the whole day??? i had to deal with james griffin in my goddamn house you ass--
the day keith asks, everything--surprisingly--goes really well? like suspiciously so. like keith’s really glad but he’s itching to reach for his knife by the end of it, bc he was prepared for shiro to have done sth by now.
but nah, keith and lance have a lovely day hanging out, doing activities keith planned and things lance spontaneously suggests. the weather is a perfect breezy, sunny day. when the sun sets they wordlessly head for the beach. lance chases keith though the surf. they throw clumps of wet sand at each other. keith hoists lance in his arms, listening to him yell as keith spins them around. lance picks him up and tosses him into the shallows, that fucking jerk. lance gets keith to forgive him. lance gives keith his shirt, goes half-naked for keith’s shivering form. ‘i’m going to get a cold,’ lance says. ‘and i’m not?’ keith snorts. they walk down the beach and lance tells him stories, pointing to this rock or that spot and saying oh i broke my arm there or dude i saved a baby turtle from a seagull that day and keith soaks it all up like he’s the sand and lance is the ocean waves, coming back to him every time.
lance hops onto a rock, demonstrating to keith how he used to pretend he was a sea prince looking for mermaids. the winds play with his hair, the setting sun brushing golden against his bare chest and the grin on his lips. like this, he’s a foot or two taller than keith.
keith gets down on one knee.
it’s lance’s fault that the ring box is damp, but he’s lucky this thing is olkari-made, because when keith opens it up, the ring shines just as bright as lance. almost as bright. it tries its best but keith really only has eyes for his soulmate.
keith says:
every day, i want to choose you. every day, i want to get to choose you. every day, growing up like i did, was spent learning what i needed to live, what food or drink or mantra was needed to make it another day alone. my body forced to me to focus on its needs, on the bare essentials. if i went a month without a caring touch, it didn’t matter, because it hadn’t killed me yet.
before i fell for you, i don’t think i knew what it meant to want. i never had a chance to think about it, a second to indulge. if i wanted a home, a family, it was a weakness, a distraction, and i couldn’t let myself admit it. so i never learned to want.
the only other thing that comes closest to what i feel for you is probably flying. it’s that addiction to diving through the clouds, it’s free-falling, it’s soaring with my heart in my throat. and even then, even now that i know you, it doesn’t quite compare. it’s a poor substitute.
in this world we exist in, where some force out there knows exactly what we need, who we need, it’s kind of a miracle that i still got to choose you. i’m glad i got the moments where it hurt to think of you, because i wanted you so bad i couldn’t stand not having you. i’m glad i got to slowly realize that you were everything to me, on my own time. it was my own conclusion, my own resolution to love you because you were you, and not because you were someone i was supposed to love. the universe kind of tricked us, but i think she meant well.
and now i know, that even in a world where soulmates didn’t exist....i know i’d still want you.
i want to want you, every day. i want to wake up wanting you, every day, fall asleep wanting you every night. i want to leave for missions wanting you, want to stay behind watching you go, wanting you to return faster than you can. i want you to want me, too. i want a ring on our fingers, reminding me that you do, that you feel the same and you always will.
