As revenge for Keith leaving a "tumblebug" in Lance's shoe a few missions ago, wherein its bite made him mortifyingly clumsy during a paladin meet-up, Lance leaves a "lovebug" in Keith's shirt. The lovebug's bite makes it impossible for Keith to ignore Lance's affections.
a motorcycle lasts a lifetime if you ride it fast enough (VLD Keith-centric)
Summary
Nobody has seen or heard from Keith in days. When Shiro finally checks his apartment, he finds a note that reads, "everything's fine, don't look for me." After all they had been through together, the paladins are both concerned and furious about Keith leaving them... again.
Or,
Keith disappears and the paladins hunt him down post-canon.
imagine the ocean | 5k (1/?) | explicit | omegaverse, non-con elements, capitalist dystopia AU
summary: Keith's sick of this city, sick of his heats getting worse, and sick to death of alphas. Enter Lance, who's gonna make Garrison City a better place if it kills him. A story about anger, trust, and changing what's broken.
“Can I help you get somewhere safe?” says Lance McClain, alpha, and claimed official for the Bureau of Omega Affairs.
Keith spits onto the pavement. “An alley not good enough for you?”
“And get a staph infection from a dumpster?” He lifts a brow, highlighted red and blue from flashing neon. He shakes his head. “I’m not gonna try anything, promise. What’s your name?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Okay. Well, you’re about to pass out, tiger.”
“Tiger?”
The fucker smirks, slow and hanging like honey. “It’s what I wanna call you.”
“Keith,” he snarls.
“Nice to meet you, Keith.” And he hates how his name on this guy’s lips rushes comfort through him. It shouldn’t. It should mean exactly nothing, that an alpha wants to call him by his name.
a motorcycle lasts a lifetime if you ride it fast enough (VLD Keith-Centric)
Summary
Nobody has seen or heard from Keith in days. When Shiro finally checks his apartment, he finds a note that reads, "everything's fine, don't look for me." After all they had been through together, the paladins are both concerned and furious about Keith leaving them... again.
Or,
Keith disappears and the paladins hunt him down post-canon.
Summary: Twelve years after the lions leave for good, Keith returns to Earth and finds that everything has changed. Lance gives him a place to crash.
Warnings: Angst, mentions of mental health
Word Count: 2.4k
Chapter One: Man, I hate this part of Texas
. . .
The events of the party are breezed under the rug as some dreadful culmination of exhaustion and injury. At least, that’s what the others say to Keith as they’re cleaning up.
He finds Hunk in the yard, halfway to the barn where they’ve all parked their cars. Keith’s crutches sink into the soft earth, but he hobbles after his friend, desperate to make some gesture that will show the world just how sorry he is. If he looks pitiful enough stranded in the muck, maybe they will forgive him.
“Hunk,” he calls. It is dark in the grassy field. He can see only the broad slope of Hunk’s shoulders turn in the darkness, the light of Lance’s distant farmhouse flashing in his eyes.
Hunk, of course, drops what he’s doing and meets him halfway.
“Keith, what are you-”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” Keith can’t find his footing. He scrabbles at his crutches, fighting to see Hunk in the low light. “I’m not…” The words escape him. Sputtering, uncertain, he manages, “I’m not myself.”
Hunk lays a hand on his shoulder. Keith knows that it’s meant to be a comforting gesture, but the weight of it throws him off balance all over again. He’s fighting to stand upright while Hunk says, “There’s leftover cake in the fridge. Hang in there, buddy.”
Keith watches him go.
Too embarrassed to walk back when someone could see, he sinks onto his ass and waits for the last of the cars to leave. They move slowly, one by one, headlights tracing tire tracks in the dirt.
Even Shiro is gone by the time he returns to the farmhouse.
He finds his duffle bag on a bed in a room just off the kitchen. A note from Shiro is folded on top: Call me. I love you. Like the party, like Hunk’s warm hand on his shoulder, this kindness puts a pit in Keith’s stomach. He stuffs the note into his duffle, kicks off his shoe.
Somewhere upstairs, a shower hisses to life.
Keith climbs into bed and does not move for a day.
Shiro had said it would be just like old times, like bunking down the hall from each other in the Castle of Lions, but it isn’t; space is quiet.
Here, there is the squeal and smack of the back door. Drifting in and out of sleep, Keith learns the path of Lance’s heavy work boots on the hardwood. He knows now how one or two stairs in the old farmhouse creak more than the others, how the banister groans under Lance’s hand. In the morning and at night, he hears Lance cook. His voice dances with the radio; dishes clatter in the sink. Nothing he makes smells particularly good, but the sound of meat sizzling on the stovetop, of his breathy high notes and the low tones that snake beneath the bedroom door…
He never sleeps better than when Lance is in the kitchen.
For most of the day, though, Lance works outside, and Keith is alone. Alone and awake, unmoving.
The weeks stretch out before him.
By the third day of this, Lance startles Keith awake by tossing a ring of keys at his chest.
“This has gotten way too depressing,” he says, breezing past and tugging open the room’s curtains. Keith hadn’t noticed the curtains. “Get up. We’re going for a drive.”
Keith scowls. The room is so bright, and Lance is moving so fast—dumping half-empty cups of water onto a drooping house plant. He sits up onto his elbows.
“Maybe you can.” He pulls back his blankets, baring the hard shell of his cast. This, at least, stops Lance in his tracks. He leans over the bed for a good look. Keith is quick to cover it back up. He mumbles, “In case you’ve forgotten.”
“Jesus wept. Can I sign it?”
“What? No!”
Lance throws up his hands and gets back to work. Lance, Keith remembers, is a lot louder when they’re in the same room. “I’m serious about that drive,” he says, snatching up a handful of Keith’s dirty laundry with a wrinkled nose. He turns to Keith, free hand outstretched. “Give me your shirt.”
Keith pulls his blankets up to his chin, knocking the keys Lance had thrown at him to the floor. He is worn out and bleary-eyed, certain he must have heard Lance wrong. Maybe, he thinks, this is an awful fever dream.
But Lance says again, “Keith, your shirt,” and Keith still does not wake up.
“I’m not taking off my shirt,” he says, incredulous. Then, remembering himself, “And I can do my own laundry!”
Judging by Lance’s raised eyebrows, he has some doubts about that. But he drops Keith’s clothes where he found them and heads for the door, spinning around at the threshold. “I’m serious about that drive,” he says, jabbing a finger at Keith. “Be ready in ten, and change your shirt. You smell like shit.”
Keith, who has felt very little for a lot longer than three days, is nearly knocked off his feet by the twinge of pleasure he feels at the sight of Lance and his truck.
It’s an old thing, a sun-bleached baby blue and light on its tires. Lance, who’s got a straw hat pulled low over his eyes, runs a hand along its body, smirking at the car like he’s trying to pick it up at a bar. It’s familiar. Lance always had better luck talking engines into starting than women into his bed.
Keith, hovering in the shade of the front porch, clears his throat. Lance doesn’t even look up. “Nice, right?” he calls, and it’s not a question. He loves this truck. He knows what it’s worth better than anyone. His hand catches on the driver’s-side door handle, and he turns to Keith. “Got the keys?”
Keith lifts them into the air. They glint in the sunlight. Lance cracks a smile. “Alright,” he says, “let’s go,” and pulls open the door for Keith to climb inside.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
Keith shuffles onto the driveway, keys still outstretched. “Lance-”
“Can’t drive manual?”
His face burns under the late-summer sun. Is Lance stupid? Well, he knows Lance is stupid; Keith’s the idiot for thinking otherwise. He jabs a free hand at his broken right leg, bulky beneath a baggy pair of jeans. “Not right now.”
Lance barks a laugh, teasing. He doesn’t bother looking down, just gets in Keith’s face like they’re back at the Garrison. “Come on, man,” he says, voice low. “You’ve flown in worse. It’s a truck.”
Keith squints up at him, mouth twisted into a thin line. That rage returns to him, the anger he felt bubbling up in his stomach at the sight of Lance with a beer and his work boots and a shit-eating grin. He could punch him. He could set a course for the sharp corner of his mouth or-
“You know you want to.”
Or he could drive. Lance is right; he wants to drive.
He shoulders past him and pulls himself into the driver’s seat by the ceiling handle. Lance claps his hands together. He’s rounded the cab and is in the passenger seat by the time Keith starts the engine.
Predictably, driving the old truck with one foot is damn near impossible.
Keith kills the engine three, four, six times before they’re off. The first time it happens, Keith lurches forward in his seat, but says nothing. He grits his teeth and tries again.
The last time it happens, he’s swearing in alien languages even Lance hasn’t heard, and Lance is cackling like it’s the funniest thing on Earth. He draws his hat from his head, fanning himself with it as they bump along empty country roads. “I’ve got a good feeling about this time,” he says, voice frayed by laughter.
Keith glowers out the windshield. “Fuck you.”
He creeps from the third gear to fourth, his good foot slipping from the gas to the clutch, then back again. The truck growls. He doesn’t back down.
Soon enough, they’re going seventy and Lance has got the windows down. Earth—Nebraska, Keith reminds himself, I’m in Nebraska—unfolds before them. There’s dune grass as far as the eye can see, the sandy rock formations of Keith’s childhood butting out of the horizon. His hand slips from the gear shift. He takes the wheel, letting his other hand trail out the open window. Wind buffets his skin, his hair. He breathes.
Lance, for once, is wordless beside him. His face is turned away from Keith, watching the Sandhills fly by. In the corner of his eye, though, Keith catches the bright blue edge of one Altean mark.
Lance can play cowboy all he wants, but the universe is vast, and he has a history.
“Bet you can’t go any faster,” Lance calls over the roar of the engine, the wind. Keith tears his eyes away, feeling caught. But Lance doesn’t know. He has no idea.
Keith shakes his head. His hand flutters back to the gear shift, his foot easing up on the gas. “It’s your truck,” he warns.
Lance reaches over the bench seat, surprising Keith with a brush of his hand on his thigh. The touch is fleeting, light, but it trails fire.
“Punch it,” Lance says.
Keith doesn’t think; he just does.
They end up at a gas station three towns over according to Lance. It might as well be a history museum, with gas you have to pay for at the counter and a campaign sign in one dusty window for Richard Nixon circa 1960.
Lance goes inside to settle up. Keith leans against the truck bed.
When Lance returns, he’s got two bottles of Coca-Cola and a bag of peach rings between his teeth. He hands one Coke to Keith, then tears open the peach rings. “Want one?” Keith shakes his head. Lance shrugs. He falls against the truck beside Keith and says, “We need to talk.”
When Keith broke his leg, he had been rocketing planetside in a light cargoship carrying Galran dictionaries to an inhabited moon off of the restored planet Daibazaal. He had been the only passenger.
He can’t recall what exactly went wrong, only that, when it came time to fix it, he had been too tired to lift a finger. Fighter pilot, defender of the universe, and a bone-deep exhaustion would be the thing to kill him. He was thirty-four. He was ready to die.
We need to talk, Lance had said, and Keith feels that weariness return to him. He feels like falling. He takes a swig of his cola. It is cool and syrupy-sweet slipping down his throat. Condensation gathers between his fingers. He presses the bottle to his temple.
“Keith?”
He hates the obvious worry in Lance’s voice. It’s a voice made for laughing, for ribbing and indignation. This pity—it sounds all wrong. Keith waves him off. “I’m fine.”
Lance snorts. The world steadies. “Where were you for the last three days, Keith? Was that fine?”
“I need rest.”
“Ever heard of moderation?”
Keith looks up at Lance, brows furrowed. “Have you?” The two face each other in the empty parking lot, each one daring the other to back down. Lance is the first to roll his eyes and turn away. He sips at his soda.
“Alright,” he says. “I asked Shiro to let you stay with me.”
Keith blinks. “What?” He’s not sure what Lance has just admitted to. There’s a weight to his words, and he won’t look up from his drink, but the situation isn’t exactly a secret. At least, not that Keith knows of. “I know that,” he says, trying to catch Lance’s eye. “Shiro told me. His house is being renovated, there was a change of plans-”
“No one’s house is getting renovated, Keith.”
The bottle of soda in his hand grows heavy. He sets it on the rear lip of the truck. Lance keeps talking.
“Shiro could have taken you in just fine. Hunk offered up his place too, and Pidge. Hell”—he breathes a laugh—“half the Garrison would have taken you in.” Keith watches with growing dread as Lance frowns. When he does, his forehead wrinkles. There’s a crease between his eyebrows that Keith hasn’t noticed before, a roughness to his sun-tanned face. “All of these people, but I insisted.” He faces Keith. “Do you know why?”
Keith shakes his head.
“Because I know you.” Lance’s words cut through Keith’s panicked fog. His mouth moves carefully, like he’s thought about this moment and what he’ll say: “I know what you think of us for staying when you took off and never looked back.” Keith thinks of the farmhouse. He remembers the party, all of them in one place, smiling and eating cake. He remembers heaving on Lance’s back porch, counting down the days.
“I don’t blame you,” Lance says. “I’m happy for you, Keith. I really am.” His eyes slip from Keith’s face, back to his bottle and the open bag of peach rings, untouched. “But I couldn’t let you break their hearts like you broke mine.”
Keith looks down too. He feels the force of Earth’s gravity weigh on his neck, his shoulders. Lance’s words should hurt, he thinks. Propped up against the pickup, nothing more than a speck in the middle of nowhere, he should flinch at the truth. But he doesn’t. It washes over him like the wind in the cab of the truck in high gear. He feels relieved.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asks. Maybe there’s absolution to be found at this gas station at the end of the world.
But Lance smiles. “Because I want you to know the effect you have on people,” he says. “They worship the ground you walk on, Keith. They have ever since they met you.” An old jealousy creeps into his voice. He nudges Keith’s shoulder with his own. Keith turns to him. “And I’m telling you so that you know, you can be yourself around me.”
Keith cocks his head. “Myself?”
“Yeah. A major asshole.” Keith shoves off the truck, rolling his eyes while Lance makes himself laugh. “I know how it is!” he calls after Keith, who is already at the driver’s-side door with one hand on the handle. “Just go easy on them, and I won’t ask anything more from you. Deal?”
Keith catches his eyes over the bed of the truck, a clear and startling blue. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll hold you to that.”
a motorcycle lasts a lifetime if you ride it fast enough (VLD Keith-Centric)
Summary
Nobody has seen or heard from Keith in days. When Shiro finally checks his apartment, he finds a note that reads, "everything's fine, don't look for me." After all they had been through together, the paladins are both concerned and furious about Keith leaving them... again.
Or,
Keith disappears and the paladins hunt him down post-canon.
