Keith picks his head up from the table. “Huh?”
“To the Blades,” Lance clarifies, chopping up something that looks like a bright pink potato and throwing it in a rapidly boiling pot in what Keith would call an aggressive manner. “You’re not going.”
He didn’t. He didn’t mention anything about the Blades to any living soul. Like, yeah, he had made the decision and was going to, but.
There’s no reason Lance should know that.
“Good, then, because I took your uniform — which looks like a slutty catsuit, by the way, just so you’re aware — to the incinerator last night. It’s ash now.”
Keith stares at his best friend, jaw dropped, hands resting limply on the edge of the dining table, because — huh? pardon? what happened?
“Whatever identity crisis you’re having can happen here,” Lance adds, shaking some spices into the boiling pot and stirring it a couple times. He dips in a spoon, brings it up to his lips, then makes a face. “Here, try this.”
He marches over to where Keith has been moping as he makes dinner and shoves a spoon into his gaping mouth. Keith chokes, hot stew making its merry way down his trachea, eyes watering and chest heaving.
“A little too salty,” he rasps.
Lance scowls. “Fuck. I knew it. Gotta add more barbie potatoes.” He turns down the heat, grabbing more potatoes from the sack and busying himself with peeling them. Slowly, as he recovers from the fear of his actual lungs collapsing in on themselves, Keith stands, hesitantly approaching Lance and reaching for a knife to chop what he peels.
But Keith is used to this dynamic. It’s either this or flipped. Friends or not, if there’s one thing they can’t do it’s use their big boy words. So he carries on.
“I take it you…don’t want me to go, then.”
Lance grunts. “Oh, look, the caveman has room in his skull for a brain after all.”
“Uncalled for,” Keith says, scowling. “I am not the one who’s refusing to communicate right now.”
The corner of Lance’s mouth twitches upwards.
“Obviously I don’t want you to leave, you stupid dumbass,” Lance admits finally. He wrestles the chopped roots out of Keith’s hands and practically dunks them in the pot, turning the heat back up. Keith smears his starch covered hands on his shirt in revenge (and then wisely takes three quick and giant steps back, well out of backhanding range).
“But there are too many paladins,” Keith points out. “You said it yourself.”
Lance grabs a dishtowel, twisting it menacingly in his hands. Keith tries not to think about the scar he knows Hunk has from when Lance snapped a towel at him when they were kids, wrestling in the McClains’ kitchen. He fails.
“Do you actually have any braincells left in your head at all?”
“Yes, jackass. That’s why I did the math. I leave and the numbers add back up. Problem solved.”
“You leave and Voltron falls apart,” Lance snaps. “So maybe crunch those numbers again.”
Keith stills. Lance steps towards him, still glaring, still menacing, but he doesn’t move — he holds Lance’s gaze, searching his dark eyes, looking for the words he isn’t saying. Because Keith…Keith isn’t the one holding Voltron together. There was a reason his heart caught in his throat when Lance came to him downtrodden and talked about being a seventh wheel. There’s a reason his duffel is packed, a reason he’s talked to Kolivan. He knows who needs to step aside.
“You just don’t get it,” Lance says, frustrated. He takes another step.
“You talk to us about teamwork all the time.”
“You’re favourite thing to whine about is the bonding moment.”
Another step, this time as he pitches his voice high and mocking, flapping his hands.
“You never shut up about training as a group.”
One final step and he’s toe to toe, shoes to boots, nose to nose. Keith realises, startlingly, that they’re the exact same height, now.
“We are a crew, imbécil. Team, group, boyband. Whatever you wanna call it. All for one and one for all. The whole nine yards, all that cheesy bullshit.” He pokes Keith hard in the chest. “You don’t get to ditch.”
“But it makes more sense,” Keith argues, weakly and half-desperately. “We only have so many resources. If I can be useful at the Blades —”
“Fuck the fucking Blades.”
Keith deflates. His hand comes up to stop Lance’s jabbing finger, curling around his knuckles. Lance softens, slightly.
“I just want to be as useful as I can be.”
“And if you’re enough as you are?” Lance asks quietly.
Keith opens his mouth, but stops, automatic I’m not dying in his throat. For the first time in his life, it doesn’t seem like the truth, with the determined set to Lance’s jaw and the sliding of their fingers together, gripping tightly.
“Then I guess I’m staying,” Keith breathes.
Keith notices his hands are kind of clammy. His forehead, too, is a little sweaty. The air between them feels hot. Keith swallows.
“Your stew is on fire,” he croaks, voice rough.
Lance drops his hand, cursing.
“Oh — por amor de dios, hablas en fucking serio —”
At dinner, Keith eats his burnt stew without a word of complaint. When Lance drags him to the sink to help clean up, after, even though it’s not his turn, he goes, and he lingers too close and too long, and he’s grateful that the duffel he packed to leave home for good is laid emptied on his bed when he turns in for the night.
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
2087
amandla
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
