Workin on a zukka fic here's a lil piece of it hehehe 😘
Zuko sat hard on the edge of the bed. The sight of him there almost stole the air from Sokka’s lungs.
The crown remained fixed in his hair. His robes had begun to fall open, silk disordered, gold dulling in the warm lamplight. One shoulder stood bare where Sokka had dragged the fabric aside. His mouth was red. His eyes were black, pupils blown wide with heat and desire. The formal Fire Lord had not vanished; he had fractured, and through every crack Sokka could see the man beneath burning.
Sokka climbed onto him, fingers weaving into his hair and pulling desperately.
Zuko’s hands came up to catch him, and they went down together onto the bed in a tangle of silk, limbs, and breathless, muffled laughter. The mattress, excessive and soft as a royal apology, swallowed Sokka’s back. Zuko climbed over him at once, half-undone and still crowned, a vision so indecently perfect that Sokka forgot every clever thing he had ever said.
Zuko saw his expression. His own turned curious, then amused. Then he reached for the crown.
Instinct, probably. Habit. The private chamber meant removal. The court was gone, the performance over; of course Zuko would take it off and set aside that final bright piece of office before becoming only himself.
Sokka caught his wrist. Hard. Zuko stopped above him. Their breathing filled the space between them. Sokka stared up at him, flushed, hungry, and too far gone to make dignity useful.
“Leave it,” he said. Zuko blinked. His eyes flicked from Sokka’s face to the hand around his wrist, then up, as if he had briefly forgotten what sat in his own hair.
“The... crown?”
“Yes.”
Another beat. Then understanding began to dawn. Slowly. Beautifully. The corner of Zuko’s mouth lifted.
“You like the crown.”
Sokka’s face went hot. He refused to retreat. Retreat was for cowards, people with fewer convictions, and men who had not spent the last three hours thinking about exactly this.
“Yeah,” he said, breathless. “I really do.”
Zuko’s smile widened. Dangerous.
The knowledge settled into him, and Sokka watched it happen with fascinated alarm. The surprise softened. The embarrassment did not vanish, but it altered, warmed by the realization that he had found a new and devastating weapon. Zuko lowered his hand away from the crown.
Sokka dragged him down by his hair and kissed him. Zuko laughed into it.
Surprise and pleasured disbelief—the sound of a man discovering, rather late in the evening, that his ceremonial crown had become an instrument of Sokka’s undoing. Sokka did not appreciate being laughed at while in the middle of a perfectly serious personal crisis.
He tightened his fingers in Zuko’s hair and pulled.
The laugh broke halfway into a groan. Sokka smiled against his mouth.
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*Summary: Lance is captured and forced to participate in the gladiator fights aboard the ISS Paragon. Even worse, he's forced to be a propaganda tool for the Galra Empire.
Haunted Laurels (CC sequel - Good Ending)
*Progress: 15%
*Rating: E
*Summary: Lance was rescued from Lotor's clutches and now has to figure out how get back to normal. Well, as normal as one can after living life imprisoned as a gladiator and the political pawn of a fascist empire.
Crown, Collar, Cradle (CC sequel - Bad Ending)
*Progress: 25%
*Rating: E
A Crown of Stolen Stars
*Summary: An alternate ending in which rescue never comes and Lance must learn how to survive as Lotor's consort all the while clinging to the man he is underneath the mask
*Progress: 10%
*Rating: T
*Summary: Altaen Lance AU. Brainwashed into loving and marrying the prince who stole him, Prince Lance is forced to confront the terrifying truth that his perfect love story is a beautiful lie after being rescued by a half-Galra rebel.
Klance
My Barista is My Archrival
*COMPLETE
*Rating: T
Joyride
*Summary: Coffee Shop/Street Racer AU. Keith fixes cars by day and participates in illegal street races at night. He's got a crush on his local barista.
*Progress: 15%
*Rating: E
*Summary: Addition to "My Barista is My Archrival." PWP ;)
Bulletproof Brat
*Progress: 5%
*Rating: M
*Summary: Lance is a mafia prince and a magnet for trouble. Keith is his newest bodyguard. What could possibly go wrong?
Untitled Alien Pet AU
*Progress: 30%
*Rating: T
*Summary: Keith and Lance crash land on an unknown planet. Lucky for them, the local aliens aren't hostile... they are, however, enamored with the two paladins and adopt them as pets.
A Life with You
*Progress: 30%
*Rating: T
*Summary: Keith wakes up married to Lance and has no recollection of this ever having happened. So of course he assumes it's a trap.
Crooked Candlelight
*COMPLETE
*Rating: G
*Summary: Keith makes Lance dinner. And it's not romantic. Nope. Not one bit.
Definitely Fine
*Progress: 10%
*Rating: T
*Summary: Keith and Lance crash land on an uninhabitable planet. Lance is injured worse than he initially thought and Keith has to keep him alive long enough for rescue to come.
Mismatched Love
*Progress: 5%
*Rating: M
*Summary: Lance and Keith have different love languages.
Chrome Addiction
*Progress: 10%
*Rating: E
*Summary: Lance is addicted to getting piercings. Keith is addicted to Lance's piercings.
The Empire's Blade
*Progress: 25%
*Rating: M
*Summary: Keith is sent to hunt down Voltrons from alternate universes and bring their Lions home to Zarkon. He tells himself every massacre is worth it as long as it keeps his Lance alive.
Untitled oneshots
*And There was Only One Bed
*Keith Turns into a Cat????
*Toxic Situationship
*Lance is Sick and Tired of Keith's Ridiculous Hair and Does Something About it
Gen/No Main Ships
Please Get the Hell Out of My Kitchen (With Love)
*COMPLETE
*Rating: G
*Summary: When an important alien ambassador visits the Castle of Lions, Hunk takes charge of the kitchen. Lance, Pidge, and Keith insist on helping.
The Lion Knows
*Progress: 10%
*Rating: T
*Summary: Lance ends up in the backrooms lmao
Avatar: the Last Airbender
Zukka
Untitled Roadtrip AU
*Progress: 15%
*Rating: M??? idk
*Summary: Sokka is hiding the fact that he and Suki broke up. Zuko is supposed to be getting married, but Mai ran away. The only logical course of action is to go on a road trip together.
Life is Strange
Pricefield
Perfect Take
*Progress: 20%
*Rating: M
*Summary: Max knows Jefferson's dark secret. She blackmails him into being her mentor.
The Stars
*Progress: 30%
*Rating: G
*Summary: Chloe notices something is off about Max. The stars are disappearing.
Kingdom Hearts
Kailette
Harbinger of Light
*Progress: 15%
*Rating: T
*Summary: POST KH3. Kairi is determined to save Sora, but to do that she must push herself beyond her limits and become more than just a Princess of Heart. Olette is trying to survive in a world that demands too much of her. So obviously she should become Kairi's knight in shining armor.
Naminas
Ansem's Monster
*Progress: 20%
*Rating: M
*Summary: Ansem resurrects Vanitas from the dead using less than ethical means.
Rise of the Guardians
Pitch/Jack
Untitled WIP
*Progress: 2%
*Rating: T?? M?????
*Summary: AU in which Jack Frost and Pitch Black have been long-time lovers. Jack is trying to get Pitch to give up his dreams of revenge. The Guardians bitch slap the shadows out of Pitch. The shadows then cling to the next best source... Jack.
Deltarune
Gen/No ship
You Asked For This
*Progress: 5%
*Rating: G??? T???????
*Summary: Something is wrong. This isn't Your soul.
Because I'm emotionally unstable, I've been writing two alternate sequels to Champion's Chains. There's the "True Ending" in which Lance tries to readjust to life as a Paladin and navigate his relationship with Keith.... and then there's the "Bad Ending" in which Lance is never rescued and must survive his new life as Lotor's consort.... and because I'm normal I'm having more fun with the bad ending lmfao
Anyway pls accept a little snippet of writing from the bad ending as I work towards finishing Champion's Chains. Thank you for your patience!
From the VIP suite, the arena looked like a jeweled mechanism turning itself on spectacle. Sand raked smooth as silk, gates gliding, pyres breathing on their cues. The oculus’ light washed the pit in purple and gold.
Lotor had the best view on the Paragon and wasn’t using it. He reclined on his favorite couch, long legs crossed at the ankle, a datapad balanced on one knee. Schedules, briefings, ad sets; color-blocked calendars and ministerial messages slid past under his thumb. He moved with the economy of someone who had trained his attention to be a blade.
Lance had asked, very sweetly, if he could play with his hair.
Lotor, after a show of reluctance that fooled no one, had relented.
So Lance perched on the back of the couch, one knee over Lotor’s shoulder, the other foot dug into the cushions for balance. He separated luminous white strands and fed them into a pattern that doubled and crossed on itself. Two braids laddering into a fishtail, then vanishing under a twist. His fingers worked on instinct now; he’d taught himself the language of this hair because it pleased Lotor to be adorned and it pleased Lance to be the one to do it.
A roar rolled up from the pit, sudden and vast. Lance looked up and thumbed the holoscreen out across the window. The image telescoped: Cindrel standing bare-shouldered over a downed opponent, blades crossed in a win that would replay well. He waved to the crowd; his antennae perked with that friendly little bounce that made the audience love him.
Then, impossible, his face angled toward the VIP glass. For a breath, Lance felt the weight of that gaze like a hand on his sternum. No one could really see in from down there. At most, they got impressions of silhouettes, a suggestion of presence. Still, it felt like being seen. Cindrel dipped into a flourish of a bow and held it, then stepped backward to his platform. The stage swallowed him; the floor closed.
A sigh huffed out of Lotor, audible enough to make Lance jump the tiniest bit and look down. The datapad glowed with a fat block of Galra in formal script. It was too dense for Lance’s growing comprehension. He undid the end of the braid and smoothed it, buying himself a second.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly, starting another pattern with the same strands.
Lotor’s mouth turned wry; his eyes didn’t leave the text. “Politics,” he said, almost grumpy.
Lance hummed as if the word itself were an unseemly bruise. “I already feel sorry for you,” he murmured, and, because it was allowed in these moods, dropped a small kiss onto the crown of Lotor’s head.
A sound that was half-laugh, half-huff escaped the prince. He flicked through two more screens in quick, precise motions. Lance breathed with the cadence of his scrolling, fingers moving, braid blooming.
“Wanna talk about it?” Lance tried, careful as if approaching a ledge.
Silence for a beat. The pad’s scroll ticked in little staccato bursts under Lotor’s thumb. Then he tipped his head back against Lance’s lap, chin lifting until he could meet Lance’s eyes.
“Can you get pregnant?” he asked.
Lance blinked. Heat climbed up his neck before meaning fully arrived. “Wh— Pregnant?” He stalled, cheeks burning, brain hopping from the word to the man to the window and back. “Where did that come from?”
Lotor didn’t blink. One hand, idle and proprietary, stroked Lance’s calf where it rested along his shoulder. “Answer the question,” he said, less kind.
Lance swallowed. He shook his head before remembering the rule and gave the answer out loud. “No. I… I can’t. I’m not, uh, equipped for that.” A nervous laugh arrived and died on its feet.
Something unreadable moved through Lotor’s gaze. He made a neutral sound, an acknowledgment without weight, and turned the pad back up. His fingers went brisk, purposeful, as if a column on a ledger had just reconciled.
Lance’s nerves hummed under his skin. He leaned and tried to read the screen over Lotor’s shoulder, but the words ran formal and bureaucratic, packed with the kind of vocabulary that kept doors closed. “Why do you ask?” he said, and hated how thin it sounded.
Lotor typed a line, another, and another. When he did speak, it was without looking up. “It’s time to plan the next steps of our relationship. The public is growing bored of your illness.”
The sentence slipped a cold hand under Lance’s ribs. He paused with a strand looped across his fingers. “But… I really am sick,” he said, small, baffled. “It’s not a performance, I… what do you mean they’re bored? And why does that matter?”
Lotor’s humorless scoff landed like a closed door. “Do you think they care? They crave spectacle and newness. You should know that by now, Lance.”
The scold cut; it always did. Lance bit his tongue. Arguing never changed the contour of a speech like that; it only made sharper edges for later. The question of pregnancy, though, echoed with a delayed horror. If he’d said yes, if he could have… Lotor would have already been setting those wheels in motion. The relief that he’d answered as he had arrived paired with a nausea that had nothing to do with fevers.
He tightened the braid, found the rhythm again. “So then… what’s the next big spectacle, you think?” he asked, keeping his tone even. Better to be ready.
“I have a meeting with PR this afternoon,” Lotor said with a faint shrug. “We’ll decide then.”
That didn’t soothe. Lance did what he knew worked. He made himself useful and charming in the same breath. He finished the braid, pinning it with a neat twist, then built its mirror on the other side and fed both into a woven crown that sat elegant and precise. “Finished,” he said, letting pride warm the word. “Want to see?”
Lotor handed the datapad back without being asked, already unlocking the camera. Lance angled it, framed the work against white hair and violet skin, and snapped the shot. He handed the pad across. Lotor studied the screen, a small, genuine smile pressing at his mouth.
“Lovely,” he said, and turned to press a quick kiss to Lance’s knee.
The compliment lit Lance up from the inside. It always did. He leaned forward, folding himself over Lotor’s shoulder and peppered his forehead with soft kisses, a handful of quick, delighted pecks. Lotor tipped his head back farther to catch Lance’s mouth with his own. Lance grinned into it; Lotor’s smile went feline, content.
Down in the arena, a new match spun up, the crowd’s roar blooming. Up here, the suite held its curated hush. The datapad chimed; Lotor’s thumb found it without looking. Lance settled back into his perch, fingers slipping into white strands again, and told himself he could live on the small sweetness of moments like this for a long time.
Ship: Keith/Lance
Rating: G
Summary: Lance has been working hard and Keith tries to make a completely platonic, non-romantic dinner as a thank you... unfortunately, Keith isn't exactly a 3-star Michelin chef.
You can also read it on Ao3!
Keith had made worse decisions in stranger places, but standing alone in the Castle kitchen with three different bowls, a half-read recipe on his datapad, and a bag of something that looked like basil in his hand, this one felt uniquely humiliating.
It had started as a simple idea.
Do something nice for Lance, his brain had said earlier, in one of those rare moments where it offered something almost tender instead of catastrophically unhelpful. Lance had been running himself ragged the past few days between training, repairs, and somehow still finding the energy to keep everybody else from turning into sleep-deprived assholes. He talked too much when he got tired. He smiled wider. He started leaning against walls like gravity had become a personal attack. Keith had noticed all of it in the quiet, involuntary way he noticed everything about Lance now.
So. Yeah. He wanted to do something nice for Lance. Just nice. Not romantic. That wasn’t what this was. Not at all.
He looked at the candles lined up on the counter and scowled at them.
Okay... Maybe it was a little romantic.
It wasn’t his fault the kitchen lights were too bright and ugly when Lance had been complaining about headaches. It wasn’t his fault that every movie Lance ever made fun of had apparently infected Keith’s brain with an understanding that candles equaled effort. And it definitely wasn’t his fault that when he’d tried to picture Lance walking into something simple and nice, the image had come with low light and actual plates instead of protein bars inhaled between missions.
That didn’t make this romantic. Not really. It was thoughtful and nice and something Lance deserved after all his hard work.
Keith set the not-basil down, picked up his knife again, and glared at the tomatoes on the cutting board as if they had personally insulted him. Hunk made this look easy. Hunk threw things in pans with cheerful confidence and somehow ended up with meals that tasted like comfort. But when Keith did it… well, it wasn’t quite the same. He had followed the recipe exactly up until step three, at which point it had started demanding words like reduce and chiffonade and “fold in the cheese.”
His instincts were great in combat. His instincts in a kitchen had already gotten olive oil on his sleeve, a broken wooden spoon in the sink, and a line of unevenly chopped vegetables that looked like they’d been cut by a man held at gunpoint.
He chopped another alien fruit that was supposed to be a substitute for tomatoes. It squished sideways under the blade and slid a wet red mess across the board.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered.
The Castle, as usual, offered no sympathy.
He scooped the pieces into the pan with perhaps more force than necessary. The pan hissed. Keith stepped back on reflex, then immediately got annoyed at himself for it. He had fought Galra death machines. He could handle sautéing.
Probably. Maybe.
The kitchen smelled mostly good, which felt suspicious enough that he kept checking it. Spices. Oil. Something warm and bright from the herbs. Underneath that, though, was the sharp metal scent of his nerves. He could feel them in the back of his throat. In his hands. In the tightness between his shoulders.
He set the knife down and reached for the datapad again. The recipe cheerfully informed him that the pasta should already be boiling. Keith stared at the empty pot on the stove. Right.
He filled it too fast. Water sloshed over his hand and down the counter. He swore under his breath, slapped the pot onto the burner, and wiped the counter with a towel that immediately made the mess worse by smearing seeds into the water. Great. Perfect. This was going exactly how a person might expect if that person had looked at Keith and thought yes, that guy should absolutely attempt romance through carbs.
Keith froze.
No.
Dinner.
He was making dinner.
A nice dinner for his teammate and friend and… whatever else they were becoming.
Keith shoved the datapad farther away.
For one brief, stupid second he let himself think about why he was doing this and that was somehow worse than anything the kitchen had done to him so far. Lance did nice things because it was in him. He threw warmth around like he never worried it would run out. A joke over breakfast. A shoulder bump in the hall. A hand on Keith’s back steering him around some piece of machinery. Keith had spent years learning how to want without saying it. Lance just reached.
So Keith had wanted, with a sudden fierce ache, to meet him there for once. To give him something that did not have to be dragged out of Keith with a crowbar and a near-death experience. The thought sat under his ribs, hot and private.
He lit the first candle with unnecessary aggression. It flickered to life, small and gold, and immediately made the kitchen look less like a battlefield and more like a place two people might actually sit down in on purpose. Keith hesitated, then lit the second. Then the third.
The problem with candles, it turned out, was that once they were lit, they made a lot of things impossible to deny.
He had even cleared one of the side counters and pulled over two chairs. Plates. Real plates. Silverware aligned in a way that had taken him an embarrassing amount of concentration. Two glasses. One folded napkin that looked fine from a distance and terrible up close.
Keith stared at the setup and for a second it was like having an out-of-body experience. Never in a million years had he ever imagined himself doing anything like this. Let alone for someone like Lance McClain of all people.
But something had changed between. Keith didn’t know when or where it began, but a warmth had started to grow between them. It had happened so gradually Keith could not point to the exact moment the ground shifted under him. Somewhere between the arguments that stopped meaning anything and the quiet that no longer felt strained, Lance had gotten under his guard in ways Keith still did not entirely understand.
A touch at his back that lingered a second too long. Easy smiles meant just for him. Long nights that somehow kept ending with the two of them shoulder to shoulder, trading tired jokes and softer looks Keith never quite knew what to do with. Whatever this was, it felt warm and unsteady and a little too easy to ruin if he looked at it head-on for too long.
That was the part that made him nervous. Keith was good at rules, at caution, at keeping things contained until he could understand them. This did not feel containable. It felt new and bright and strangely fragile, like something that had been growing in the space between them without asking permission. He did not have a name for it yet. He only knew he wanted more of it. He wanted to keep moving toward it instead of away. And if he could not figure out how to say any of that without combusting on the spot, then maybe this was a decent place to start. Something simple. Something useful.
Lance had spent so much time taking care of everyone else. The least Keith could do was sit him down, feed him a good meal, and try, for once, to make sure some of that care came back his way.
Something in the pan popped sharply.
Keith turned back just in time to catch a spray of oil snapping at him. He jerked away, grabbed the spoon, and stirred. The onions (or whatever they were) were going darker than they were supposed to. Probably. Maybe. He lowered the heat, frowned at the pot of water, realized it still was not boiling, and checked the datapad again.
He had somehow skipped an entire sauce step. He swore softly under his breath.
No. That was fine. Everything was fine. He could improvise. Improvisation had gotten him through most of his life.
Improvisation in a kitchen apparently meant opening the wrong cabinet twice, knocking over a small container of dried spices, and getting a faceful of pepper that made him sneeze so hard he nearly elbowed one of the candles off the counter.
Keith caught it at the last second. He stood frozen for a beat, one hand wrapped around the candleholder, heart pounding in pure offense.
“This is ridiculous,” he said to nobody. He set it back down more carefully this time.
The water finally started boiling with the dramatic intensity of something that had decided to be difficult on purpose. Keith dumped in the pasta. Some of it bounced off the rim and clattered onto the floor. He stared at it. Then he left it there. A person only had so much dignity to lose in one evening.
The smell reached him a second before the truth did. Keith turned. The sauce was burning. Not a little. Not maybe salvageable if he acted quickly. Burning. Smoke curled up from the pan in a thin, accusing ribbon.
“No, no, no,” Keith snapped, lunging for it.
He yanked the pan off the heat and immediately realized that was the wrong move because now the smell got worse, thick and bitter and unmistakable. He coughed, swore, grabbed the towel, and started fanning at the smoke like that would erase the evidence of his failure from the air itself.
The candles kept flickering.
The pasta was boiling over.
One of the chairs snagged on his boot as he moved too fast, screeching across the floor.
For one horrible second Keith just stood in the center of it all, pan in one hand, towel in the other, and took in the full scope of what he had done. The side counter looked almost sweet under candlelight. The rest of the kitchen looked like it had been lightly shelled.
He set the pan down, turned off the burner, opened the nearest vent, and stared into the ruined sauce. There were blackened edges. There were chunks that looked like they might actually be pieces of food if he pretended hard enough.
Maybe if he scraped off the top.
Maybe if he added more alien ingredients.
Maybe if he died immediately.
Keith scrubbed a hand down his face and came away with a streak of charred sauce he hadn’t realized was there.
He scraped. He stirred. He added something green on principle. The result looked worse.The kitchen smelled like arson. He checked the time. Lance still had at least ten minutes.
Unless training wrapped early.
Unless Coran had let him go.
Unless the universe, smelling blood, decided to finish Keith off properly.
Keith went into full crisis mode. He wiped down the counter, scooped the dry pasta off the floor, and shoved the spice container back where it belonged with brisk, irritated movements. He angled the pan so the least catastrophic side faced outward, as if presentation could still save him now, then reached to fuss with the candles again. One of them had started dripping wax in long pale streaks down the holder, which only made the whole setup look somehow more pathetic.
He grabbed two plates and started portioning out the least ruined parts of the meal with the rigid concentration of a man attempting surgery in the dark. If Lance squinted, maybe it would look intentional. Rustic. Charred. Hunk sometimes used that word when things got crispy on purpose.
This definitely wasn’t on purpose, but Lance didn’t need to know that.
…No, who was he kidding? Lance would know immediately. Keith straightened the napkin again anyway.
He had just finished dragging the towel across one final patch of sauce on the counter when he heard footsteps in the hall. Then Lance’s voice, easy and bright and much, much too close.
“Hello? Why does it smell like a cooking show had a mental break in here?”
Keith went cold all at once. He turned toward the doorway right as Lance appeared in it.
Keith had a vivid, terrible awareness of everything Lance could see from where he stood. The dimmed overhead lights. The candles. The table set for two. The smoke still hanging faintly in the air. The scorched pan on the stove. The ruined counter. Keith himself in the middle of it with his sleeves rolled up, flour on his shirt, and what was probably soot on his face.
Lance blinked once. Twice. Keith’s soul quietly left his body.
“You were supposed to be back later,” he said, as if it would explain everything. It came out flat and accusatory and not at all like the thing he had meant to say, which had maybe been “hi.”
Lance’s mouth twitched.
Keith pointed at him, because apparently humiliation made him stupid. “Don’t,” he said. That only made Lance’s expression go softer in the most dangerous possible way.
“Oh my god,” Lance said, very quietly.
“It was under control ten minutes ago.”
Lance looked around the kitchen again. His gaze landed on the candles. The plates. The pan. Came back to Keith.
“Was it?”
Keith set the towel down with rigid care. “...Yes.” It was the least convincing word ever spoken.
A laugh slipped out of Lance then, soft and startled and entirely too fond to count as a real threat. Keith was suddenly painfully aware that he was standing in the middle of a candlelit kitchen disaster with flour on his shirt, smoke in the air, and his dignity hanging on by a thread. He turned toward the stove on instinct, like maybe if he started aggressively dealing with the pan he could avoid dying of embarrassment in real time.
“Forget it,” he muttered. “I’m cleaning this up.”
Lance caught his wrist before he could reach the pan. The touch stopped him more effectively than any order could have. Keith went still and looked at their hands first, because it was easier than looking at Lance’s face.
“Keith,” Lance said. There was something in his voice now that made Keith finally look up.
Lance was smiling, but not in the way he did when he was gearing up to tease somebody into the ground. This smile was warmer. Softer. Like surprise had melted into something that reached a lot deeper and left him gentler for it.
“You did all this for me?”
Keith wanted, very badly, to phase through the floor.
“It was supposed to be better than this.”
Lance glanced at the candles again. At the plates. Back at him. “You made me dinner.”
“I made a mess.”
Lance laughed, hand flying to his mouth for a second like he could actually stop himself, and Keith would have been offended if the sound was not so helplessly fond that it hit him right in the chest.
“You made me a very romantic mess,” Lance said.
Keith groaned. “I said don’t.”
“You lit candles.”
“You’ve been having headaches.”
“You set the table.”
“We own plates, Lance. It’s not illegal to use them.”
“You cooked.”
Keith looked at the pan. “Debatable.”
Lance stepped farther into the kitchen, still holding Keith’s wrist like he had no intention of letting him retreat into damage control. He took in the disaster with open delight now, the kind that only made Keith’s face feel hotter.
“This,” Lance said, turning slowly in place, “is the most romantic disaster I have ever seen in my life.”
“It smells burnt.”
“It smells like effort.”
“That’s not better.”
“It really is.”
Before Keith could argue, Lance let go of his wrist only to reach up and rub his thumb over Keith’s cheek. He came away with a dark smear and held it up between them with a grin.
“You have soot on your face.”
Keith closed his eyes for half a second. “Great.”
“It’s cute.”
His eyes snapped open. “No, it isn’t.”
Lance’s grin widened. “It really, really is.”
Keith looked away, which did nothing to help because now he was painfully aware of Lance moving around his space, touching things, straightening one of the plates, peering into the pan with unconcealed curiosity. Lance picked up the spoon.
“Lance, don’t—”
Too late. Lance tasted the sauce. His face did something complicated and brave and almost heroic.
Keith winced, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. “That bad?”
Lance swallowed with visible determination. “I’m choosing to focus on the emotional narrative.”
“Oh my god.”
“It has notes.”
“Of what?”
“Fire. Determination. Yearning.”
Keith made a strangled noise that only encouraged him. Lance set the spoon down and looked back at him, laughter still in his eyes but gentled now by something else. Something softer and much worse for Keith’s survival.
“No, seriously,” Lance said. “This is insanely sweet.”
Keith folded his arms. It was that or do something equally embarrassing with his hands. “It’s a mess.”
“So?”
“So,” Keith repeated, gesturing to everything. “Look at it.”
“I’m looking at it.”
“That should make my point for me.”
Lance stepped close enough that Keith caught the soft, clean scent of soap and whatever absurdly nice hair product he’d used after his shower, something fresh and warm with a sweeter edge that did dangerous things to Keith’s concentration. It cut straight through the smoke and the burnt-dinner haze. Close enough that the whole room seemed to shift around him. The candles stopped looking incriminating. The wrecked kitchen stopped feeling like the center of the universe.
Lance’s voice dropped, all playfulness gone soft around the edges. “Keith.”
Simple. Quiet. Devastating.
Keith swallowed.
He had meant to say something cooler than the truth. Something dismissive. Something with enough sarcasm wrapped around it that he could survive hearing it out loud.
Instead what came out was, “I just wanted to do something nice.”
Something gentled in Lance’s face then, quiet and lovely and impossible to miss. The warmth in his expression deepened until it made him look almost unbearably open. Keith had seen Lance in a hundred different shades by now. Bright with laughter, fond and teasing, fierce, stubborn, reckless, kind. This felt softer than any of them. It was Lance looking at him like the effort mattered. Like every clumsy, earnest piece of it had landed exactly where Keith had hoped it would.
“Oh,” Lance said. Keith hated how wrecked that one syllable made him.
Lance slid his hand from Keith’s wrist to his hand proper, lacing their fingers together with easy certainty. Keith felt the contact all the way up his arm. Lance lifted their joined hands slightly between them like proof.
“This is way better than perfect food.”
Keith eyed the pan. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“It is to me.”
Keith looked at him then. Really looked.
Lance meant it.
Of course he did. Lance, who could take the rawest, most awkward thing Keith had to offer and somehow hold it without making it feel ugly. Lance, who seemed almost delighted by the fact that Keith had clearly gone completely out of his depth trying.
Keith’s chest hurt with it. In a good way. In the way that still made him suspicious and nervous and unsure.
Lance squeezed his hand, then lifted his free one to brush a faint streak of flour from Keith’s shirt with maddening care. The touch was light, almost absentminded, but it still sent Keith’s nerves skittering in six different directions at once.
“You know,” Lance said, voice easy and warm, “if this is what happens when you try to be romantic, I’d really love to see what you do when you actually know what you’re doing.”
Keith’s entire brain quietly short-circuited.
Heat rushed up his neck so fast it was almost embarrassing. His pulse went wild. Every thought he had scattered on impact, leaving him standing there with Lance’s hand in his and absolutely nothing useful in his head besides the fact that Lance was close and smiling and very obviously enjoying this.
“I wasn’t,” Keith started, then stopped because that was already a lie and they both knew it. He tried again, faster this time, words tripping over each other. “It’s just food. I was just making food. I mean, dinner. For you. Because you forget to eat when you’re busy and somebody has to make sure you eat something that isn’t just goo.”
Lance’s mouth twitched. “Mm-hmm.”
Keith could hear how flimsy that sounded and hated that he was still talking, still making it worse with every desperate attempt to explain himself. “It wasn’t supposed to be a whole thing,” he muttered. Then, because apparently he had not suffered enough, he added, “The candles were just because you said you had a headache.”
Lance blinked at him.
“The candles,” he repeated.
Keith refused to look away. “The overhead lights in here are awful.”
For one terrible second Lance just stared at him. Then his smile widened into something so fond and helpless it made Keith want to walk directly into space.
“Right,” Lance said softly. “Of course. Very practical. Nothing romantic about headache candles.”
Keith shot the traitorous little flames a dark look. “They were supposed to be subtle.”
Lance laughed, warm and delighted, and Keith could feel the sound of it all the way down in his ribs.
Lance’s gaze flicked from the candles back to Keith, softening in a way that made Keith’s pulse stumble. “You know,” he said, voice warm with amusement, “I think I like your version of practical.” His thumb brushed once against the back of Keith’s hand, light enough that Keith could have pretended it was accidental if Lance had not been looking at him like that. “A nice dinner, headache candles, you trying to take care of me. It’s kind of unfair, actually.”
Keith’s throat went dry. “Unfair,” he repeated weakly.
Lance’s smile turned smaller then, gentler, with that same teasing edge still tucked into it. “Yeah. Makes it really hard not to kiss you.”
His hand felt too warm in Lance’s. His face felt even worse. “You can’t say stuff like that when I’m already at a disadvantage.”
Lance tipped his head, still looking at him with that bright, dangerous fondness. “And what disadvantage is that?”
Keith stared at him for a second too long. At the curve of his mouth. At the candlelight catching in his eyes. At the fact that Lance knew exactly what he was doing and seemed delighted by it.
“You know exactly what,” Keith muttered.
“Maybe,” Lance said, leaning in just a little, his voice dropping into something softer and more intimate, “but I think I need a better explanation.”
Keith opened his mouth and got absolutely nowhere.
Then Lance kissed him.
Keith had just enough time to pull in a breath before every coherent thought left him again. Lance kissed like he did most things that mattered, warmly and wholeheartedly, like he had chosen this and had no intention of holding back from it. It was slow and soft and just smug enough at the edges to make Keith dizzy. Keith’s free hand found Lance’s waist on instinct, fingers curling there like he needed something solid to anchor himself to. He felt the warmth of him through his clothes, the easy steadiness of his body, the unbelievable reality of this.
The kitchen disappeared around the edges.
The burnt sauce, the smoke, the crooked candles, the humiliating wreck of dinner, all of it fell away under the simple, staggering fact that Lance was kissing him like none of that mattered. Like Keith’s clumsy effort had gotten through anyway. Like this whole stupid evening had somehow worked exactly the way it was supposed to.
Keith kissed him back harder than he meant to, because gentleness lasted about half a second before want took over and made the decision for him. Lance made a small pleased sound against his mouth, and that nearly undid what little remained of Keith’s composure.
When they finally pulled apart, it was only just enough to breathe. Lance stayed close, close enough that Keith could still feel the warmth of his breath against his face. Their hands were still linked between them. Keith realized, dimly and far too late, that he was holding on too tight, fingers locked around Lance’s like he was afraid this might vanish if he loosened his grip.
Lance’s smile softened again, warm and a little smug. “For the record,” he murmured, still close enough that Keith could feel the shape of every word, “I’m really easy to romance.”
Keith let his forehead rest against Lance’s for a second, partly because he wanted to and partly because it was easier than dealing with that head-on. “Good,” he said. “Because I’m never doing this again.”
Lance pulled back just enough to look at him, scandalized. “Excuse you. You do one candlelit dinner and now you’re retiring?”
“I almost burned the kitchen down.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t.” Lance’s mouth twitched. “And honestly, the near-disaster added character.”
Keith gave him a flat look. “That’s not how dinner works.”
“It kinda is when you’re involved.”
Keith huffed out a laugh despite himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lance’s grin widened. “It means you’re intense. You bring a certain fiery atmosphere to things.”
Keith blinked at him. “Fiery atmosphere.”
“Come on,” Lance said, like this was obvious. “Red Paladin. Terrible impulse control. Constant smoldering.” His eyes dipped meaningfully, then came back up. “Very fire-coded.”
Keith stared for half a second, then laughed properly, short and helpless and fond in a way that hit him too low in the chest. “Fire-coded,” he repeated.
Lance nodded, completely pleased with himself. “Absolutely. Red is fire. It’s practically science.”
“That’s not science.” Keith rolled his eyes.
“It is if I say it with confidence.” Lance’s grin widened. “Honestly, this whole evening was very on-brand for you. Deeply sincere, a little chaotic, mildly dangerous.”
Keith gave him a look. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Of course I am,” Lance said, like Keith had said something ridiculous. His thumb brushed lightly over Keith’s hand where their fingers were still tangled together. “You tried to make me dinner. You lit candles because I had a headache. You almost died fighting a sauce for my honor. This is, like, top-tier material for me.”
Keith felt his face heat all over again.
Lance shifted just enough to glance past Keith at the counter, at the two plates waiting under crooked candlelight, at the pan sitting sadly on the stove. Smoke still lingered faintly in the air, thinned now but not gone, and the whole kitchen carried that strange blend of garlic, burnt sauce, and melted wax that somehow made the disaster feel even more ridiculous.
“I still think we should eat whatever part of this isn’t legally considered ash,” Lance said. His mouth twitched. “Wouldn’t want all your wonderful hard work to go to waste. Besides, I’m starving.”
Keith followed his gaze to the pan and felt his soul grow tired all over again. “I seriously doubt there are any parts like that,” he said. At this point he was ready to admit defeat, clean up the crime scene, and raid the fridge for whatever leftovers Hunk had preserved. Something cold and safe and not actively burning.
Lance looked back at him with easy, unearned confidence. “There has to be. I have faith in Chef Kogane.”
Keith gave him a flat look. “You literally gagged when you tried it.”
“That was one bite,” Lance said at once. “And, to be fair, it was a very aggressive bite.”
“It’s sauce.”
“It was the wrong part of the sauce.”
Keith opened his mouth, fully prepared to inform him that there were no right parts of the sauce, only varying degrees of tragedy, but the words died before they could make it out. Footsteps sounded in the hall.
Both of them went still. Lance’s eyes widened a fraction. Keith felt the blood drain from his face.
A second later Hunk walked into the kitchen carrying a storage container against one hip. He took one step over the threshold and stopped so abruptly he nearly dropped it.
Silence fell.
Hunk turned his head slowly.
His gaze moved over the room in stages, each one somehow worse than the last. The smoke-stained air. The scorched pan on the stove. The splattered counters. The pot of pasta. The wax dripping down one candle in pale, guilty streaks. The little two-person setup glowing softly in the middle of the devastation. Keith and Lance standing much too close together in front of all of it, hands still linked.
Hunk looked at the pan again.
“Keith,” he said, in a voice hollowed out by genuine horror, “what did you do to my kitchen?”
Keith straightened instinctively, like posture might save him now. “Uh… there was an ambush.”
“Keith.” Hunk set the storage container down on the nearest clear patch of counter with the care of a man laying flowers on a grave, then marched to the stove and stared into the pan with naked grief. “Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my god. Look at this pan. This pan had dreams.”
Lance made a strangled sound beside Keith, half choke and half laugh.
Hunk whipped around and pointed at the candles like they had personally betrayed him. “And why,” he demanded, “are there mood lights at the scene of the crime?”
“It wasn’t a crime scene until the sauce went bad,” Keith said before he could stop himself.
Hunk stared at him. Then, very slowly, he repeated, “The sauce went bad?”
Keith, who had already lost everything worth preserving tonight, only shrugged a little.
Hunk pressed a hand to his chest. “Keith,” he said, sounding deeply wounded, “that sauce didn’t go bad. That sauce was brutally murdered and is now haunting this room.”
That did it. Lance broke.
He bent in half laughing, shoulders shaking so hard he had to clutch at Keith with his free hand just to stay upright. Keith could feel heat rushing back into his face, hot and helpless and impossible to stop, which was bad enough on its own without Lance nearly collapsing against him over Hunk’s eulogy for the sauce.
Hunk turned back to the counter with the dazed expression of a man discovering new depths of suffering. “No. No, I need a minute. I need several minutes. I need emotional support. Is that wax on the counter?”
Keith glanced toward the candle. Wax had indeed dripped onto the polished surface in a little pale puddle. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Lance straightened only enough to try, unsuccessfully, to look helpful. His voice still came out thin with laughter. “Hunk, I swear, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
Hunk swung toward him so fast it was almost impressive. “Lance,” he said, with the patient devastation of someone explaining a tragedy to a child, “my kitchen looks like a war crime.”
Lance folded right back over.
He laughed so hard he had to grab Keith’s arm with his other hand, his forehead almost knocking into Keith’s shoulder. Keith held on to his hand automatically, partly to steady him and partly because at this point letting go felt harder than hanging on. Against all reason, against all dignity, a laugh escaped Keith too. It came out rough and reluctant at first, then warmer, helplessly dragged free by the sheer absurdity of the whole thing.
Hunk pointed at both of them with righteous fury. “No. Absolutely not. You do not get to stand there and laugh. Somebody is helping me clean this up. Preferably the somebody who committed this act of culinary violence.”
Lance lifted his head. The look he shot Keith was immediate, bright, and extremely bad news. Keith knew that look.
“Run,” Lance said.
Keith blinked. “What?”
“Run!”
And because apparently Keith had lost every remaining fragment of self-preservation the moment he lit the first candle, he went. They bolted for the hallway in a tangle of laughter and bad decisions while Hunk shouted after them, scandalized and disbelieving all at once.
“Lance! Keith! Get back here right now!”
Lance was laughing so hard he nearly tripped over the threshold. He caught himself, kept going, and dragged Keith around the corner at full speed. The Castle corridors blurred past in smooth silver curves and bands of soft light. Their footsteps rang off the floor. Keith almost collided with Lance once, shoulder clipping his back, but Lance only laughed harder and kept pulling him onward. Their hands stayed locked together the whole time.
Lance’s grip was warm and firm and completely unapologetic, fingers threaded tight through Keith’s like this was the most natural thing in the world. Keith’s lungs burned from the sudden sprint and from laughing more than he meant to, but he didn’t even think about pulling free.
“Hunk is going to kill us,” he said, breathless.
Lance glanced back at him, grinning so brightly it almost knocked the air out of Keith all over again. “He has to catch us first.”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
Lance’s smile only widened. “And here I thought we were having a bonding moment.”
Their hands were clasped so tightly together that letting go would have taken actual effort. Keith could feel the heat of Lance’s palm, the slight dampness from the run, the easy certainty of his grip. He didn’t loosen his hold.
When he looked back up, Lance was already looking at him over his shoulder, face flushed, hair still soft from his shower, eyes bright with laughter and something gentler underneath it. The sight hit Keith with that same strange, dizzying mix the whole evening had become. Affection. Disbelief. Nerves. Want. All of it tangled together so tightly he couldn’t have separated one from the next if he tried.
Behind them, Hunk’s voice echoed faintly down the corridor, still promising consequences, cleanup, and possibly a formal trial for crimes against cookware.
Ahead of them, Lance just kept running and laughing, dragging Keith through the Castle like this had been the best night of his life.
Keith should have felt mortified.
He should have felt doomed.
Instead he ran hand in hand with Lance through the glowing halls, grinning despite himself, and thought with a kind of helpless, startled wonder that somehow, against all odds, he had gotten it exactly right.
