“No.”
Lance groans loudly, forgoing smacking his face in his hands and going straight for banging his head repeatedly against the elevator doors, which Keith thinks is a touch dramatic. But regardless he crosses his arms over his chest and stubbornly refuses to budge from his position.
“Keith. For the love of God.”
“God is dead and I’m not climbing out of a goddamn ten thousand foot elevator hatch with you.”
Keith admittedly puts a tad too much emphasis on the ‘with you’ part of the sentence. It’s obvious in the way Lance stops and lifts his head up and glares at Keith so icily he doesn’t need to squint to make out Lance’s expression in the low emergency lights; his eyes practically burn a hole through Keith’s forehead. Keith winces but doesn’t say anything.
“You have gone toe to toe with a goddamn zombie dictator,” Lance grinds out, “but you’re too much of a pussy to climb an elevator shaft?”
Keith stiffens. “I’m not — shut up!”
Smirking, now, visibly delighted that he’s managed to press Keith’s buttons (God Keith wants to punch him), Lance leans against the elevator wall, hip cocked, feigning nonchalance.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he says, inspecting his nails like it doesn’t matter. “I just never would have thought that the best pilot out of the Garrison and literal pilot of the Red Lion is, you know, a chicken.”
Keith clenches his fists. Lance is frustrated and bored and pushing Keith’s buttons because there’s fuck else to do. He is. Keith knows this.
But he is so goddamn good at it.
“I’m not a fucking chicken, Cargo Pilot.”
‘Cargo Pilot’ is usually a hole-in-one insult that’s guaranteed to make Lance bristle, sure to make him bare his teeth and go bright red and generally lose his absolute shit. Keith is even sparing in his use of the term, careful not to let it lose its potency.
But because the universe hates him and also Lance is the most annoying motherfucker alive, his smirk only widens, and he flexes his fingers, still fucking casual, still not even bothering to look up in Keith’s direction.
I hate you, Keith thinks, with feeling.
“Sure,” Lance says, without. He shrugs. “Prove it.”
For a second Keith thinks he’s so mad that he might. But then he imagines it fully, pictures his bare back pressed against Lance’s, feet planted on the slippery castle walls, lights probably still out, struggling to put one foot in front of the other and drag each other upright. He thinks of how much effort that would take and how easily he would start to sweat, how easily every shift of their muscles would loosen the friction-borne grip between them, how easily his foot could slip. He thinks of how long a ten thousand foot drop would take, how long he would have to accept that he’s going to die before he splats on the pristine floor.
His stomach turns. His face goes green.
Lance’s jaw drops.
“Oh my God, you’re afraid of heights!”
“I am not!” Keith snaps, because he isn’t, he just has a fucking brain. “It’s just — it’s ten thousand fucking feet, Lance!”
“A pilot!” Lance screeches. “A pilot afraid of heights!”
“You are so goddamn extra!” Keith cries.
Lance makes more vague screeching noises. He gestures furiously at Keith, then pauses, then makes a sound in the back of his throat akin to a loudly dying whale, then gestures back at Keith, then at the ceiling, then at the elevator as a whole. Then he lets out one loud, long, final yell, completely wordless and directed at what Keith can only assume is the heavens, and stops, closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and very calmly crawls onto the floor, belly first, and lays perfectly flat with his face pressed to the tiles.
“I hate it here,” he says serenely. He pauses for a minute, thoughtful. “Also, I hate you.”
“Ditto,” Keith mutters, finally giving up and joining him on the floor. He tips his head back until it thumps on the elevator wall and sighs, loud and long, wondering vaguely if this is punishment for the hundreds of times he mocked Shiro for his fear of squirrels. He truly thinks it might be.
All he wanted was twenty goddamn minutes in the pool. That’s all. He’d have even taken ten. He just wanted to swim a few laps, maybe float for a bit, and pretend he was in a lake somewhere without pressing problems such as saving the universe and the fate of every single soul in it.
Eight minutes, really. Seven.
The lights flicker back on. Lance lifts his head, hopeful, then stretches out one ridiculously long leg (seriously what is the deal with that he’s basically a giraffe, it’s too much, Keith should talk to someone about it because since when were legs allowed to be that — long and shapely, or whatever, it’s weird) and presses the closest button with his toe.
It does nothing. Lance stares at it for a few minutes, as if attempting to bring the elevator alive by manifestation alone, but no life is forthcoming. Lance huffs sadly and returns his face to the floor.
“That’s really disgusting,” Keith says, although he has his fair share of Floor Time. “People walk on this floor all the time.”
Lance doesn’t bother looking up, groaning loudly for several minutes before simply rolling away to the opposite side of the elevator.
“Shut up,” he says finally, after so long Keith almost forgets his original comment. “You just —”
Abruptly he straightens up, pulling the towel off his neck and crawling forward to place it in the middle of the elevator. Keith rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts, a little.
“You and your commentary stay on the loser stinky mullet half of the elevator,” Lance says. “The pretty half that’s not infected with your rancid vibes belongs to me.”
“Were you trained to be this annoying?” Keith ponders, half out of genuine curiosity. “Like, do you do this on purpose?”
“Ignoring you now,” Lance says primly.
Keith scowls. He’s not — Keith isn’t the one who’s too irritating to be around without going insane.
“I’m ignoring you, asshole.”
Lance doesn’t respond. Keith closes one eye and holds up his thumb and forefinger to the approximate shape of Lance’s face, pretending he’s squishing his head. It brings him great peace.
After a while, though, he starts to get restless. His legs starts bouncing, up and down so fast it’s blurry, and then his fingers start to tap, but the feeling of rustling under his skin only gets worse, spinning faster and faster and coil tightening more and more in his stomach until he just — implodes, really, until his brain goes boom and says if you don’t get moving right this second, and Keith says in response to it, believe me I’m on it. He’s scrambling to his feet before he has the conscious thought to do so, hands moving before he tells them to and pushing him upright, bare feet padding rapidly on the floor as he paces, three steps until he hits the wall then pivot then three steps then pivot then three steps again. Over and over and over. His fingers stop tapping but his shoulders get twitchy; itchy under his skin and on it, sweaty because there’s no airflow and this goddamn elevator is sweltering. Or he’s just hot. He usually runs hot. He’s not sure and he doesn’t care to know, because the pool would have been refreshing but instead he’s stuck in a ten by ten by ten cube stuck somewhere on a ten thousand foot tube and to his right his rival-slash-teammate keeps huffing and rubbing his hands on his arms and muttering to himself.
“Could you maybe cut that out,” Keith snaps, which is entirely unfair because his pacing isn’t quiet, but Keith is three seconds away from attempting to climb the walls and it’s Lance, anyway, when are they not arguing, so it doesn’t matter.
Maybe when you’re having a crisis-brought bonding moment, says a voice in his brain. Stuck elevators are kind of a crisis.
Shut up or I’m going to give myself a concussion, Keith responds to it.
“Not my fault it’s goddamn freezing in here,” Lance snaps.
Keith pauses. He looks down at Lance. He frowns.
“Your lips are blue,” he observes, bewildered.
“Eat shit,” Lance responds, predictably. He’s fucking — he’s shivering.
Keith is made astutely aware of the cooling sweat on his back and grimaces.
“Lance,” he says slowly, “it is not cold in here.”
Lance blows out a breath like the goddamn weight of the world is on his shoulders. He flicks his eyes up to meet Keith’s, who is standing behind his head and leaning down, and somehow manages to seem like the more put-together person between them, which is bonkers.
“I’m anaemic, stupid.”
Keith blinks. Suddenly the air feels very solemn, and he shifts uncomfortably, unsure of what to say.
“I didn’t know you had an eating disorder,” he manages eventually.
Lance’s faces scrunches up in confusion for seven whole seconds before it clears, and he looks at Keith like he is the dumbest man alive and then bursts out laughing.
“That’s — anorexic, you idiot! I don’t have enough blood!”
“Oh,” Keith says, face heating. He scowls as Lance continues to laugh way harder than what was called for, clutching his stomach with tears rolling down his face. He pokes Lance aggressively with his toe, and by that he means his kicks him. “Will you stop — it’s not that funny, dickhead!”
“It really is,” Lance wheezes.
Keith scowls harder. His face is as red as his shorts and the flush is starting to spread down his chest and Lance notices and it only makes him laugh more, because he’s a shithead of the worst kind. “I hope you choke.”
Keith flicks his towel over his head and yanks, embarrassed, stomping to the other side of the elevator as if that will somehow make Lance shut up faster. It doesn’t, obviously, and he hears Lance laugh for several minutes until he finally winds down to giggling, then eventually nothing.
Keith harrumphs quietly to himself. He resolves to sticking in his corner like he should have from the very beginning, until the elevator starts moving again or someone on the team comes to save them. At this point he’s so done he wouldn’t even care if it was Shiro, wouldn’t even care if Shiro gloated about it for eternity (Keith saved his ass from government experimentation, anyway, so he wins by default for the rest of time). He faces his corner and pulls his knees to his chest and starts picking at a loose thread in the seam of his shorts to amuse himself.
Several minutes later, he hears Lance shifting. He ignores it. He pulls at the thread until it comes loose, then busies himself with tying the thread into the most complicated and random knot he can.
A few more minutes later, and there’s the sound of fabric rustling and draping, then quiet cursing. Keith untangles and retangles his knot for the fourth time.
After what must be a half hour, Keith hears the sound of teeth chattering.
He sighs. He looks forlornly at his knot.
“I could just ignore him,” he mutters to himself. “He probably won’t die.”
He thinks of how short Lance’s shorts are. He pinches his own towel in his fingertips, so thin he can practically feel his fingerprints. He remembers blue lips and a clenched jaw and raised gooseflesh.
He sighs loudly, more of a groan, and flicks his ball of thread away.
It takes Lance a few seconds to respond to Keith looming over him, which is worrying. But eventually he cracks open one brown eye and flares up at Keith.
“What,” he mutters. His teeth are chattering so bad it sounds like two words.
“You’re freezing,” Keith says. His voice is softer than he expected it to be.
Lance huffs, closing his eye again and curling further into himself. “No shit.”
Keith frowns. “I’m not.”
“Well, rub it in, why dontcha.”
Keith frowns. “You’re not understanding.”
Lance ignores him. Keith has a sudden and vivid memory of the year Shiro and Adam drove him up to Seattle in the winter so he could be more cultured, or whatever (or less of a desert menace, Adam had argued, and perhaps more inclined to stop biting people), and spent the whole car ride lecturing him about hypothermia.
“It doesn’t take very long to set in,” Shiro had said.
“And once you have it you need to warm up or your heart can stop,” Adam had finished, very serious.
Suddenly Keith starts to feel very panicked.
Lukewarm tea, warm blankets, skin to skin contact with someone who’s warm, were Shiro’s instructions. And then possibly hospital.
Well. Keith has one of those things.
Before he can talk himself out of it, he wraps a gentle hand around Lance’s shoulder, tugging him upright, then pulls him forward so his cradled hands are pressed against Keith’s chest and his head is tucked into the junction of Keith’s neck.
Worryingly, it takes Lance almost thirty seconds to start complaining.
“You smell like mullet,” he whines. But he doesn’t move away. In fact, he burrows closer.
Keith swallows down his worry. “Mullets don’t smell like anything, dumbass.” He brings his hands up to press against Lance’s back. Lance groans, curling deeper into Keith’s hold. His nose is icy and burns a trail across Keith’s shoulder, down his collarbone. Keith’s flush from earlier makes an enthusiastic return, because nothing good still exists in the world.
“I still think you’re annoying,” Lance mumbles. Every move of his lip brushes against Keith’s skin.
“Shut up and focus on not freezing to death,” Keith snaps.
Lance snorts. “I’m not gonna freeze to death, doofus. It’s just a dead elevator. Once I fell asleep on the Garrison rooftop in January and only had to spend three days in urgent care, so basically I can withstand anything.”
Keith pauses. He tries to reconcile the Lance who just said that to the Lance who came up with a life saving plan in thirty seconds on the Balmera to the Lance who threatened to stick Keith in a wormhole to the Lance who smiled and said they made a good team before passing out in Keith’s arms.
“You are a very confusing person,” he says when all the reconciling does absolutely nothing.
“Thank you,” Lance says, sounding pleased.
Keith snorts and tightens his hold. Lance sighs and sags a little. Slowly his fingers stop feeling so much like ice blocks, and his breathing doesn’t sound so erratic. Keith doesn’t know how long it’s been. He stopped trying to count somewhere between when Lance’s cheek squished against his chest and his fingers started tracing featherlight patterns across his skin.
Lance yawns. Keith tries to fight his but ends up yawning anyway.
“Is it bad to let a person with hypothermia sleep?” he mumbles, half-slurring his words.
Lance hums. “‘M not hypothermic.”
“Dunno. Could be.”
He sighs again, a puff of air against Keith’s neck, and spreads his palms against Keith’s chest, flat. “‘M not. You’re too warm.” He pauses. “Freak.”
His tone is fond. The corners of Keith’s lips quirk up. “Weirdo.”
“Mhm.”
He falls asleep trying to count Lance’s breaths. It’s — groundbreaking, somehow.
———
(“Oh, my God.”
Keith cracks open bleary eyes, lifting a hand to rub his face. Lance groans from his place on Keith’s chest — in a puddle of drool, why is that not nearly as revolting as it should be — and snatches Keith’s wrist way faster than he should be able to as groggy as he is, placing it back around his waist.
“Oh, my God,” the voice repeats, gleeful.
“Shut up, Shiro,” Keith mutters. “Fuck.”
It takes him a minute.
His eyes fly open at the same time as Lance’s, and they look at each other, and then Keith is being shoved and kicked at the same time somehow and Lance is scrambling backwards at the speed of light, screeching. A loud bang makes Keith look over and he discovers his brother, who is dead to him, collapsed on the floor, laughing so loud Zarkon can probably hear him.
“What — Shiro — go — stop fucking laughing, you piece of shit!”
Lance continues to screech. Keith whips a towel at him.
“You gay pining loser!” Shiro shrieks. “I’m going to tell literally everyone!”
Keith puts his head in his hands and wishes he’d fallen down the goddamn elevator shaft.)
