#dreamdreaded

To make everything worse, Lance had spoken softly to him the whole time. His voice was one of Keith’s favorite things about him, and Keith would be a liar if he didn’t like it best when Lance was quiet and talking softly in Keith’s ear.

They spent the rest of the night together. They walked to dinner together, and when they were finished eating, they sat underneath one of the big windows on the observation deck, staring out at the stars while they talked about anything and everything.

Eventually, Lance had scooted over to him and leaned against his shoulder, and fuck, everything had been so perfect.

It wasn’t the first time either. Over the past few months, he and Lance had been in this strange place. There would be days where they hardly left each other’s side. Then, there would be days where Lance could barely look at him.

When it had gotten late and when Lance was interrupting his stories by yawning into Keith’s shoulder, Keith had said, “It’s late. We should get some sleep.”

Lance had nodded and looked up at him. His body was still pressed against Keith’s, and his eyes were a shade darker than normal. He said, “I know you have trouble sleeping after a mission like that. You can… you can stay in my room. If you want.”

Keith had nodded and followed him back to his room, grasping onto his hand. When they got there, they helped each other undress, and fuck if it wasn’t the best thing that Keith had ever done. Lance was too beautiful. He had been all soft smiles and murmurs when he pulled Keith into his bed with him, rolling onto his side and pulling Keith’s arm over his waist like it belonged there. Lance fell asleep quickly, pressing his back into Keith’s chest and gripping Keith’s hand in his own, even in his sleep.

Despite how tired he had been earlier, Keith was awake after that. All he could do was stare at the dark, perfect curve of Lance’s neck. He stayed until the feeling in his chest got too heavy, and then he slipped out of Lance’s bed, grabbed his clothes, and went to Red’s hangar.

He left the castle and headed down to the planet they had saved earlier that day. He landed Red in an empty field and took his speeder over to the closest town, and when he was walking through the crowded streets, he ran right into an alien that recognized him from earlier.

The alien’s eyes were the exact same shade that Lance’s had been earlier.

It took a brief conversation, a smirk, and a hand on theirs before Keith had them pressed up against the scratchy brick of a dark alley. The only thing he could think about while he fucked them was Lance’s name, Lance’s voice, Lance’s body, Lance’s smile, Lance, Lance, Lance.  

The first thing that Keith thought after he came was that he was a real fuck up, that Lance was probably going to hate him, that there was no way that Lance, beautiful, sweet, amazing Lance, would want to be with him in this or any universe.

It was that thought that had Keith diving back in for another rough kiss, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to banish all thoughts of Lance.

;;

Keith had been back for a grand total of twenty minutes when Shiro found him.

He figured it was sometime close to morning, early enough that the others should still be asleep. He had just landed Red in her hangar, and he was sitting in the showers, unlacing his boots when Shiro stormed in.

“We have a problem,” Shiro said, and Keith could tell how mad he was just by his voice.

Because Keith was an asshole, he looked up and met Shiro’s gaze and said, “I’d say we have more than one.”

Shiro scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. This is happening too much.”

“Please,” Keith scoffed, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad. We’re done with not talking about it. It’s been happening for months, and it’s starting to affect the team.”

“I don’t see how the people I sleep with affects the team.”

Shiro frowned, disappointment radiating from him. “Keith. Yes, you do. I’ve seen you when you run into Lance in the hallway after you get back. Your face—”

“Shut up, Shiro.”

“Keith,” Shiro started, “what the hell is wrong with you?”

Keith exploded. He jumped to his feet and got in Shiro’s face and said, “I don’t fucking know, okay?! I don’t fucking know what’s wrong with me. Because all I can think about is Lance and how much I fucking care about him, and then when I go out at night I always, always end up fucking up and and—”

He took a breath, forced himself to calm down and take a step away from Shiro. He continued after a few seconds, “They always have blue eyes, you know? Just like his so I can pretend.”

“But going out and fucking people that remind you of him doesn’t help the situation,” Shiro replied, and Keith felt like a scolded three-year-old again. “It makes it worse. Do you even know how upset it makes Lance?”

Keith buried his face into his hands, “Of course I know how upset it makes him. I can’t—I can’t even look at him after.”

“Then why would you—”

“I don’t know, Shiro,” Keith said tiredly. He had beaten himself up over it so much in the past few months, but every time he went to a planet and walked around and found someone and ended up fucking them, he couldn’t remember what was going through his mind when he agreed and followed them back to their house or a dark alley or wherever it was. “I don’t know, okay?”

“Well, figure it out,” Shiro said. He stepped close enough to set a hand on Keith’s shoulder and forced Keith to look up at him. His expression was still serious. “No more. You can’t leave the castle in the middle of the night again. It’s dangerous; you don’t know what could happen, and if you got hurt, we wouldn’t even know where to look for you. I’ll put Red on lockdown if I have to. I’m serious.”

Keith swallowed and nodded, “Okay.”

Shiro left him alone then, and Keith stared at the floor and wondered how he was going to face Lance in a few hours.

;;

Keith wasn’t going to go to breakfast because he didn’t want to see Lance right away, so the universe took it upon itself to fix the situation.

He ran into Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro walking to breakfast together.

There was one second where Lance hadn’t seen him. He was talking to Hunk, telling a story and laughing, and when they rounded the corner, he had his head turned. Hunk and Pidge both saw him, and before he could turn and run, their expressions shifted to confusion and Lance was turning to look.

“Keith?” Lance asked, blinking at him. “Where did you go last—”

He seemed to realize it just as he was asking. Keith guessed it wouldn’t be hard to guess. He looked like a fucking train wreck, even after a shower. There were hickeys all over his neck and scratches and bites at his hips.

“Lance,” Keith said, voice hinting at desperate. “It’s not—”

“Not what it looks like?” Lance asked, blue eyes turning to fire. “It looks like you went and fucked someone. It looks like you spent all night with me then you went to fuck someone else. Is that not what happened?”

Keith glanced at the others. Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro were all staring, standing off to the side like they were preparing to stop a fight. He didn’t say anything.

Lance’s expression shifted from anger to disgust. “You were in my bed last night, Keith, with me. I let you—I was thinking… I thought that you cared about me and then you just jump at the chance to run away and have sex with someone else? Am I not good enough for you?”

“That’s not—”

“Then what else is there, Keith?” Lance shouted. His hands were curled into fists at his sides. Suddenly, Keith couldn’t stop thinking about how his hands had felt wrapped around Keith’s own last night.

“Nothing. I don’t,” Keith stammered, unsure what to do, what to say to fix this. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No!” he exclaimed. “It didn’t mean anything, Lance, I swear. It was—I made a mistake.”

Lance stared at him for a second before he started shaking his head, “I can’t believe I ever thought you cared. I’m so fucking stupid.”

“No, no, Lance, I—”

“Don’t touch me!” Lance yelled at him when Keith reached out to touch his hip. Keith jerked his hand back and took a step away from him.

A few seconds passed where neither of them said anything. Then, Lance sighed and pressed his hands to his face. Keith’s heart plummeted to his stomach when he realized that Lance was blinking away tears.

“I thought,” Lance started, voice wobbling, “I thought that I could trust you. I thought things were getting better. I thought that I could rely on you, and I thought you would never, ever hurt me. Guess I thought wrong, huh? Just like always.”

“Lance,” Keith begged, “please.”

Lance shook his head and turned away, “Shut up, Keith. Just shut the fuck up. I don’t even want to look at you right now. Go screw someone else and stay the hell away from me.”

He stomped down the hallway, and the only thing Keith could do was watch.

“I’m assuming you guys hate me too, right,” he said after a few tense moments.

“We don’t hate you,” Shiro said. “That was a dick move, and you deserved everything Lance said to you, but we don’t hate you.”

Hunk and Pidge nodded along with Shiro. Hunk nodded to Keith, “Speaking of, I’m going to go check on him.”

Pidge stepped forward and squeezed Keith’s arm. He turned to meet her gaze, and her eyes were honest. She didn’t say anything, but she nodded to him before she followed Hunk.

“Give it time, Keith,” Shiro said. “That’s all I know to do.”

Keith nodded. His throat was tight, and he didn’t know if he could say anything else. Instead, he just started back to his room and stayed there for the rest of the day.

;;

It took a whole week before Lance would acknowledge his existence again, and even then, if he had to interact with him, he kept it short, focused. He never spoke to him unless it was about a mission or Voltron. He didn’t sit beside him at meals anymore. He didn’t walk with him around the castle when they were bored. He didn’t stay up late with him when he couldn’t sleep.

Keith missed Lance so much it hurt to breathe.

He was just—he didn’t know what to do. The bond between them, if Keith could even call it that anymore, had always been weird. Since they got to space and they were forced to be around one another, things were tense between them. It didn’t help that they were so different either. They seemed to clash everywhere they went, every time they moved around each other.

Since their fight in the hallway, Keith had been thinking about the two of them.

Lance was dependent on relationships. Keith knew that he loved his family and talked about them all the time, but for all Lance’s bravado with his pathetic and endearing one liners, Keith knew that he was a relationship-first kinda guy. He didn’t sleep around. Even though he might joke about it sometimes, Keith knew that sex was important to him.

It was no wonder that Lance was so mad at Keith now. Keith had always just treated sex like it was no big deal. Then, he walked around and flaunted it in Lance’s face, like a goddamn idiot.

The thing was, Keith was really bad at relationships. He had never even been in one before, and really, the only thing that Keith knew how to do was sex. Hooking up with people once or twice was way easier than being committed to them and being in a relationship. After all, Keith would just end up hurting someone, just like he did with Lance.

A lot of good it had done either of them, he guessed.

Keith was in the training room, contemplating life, his idiotic choices, and dueling the gladiator when he felt something hit his back, right between the shoulder blades.

Whatever it was had been heavy enough to knock the breath out of him, and Keith was a bit worried about being murdered by the Altean training equipment when a familiar voice called out, “End training sequence!”

Keith froze.

“Turn around and look at me.”

Keith did. There was a book on the floor between his feet. It must have been what Lance had thrown at him.

Lance was wearing jeans and his blue t-shirt. His jacket was missing. His stance was stiff, and his shoulders were tense, and when Keith looked up to his face, he noticed how angry his eyes were. He was also clutching another book in his hand, and Keith was glad he was wearing his armor.

“Hey,” Keith said.

There was a twist to the angry expression on Lance’s face, and then, Keith didn’t even have time to raise his arm to protect his head before Lance was throwing the other book at him.

It hit Keith square in the chest and doubled him over from the force of it. Then, before he could upright himself, Lance was in his space, grabbing him by the collar and getting right into his face.

His voice was angrier than anything Keith had ever heard from him when he said, “I am good enough! Just fuck me already!”

Keith jerked his head back, caught off guard. “What?”

“You fucking heard me!”

He waited a second, studying the anger in Lance’s face.

Lance was offering for Keith to fuck him.

“You want me to fuck you?” he asked.

“Yes!” Lance said. “I’m just as good as all those other hook-ups you have, and I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know I’m good enough.”

Keith didn’t reply. Lance was gripping his shoulder in his hand, grip too tight for comfort. He was shaking a little.

Keith made himself stop and think. Not doing that earlier was what got him into all this mess, and if Keith just agreed and fucked Lance right now, when they were both angry, he doubted that they would ever be able to fix this.

He shook his head. “No, Lance.”

Lance flinched away from him. His voice broke, “So you’d rather fuck random people you don’t know?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Keith said desperately. “Please listen to me.”

“Give me one good reason then.”

“You’re angry,” he said. “It would just make things worse, and I don’t want that.”

Lance stared at him, and as Keith watched, tears filled his eyes. He tore away from Keith and started toward the door. When he got there, he turned back long enough to meet Keith’s gaze and say, “I really fucking hate you, Keith.”

The tears on Lance’s face and the catch in his voice made his statement a million times worse because he knew how much Lance was hurting and he was the reason for it.

;;

The first time that Keith had sex with someone they met in space, almost the entire team had been there to watch him pick them up.

They were on Ze’Vequan, and they were walking through their market. Ze’Vequan was a desert biome, and it was one of the planets that reminded Keith of Earth the most that they had been to so far. The aliens were bipedal and fairly humanoid as well, despite the weird shades and hues of their skin and the lack of hair.

One of the aliens had volunteered to show them around the market. Their guide had been shooting Keith these looks the whole time they had been on the planet’s surface, and Keith knew what they meant. He kept his eyes on them, smirked in their direction, and stared a little too much.

It worked like a charm, just like it had back at home.

They had been describing the night life on the planet, telling him, Lance, and Hunk about the people, when they had hinted at the fact that many people used the dark, convenient alleys for certain activities.

A few minutes later, they had fixed Keith with a look and then sauntered off into one of the alleys.

Hunk and Lance had been spluttering uselessly, and Keith had thought about it for one, two, three seconds before he said, “Give me half an hour” and followed them off into the alley.

It was nice. Fucking was just as good as he remembered from Earth.

Later, Lance and Hunk hadn’t even been able to look at him. He wasn’t sure if they ever told the rest of the team, but he knew that Shiro had recognized it. Shiro never commented on it except for waiting for him after dinner that night and saying, “At least be careful, okay?”

Keith had agreed and walked off to his room.

It usually started like that, and thinking about it, it was always like that at home too. Keith never really had to try to pick anyone up in the beginning; they usually did all the work for him. When he had figured out that people were looking at him because they liked what they saw, it was too easy for Keith to smirk in their direction and sway his hips a little.

After a while in space, Keith realized that when he did try and pick someone up, it was always because they reminded him of Lance in some way, which was just—extremely problematic. He knew that he had feelings for Lance, but after the first time he actually sighed Lance’s name when he was fucking someone, it was obvious to even Keith.

He dealt with it like he dealt with anything: he ignored it.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. Keith found himself picking up aliens that had Lance’s skin tone, Lance’s eye color, Lance’s laugh, Lance’s body.

It was never good enough. It never made Keith feel any better.

Keith was thinking about all of this as he was fighting.

They were on a Galra battlecruiser, trying to escape. They had already freed the prisoners on the ship, but the sentries and soldiers were fighting back hard. Keith and Lance had been pushed back away from the others, and they were trying to make their way forward to get to the lions that were docked outside.

Just as Keith was jumping to avoid a blast to the feet and cut off a sentry’s head, he heard Lance scream.

His blood ran hot and cold all at the same time, and he spun around just in time to see Lance collapsing, a Galra soldier pulling a long blade out of his stomach.

There was blood everywhere. Already.

Keith roared and launched himself forward, brandishing his sword. He couldn’t see straight because he was so enraged, but he felt it in his bones when his sword cut through the Galra’s neck and decapitated him.

He fell to the ground beside Lance. Thankfully, there weren’t any more soldiers around them, but the others, the rest of the team—they were too far away.

“Lance,” Keith started, looking at the wound frantically. It was gaping. Keith could see everything. He wanted to be sick.

Lance was already looking up at him, blue eyes wide. He was crying.

“I don’t—” Keith looked up and started yelling for the others, hoping they would hear him over the fight or through the com link or something. He stopped when he felt Lance’s hand on his chest.

“Keith,” Lance started, and there was something in his voice and no.

“No, Lance, no,” he said. “Don’t fucking talk to me like this. Don’t talk to me like you’re going to die.”

Lance hiccupped roughly and held his hand out to Keith. Keith took it and stared.

The sounds of the battle around them, the lasers, the sentries, the soldiers, almost drowned Lance’s voice out when he said, “I love you.”

“No,” Keith said, bending his head closer. “We can—no.”

“I’m sorry I was never good enough for you.” His voice was weaker.

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think. This was a nightmare. This wasn’t happening. Why couldn’t he wake up—

Lance said, “I’m glad you’re going to be the last thing I see before I die.”

Keith started screaming when Lance’s eyes closed for the last time.

;;

Keith’s ears were still ringing. He was covered in Lance’s blood.

“You should go shower.”

He jerked at the sound of the voice. It was Hunk. Shiro and Pidge were standing behind him too, expressions just as worried. They were all frowning. Pidge still had tear stains on her face, and even Shiro’s eyes looked a little red.

“He told me he loved me,” Keith rasped. His voice was hoarse from screaming so much earlier.

“We heard,” Hunk said. He shifted his gaze up to the cryopod, where Lance was. His face was relaxed, eyes closed. “The com link was working, but we couldn’t get there fast enough.”

“Was it true?” Keith blurted.

Hunk shot him a weird, confused look. He said, “Of course it was true.”

He didn’t understand. Well—Keith guessed that he did. Lance had been angry and upset with him over the last few months not because he was sleeping with other people, not because he had feelings for him, but because he loved him.

And Keith had just ignored that. Even if he hadn’t known about it, it was still Keith’s fault. He shouldn’t have—he should have talked to Lance about how he was feeling instead of just going around and fucking people who reminded him of Lance.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” Keith asked.

A hand gripped his shoulder, and Shiro said, “He will. Coran said it would be a few days, but he’ll be okay.”

Keith didn’t look over at him. Instead, he stared up at Lance’s cryopod and tried to remember what his laugh sounded like.

;;

Lance woke up from the healing pod two days later, exhausted, but fine.

Keith was relieved, so relieved that it hurt to breathe. He almost couldn’t stand when Lance slumped into Shiro’s arms and murmured, “I’m fine.”

They all gathered around Lance while Coran checked his injuries. While he sat, drinking some water, he started to look better. He even managed to talk to Hunk and Pidge, but he didn’t speak to Keith. Hell, he barely even looked Keith’s way, which was—Keith thought it was weird.

Later, after Lance had gotten some sleep and started to feel better, he started frowning at Keith again, just like he had been before the mission.

Keith wondered if Lance even remembered what he had said.

The days were long. When they weren’t training in the lions or with Voltron, they were on missions to try and defeat the Galra. And when they weren’t forced to train together, Keith stayed in the training room late, working himself to exhaustion late in the night—or whatever they were calling night. In space, time seemed like it didn’t matter.

Hunk found him one night, sneaking into the kitchen late because he had skipped dinner. It was almost like he knew Keith would be there because he already had a plate fixed for him.

“Lance didn’t remember what he said,” Hunk told him, pushing the plate toward him. Keith didn’t let himself react. Instead, he picked up his spoon and started eating. “I had to tell him a few days ago.”

Keith nodded, “It didn’t make a difference.”

“I think you should talk to him.”

He sat the spoon down and looked up at Hunk. He said, “Hunk, why would Lance want anything to do with me? All I do is fuck everything up.”

Hunk sighed, “Keith, that’s not true. You guys just… need to talk about everything.”

“He won’t even look at me,” he muttered.

“So just, start with being nice, okay? You’ve been all stoic and distant lately anyway. Start coming to meals and training again. Show Lance that you can be around him and us without it being a big deal and maybe… maybe things will work out so you guys can at least be friends,” Hunk explained, eyes wide, pleading. “This is affecting more than just you guys. I’m afraid it might start to be a problem for Voltron if you don’t do something.”

Keith buried his face in his hands. Objectively, he knew that Hunk was right. Keith had been avoiding everyone. He just couldn’t stand to be around Lance when all he would do is ignore him and frown in his direction. But… if Keith started acting like a decent human being again, then maybe Hunk was right. Maybe they could at least be friends.

Things would be better if Lance would just talk to him. Keith would take that over anything.

“Okay,” Keith sighed, defeated. “Okay, I’ll—I’ll do better.”

“Thank you,” Hunk said, voice relieved. “And you know you can always talk to me, yeah?”

“Thanks, Hunk.”

;;

Keith went to breakfast the next morning. He sat down in his usual seat. Pidge was next to him. Lance was across from him. Hunk was smiling from his seat, and even Coran and Allura looked happy to see him.

“Morning, Keith,” Shiro said, voice guarded.

“Morning,” he greeted. He didn’t meet Lance’s eyes. Instead, he looked down to his plate and started eating.

Conversation picked back up around the table, and even if Keith wasn’t really a part of it, it felt good just to sit and listen.

;;

During training that day, Keith grabbed Lance’s hand and hauled him up off the floor before the gladiator stabbed him.

Lance brought his gun up to fire at it and huffed, “Thank you,” in Keith’s direction.

It was the most contact that they’d had in weeks, but it made Keith’s heart soar. Fuck, he was screwed.

;;

Keith naturally gravitated toward Lance in battle. They were the perfect combination of close and long-range fighters, and they had trained together so much that it made sense that Keith advanced in front of Lance to take care of soldiers and sentries close to them while Lance used his long-range weapon to clear out their future targets.

It was the one thing that Keith was so fucking grateful for. At least he still had this with Lance. It seemed like He had already messed up everything else.

“Keith!” Lance shouted his name, and Keith turned automatically, swiping his sword while Lance ducked under his legs to roll away.

He knocked aside a group of sentries and sliced them open before circling around Lance and scanning the rest of the battlefield. They had cleared their section out.

“You good?” Keith asked.

“Fine,” Lance said, looking through the scope on his rifle. “Everyone else looks okay too except—wait.”

“What?” Keith demanded.

“Knees, get on your knees right now,” Lance said hurriedly, taking the strap of his rifle and hooking it onto his shoulder tighter.

Keith didn’t argue. He dropped to his knees in front of Lance and stared up at him. His expression was serious, and he lowered the rifle down to rest on Keith’s shoulder. He was close—closer than he had been in weeks.

“Don’t breathe,” Lance murmured, leaning farther into him and staring through the scope. Keith froze and remained still.

Lance breathed once and then pulled the trigger.

The echo of the shot was loud, and it jarred Keith’s ears. He felt Lance’s hands on him, lowering him to the ground to rest for a minute.

“Lance, was that you?!” The voice was Pidge, speaking through the com link in the helmets.

Lance grinned and laughed, “Yeah! Did you see that?”

“Dude! That was so cool! I thought he was going to stab me, but you got him!”

“I used Keith to keep me steady,” Lance explained, and for some stupid reason, that made Keith feel shakier on the inside. Lance was scanning the horizon with his rifle scope, but he was still grinning. He even glanced down at Keith. “We’re good on this end. We can either stay here and pick off soldiers or we can come to you.”

Shiro’s voice came through the com next, “I need Keith on this side. Get him over here and then pick a spot to pick off loners with your rifle, Lance.”

“Roger that, boss,” Lance said, then he looked back down to Keith. “Let’s go, cowboy.”

Lance hauled him up off the ground, and Keith kickstarted his brain enough to give them cover while they raced for Shiro.

Later that night, Keith was walking back to his room from the showers, massaging his shoulder through his shirt when someone said, “Good job today.”

He turned in time to see Lance walking past him, heading for the showers probably. He managed to say, “You too,” while Lance was still within earshot.

**

It was getting better. Slowly.

They were on a planet surface today though, which was usually where all of Keith’s problems started.

He could tell that Lance was thinking the same thing. When they trained or hung out with the rest of the team, Lance was more relaxed with him. He had started to look at him again, not just frown in his direction. He had even started talking to him again, hesitantly of course, but it was way better than nothing.

Even though things were getting better between them, being on a planet made everything worse. Lance was more distant than he had been in weeks, sticking close to Hunk and Pidge and watching Keith carefully.

He understood. It made a lot of sense, actually.

Keith was doing his best to keep his eyes on the ground or on his team. They were currently on a tour of the planet’s (Keith didn’t even bother remembering the name because he didn’t want to know just in case he woke up in the middle of the night with no self-control) governmental facility, and he thought that one of the guides was making eyes at him. He didn’t look in their direction enough to confirm it.

Instead, he just followed his team through the tour and only spoke when someone said something to him.

A few hours later, Hunk dropped back to walk with him. Allura and Shiro were up ahead with the alien representatives, and Pidge and Lance were in front of them, talking about video games.

“You alright?” Hunk asked. “You’ve been quiet today.”

“Yeah,” Keith replied, and the thing was, he was alright. “Just—I’m trying not to make any mistakes. They tend to start when we visit planets.”

Hunk actually laughed a little, “You’re right, buddy. Good plan.”

Keith huffed a laugh too. “Yeah.”

Lance and Pidge both appeared at their sides. Pidge was closest to him, and Lance was on Hunk’s other side. At least he was looking at Keith’s face and not frowning.

Lance asked, “What are we laughing about?”

“Keith said that this planet reminds him of Jakku,” Hunk said. Keith nodded along.

They stared for a second before they all got into an argument about the Star Wars universe, and Keith felt himself smiling during their conversation, which was something that he’d been missing for the past few weeks.

;;

Keith was sitting at the table, cleaning his knife when Hunk said, “Keith, will you take this to Lance? He’s on the observation deck.”

He looked up, surprised. Pidge and Shiro were both sitting at the table too, but their expressions didn’t give anything away.

He said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah,” Hunk nodded, pushing the plate of food toward Keith. “Just don’t say anything, okay? I know he misses you.”

Keith sighed, but he nodded and pushed himself up from the table.

Normally, Lance didn’t skip dinner unless something was wrong, and today, after the mission, Keith knew that he was probably struggling. The planet that they had been trying to save today was so much like Earth that when Keith first saw it through Red’s windshield, he thought that Allura had messed up the wormhole. It was green and blue and full of people and it had been so beautiful that even he had started to miss home.

Voltron hadn’t been able to save it from the Galra. They had used an ion cannon to destroy the whole planet.

Keith walked onto the observation deck and found Lance sitting in his usual spot underneath the window, staring up at the stars. His shoulders were shaking a little, but he wasn’t facing him.

Keith made his footsteps and breathing louder so Lance would hear him, and he sat down behind Lance. He pushed the plate around in front of him and stayed quiet.

A few minutes later, he heard Lance pick up the spoon and start eating.

He stayed until Lance finished and pushed the plate back toward him. He gathered the plate and stood, and Keith hesitated for a few seconds.

Carefully, he set his hand on Lance’s shoulder and kept his voice soft when he said, “I’ll be in my room tonight if you need anything.”

Lance didn’t reply so Keith started toward the door.

A quiet, “Thank you,” followed Keith out of the room.

;;

Keith stayed up almost the entire night. Lance never showed up. He wasn’t surprised.

;;

Keith was considering breaking the glass of the nearest window and jumping out of it so he could sprint back to the castle.

It was another diplomatic mission. Keith loved defending the galaxy, loved flying Red, but he hated the diplomatic part of being a paladin. He wasn’t any good at it.

Well, unless he was trying to find someone to fuck. Then he could be really good at talking and convincing people.

They were back on Quillrox, a planet known for its deep oceans and humanoid species, for another conference with their people. Allura and Shiro thought it was important to make sure that they stayed in contact with the different planets of their alliance, and when Quillrox was hosting another government, Allura agreed that it was the perfect time to secure another planet’s position in the alliance.

Keith didn’t mind it that much. Quillrox was a nice planet, and the people were interesting. Actually, the last time they had been here, he had a great time, which was exactly what had him ducking around corners and staying close to his teammates.

Thankfully, the evening passed quickly. They mingled in a large hall for hours, they sat through dinner with the government officials, and Keith didn’t embarrass himself once. They were just getting ready to leave when Keith glimpsed someone waving at him through the crowd.

Lance froze at his side.

Keith had been surprised at how he acted all night. Lance had stayed relatively close to him, despite being a little quieter than normal. He did talk to Keith, and he would look at his face now. It was a major improvement over how everything had been between them for the last few weeks, and honestly, Keith would take anything that he could get.

But now, he froze. He completely stiffened up, and when Keith looked around, his stomach dropped in realization.

Okay, so the last time that they were on Quillrox, Keith had a sort of fling with one of the people. They had stayed on the planet for almost two days and then dropped back by for a supply trade a few weeks later. The first day that they were there, Keith met Nixora, a beautiful alien that was funny and different and generally awesome.

While the aliens of Quillrox didn’t have specific genders like humans did, their anatomy was shockingly similar. When Keith had first started talking with Nixora, a soldier in the planet’s foot army, he had noticed how they had been watching him, and when Nixora offered, Keith smirked and followed them into a deserted hallway closet.

Nixora was beautiful. Their skin was almost light orange, and they had obvious muscle definition. They were mostly humanoid, enough for it not to matter to Keith.

They weren’t very subtle, but Keith wasn’t trying to be. He liked Nixora, and he liked that they understood that their relationship was just physical. He enjoyed them, and the few times that they fucked while Keith was there were really fun.

Keith wished that they weren’t here though. The last thing he needed was for Nixora to show up and—

“Hey, Keith!”

Lance was already turning away, facing Hunk and Pidge instead of looking at him. Hunk met Keith’s gaze for a second, and there was a warning in his brown eyes, but he turned to Lance instead of saying anything.

“Hey,” Keith said, smiling a little at Nixora. Fuck, he couldn’t be rude to them. He just—he didn’t want to fuck anything up with Lance. Not anymore.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here or I would have come sooner,” they said, shifting a little closer and reaching out to touch Keith’s wrist. “Do you want to—”

“No,” he said, voice a little too loud. He moved his hand out of Nixora’s grip and glanced in Lance’s direction, hoping that they understood. He softened his voice a little when he said, “No, um. I don’t—I can’t.”

Nixora stared for a few seconds, and their eyes flicked over to Lance, who still had his back turned, but he was obviously listening, just like the rest of the team.

They smiled lightly, purple eyes full of understanding. Even though Nixora had been before Keith really… understood his feelings for Lance, they seemed to catch on pretty quick. Sure, they had only fucked three or four times, but Nixora seemed to know him. It was nice, until his feelings for Lance got all tangled up in it. They had commented on it several times, but Keith had denied and denied until… it had made sense. Nixora seemed to know long before Keith had.

Keith relaxed and smiled back too. Nixora said, “Keep me updated, Keith. Stay safe.”

“You too,” he said, relieved as Nixora shifted through the crowd.

When Keith turned to look, Lance was already staring at him. His face was open, eyes wide. He didn’t look angry, just confused.

“What?” Keith asked.

“Nothing,” Lance said, even though his voice was saying everything else. Instead of arguing, Keith nodded and stayed within his sight for the rest of the evening.

;;

No one said anything to Keith about it, but he could tell that the rest of the team was relieved. For however much they were trying not to show that this thing—Keith and Lance’s fighting—wasn’t affecting them, he knew that it was.

“Good job today,” Shiro said to everyone, just as they were finishing up the meeting for the night. “Get some rest. Everyone could use it.”

Hunk and Lance strolled off toward their rooms, dragging Pidge with them. Allura had already gone back to her rooms, and Coran was finishing up some diagnostic tests on the castle. Keith turned to leave as well.

Shiro stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He nodded and said, “Thank you. For today.”

Keith shrugged, embarrassed all of a sudden. He really didn’t want to talk about it. He especially didn’t want to talk about how he was itching to take Red down to Quillrox and see Nixora. He didn’t want to talk about how much he wanted Lance, how much he would rather follow Lance back to his room and spend the night there instead of staying in his room by himself.

“Yeah,” Keith said instead. He turned and walked back to his room.

;;

After, things changed between him and Lance.

It was almost like everything was back to normal. Lance was less hesitant around him now. He was open and happy, talking to him more and actually looking in his direction again. When they trained or went on missions together, it was like nothing had gone wrong with them in the first place, and Keith wondered what was going on. He wondered if they should talk about it.

Instead, he decided that he was going to show Lance how he felt. After all, his feelings had been what caused this whole thing in the first place. It was time that Keith owned up.

He started with small things.

When he and Hunk got sent on a mission to a planet surface for recon, he saw a seashell that reminded him of Lance’s eyes. He grabbed it and gave it to Lance when they got back to the castle with a quiet, “This made me think of you.”

When they were on a rescue mission, Keith found a knife that he thought Lance would like, so he pressed it into Lance’s hand after the battle was over with a small nod.

When they were on a diplomatic mission on another planet, Keith saw a patch of wildflowers that looked almost as pretty as Lance. He picked one and crossed the meadow to where Lance was standing with the others, and before he lost his nerve, he tucked the flower behind Lance’s ear and nodded. Lance had blushed, but he left it there the rest of the day.

One night, Lance smiled at him, one of those big, crooked grins that made Keith’s fucking knees weak. He hadn’t seen that smile in—fuck, months probably.

After, everything seemed like it was going to be okay.

;;

They went on a mission together, and it fucked everything up.

PR-134B01 was, as Keith understood from Coran’s briefing, an abandoned planet that the Galra had previously used for mining. It had been rich with minerals, but they had tapped it out years ago. According to Coran, the planet was abandoned, but its headquarters was still standing, where they might be able to intercept some information regarding slave trades. In other words, they might be able to find Pidge’s family if they had any information on them.

Keith and Lance were paired to go down to the planet surface and do recon before the rest of the paladins came down to join them, just in case it was a trap. Lance didn’t even object when they were paired off, just nodded, smiled, and cracked a joke.

They took Red down to the planet. Keith landed in the zone Coran had approved, and from what Keith could see, the entire planet was desolate. There was nothing here. Just dirt and dust.

“Let’s go down and see what we see,” Lance suggested, pushing off from where he had been leaning against Keith’s chair.

Keith followed him down Red’s ramp. When they got to the surface, it looked the same. The ground was cracked and dusty. It reminded Keith of the desert, but it seemed… unnatural. Like the planet had been something else before and the Galra took everything it had and just left an empty corpse.

The air was dead too. There wasn’t even a breeze, and Keith was sweating in his armor. Coran had warned them that PR-134B01’s environment would be harsh, but Keith hadn’t really taken him seriously because all of the other planets they had visited had been relatively nice so far.

“This is weird,” Lance commented, breaking Keith out of his thoughts. He was standing at Keith’s side, and he activated his bayard to look through the scope of the rifle. “Like, there’s nothing out here.”

Keith looked around too. He frowned and said, “What’s—”

“Looks like some kind of shelter, I think, maybe the building we’re looking for,” Lance interrupted, finishing his question about the building in the distance. Keith could only see a vague outline of it on the horizon.

“We can take Red—”

Keith was interrupted again, but this time, it was by the shouting through the com link in his helmet. It started all at once, and he couldn’t understand anyone’s voice.

Lance winced, holding his free hand to his helmet. “Guys, come on—”

Lasers pelted the ground at their feet.

Keith activated his shield and grabbed Lance around the waist. He covered them until they got underneath Red, where they took shelter.

“What’s going on?” Keith demanded. He didn’t realize he still had his arm around Lance’s waist until he shifted against Keith’s chest.

“There’s a Galra fleet above you,” Shiro informed them, voice a little short, like he was running. “We’re heading to the lions now, but they’ve dropped a ground fleet already. It’s headed in your direction.”

Lance’s eyes were wide, and he moved out of Keith’s grip. He pulled his rifle up and scanned the area. Keith watched as he froze.

“It looks like there’s at least a hundred of them,” Lance said. His voice sounded weird.

Keith risked ducking out from underneath Red, but he barely had half of his body out before the lasers were pelting the ground again.

He said, “I don’t think we can get back in Red without getting hit, even with my shield.”

“Stay put,” Shiro ordered them. “We’re going to provide air support and take those Galra out so you can handle the ground soldiers. Lance, pick them off while you still can.”

Lance dropped to a knee and started firing almost immediately. Keith could barely see the crowd of Galra rushing for them, but Lance kept firing.

“I’m going for Lance and Keith!” Pidge said. “If we clear those ships first, they can get back in Red!”

Shiro and Hunk agreed, and Keith just had to stand and wait. He alternated between watching Lance and the Galra that were getting inevitably closer.

“They’re just sentries,” Lance said suddenly. He spared a second to glance at Keith. “I’m clearing them, but when they get close enough you’re going to have to rush them. Unless we want them to trap us under here.”

Keith nodded. He activated his sword and said, “Tell me when.”

Keith heard Green roar, and several ships crashed to the ground all around them. Through the com, she said, “I’ll lead the rest away!”

“Thanks, Pidge!” Lance called. Then he said, “Go, Keith!”

Keith rushed out from underneath Red.

He ran forward, dodging random lasers and debris from above. He didn’t bother with looking up to see how the others were doing. Instead, he pushed himself to run faster because the more distance he put between the sentries and Red, the less likely Lance was to get hurt.

One of the ships that Pidge had downed was in front of him. The sentries were rushing closer on the other side, so Keith ran forward and jumped on top of it, catapulting himself down into the crowd.

He started swinging his sword midair, and he had taken down three sentries before his feet hit the ground.

Keith rolled through the crowd and activated his shield. He shoved the first few backward and started slashing his sword. He could hear Lance shooting, and the sentries at his back were falling to the crowd faster than the ones in front of him.

He was doing fine until the ground started rumbling underneath him.

“Paladins!” Coran’s voice was in his ear then, loud and serious. “PR-134B01 is destabilizing! It’s breaking apart!”

“Lance! Keith!” Shiro ordered. “Get off there!”

The noise distracted him, and Keith didn’t have time to swipe the gun away from the sentry in front of him. It fired the gun, and Keith barely had time to dodge it, and even then, the laser blasted his shoulder.

For a few seconds, the pain blinded him. It was too much. He fell backwards, and his head bounced against the ground, turning his vision black.

Then, he blinked roughly, and he could hear and see again.

“Keith!” Lance was shouting. He was too far away for Keith to hear anything other than his voice through the com link.

“I’m fine,” he said, switching his sword to his other hand and rolling to his feet. The ground was rumbling again, and Keith and the sentries stumbled when a giant crack appeared at their feet.

Keith froze and looked at the ground in front of him. It was a deep, gaping abyss, and some of the sentries started to fall inside it. It splintered off, right to Keith’s feet, and he barely had time to mutter, “Fuck” before he started running.

“Get in Red and go, Lance!” Keith shouted, turning to swipe away the sentries that followed him.

“I’m not leaving you!” he yelled.

The ground was crumbling underneath him as he ran, straight toward Red, and Keith had to turn to swipe at the sentries again. He pushed them back into the crack, and the rest of them disappeared into it too. He scrambled forward, breathing harshly, and when he looked, Lance was still standing underneath Red, just watching him.

“Get in Red right fucking now!” Keith roared.

Something grabbed his ankle, and he fell.

The grip was tight on his armor, and Keith spun as he fell to the ground. He landed on his back.

One of the Galra sentries was holding onto his ankle. It had his gun pointed right at Keith’s face, and when it pulled the trigger, Keith ducked and kicked his foot, sending it flying back into the crack in the ground. It was still growing, and Keith scrambled backwards, trying to get back to his feet. His shoulder was aching, and it was hard to use his right arm, but when his hand brushed the metal of one of the crashed ships, Keith hauled himself up onto it.

He climbed to the top of it, and just as it was starting to slip backwards and fall into the planet’s core, he closed his eyes. His shoulder was aching, and his head was throbbing. He couldn’t—as long as Lance was in Red and got away, everything was fine. It was fine, it was good. Lance and the rest of the team would make it. He knew they would. And Lance—as long as he was going to be okay, as long as he was safe and alive, then Keith was okay too.

He didn’t realize he had said that aloud until they were shouting at him.

But he was so tired.

“Keith!” Lance screamed, and Keith opened his eyes. He thought he could see the atmosphere and space, where there were what seemed like thousands of Galra ships. He thought he could see the castle from here, and there was Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk, blasting ships out of the sky, defending the universe.

“Keith, jump!”

Lance’s voice was the only thing he could hear, so he gripped his sword in his good hand and pushed off the ship as hard as he could. It groaned loudly, slipping backward into nothing, and Keith could feel himself falling with it—

Red caught him.

It wasn’t pleasant. He fell into his mouth hard, rolling and slamming into the metal of his hull. His shoulder twisted painfully, burning from where he had been shot earlier.

“Lance,” he called, desperation making him strong again. What if he was still down on the surface? What if Red had saved him without getting Lance? “Where—”

“Cockpit,” he answered, surprising Keith. “Get your ass up here!”

Keith pushed himself up onto his shaky legs and raced to the cockpit, stumbling and gripping Red’s walls. He was dizzy, and he could barely see straight, but when he got to the cockpit, when he saw Lance sitting in his chair, gripping the controls, piloting Red, talking to the others, alive, his legs gave out and he hit the floor.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, desperate. He just—he was so fucking thankful that Lance was okay. He didn’t know—he couldn’t—

“Keith,” Lance said, turning back to look at him, blue eyes beautiful and wide and full of concern. “Red wants you to drive.”

“Not a good idea,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was dizzy or because he was so relieved, but he rolled over and vomited onto the floor.

“Shit,” Lance cursed. “Keith, babe, did you hit your head?”

He coughed before rolling back onto his back. His shoulder was hurting like a motherfucker, and his heart was racing. He muttered, “Don’t know.”

“Okay, guys,” Lance started, gripping Red’s control. When Keith turned to look, they were already up out of the atmosphere and into space. “Keith is out. Red is letting me pilot for now. Tell me we’re not going to need Voltron.”

“We shouldn’t,” Shiro said, and Keith winced at the volume of their voices. “We’re almost done here. If Keith is alright, help us finish this before we go back home.”

“I’m good,” he said, curling his head toward his knees.

Before Lance could object, there was a Galra ship in front of them, and he was having to maneuver them out of the way and join the fight.

His piloting was a little erratic, and Keith could feel the bond between him and Red stretched tight. There was another presence there too, and it took Keith a few seconds to realize that it was Lance. It should have been more obvious, Keith guessed, but he was more surprised than anything. Of course, Lance would have needed some kind of connection to be able to pilot Red.

It just… it surprised him that he was the connection.

It made him feel warm on the inside. Lance’s presence in his and Red’s connection was… it was really nice. It twisted everything up inside of him, but it was warm. It was comforting. They were protecting him. Everything was okay because they were both here, and the others were just outside too.

That was why it didn’t seem like such a big deal when Keith let his eyes close. It must have been too late because by the time Lance started screaming, Keith was already gone.

;;

“Hey there, beautiful.”

Keith hummed and opened his eyes when he felt a pair of lips on his collarbone. Lance’s face was in front of his then, smiling and leaning down to kiss him. His lips felt better on Keith’s anyway.

The soft light from the sun filtered into their bedroom window, and it was light enough that Keith could see. Their bed was warm, and Lance was on top of him, body pressing everywhere along his. Lance was caressing Keith’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Keith murmured softly, turning his face into Lance’s hair. “Time is it?”

Lance leaned back up, but he wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, his face was covered with soot and dust, and there was a bit of blood on his forehead and chin. They weren’t in their bedroom anymore. The soft light had been replaced by harsh fluorescents, and instead of their warm sheets, all Keith could feel against his skin was cold, hard metal.  

Lance’s face was the most prominent thing in his field of vision, but there were blurry shapes moving over him too. Something was gripping his shoulder, hard.

Lance had tears in his eyes, and his mouth was moving frantically.

“Wake up, Keith,” he said, voice desperate, pleading, breaking, unlike anything Keith had ever heard. He was confused. He tried to reply, tried to tell him that he was awake, but nothing came out of his mouth.

He felt it when one of Lance’s tears fell and splashed onto Keith’s cheek. Lance was begging now, tears flowing down his face, voice cutting Keith’s heart as he said, “Keith, please, please, come back. You can’t leave me. You can’t—Keith, come back, I love you, come back—”

;;

Keith woke up.

Everything was spinning, and the lights were too bright. He could hear something, no—it was people talking. He turned his head to the side, but there was a slight ache in the back of his neck.

He blinked and reached up to touch his face, but something caught his wrist, and then, there was Shiro, leaning over him. His mouth was moving, but it took Keith a few seconds to decipher what he was saying.

“Keith,” he said. “Hey, Keith, just take your time.”

“What—” Keith’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. “What happened?”

Shiro put his hand back down to the bed and patted his arm. He said, “You had a concussion, and you were shot by one of the sentries while you and Lance were on the mission.”

At Lance’s name, everything came rushing back. The mission, Lance—

“Lance,” Keith croaked, “is he okay?”

Shiro nodded, “He’s fine. He’s okay.”

Relief slammed into Keith, and it was harsher than anything he could remember. He didn’t know why it was so bad this time. There were other missions, other injuries, that had been worse, and yet, this had almost broken Keith.

He didn’t know why, but Shiro took his wrist and flipped it over, feeling for his pulse. He didn’t know why his expression was so serious.

“Shiro,” he said, voice hoarse. “What’s going on?”

Shiro sighed. He sat down next to Keith and said, “We didn’t know it was so serious. Lance didn’t know that you had been shot or that you hit your head, so we thought it was fine. By the time we got finished with the fleet, you were passed out in Red. We got you back here, but before we could get you into a healing pod, your heart stopped.”

Keith blinked.

“We don’t know what caused it to be so bad,” Shiro continued, “but it was. We thought—we didn’t know. We got your heart restarted, and then we got you into a pod. It’s been a day since you got out, but when you didn’t wake up, we brought you to the infirmary.”

Keith looked around, and since his vision cleared up, it was pretty obvious that they were in the infirmary now that he could see everything. He was on some sort of hospital bed, and there was an IV in his left arm. When he looked up, Allura and Hunk were standing on the other side of the room, gazing at him in concern.

He lifted his fingers in a wave, and they finally rushed to his side, opposite of Shiro.

“Oh, Keith, man,” Hunk started, “buddy, we thought you were dead!”

Allura nodded, eyes wide, “We were very distraught, Keith.”

Keith nodded too, mostly because he didn’t know what to say. Instead, he looked back up to Hunk and asked, “Lance is okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Hunk said. “He was… honestly, he was pretty fucked up over it. He didn’t sleep any while you were in the pod even though your vitals were fine, so he’s sleeping now. When you guys were in Red, he didn’t know that you weren’t okay until you stopped answering him.”

Keith remembered. He could barely recall how Lance had started screaming in Red, how his lion had jumped at the sound, how the connection between the three of them had seemed to shatter. Then, he could remember Lance crying, Lance begging him to stay alive—

“Can I see him?” Keith asked.

Shiro shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we get you up.”

Keith frowned and started to move. He said, “I’m fine.”

Allura put a hand on his chest and lowered him back down. Her voice was firm when she said, “No, Keith. Coran says you must have the rest of the IV medicine before you can go anywhere. You need the rest.”

“She’s right, buddy,” Hunk smiled a little. “Besides, Lance is finally asleep. By the time you finish the IV and get up, he should be awake.”

Keith sighed, “Alright.”

;;

“You were fucking dead,” Lance said, voice wobbling. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

Keith tightened his arms around Lance’s waist and held him close. He was shaking. Keith said, “I’m okay, I’m right here.”

Lance clung to him anyway, arms tight around his middle, face buried in his shoulder, chest and stomach pressed against his. His body was warm and familiar and everything Keith had ever wanted.

Keith had never felt more alive.

;;

Over the next few days, Lance’s relief at Keith being alive seemed to wear off. They got into more petty arguments than normal, they fought with each other during training, and they couldn’t seem to get through a meal without glaring at each other at least once.

Keith had no idea what was going on until suddenly, it all made sense.

He was trying to get into Red one afternoon, just to go fly for a few minutes, just to get away from all the intensity. Things had been crazy with everyone since he’d gotten out of the healing pod, and Keith just needed a break.

But Red had his particle barrier up, and he wasn’t letting him in.

After minutes of yelling at him, pleading with him, glaring at him, Keith was staring up at him wordlessly, helmet tucked under his arm, when he heard, “Going somewhere?”

When he turned, he saw Lance standing in the middle of the hangar, arms crossed, scowling at him intensely. He was wearing his normal clothes, already having changed after training earlier. His eyes were narrowed, and he looked furious. Keith wasn’t sure what he’d done to make him so mad.

So, he found himself saying, “Why does it fucking matter to you?”

Lance’s eyes flared, and he stalked forward until he was close enough to poke Keith in the chest. He said, “Why do you think it matters to me, dumbass?”

“I don’t know!” Keith exploded, throwing his hands up. His helmet clattered to the ground at their feet. “I don’t know, okay? Just—I thought we were fine! I thought everything was fine, but ever since I woke up, you’ve been acting like such a jackass and all we do is fight! I don’t know what’s going on!”

“I’ve been acting like a jackass?” Lance seethed, face twisting into disbelief. “Keith, why don’t you look in a mirror!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Keith roared back.

“Exactly!” Lance shouted, and the one word seemed to shutter throughout the whole hangar. “You haven’t done anything! It’s like you don’t even care!”

“Care about what?” he growled. “Care about you? Care about Red? Just say what you fucking mean!”

Lance paused, and for a long moment, he just stared at Keith. He didn’t say anything, just looked and looked at him without a word.

Eventually, he spoke. His voice was quieter, but no less angry when he said, “You died. You almost left me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes you did,” Lance argued, voice still at that same level. It unnerved Keith. “You haven’t even tried to talk about what happened in Red that day.”

His stomach sank. Even though he knew what Lance was talking about, even though he knew that Lance was referring to the connection, he couldn’t make himself say it. He couldn’t make himself bring it up. So, instead, he said, “What are you talking about?”

“You’re a terrible liar, Keith,” Lance said, disappointment clear in his voice. “I felt it too. Red felt it. We felt it when you died. It just—it was like you disappeared all at once, and Red and I were left and there wasn’t anything else to connect us because you were gone. You were gone, and I had to keep piloting and he knew that so—”

It became clear all at once, why Lance was so upset with him, why Red hadn’t taken down his particle barrier, why everything was so fucked up right now.

Lance cut himself off. He must have seen the change in Keith’s expression. He nodded and said, “Get it now?”

“You became the Red Paladin.”

Lance nodded, “There wasn’t anything else we could do. Red and I were both stranded and you were dying and—I didn’t even ask him to. He just did it.”

“Are you still?”

“I think it depends on you.”

Keith frowned and uncrossed his arms from his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I can still feel Red. It’s like my connection with Blue, but a little different. You’re in it too.”

“How?” he asked, “I can’t feel anything.”

And it was true. Over the past few days, he hadn’t really felt a connection between him and Lance. In fact, they had become more distant than they had been in months. Keith just thought—he didn’t know what he thought.

He wondered if it meant that he wouldn’t be able to fly Red anymore. If he would have to move to another lion, or worse, not pilot anything at all. He guessed that was what he deserved, for everything in the past few months.

“I talked to Coran and Allura about it,” Lance said, breaking him out of his thoughts. For the first time in the conversation, he didn’t look as angry. “They agree that Red let me into the connection between you and him so I could pilot and save us. But, when your heart stopped, we were the only two left in the connection so it automatically switched over, and now, you’re back in the connection, but it’s like you’re sitting in the backseat.”

“Will it go back?” Keith asked. “What do we have to do?”

Lance frowned again, “We have to fix the connection between us.”

“Between me and you and Red?”

“No, Keith,” he rolled his eyes. “Between me and you.”

Keith’s palms were sweaty in his gloves at the mention of them. He didn’t—he didn’t know what to do. He found himself saying, “There’s nothing to fix between us.”

Keith recognized his mistake the moment the words came out of his mouth. Lance froze, eyes narrowing, shoulders stiffening. His voice was sharp and dangerous when he said, “You think there’s nothing for us to fix?”

“No.” The word came out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“You think that everything’s fine between us? That there’s nothing that needs to be fixed or talked about or anything?”

“Yeah,” he said, clenching his hands into fists. “I thought we were fine.”

Lance outright laughed. The sound was bitter and short and nothing like the sounds that Keith loved to hear most. When he was finished, he looked more serious as he said, “That’s ridiculous, Keith. Surely you know better.”

He gritted his teeth, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t?” Lance asked. “So, there’s absolutely nothing you want to talk about, apologize for, or anything at all?”

“No,” he paused. “Do you have something to say?”

“Do I—yes!” Lance exploded, yelling so suddenly that it made Keith jump. “I want to talk about how terrible you’ve been over the past few months. I want to talk about how shitty you’ve made me feel within the past year. I want to talk about how I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real between us because you treat me and talk to me like I’m fucking stupid!”

“I—”

“I want to talk about how you slept with all those people, how you threw all of it in my face, how you made me think that you cared about me, that you might have loved me and then you just ignored me,” Lance said, and Keith’s heart clenched painfully in his chest when he saw the tears that were gathering in Lance’s eyes. He continued, “I want to talk about it, Keith. I thought we could fix it, that you might have an explanation or something or—”

“Lance—”

“Don’t. Don’t say my name like that and just think that everything is going to be okay. I’ve told you that I love you multiple times. I thought—I thought that you might feel the same way or at least want to talk about it. I’m not just another person that you can fuck and forget about,” Lance took a breath, wiped his eyes. “I haven’t done everything right either. I’ve been mean to you too, and I am sorry for that but…”

Keith let Lance trail off into silence. He didn’t know what to say. Fuck, he didn’t know how to say it.

He watched as Lance wiped his eyes again before continuing, “There’s nothing you want to say?”

Keith opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked away and shook his head.

He heard Lance take a surprised breath. His voice shook when he said, “Then I guess that’s it.”

Lance stood in front of him for a few more minutes, like he was expecting Keith to object, to say something. Instead, he stayed silent. Eventually, Lance turned and walked out of the hangar.

Keith stared after him, and Lance stopped at the door to the hangar. When he turned back to look at Keith, there were a few tears sliding down his cheeks. His voice was just loud enough for Keith to hear when he said, “I’m done, Keith. I thought you would want to talk about it, but since you don’t… I can’t keep doing this. I’m done.”

He left, and Keith’s breath went with him.

;;

Keith stood, unsure what to do, unsure what to say, unsure if he should even bother anymore.

Red kept his particle barrier up, and he continued to stare down at Keith.

“What do I do?” he asked. Red didn’t respond.

He collapsed, roughly falling to the ground. He rolled onto his back and miserably stared up at the high ceiling of the hangar. His heart was beating too fast in his chest, his eyes were stinging, and his hands were shaking.

If Lance was… if Lance was really done with him—

Fuck, why hadn’t Keith just talked to him? Why couldn’t he have just explained everything? He had been in love with Lance for months now! And sure, he did sleep with all those people, and he did treat Lance terribly, but that didn’t mean that he loved him any less. All he thought about was Lance. All he wanted was Lance.

So why hadn’t he said it?

Keith had never been good with words. It was one of the reasons that he had never dated before or even really bothered with any kind of relationship before. It was always easier for him to just fuck someone once or twice and move on than to deal with another person for an extended amount of time and actually communicate with them. But then again… before Lance, he’d never been in love with anyone before.

He should have just told Lance everything. Fuck. He should have apologized. He should have begged Lance to forgive him.

But now… was it too late?

There was—it couldn’t be too late. Lance was being serious about being finished with all of this, being done with him. Keith didn’t even blame him.

But Keith… Keith couldn’t lose Lance like this. Not without telling him everything.

He jumped to his feet and started running, sprinting out of the hangar and sliding on his boots as he turned into the hallway. There was no way that Lance had gotten very fair, but he had probably made it back up to the main level of the castle, so Keith rushed up to the elevator and ran toward the lounge.

Sure enough, Keith slid into the room to find them sitting in the room. Shiro and Allura were on one of the couches, and Pidge and Hunk were on the other, sitting on both sides of Lance. Coran was in the corner of the room, typing at a control panel in the wall and—

Lance.

He was crying still. Hunk had an arm around his shoulders, and Pidge was pressed against his side. It sounded like Lance was saying something, but Keith’s heart was beating so hard in his chest that he couldn’t hear anything.

“Lance,” Keith started, and everyone’s eyes turned to him. Allura and Shiro both looked concerned, Pidge’s eyes were wide, and Hunk was frowning.

Lance looked up at him, blue eyes rimmed red. There were tear tracts down his cheeks, but he swiped his sleeve across his face. He sighed, and his voice shook when he said, “Keith, I already—”

Keith walked forward until he was standing in front of where Lance was seated on the couch. He shook his head and interrupted Lance, “Can you just listen for a few minutes? You don’t have to say anything. I just need you to listen.”

Lance stared at him for a second before he slowly rose to his feet to stand in front of Keith. He nodded.

“Okay,” Keith started, taking a breath, praying that this would come out right this time. “I’ve done terrible things to you over the past few months. I’ve completely ignored your feelings, and I’ve been so caught up in trying to distract myself from how I feel about you and convince myself I didn’t care that I didn’t consider how it was making you feel. I slept with all those people and treated you like shit. I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

He took the time to stop and look at Lance. He was looking right back, eyes wide with so many emotions swimming in them that Keith couldn’t keep up. At least he was listening.

Keith continued, “I don’t blame you for hating me. You have every right to. You have every right to hate me, to never want anything to do with me, to never want to talk to me again. I was mean to you, and I never told you how I felt. I just—”

His strength ebbed, and he dropped to his knees, staring up at Lance desperately. There were tears pricking his eyes in anger, frustration, sadness, and his voice was shaking noticeably now. He said, “I’m so, so sorry. I love you so much, and I know that I’ll never ever deserve you in any lifetime, any universe, any reality. You’re—you’re so kind, beautiful, amazing, and I’m—I lied to you and I disrespected you.”

Tears were making their way down Lance’s cheeks, and Keith looked down to the floor. He couldn’t make himself look at him or the others anymore. Now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop. He had to tell Lance everything, every last bit of it.

Keith felt his own tears start to drip down his onto his face as he continued, “I’m so sorry. I know that I don’t deserve you, but if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my fucking life trying to make up for all the bad I’ve done and love you as much as you should be loved.”

Silence. He didn’t want to look up. Instead, he kept his head lowered and stared at the floor.

When Lance didn’t say anything a few seconds later, Keith swallowed roughly and said, “It’s okay if you still hate me. I-I deserve that, okay? I just couldn’t—I needed to talk to you. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this.”

“You’d do anything?”

Lance’s voice was rough, and Keith jerked his head up to look at him. He was still crying.

Keith nodded, held his gaze, and said, “Anything.”

“If I asked you to leave, would you do that?”

Keith’s heart sank in his chest, but before he knew what was happening, he was nodding and saying, “Yes.”

“If I thought that you leaving Voltron, leaving us, was the best way to fix this between us, you would do that?”

“Yes.”

Lance’s eyes narrowed, and he asked, “And you love me? All of this was real? No lies?”

“I meant everything I said,” Keith replied evenly, despite the tears in his eyes. “I love you. More than anything.”

Lance was quiet for a few seconds. Then, he nodded, “Okay.”

Keith flinched, and his voice broke when he said, “You want… you want me to go?”

Even though he had said that he would, and even though he would actually do it for Lance, he didn’t know how he would. Voltron… this team was all he had. He didn’t have anything else in the universe, not without Voltron, not without his family, not without Lance.

“No. I want you to stand up.”

“Not until you realize how sorry I am. Lance, I’ve never regretted anything this much before, and I love you so much and—”

Keith was cut off when Lance dropped to his knees in front of him, gripped his face in his hands, and crashed his lips to his own.

The kiss was warm and cold at the same time. It was softer than Keith expected, just an insistent press of Lance’s lips against his. Lance’s thumbs were grazing his jaw, and the soft and sweet motion had Keith pulling back out of the kiss.

Lance’s eyes were soft, and his mouth was curved into a small smile. He still had his hands cupping Keith’s face, and he carefully wiped his tears away.

“What?” Keith whispered, entirely confused, completely overwhelmed.

“I love you too, jackass,” Lance said, smiling at him. His eyes were still full of tears.

“You—what?”

Lance rolled his eyes, but the gesture was soft, intimate. He moved his hands to Keith’s shoulders and pulled him into a hug. “I said that I love you too, Keith. I love you.”

“I thought you hated me.”

Lance laughed a little, and the sound was as good as Keith remembered. One of his hands was rubbing Keith’s back gently, and his voice was soft when he started talking. “I thought you were messing with me. I thought you were just making fun of me or that—or that you just wanted to fuck once and be done with me.”

“No,” he said, pushing back so he could see Lance’s face. “No, Lance. That’s not what I was doing. I was trying to show you how much I love you, but I kept fucking up. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Lance murmured, cupping Keith’s cheek with one of his hands again. “Next time just talk to me, okay?”

“I love you,” Keith said instead.

Lance nodded, “I know. Let’s stand up.”

He stood slowly, pulling Lance to his feet with him. Somehow, one of Lance’s hands had slipped into his, and his other was hovering awkwardly at his side. Keith’s heart was just now starting to slow in his chest, and his stomach was—Keith didn’t know. The relief that he was sure would come hadn’t hit him yet, but fuck, he was happy.

The silence in the room was obvious then, and Keith realized that he had said everything in front of everyone. They were all staring at them. Hunk, Pidge, and Coran were all crying together, wrapped up in one hug. Shiro and Allura were both smiling a little too, and honestly, Keith didn’t even feel a little embarrassed, especially not with the way Lance was smiling at him right then.

Thankfully, before anyone could say anything, Lance tugged on Keith’s hand and gave him another one of those gentle smiles. Keith didn’t know if he would ever get used to seeing that look on his face, especially not when Lance was looking at him.

“We’ll see you guys at dinner, okay?” Lance said, and even though he was looking at Keith, he directed his voice to everyone else, and then, he was guiding Keith out of the room.

Keith didn’t bother with adding anything or saying anything else to them; instead, he just gripped Lance’s hand and trailed after him, relief sinking into his stomach at the sight of Lance’s smile.

;;

They made it halfway down the hall in the direction of their rooms when Keith stopped walking and tugged Lance back into his chest.

“Keith?”

He didn’t answer Lance. He spun him around to grip his arms before he leaned in to kiss him.

It was rougher than he meant it, but he tried to tell Lance everything just by pressing his lips to Lance’s. How much he had missed him, how much he loved him, how relieved and happy he was right now.

Lance responded faster than Keith had expected him too. He melted into Keith’s chest, arms falling around his neck, one hand tangling in Keith’s hair. Keith let go of Lance’s arms and moved one of his hands up to cup Lance’s cheek. He wrapped his other arm around his waist and held them up.

When he pulled back, just fair enough that he could rest his forehead against Lance’s, they were both breathing hard.

“That was…” Lance trailed off, but his voice gave everything away.

Keith smiled a little, “You did it first.”

Lance huffed a laugh. His face was red. He leaned forward to ghost his lips over Keith’s, and he said, “Do you want to go to my room?”

Keith nodded, trying not to blurt out that being with Lance was one of the only things he had been wanting for months.

Lance reached down to take his hand, pulling back out of Keith’s grip. All of a sudden, he looked nervous. He was biting his lip instead of smiling and avoiding Keith’s gaze, turning his head when Keith ducked down to look at him.

“What is it?” he asked softly.

“I don’t want to have sex,” Lance blurted, eyes wide. “Like, um, I don’t mean never, or anything, but I just don’t want to right now because um—”

“Oh,” Keith said, surprised. He hadn’t—honestly, he hadn’t even been thinking about that. He just—wanted to be near Lance, wanted to be close to him, wanted to talk to him.

Lance frowned and started to pull back from him, but Keith panicked and tugged him back into his chest, hurriedly saying, “That’s fine. That’s—I don’t want to either.”

“Okay,” Lance sighed in relief, dropping his head to Keith’s shoulder. “Okay, good.”

“Can I, um, can I still kiss you?”

“You better,” he replied, ducking forward to peck Keith’s lips again. Keith was—he didn’t know how it would get better than this. Lance was smiling, and they were holding hands again and—fuck. It was almost too much.

Lance tugged on Keith’s hand and pulled him forward. They stumbled though the hallway together, Lance leading them. Keith was too distracted by Lance, by his relief, by everything. The only thing he could manage to do was trip after Lance and keep his grip on his hand.

When they got to Lance’s door, they stumbled inside, and Lance turned, pressing him up against the smooth metal as soon as it slid shut. His hands were everywhere on Keith, and his lips were soft, slow, languid, against Keith’s jaw. Keith felt like he was burning.

Lance’s room was just how Keith remembered it. His armor was stacked neatly in the display case beside the closet, and his jacket was hanging on the chair next to his desk. There were pictures that Pidge had printed for him tapped to the walls, and he had other personal items sitting around the room including—

Everything that Keith had given him. Even the flower that Keith had tucked behind his ear was there, sitting right beside the sea shells, the knife, and everything else.

He held onto Lance’s hips and cradled him close, closing his eyes and pressing into Lance’s lips.

A few seconds, minutes, hours—Keith had no idea how to tell time like this—he felt Lance’s hands move to his armor, undoing the latches so his belt dropped to the floor.

Keith pulled back enough to look at Lance.

“I don’t know about you,” Lance’s voice was rough and low, and it made Keith want, “but I’d rather we make out without your armor.”

Keith nodded frantically and leaned back in to kiss Lance again. Between the two of them, it only took a few minutes to get him out of his armor without stopping their kiss. Lance giggled against his chest when Keith got stuck in his chest plate, before he huffed and dropped it to the ground, leaning back in to kiss Lance more.

When Keith was just down to his black thermal suit and he could feel Lance pressed up against him, he realized how right he had been, so Keith told him, murmuring it against his lips.

Lance pulled back enough to whisper, “What was I right about?”

“Everything,” Keith said. Then, he dived back in.

;;

They spent the rest of the afternoon on Lance’s bed, alternating between kissing and talking. Keith felt like there was a lot to catch up on, and for the first few hours, they just talked about nonsense things, topics that made both of them laugh and breathe easier.

Keith was laying on top of Lance’s chest, head resting at his collarbone. He could hear Lance’s heartbeat underneath his ear, calm, steady. Their legs were tangled together, and Lance had one of his hands in Keith’s hair, nails scrapping against his scalp as he combed through the black strands.

“Keith?”

He lifted his head to look at Lance and whispered, “Yeah?”

“I just—I don’t know if we should talk about anything.”

He winced because yeah, there was something that still felt unfinished about all of this. Of course, Keith knew that Lance loved him, and Lance knew that Keith felt the same way. Keith had apologized for everything several times already; honestly, he would probably never stop apologizing for it.

“Do you want to talk about something?” Keith asked carefully. He tightened his hand on Lance’s hip.

“I don’t know.”

Keith frowned and pushed himself up so he was hovering over Lance. He was looking up at him, and even though the room was dim, Keith could still see every fleck of blue that made up his eyes.

Before he could say anything, Lance blurted, “Are we dating?”

He paused carefully, but Lance looked so worried underneath him that he reached up to cup his jaw. He kept his voice neutral when he said, “Do you want to be?”

He nodded.

Keith huffed a laugh, breathing against Lance’s jaw. “Me too.”

“Okay, that’s—good,” Lance sighed. “That’s good.”

He nodded, “What else?”

“How do you know there’s something else?”

“I know you.”

Lance sighed, and he blinked up at the ceiling, avoiding Keith’s gaze. His hands had slipped down to Keith’s back. He asked, “How are we going to figure out the lion switch? If I’m still the Red Paladin and the Blue Paladin—”

Keith snuck his arm around Lance’s waist and rolled over, pulling Lance up on top of his chest. Lance went willingly, curling into his chest.

Keith stayed quiet for a few minutes, listening to Lance’s breathing while he chose his words. Then, he said, “I’m not worried about it.”

“How in the living hell are you not worried about it?” he grumbled, spreading his fingers over Keith’s chest above his heart.

“We’ll figure it out,” Keith assured him. “You were the one that said we needed to fix things between us first.”

“We don’t even know that it worked or that it will work.”

Keith shrugged, and Lance’s face dipped into his neck. He said, “Doesn’t matter. This is more important to me. We’ll figure Red out later.”

Lance leaned up, crooking an eyebrow at him, “Who are you, and what have you done with Keith?”

He felt his face flush a little, so he grabbed Lance and pulled him down to his lips, sighing against his lips when Lance relaxed into him. He murmured, “Shut up.”

;;

Later, Keith left Lance’s room to go change into his clothes for dinner, and when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the door to his room, he groaned when he realized how wrecked he looked. His face was still tinted red, his lips were swollen, and there were more than a few faint bruises on his neck and jaw from Lance’s mouth.

His blushed deepened as he thought about it. He shoved the door closed behind him and dropped his armor to the ground.

Keith sat down on his bed and let his head fall into his hands. Fuck, he couldn’t believe this. He just—he didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky.

A few minutes later, he rose from his bed and got dressed.

;;

He walked into the dining room, and Lance was already sitting in his seat, talking to the rest of the team, so Keith slid into the seat beside him silently and started eating.

“You alright, Keith?”

He looked up to see everyone smiling in his direction, and when he turned to look at Lance, the other boy was grinning so wide that it must have been hurting his face. Keith felt his expression soften, and he kept looking at Lance when he said, “Yeah, I’m good.”

Lance leaned forward to give him a quick kiss before turning back to his food and picking up with another story. Hunk and Pidge were laughing along with him, and when Keith turned to glance at Shiro, he was already smiling at him.

Keith nodded to him and reached for Lance’s hand underneath the table.

;;

It ended better than Keith could have imagined.

After dinner, Keith followed Lance back to his room. They held hands the whole way, and Lance was quiet, humming to himself while they walked through the dim halls of the castle. Dinner had been—really nice. He hadn’t realized how much strain he and Lance had been putting on the rest of the team with their fighting.

Keith was so relieved. He couldn’t remember ever being this happy.

Lance stopped outside of his door and blinked up at Keith. His blue eyes were soft, and he reached out for Keith’s other hand, swinging them gently. His voice was quiet when he said, “You can so no if you don’t want to, but I was wondering if you wanted to sleep in my room tonight?”

Keith nodded, leaning forward to kiss him quickly, and Lance dragged him into the room behind him.

It was slow. Keith pulled Lance’s shirt over his head and paused to press a kiss to the scar on Lance’s shoulder. He couldn’t remember what it was from, but it meant that Lance was here with him and that was all he ever wanted.

Lance changed into his pajamas, and Keith slipped out of his jeans and boots before they crawled into Lance’s bed.

Lance pulled the sheets up over them and curled into Keith’s side. He grabbed Keith’s wrist and pulled his arm over his waist, and looked back over his shoulder at him and whispered, “You’re gonna be here when I wake up, right?”

Regret slashed through Keith’s heart. He thought of the first time they had been in this position; the night that Keith had effectively ruined everything between them. They could have had this months ago. If he hadn’t—

Instead of focusing on it, he leaned up enough to press his lips to Lance’s and murmur, “I’ll always be here when you wake up. I love you.”

“Love you too,” Lance whispered, taking Keith’s arm and pressing his lips to Keith’s wrist. He let go and pressed his back into Keith’s chest.

Keith curled around him, pressing his nose into the back of Lance’s neck. He had one arm around Lance’s waist, holding him tight, and the other was underneath Lance’s head. He stayed awake long enough to hear Lance’s breath even out, and then, he closed his eyes and slept, knowing he was right where he wanted to be, right where he should be.

;;