#klangstweek2018

In the five phoebs they've seen each other, Lance could tell that this was different. They were different. Better different. The girls he dated (however brief), couldn't hold a candle to what Keith made him feel, the connection they had. Granted, those girls never piloted a Lion Mecha to save the universe with him.

Keith, although shy with initiating intimacy, never turned down a chance to smooch.

And damn, if he wasn't a good kisser.

Their not so secret rendezvous in supply closets or empty rooms before missions and briefings were intense and passionate.

In one of these rendezvous, Lance sensed the air in the room and felt Keith’s pulse racing. He kissed his impossibly soft lips and pulled away to admire the way his black hair was tussled, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes blown out. Lance gently brushed his thumb over Keith’s lip, light enough to mimic a feather and smirked when he sent a shiver down Keith’s back. He moaned with the shiver and the noise he made turned Lance inside out.

He wanted more, so much more, and knew Keith felt the same.

“Let’s head to my room.” He whispered low and softly in Keith’s ear.

Keith immediately stiffened and untangled himself from their hold on each other. “U-umm, I don't…” He turned his face away from Lance. “Maybe some other time?”

Lance flinched, feeling like his hands had been burned by his words, but knew better than to pull away from his boyfriend.

“O-oh, yeah! ‘Course, no pressure, babe.” He caressed the side of Keith's face with a shaky hand. He kissed his forehead and hugged him before guiding them out of the room and saying goodnight for the evening.

When Lance went to his room, to his bed, he curled up in his blanket. He didn't think too much about the sting in his heart, because it's not unusual to read a situation wrong. If Keith wasn't ready to move to the next step, the last thing Lance was going to do was try to push.

Over the next few phoebs, Lance would think he read Keith's signs correctly and every time, Keith would turtle up and shy away from his touch. It didn't help that his empathy radar was apparently busted, because he would only try to initiate something after he was sure Keith wanted to. But every time, Lance scrambled to recover and convince Keith he wasn't a horndog. Because he wasn't!

He just wanted to feel every inch of his body, feel it pressed against him, hear him cry out his name.

‘Calm down. Take it easy Lancey Lance.’

“This is gonna sound a little weird, but… are you, like, would you call yourself a sexual person?” He asked Keith one day after training.

Keith choked on the hydration packet he was drinking and turned a furious shade of red. “Not really!” He yelped out. Lance saw his shoulders hunch up slightly and knew the telltale signs of Keith becoming uncomfortable, but needed to get this sorted out.

“So like, would you call yourself asexual? Which is like, not a problem at all! I'm just… wondering, is all.”

Keith laughed nervously and responded with, “Who could really say?”

It did little to soothe Lance's anxiety, but it was better than nothing.

--

Until it wasn't.

Lance woke up from a nightmare one night and went to the showers to clean the sweat off. As he approached the showers he heard one of the shower heads on. Curious, he didn't call out to the person, but silently walked over.

Then he heard Keith moan.

His heart skipped a beat and wondered if he should just turn around and go back to bed, but the need for confirmation go the best of him. Lance turned the last corner for the shower room and saw Keith, in all his glory with his back facing Lance and making a stroking motion that was impossible to doubt. Lance felt his blood rush and hurried out before Keith saw him.

The anxiety that was building up since Keith first sidestepped his advances was reaching critical mass.

So, at the very least, Keith did have some type of active libido.

Then why didn't he want to do anything past intense makeouts?

He found he couldn't wait long to confront Keith. The next day, as they laid in his bed, Lance asked, “When's the last time you jerked off?”

“Whu- Lance!” Keith shrieked out, and scrambled out of the covers they were cuddling under.

“Dude, chill, I'm just wondering!” He sat up with the young Asian, acting like he was as relaxed as he could be. “I feel like as your BF for almost a deca-phoeb, I can ask something like that.”

Keith stammered to find a retort and tried to cover the blush on his face with one of his hands. “I- I guess? Umm… I don't even remember the last time, I really couldn't say.”

Wow. That hurt a lot more than he thought it was going to.

“Let me jog your memory.” Lance snipped. “It was last night. In the shower room.”

Keith's jaw dropped and Lance knew he wanted to counter with something along the line of 'you were spying on me?’, but he curled into a ball against the wall of his room and continued.

“Do you, do you think I'm ugly? Am I not attractive enough to turn you on?”

Keith jumped up and crawled over to his boyfriend. “Are you-? No! Of course not Lance, you're gorgeous!”

“Then why?” Lance heard his voice crack and the blur of tears covering his eyes threatened to fall. “I've been going crazy trying to think of what I did, or didn't do to make you not want me! Sex isn't the end all be all for me, but I need to know what's going on in your head, truthfully this time!”

Keith stared at his boyfriend on the brink of tears and felt a deep ache in his chest.

“I… you drive me up the wall.” He finally said after a dreadfully long moment of silence. “Sometimes, I can't tell if the things you do are to get a rise out of me, or if you're really just that irresistible. Almost everything you do makes me want you like crazy.”

Lance's face twisted into incredulous confusion. “What? Dude, I’ve been sitting at the edge of my seat trying to figure out if you even thought I was cute or thought I just had a 'nice personality’! Now you're telling me you wanna jump my bones as much as I do? What gives?!”

Keith didn't respond, but used a trembling hand to pick up Lance's and slowly placed it over his pants.

“Oh, fuck.” Lance wheezed out.

Keith continued to say nothing, and nodded, with his lips sealed shut, his face turned away and the blush on his face so apparent, he was pretty sure he could match Red's paint.

“I don't get it, are you not emotionally ready? Is there something I could do to help?” Lance slowly gripped through Keith's pants.

Keith took a sharp breathe in and shook his head. He squinted his eyes open and looked at Lance with such cautious, vulnerable eyes. “I-it’s not that I'm not ready. I've been ready, I've been dying for your touch. But… I'm scared.”

Lance loosened his grip slightly, “Scared?” He repeated. “Of what?”

“Well… I'm not. I'm not human like you are! Not fully anyway. I've never done anything before so, so I don't know if anything is… different between us. Or what being half-Galra means when doing stuff like this. I don't want to- I don't know how you'd react to seeing me and doing anything with me. If anything we did would even be safe for you. I- I-”

Lance softly ran his hand down the zipper of Keith pants, earning another beautiful cry of ecstasy. “But… you do want me?”

“Quiznak, yes.”

Bubbles and butterfly danced around in his chest. The Blue Paladin smirked and crawled on top of his boyfriend and ground their groins together. Both teens made a shuddering groan and were panting furiously.

“Then that’s good enough for me.” Lance whispered in his ears. “We don’t have to go all out tonight, but your ass is mine, Kogane.”

Stars exploded behind Keith’s eyes and he couldn’t trust anything he said right now to make sense, so he reached up and kissed Lance with as much passion as he could convey, hoping it could say what he wanted to.

They puffed out an exasperated sigh.

“You think Lance wants to come out of there to a bag of bones?” Their eyes gave him a once over and frowned. “You're practically emaciated. If you keep this up, Shiro is gonna throw you in a pod again, and what would be worse? Not being there to greet Lance when he comes to, or how sad you'll make him when he finds out he put you in that pod?”

Keith felt his stomach lurch at the thought and hesitantly picked up the spoon on his plate.

Pidge sat down with their legs cross and propped their head with their hands. Sharp brown eyes followed his motion of picking up tiny bites and forcing them down.

“No one thinks it's your fault, you know.”

The spoon fell with a loud clatter and Keith is honestly too scared to see what kind of face their making.

Pidge continues, “The mission went South. It happens. We're all equally to blame. Shiro and Allura should have gotten more Intel from the Blade before sanctioning the mission. Hunk should have gotten there faster. I should've scanned the room schematics rather than focus on the computer architecture.”

Keith looked down at the plate.

“You weren't there.” He said, just above a whisper. “If I was faster, he wouldn't have needed to hold the door open. His hand wouldn't have gotten magnetically bonded to the room. He wouldn't have…”

Images of the flames being extinguished by a furious Blue came to mind. Flying into the charred room after Yellow clawed a hole into the room. Seeing his crumpled body, partially melted armor.

The smell.

Allura had told them that Blue used so much residual quintessence to keep Lance alive long enough to make it to a pod, that the moment she landed in the dock, she powered down.

Lance was alive, somehow, and was hanging by the frailest string.

Four quintants later, Coran had informed the team that it isn’t clear when the pods would release him.

His body, the burns (quiznak the burns) were patched up without an issue, but Lance's body had been thrown into such a large state of shock, that his mind was completely unresponsive to the pod’s treatment and at this point, Lance's fight was his own to finish.

Vargas after Coran broke the news, Keith wandered into the kitchen in a daze. Hunk was making cookies to try to lighten the mood and was happy to see the Red Paladin in the dining hall. Keith opened the oven baking Hunk's cookies and felt the puff of heat hit his face. The thought that Lance baking in the heat of the room like those cookies disgusted Keith, and compelled him to place his hand directly on the rack.

The pain was enough to tear a scream out of Keith and cause nothing but white to flood his vision.

But Lance had felt worse, he knew he did, so Keith persisted. What was a few seconds of heat on your hand compared to your entire body being broiled, wrapped in metal armor for almost a quarter varga?

Hunk almost fainted when he pulled Keith away from the oven and saw that nasty boils were already littering his hand.

It took both Hunk and Shiro to drag him into a pod and when he came out, they threatened to start a rotation of permanent Keith Watches.

He pushed the plate towards Pidge the moment he ate more than half and sat up to view Lance's slightly troubled face.

The youngest Holt glanced at the plate, then Keith, and sighed again. They picked the plate up and walked away.

Since the incident two movements ago, Keith has spent every waking moment by his side. There were many moments in between where he woke up in his bed and his back had Shiro, Hunk, and the occasional Coran or Allura to that for that.

The team was kind enough to give him as much time alone with Lance as he wanted. They were handling their own pretty well without him, which was hardly a surprise. Outside of piloting their Lions, he never really put himself out there for them to miss his presence.

Not like Lance.

“You’re so stupid.” He said to the pod, his forehead pressed against it. “So, so stupid.” The ache in his chest ebbs and flows like waves, and he's reminded of the Cuban in front of him, and his love of the sea.

All the promises they made about what to do after the war echo in his mind. Seeing the sunset on Veradero Beach. Meeting Lance's family. Going to the Fire Festival. They were spoken under the pretenses of friendship, but after their kiss, Keith sees them in such a stronger light.

And it hurts.

So much.

A phoeb after placing Lance in the pod, Keith began to understand what was really happening. He woke up and under the pain he has felt for so long, was an eerie calm.

“I can't stop thinking about that mission, and even though I hate that you did it, I'm so proud to have someone like you on our team. I don’t-” A lump forms in his throat thinking of the fierce kiss Lance gave him before sacrificing himself. “I don’t deserve your love, but I want it so bad. That’s, that’s pretty selfish isn’t it?”

Keith locks his sight on the cords connecting the pods to their power source.

“Coran said he doesn't know when you're going to wake up.” He's staring at the cords, fixated on what they truly mean. “But, I don't think that's true. I think he doesn't know if you're going to wake up.”

He remembers Lance gloating one day that he was the first Cuban student accepted in the Garrison. “You've been fighting an uphill battle since before we met. I can't even imagine what kind of battle you're fighting right now. You've fought so hard. You've done so well.”

The emotions he's feeling are impossible to describe, they leave him dizzy and his mind in a swirl.

“I would do anything, anything, to trade places with you. To see you out of that pod.”

He breaks his trance from the power cords and looks up at Lance.

“But… Sometimes what we want, isn't necessarily what we get.”

“If this battle is too hard to beat, you can let go. It’s okay to let go. Give me a sign, anything, to tell me what you want, and I'll respect it.”

No matter what Lance chooses, Keith will follow him.

It's the least he could do.

Loud beeping emits from the pod, startling the young teen. He grips the pod’s glass, looking at the digital windows popping up on it's screen. Keith knew very little written Altean, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what it meant.

His knees shook and went weak, folding at the base of the pod. He covered his mouth to suppress a sob and cried out what felt like the last of his tears.

—

There's nothing around him, or maybe everything.

Lance can’t recall the moment he entered this realm, or how he got here.

His feet were firmly planted on a non-existent plane, but it still felt like he was floating.

To his left, was blinding light. To his right, darkness. He stood at what felt like directly in the middle where they bled into each other with a murky grey.

How long has he been here - hours, weeks, years?

Was he dead? In limbo? In hell?

If this was Heaven, he'd like to file a complaint.

He hears distorted voices now and then, they feel so close, he tries to reach out into the nothingness to grab hold of the sound. Sometimes, they’re loud and angry, but for the most part, it's soft and sad.

Lance would chew his foot off to understand what they say.

It's at that point that Lance figured the only way to get out is to make a decision.

Left or right. Right or left.

Does he do what the movies say, where running to the light meant death and concurrently, darkness meant coming back to life?

Or is it the other way around?

Should he ignore all of that and just follow his gut?

What was his gut trying to tell him?

God, was he tired. In the beginning, he felt no need to rest, but the exhaustion was creeping in more often than not. Sleep had yet to grace him in the undetermined amount of time he spent here, and it sounded so tempting.

What would happen if he just… closed his eyes?

“Sometimes what we want, isn't necessarily what we get.”

What the-?

“Keith?” He shouted into the void. “Keith, is that you?”

“It's okay to let go.”

The disembodied voice wraps itself around his soul. Ripples of sadness and resolve were echoing in his mind. Lance screamed and tugged at his hair. “I don't understand what you're saying!”

“Tell me what you want, and I'll respect it.”

A strong force slammed his chest. Lance fell to the non-floor and choked out a cry.

His heartbeat.

He gasped for air and realized that in his entire time in nothingness, he had not once felt his heartbeat.

A strangled noise escaped his throat as he felt the pound in his chest again.

And again.

Something instinctual tells him that the void is ejecting him, and it's time to decide.

Gathering his strength, Lance stumbles back up, clenches his fist over his chest, and starts to walk. Step by step. The harsh sound of bells ring over and over again in his ears. Lance still can't tell if where he's going leads to life, death, or nowhere at all.

But he thinks about the team, his family, everyone on Earth and everyone in the Universe depending on them. On him.

Lance feels Keith reaching out to him, like a beacon, and that's enough to move forward.