#observant lance

“Jesus H. Christ one a one-wheeled motorbike, Pidge,” he gasps, hand pressed to his galloping heart. She doesn’t laugh — Pidge doesn’t laugh often — but Lance has learned to read her, in the year or so they’ve been in space. He recognises the twitch of her mouth, the flash in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Your lock code is embarrassingly easy to guess,” she says in lieu of an answer. Lance smiles reflexively at the matter-of-fact, half chiding tone. He pulls finally away from the wall, having caught his breath, and starts rifling through his cabinet.

“Yeah?”

He hears the shuffle of blankets, the muffled hits on a pillow being shoved into a lap. When he glances out of the corner of his eyes, he finds her sat comfortably in the dead centre of his bed, criss-cross-applesauce, nails picking at the threads of his pillowcase and eyes blinking owlishly behind her glasses.

“Yes. Fifty eighth most common four letter password.” She pauses a moment. “Spelling F-A-R-T with numbers is very immature.”

Lance snickers. He’d forgotten what his password spelt, he’s used the same combo so long. “Is that right?”

“Yes. You should come up with something more secure. It was my second guess.”

“What was the first?”

Pidge doesn’t seem to notice his curious look. Her eyes are focused on the items in his hands, watching diligently as he sits on the floor next to a dish of water, squeezing some soap into his hands and rubbing it all over his bare legs. Her head is tilted with a similar look of inquiry.

“Your birthday. What are you doing?”

Instead of answering, Lance removes the cap from his razor and starts to carefully drag it down his calfs, rinsing it every two strokes in the water. Pidge watches with rapt attention.

Weirdo, Lance thinks, fondly and hypocritically.

It doesn’t take long for the questions to start firing off.

“What’s the point of shaving your legs?”

“Gets rid of the hair.”

“Why do you want to get rid of the hair?”

Lance takes a moment to gather his thoughts, answering truthfully. “Lots of reasons. Not all of them I’m proud of. I started mostly ‘cause Veronica did it and I used to do everything she did.” He pauses. A sad smile pulls on his lips, and he swallows around the comfortingly familiar lump in his throat. “Well. ‘Used to’. If she was here I’d probably still be puttering around after her.” He finds Pidge’s eyes and smiles at her, winking. “Older siblings are easy to hang off of, huh?”

Her mouth twitches. She breaks eye contact, resting her chin on her knees and moving the pillow under her legs. “No. Older siblings are annoying. And ridiculous. I once followed Matt around all day and wrote down every single time he said ‘ow’. He said in on average twenty-three times an hour.” She meets his eyes again, mouth pinched and eyebrows raised. “Your average is twenty-four.”

“I see.”

“You should tie your shoes.”

“Nah.” He taps the razor on the side of the dish, gently sliding it to the other side of him and switching his razor to his left hand. “Anyways. When I was your age I mostly did it ‘cause Ronnie did it. Helped with swimming, too. But as I got older…” He frowns. “As I got older, I started feeling like I had to, I guess. Like I was ugly if I didn’t.”

A pinprick of pain makes his hand still, lifting the blade from around his ankle. A tiny drop of blood swells at the base of it. He sets the razor down, quickly grabbing a towel and dabbing at the nick. Ankle wounds always bleed so much — it doesn’t even hurt anymore, but he can’t pull the towel away or he’ll stain the floor.

“…Do you feel that way now?”

Lance doesn’t answer for a long moment. He hears Pidge fidget, clicking her nails together. The blood finally slows enough for him to pull away the towel, and he resumes shaving the last half of his leg — much more slowly, this time.

“Not exactly,” he says carefully. “I recognize why I feel that way. I know where that pressure comes from, why it’s harmful. But it’s still…there. I still catch myself thinking cruel things; I have to spend a few minutes talking myself out of them. I tried stopping for about a year. I didn’t like it.”

He finally finishes swiping up the last line of soap, rinsing off his razor and then gently running a cold, wet cloth over his legs to get rid of any lingering suds.

“Do you think you’ll try to stop again?”

“Hm. I don’t think so. I like the feeling of smooth skin more than hairy skin, I’ve found. It’s nice on fresh sheets, plus sometimes hair tickles me and makes me jumpy. Plus, it’s easier to moisturize.”

“Ohhh,” Pidge says, and when Lance looks up there’s a real look of understanding on her face — not the practiced one she puts on when she doesn’t actually get something but doesn’t want to look dumb. “Like — it’s the same as why you don’t like jeans and socks.”

Lance smiles. “Exactly. I’d walk around in nothing but shorts and a big t-shirt, if I had the choice.” Legs clean and clean-shaven, he picks up his tube of lotion and starts dabbing dollops all over the skin. “That’s all I ever wore back home.”

“Arizona is freezing half the time!”

“Cuba,” Lance reminds her.

“Oh yeah,” she says again. “But what about when it rained?”

Lance shrugs. “Better to wear flip flops and get wet feet than wet socks. Wet socks are the worst.”

“Yeah.” She shudders. “Like prickly sweaters.”

He hums. The lotion smells like juniberries, which kind of smells like pineapple and hibiscus mixed with a strange, almost spicy scent. Not quite home, but close enough to be nice.

He doesn’t ask Pidge why she broke into his room while he was in the showers and sat in the dark waiting for him to get back. The same way he doesn’t press when she follows him down the halls, disappearing behind corners when he turns to look, or sits by his feet during movie night. He lets her be prickly with affection and learns to hear the undercurrent in her constant comments and rambles, learns to read her questions about every thing he does as curious rather than judgemental.

She would ice him out for weeks if he said it out loud, but there was this stray cat that lived near his house, when he was young. It hissed and spit and clawed if you came halfway near it; Mamá had forbidden him from trying in case it was sick. But he used to leave out water for it at night and sometimes even sneak Abuelo’s heating pad, and every once in a while it would let Lance sit near it without clawing him. Once it even attacked one of the older kids who used to chase him after school.

It’s no coincidence that Pidge always happens to be in the same room as him 90% of the time. Or that she can guess his passcode easily.

“Hey, Pidgeon,” he says, unwrapping the towel from his hair and starting to work in the leave in conditioner. “The lockcode on my snack drawer is the same as the room code. Just so you know.”

She stares at him for several minutes.

Her mouth twitches.

“I could have figured that out myself.”

“I know.”

“You’re weird.”

AAAAHHHHH!!!! CONFIRMATION THAT SHIRO IS NOT SHIRO!!!!

So. Honerva obviously had a clone ordered to be made, to see through their eyes and control remotely, along with using it to push forward Lotor as the new emperor. We now have confirmation that Honerva is now the focus antagonist.

On the other hand, this episode was confirmation after confirmation that this is NOT OUR SPACE DAD. First was him not bothering to listen to SIC Lance and dismissing his concerns. Second was the fact that Honerva was watching through Shiro’s eyes (Remember, she sees from the point of view of who ever she is controlling. And Shiro was facing Lotor at the time). Third was the internal conflict within Voltron. Fourth was Lance and Allura’s conversation about Shiro. Fifth and most telling... is the fact that the Shiro that appeared when they tapped into their bonds with the Lions... was not there at first, appears as a silhouette when he does, and tries to warn Lance about something... and when Lance asks him about it, ‘Shiro’ brushes it off... 

Look. This episode is really building up the Holt family bonds as well as Lance as a character. I love this episode so much. And now I have the fuel I need to write another chapter in the VLD Flames universe.

“Lance. Dude. Come on.”

Lance isn’t listening even a little. There’s a crease between his eyebrows, furrowed as they are, and his dark eyes flit rapidly back and forth, scanning the hustle and bustle of the giant crowd of the market they’re in.

Keith tries tugging Lance’s hand again. It does nothing. Lance always suddenly grows a ridiculous amount of muscle when he’s being stubborn.

“Lance,” Keith tries again. “What’s up? If you want to go to a stall you can say so, you know. You don’t have to just look around until I guess what you’re thinking.”

Lance doesn’t take the bait, which is worrying. Usually Keith has no trouble riling him up even playfully.

Lance mumbles something, standing on his tiptoes and leaning to try and look over the crowd. (Fat chance. The Megel people are tall as all hell. Even Hunk barely passes their shoulders.)

“What? You’re mumbling.”

“I think she’s lost.”

Keith blinks.

“Okay, that cleared up exactly nothing.”

Lance finally looks over at him, and Keith’s earlier judgement was correct. Lance is biting his lip. He looks upset, anxious.

“The little girl. I think she’s lost.”

“What little girl?”

“I’ve been seeing this little girl walking around every few minutes. She looks scared. She keeps walking up to people and running away when she sees their faces. I think she’s crying. I haven’t seen her in a while, but I have a bad feeling.”

That sobers Keith up quickly. Unbidden, a memory he hasn’t touched in a decade floats up to the forefront of his mind; blurry around the edges, like an old home video: him and his Pa, at a flea market in west Texas. Keith couldn’t have been more than three. He remembers holding his Pa’s hand, as he always did, his tiny palm wrapped tightly around his father’s calloused finger. It had been so loud that the noise had coalesced into one constant swelling sound, like the constant background noise of the desert.

He’d let go of Pa’s hand for a millisecond. Just — just for a second, as he’d waddled over to someone’s kiosk, awed at the shining jewellery and glittering stones. The old woman manning that kiosk had been amused by him, spinning him a tale he doesn’t remember about a brooch and the ancient princess it had belonged to. He’d wanted to keep it, he remembers, and when he asked if he could have it she had told him he could as long as his parents paid for it.

The terror had come so quickly.

He’d looked over immediately and realised he couldn’t see his Pa at all. He’d even climbed on the top of the kiosk to try and see better, but all he saw was a sea of baseball caps and cowboy hats, and no sign of his father’s messy black hair or broad shoulders. He remembers how quickly the tears came, how they’d blurred his vision until the massive crowd was a smudge of colours and shapes. His chest had felt so tight that he’d struggled to breathe.

He doesn’t remember how he found his Pa. He thinks his Pa must have found him.

But he remembers that fear in startling clarity, the galloping of his heart, the first time he’d ever really thought I am all alone.

“There she is!” Lance cries, and that’s all the warning Keith gets before he’s yanked in a random direction. He barely manages to keep himself upright, balancing only by his hand clenched tightly in Lance’s.

Seconds later they’re stopped abruptly when Lance lets go of his hand to brace them on his knees, bending down to the little girl’s height. She looks at him distrustfully, wary of both a stranger and a stranger who is so clearly foreign.

“Hey, kiddo.” The words are delayed by a fraction of a second, meaning they’re translated — Lance isn’t speaking English.

By the instant look of surprise and then familiarity that rushes through the girl’s features, Lance is speaking her native tongue. Where the hell Lance had time to learn Megeli, Keith doesn’t know.

(Except yes he does, because he’s stayed up with Lance before diplomatic missions, unable to sleep with all his nerves — diplomatic missions are not his strong suit. Keith has caught Lance, though, on several occasions, quietly teaching himself a few key phrases in the language of whatever people they’re visiting. He does it if he can on rescue missions, too, small phrases like his name and his purpose, and “we are not here to hurt you”. Comforting words, soft words. An active proof that the person coming to save you cares enough about you to learn your language so you can hang on to whatever familiarity you can, in your most frightening moment, without the just-a-second-too-long delay of the translators. Keith got a little choked up, when he first saw it; Lance’s purple eyebags and lost beauty sleep, all so he has an off-chance of comforting whomever may need it. He still feels in intense affection bubbling up in his chest when he thinks about it.)

“Where is your home?”

The phrase is a little klunky, kind of a strange thing to ask — Keith can’t imagine that Lance is fluent, or anything, they only learnt about this mission yesterday so Lance can’t have had much time to memorize many phrases — but it drives the point across.

The little girl bursts into tears, flinging herself into Lance.

“I can’t find my mama,” she wails, sobs wracking her tiny frame. Lance wraps his arms around her immediately, unhesitatingly, pressing her head to his shoulder and standing carefully once he’s got her secured.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here to help. You know Voltron?”

It takes her a moment to gather herself, maybe to place the name, but she nods.

“I am part of Voltron.” He makes sure she’s supported properly, balanced on his hip, then uses his other hand to point at Keith. “Him, too. We can help.”

The little girl contemplates them for a moment. Keith tries to make himself look as helpful and non-scary as possible, but only really succeeds in making himself look constipated and dumb.

The little girl giggles. “He looks silly.”

Lance laughs too, bright and loud and obnoxious, and it takes up all the air in the room and Keith wants to breathe in the sound like it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever inhaled.

“He does look silly. I think it’s the hair, hm? Very dorky.”

Lance’s words are no longer delayed, he’s back to English, but the little girl is unphased. She wipes her tears with her hands, and then on Lance’s flightsuit.

Lance doesn’t seem to mind.

“Can we find my mama now?”

“Of course, kiddo. How about you sit on my shoulders? I’m not very tall on this planet, so it might help you see better.”

The little girl lights up.

“Can I stand on your shoulders?“

Lance snorts. “Absolutely not, pequeña. That’s a great way to fall on your head.”

The little girls pouts, but offers no further complaint as Lance lifts her by the armpits over his head and onto his shoulders. He plants on arms across her knees once she’s situated, and then reaches over to curl his free hand around Keith’s, beaming at him.

“Can’t forget Shiro’s rule,” he says, winking.

Keith swallows, face heating up as he entwines their fingers together, even though they’ve held hands a million times before.

That’s Shiro’s version of the get-along-pants, you see. Everyone has to do it. If you’re bickering for longer than what is acceptable (a standard known only to Shiro, who’s patience flounders between a level so awe-inspiring that Buddha would be ashamed, and shorter than even Keith’s fuse, depending on how long it’s been since he’s been in the same room as Slav), then boom! Guess who’s holding hands for the next several hours. Keith and Lance are a special case — since they spend inordinate amounts of time, and Keith is quoting here, “doing goddamn somersaults on my last nerve”, for every time they argue they have to hold hands for ten missions in a row.

Lance did the math. Based on all the arguing they did in their first few months in space, they’ve wracked up a handholding debt of about 54 straight years.

So it’s become normal for them, now, to hold hands all the time. Keith has pretty much gotten used to it — he leaves his room, sees Lance, and neither of them even blink before linking hands and moving on. It shouldn’t be a Thing. It isn’t a Thing.

But sometimes, it really is.

(Sometimes, like when Lance’s brown eyes are amused and mischievous and looking to Keith like he’s in on the joke, or when Lance is tugging Keith along to whatever dorky thing has attracted his attention, or when Lance is swinging their arms back and forth when he gets bored, or when he makes Keith twirl him around and Keith does without question, because as much as it makes his heart pound he will take any opportunity to have Lance twirled and dizzy pulled back against his chest, or or or —)

“What’s your name, buddy?” Lance asks, yanking Keith back into focus.

He has a funny way of doing that, Lance. Of dragging every inch of Keith’s attention on him.

“Gehma,” the girl says, appearing to be playing bongos with Lance’s head. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Lance. And this is Keith.”

Keith raises his free hand as Lance introduces him, wiggling his fingers in an awkward half-wave. She imitates him, the way kids do with the world around them in general.

“Those are silly names. Do all of you have silly names?”

“Probably, by your standards,” Keith says, cracking a grin.

He loves kids. They’re hilarious. He’ll forever laugh at the time a random child walked up to Shiro at Walmart one day and told him he would look better bald with long nose hair. Keith laughed until he was hunched over, crying in the produce section.

Gehma continues to chatter on, asking a myriad of questions and making out-of-pocket observations about people. She also frequently yanks on Lance’s hair, who winces but allows it. At one point they even stop for snacks, because they’ve all been in the sun for a few hours and also because Keith’s stomach growls so loud that several people turn to stare, so. Food time.

“What does you mama look like, Gehma? It’s hard to see over everyone’s shoulders, but Keith and I may be able to help a little, at least. Do you remember what she was wearing?”

Gehma rattles off a description, half-helpful and half-information that would only ever be notable to a kid (“And she makes an excellent monster impression, so watch out for that.”). Keith keeps on high alert, though, looking for pink braids and a blue tunic that Gehma mentioned.

“Mama!” Gehma yells, after another twenty minutes of aimless wandering. She lunges forward so abruptly she and Lance start toppling forward. Keith rushes forward to plant on hand on the back of Gehma’s shirt and one hand on Lance’s chest, yanking them upright. He reaches up to help lift Gehma down, who takes off in a sprint the second her little feet hit the ground, into the waiting arms of a woman who looks very, very relieved.

“Oh, baby! Oh, Gehma, my girl, my little monster —” Every word is punctuated by a kiss, Gehma’s mother’s fluttering hands frequently patting random areas, making sure her kid is alive in one piece. Gehma herself has gone quiet, all the fear catching up to her, reminding her how scared she was without her mama.

It’s a lot for a little kid to handle.

“Thank you,” Gehma’s mama says, once she’s satisfied that her kid’s okay. “I couldn’t — I turned around for one second and she was — I was so scared —”

“It’s okay,” Keith interrupts softly, surprising himself a little. “Uh, yeah. Happens to the best of us. Not that I would know. I mean. Yeah. But it’s cool. I’m glad we found you.” He’s bright red by the end of it, and lowkey hoping something blows up so he has a reason to exit the scenario immediately.

Lance’s quiet laughter is not helping. It’s making Keith redder.

God, he’s going to find some way to blame this on Shiro and then yell at him later, for his own sanity.

“Thank you, paladin,” the mother says again, and this time she sounds amused.

“All good,” Keith chokes out. Lance squeezes Keith’s hand, nodding.

“Yeah! That’s what we’re here for. Stay with your mama now, okay, Gehma? Don’t let go of her hand.”

Gehma promises to be more careful, and then she and her mother are off. Keith watches them go with a fond, semi-wistful smile.

He misses his Pa.

“I miss my mom,” Lance says quietly, voicing exactly what Keith is thinking.

“Me too. Uh, my dad. Not your mom. Not that I wouldn’t miss her if I didn’t know her! I’m sure she’s great. But, I don’t know her? So. I don’t. Miss her. But —”

Lord above, someone put him out of his fucking misery. God. Is it impossible for him to, like, speak like a normal person?

At least the word vomit that just came spewing out of his mouth had one benefit, he supposes. The horrible sad look has dropped from Lance’s face, replaced with the pinched expression of someone trying desperately not to laugh.

Keith sighs. “Go ahead.”

That’s all the permission Lance needs. One second he’s shaking every so slightly as he tries to keep himself together, the next he’s collapsed onto Keith’s shoulder, laughing himself sick.

“Jerk,” Keith mutters, but it’s far to soft to have any impact.

“You’re such a loser,” Lance says fondly. It takes him a few minutes for the giggles to vanish completely, but eventually the do, and he steps out of Keith immediate space and starts to pull him along in a random direction.

Keith doesn’t miss him being so close.

He doesn’t.

(They’re still holding hands, for fuck’s sake. When did he get so greedy? When did he need Lance so close to him, all the time?)

“We should meet back up with the others,” Lance says, swinging their arms together. “It’s been a few hours, I’m sure everyone else is done shopping. Ooooh, maybe we’ll be the first ones back, and we can go for a swim! What do you think?”

Keith smiles, whipped as all hell, Lance’s endless enthusiasm and love and affection and joy just making every part of him feel all fond and squishy.

“Sure, Lance. Whatever you want.”

The worst part is he means it. Lance could ask if Keith wanted to go skateboarding on an active volcano, and Keith would say yes without a second thought. (He would still have the wherewithal to complain, thankfully. He’s not that far gone yet.) But as he looks at Lance, who’s beaming, dodging elbows of random passers-by and pointing out every little stall that he thinks Keith would like (“Hey, Keith, check this out! It’s like little knives but for your nails! That’s right up your alley, Freddy Krueger.”)…

Keith fumes. Like, actually fumes, making the noise and everything, face bright red and scowl twisting his face so tightly that there’s a genuine concern he’s in pain. Lance, on the other hand, looks completely unbothered, flexing his fingers and checking his nails like he has no stake at all in the conversation.

Hunk exchanges a glance with Pidge. He’s at least glad they know better, if not poor Keith — Lance’s leg is bouncing up a storm underneath the table. He’s just as affected as Keith is, he’s just being a dick for brains because he’s emotionally stunted.

“If there’s something wrong with the plan,” Keith says, carefully enunciating every word through gritted teeth, “then please point it out to me and suggest an alternative.” The ‘otherwise shut the fuck up’ goes unsaid, but Hunk feels the sentiment is pretty clear regardless.

Lance upheaves a big, dramatic sigh, flopping backwards in his chair and covering his eyes with his hand like merely voicing his thoughts is such a struggle.

Keith’s eye twitches.

“You’re going to get a knife thrown at your head,” Hunk warns pleasantly, fully aware that it will do nothing.

He’s right. Lance ignores him.

“Look here,” he says, flicking a hand — with a more than reasonable amount of fanfare, Hunk will add, in fact he’s relatively certain that Lance has painted his fingernails gold entirely so they shine and catch everyone’s attention when he waves his hands around — at the holo blueprints Keith has pulled up of the Empire warship. “I mean, you have a plan that would work well for an EXC-76E-5 ship. Enter through the west hatch, sneak through the side hallways, ambush the gathered crew on the bridge. Except —” he swipes the image to the side, pulling up a file and displaying a photo sent by the Blades of the ship they’re currently planning to infiltrate — “the ship we’re infiltrating is an EXC-76E-4, dumbass. The hallways available to the west hatch opening don’t lead to the bridge, they lead to the armoury. If we mosey our way to the one place on the ship loaded with bombs and trigger happy Empire soldiers, it’s bye-bye Voltron.” He raises an eyebrow, smirking slightly, before parting his hands in faux surrender. “Of course, you’re the leader, though. If you say it’s time to go boom, I say sayonara, cruel word. Your wish is my firm command, Oh Fearless Leader.”

There’s a moment of tense, shocked silence. Hunk hurriedly pulls out his own file, noticing peripherally that everyone else does, as well, and hurriedly scans the report — the Blades have mistakenly noted in the write-up that the ship model is the EXC-76E-5, but the photos show, very clearly, an EXC-76E-4. Lance is right, and is the only one to notice — he must have all the models memorized. It’s a very Lance thing to do.

So is being a smug little shit about it, Hunk knows that for certain.

Beside him, Allura is biting her lip hard to keep from laughing. Over the past few months, her and Lance have gotten much closer, and while that has done wonders for team dynamics, it has also done wonders for Lance’s ego, which is.

Well.

It just is.

Pidge is also notably hiding her face with her hands. Hunk himself has several years of practice keeping his face in check when Lance is right, as is his duty as the number one Lance humbler (and as Lance’s duty with him — Hunk will admit that he can be a cocky shithead when he wants to be), so he’s looking straight at Keith.

Keith’s face has dropped to a deadpan stare. He grinds his teeth, glancing at the file and then back up at Lance, who smiles sunnily as if he’s not the absolute king of being as irritating as possible as often as possible.

“You know what your problem is?” Keith mutters, angrily swiping his hand through his battle plans to delete them and pulling up new blueprints.

Lance grins smugly, placing his hands under his chin and his elbows on the table. He blinks slowly, then opens half-lidded eyes towards Keith.

“Enlighten me,” he says.

“You,” Keith continues, as if Lance had not spoken, “are really cute, so no one ever told you to shut your fucking pie-hole.”

For the second time in the last ten minutes, the briefing room rings with shocked silence. Keith doesn’t seem to have noticed that he said it, or even that he said it to Lance’s face — he’s muttering grumpily to himself, crossing out every other thing he writes. He’s not even looking at Lance.

Lance, on the other hand, looks completely shocked. Shocked does not begin to cover it, honestly. Startled, maybe? His hands have dropped from under his chin, and his brown eyes are wide, looking at Keith in disbelief. His mouth is open slightly, gaped, at a total and complete loss for what to say.

Allura loses her battle. She clamps her hand over her mouth, trying her damnedest to muffle her laughter, eyes tearing with the effort. Pidge’s shoulders have started to shake, too. Hunk, for his part, can’t decide who to stare at, flicking wide eyes between Dumbass #1 and Dumbass #2.

Suddenly Lance’s expression shifts — the shock evaporates from his face, and in its place is something smug, something unbelievably satisfied, like a cat that knows it has its prey exactly where it wants it.

Hunk is generally a mature person, but drama is his weakness. He is straining every part of him so as not to miss a word.

Lance allows Keith a couple more moments of frustration, then starts tapping a nail on the table, a sound that is well known to annoy Keith quickly and reliably. When he, as expected, whips his head towards the sound and glares, Lance smirks, eyes honestly a little salacious between fluttering eyelashes.

“You think I’m cute?” he purrs.

It takes Keith maybe half a second to clock what the hell Lance is talking about, and then he goes so red that Hunk is sure he can feel the heat of his face, from exactly where he’s sitting, ten feet away.

Seriously, he’s glowing.

“Shut your pie-hole!” he snaps. “God!”

Rapidly, he turns back to the holoscreen, enlarging the proper blueprints with his new plans so everyone can see.

Lance cackles, continuing to snigger as Keith tries valiantly to outline his new plan and not die of self-induced heat exhaustion.

When Hunk peeks over Lance’s shoulder to look at his notes, though, he sees that he’s been dotting his i’s with hearts.

———

Lance really starts to clue in Keith’s comm goes off, late at night, when they’re cuddling and watching a movie (but mostly cuddling).

“Sorry,” Keith mutters sheepishly. Lance just rolls his eyes fondly and digs around for the remote to pause the movie — he is not going to have Keith talk over Deadpool. That would be a sin.

Remote search or no, though, Lance refuses to move even one inch away from his own personal space heater, so he feels it when said personal space heater tenses up.

Here we go.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Just — don’t hang up. I’m coming, okay?”

Keith puts his hand over the base of his phone, looking at Lance urgently.

“It’s Pidge.”

“Is she okay? Does she need Voltron?”

“Not all of us,” he says, hushed. “She’s just — she messed around in the wrong server and got herself arrested in the Delrn quadrant. She needs someone to go get her.”

Lance exhales, shoulders slumping. That’s not — that’s not good, obviously, but after years of ‘Pidge needs help’ meaning ‘Pidge is being ambushed by dozens of armed soldiers’, it’s a lot less scary.

“You need my help?”

Keith shakes his head. “No, you stay here. I’ve got it. It shouldn’t take too long. Don’t wait up though, okay?”

He presses a kiss to Lance’s cheek before untangling himself from the blankets, walking over to the front door and sliding on his boots.

“I’m coming now, Pidge, okay? Keep on, I’ll transfer your line to my ship in a minute.”

“Text me when she’s safe,” Lance calls as Keith unlocks the door.

“Will do.” He shoots a rueful smile in Lance’s direction. “Sorry for ditching movie night.”

Lance shakes his head fondly, waving him away. “Go, Oh Mighty Black Paladin. I’ll see you when you get home.”

Keith grins at him one more time before he ducks into the garage, locking the door behind him. Lance sighs, turning off the T.V. and folding the blanket, heading over to the kitchen to make himself a coffee. He won’t be able to sleep until he knows Pidge is home safe, anyway. (And, he’ll be honest, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll be able to sleep without Keith’s constant snores, so. No point in frustrating himself by trying.)

By the time Keith gets home, Lance has finished three (3) coffees and has sewn the lining of the current project he’s working on. It’s something like 4 in the morning, probably, but Lance stopped looking a couple hours ago.

“I thought I told you not to wait up,” Keith says, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to Lance’s lips.

“Mm,” Lance mumbles, grabbing Keith’s shirt and keeping him right where he is (pressed close close closely to Lance, where Lance has selfishly and unashamedly decided he belongs), “can’t sleep without you. I’ve unfortunately fallen victim to your conditioning, Pavlov.”

Keith snorts, kissing him one last time before fully scooping him up in his arms.

Lance, whipped as he is, does not protest.

“I think you’re maybe just in love with me,” he says, smirking.

Lance pretends to think about it. “I dunno. There’s this really hot guy, maybe you’ve heard of him. Leader of Voltron? Ex-Blade? He’s got this dreamy mullet. I kind of have a thing for him.”

Keith rolls his eyes, fully throwing him on the bed and crawling in after him, ignoring Lance’s indignant yelp.

“He sounds like a dork,” he says drily.

Lance grins. “He is.”

“Whatever, you butthead. Get over here so we can sleep.”

Without a moment of hesitation, Lance flips into Keith’s open arms, snaking his arms around his husband’s waist and tangling their legs together. He holds him closely, head over his heart, listening to it beat.

“Pidge okay?” he asks softly.

Keith hums, running his hands through Lance’s hair. “Yeah. Pretending to be less shaken up than she is. She got cocky and got caught and it freaked her out, so she started running her mouth. You know her.”

Lance laughs quietly. Sounds like Pidge.

“But it wasn’t that big of a deal. I went to the station and talked them out of pressing charges for spying. She’s banned from the quadrant for life, but nothing else. Dunno why she called me to help. Shiro probably would have been more helpful.”

Privately, Lance thinks he knows exactly why Pidge called Keith. Why, when she was scared and alone and knew she had fucked up, she immediately called the one person who would drop everything to make sure she’s okay. Who has done it for her before and will do it again. Who respects her as a grown woman, now, who doesn’t need his guidance, but who will never stop providing his support.

“Bet she thought the big bad Black Paladin would win her some intimidation points,” he says instead, because he knows his husband isn’t yet ready to hear it.