#whipped lance

He freezes, towel clamped to the back of his neck, and carefully scans his room from corner to corner. His lock was still intact when he walked in, so unlikely break-in. His bed is still exactly as messy as it was when he left it. His dresser drawer is still left cracked slightly open, as he always leaves it, because it’s harder to put a drawer back to the same level of open it was before than to close it (he’s caught Hunk snooping through his shit many a time with this method. Thanks, Pa’s paranoia).

His gaze lands finally on a nondescript black book on his nightstand, and his eyebrows shoot up. He finished his book this morning and returned it to the library on his way to the training room.

He did not leave that black book there.

Wary, a thousand anxieties running through his brain, Keith approaches his nightstand bayard-first, sword extended and sharp. He pauses before he comes in contact, taking time to analyse it, attempt to puzzle out any kind of traps or discrepancies before they jump out at him. He can’t see any — the book is on the newer side, with a roughened black hardcover, gold detailing on the spine but no title or author. The paper looks thick and it’s strangely uncut, raggedy.

Hesitantly, Keith pokes it.

Nothing happens.

Less suspicious, now, he prods at it with his hands, and when that does nothing, he picks it up. It’s heavier than he expected. He cracks open the cover to reveal a red paper lining. Stuck to the inside of the cover is a baby blue post-it note, crookedly place, with only a neatly drawn heart in glitter gel pen. Keith can’t help the smile, even as his eyebrows furrow in confusion.

“What even…”

Pinching the first page from the bottom corner so as to not accidentally rip any paper, he slowly turns it over.

He gasps, fumbling with the book as he nearly drops it.

“How did it…”

He recognises the first page — it’s his. Or he made it, anyway. Scrawled in every white space of the nearly parchment-esque alien paper is his own doodling, from a boring meeting several weeks back. He recognises the slightly mean drawing of the Capnir leader and his snooty expression in the left corner, and the ninety games of tic-tac-toe he played with Lance on the bottom half of the page (Lance insisted he won because he is a nasty cheater. Keith didn’t even know it was possible to cheat at tic-tac-toe, but it is. It’s crazy).

Gobsmacked, Keith begins to flip through the rest of the pages, eyes getting wider and nose getting closer to the book with every corner he turns. These are his doodles and drawings — hundreds of them, loose papers from meetings and scrawled diagrams from mission plans and notes to other paladins and dorky little drawings he made for his friends or because of his own boredom. There are grocery lists covered in drawings of engine parts and knives and strange alien vegetables, hand-to-hand manoeuvre diagrams, several drawings of Shiro as Captain America, of Pidge and Hunk covered in soot except for the line around their eyes from their goggles, of Allura with the mice in her hair, Coran in the wackiest outfit he’s ever seen, Shiro with his eye twitching from Slav, Matt making goo eyes at Allura. Some of Kolivan, even, with over-exaggerated eyebrows and a frown that touches his neck.

And dozens, maybe even hundreds, of drawings of Lance. Smirking at Keith from across the kitchen table before he instigates a Pidge-Hunk argument, crowing in victory after making a shot, serious and focused mid battle, face drooping and sad and fixed on a glowing blue Earth projection with his chin hooked over his knees. Drawings that itched at Keith’s fingers every hour of every day, that he barely tried to resist; snapshots of Lance that plagued his mind ‘til he finally found time to grab a pencil.

Drawings that he had, apparently, left scattered all over the castle without thinking.

He cradles his flaming face in his free hand, heart pounding in his ears. He’s sure — he knows he threw half of these out. Some of them he left lying around, sure, and others he left out deliberately for his friends to find, but — Keith knows he threw out the full-page and coloured portrait of Lance, bright and beautiful in a dozen shades of earth, smiling softly at Keith in the low-light of the common room well after midnight. He can see the creases and smudges from where he’d crumpled it, embarrassed, and where someone had fished it out of the trash and carefully straightened it back out, brushing dust out of the crevices.

“Oh my God.”

Hunk would never have been able to keep the secret with how long it would have taken to bind this book — by hand, by the looks of it. Allura couldn’t either. Both Pidge and Shiro would have been gleeful in mocking Keith about the clear affection in every pencil stroke. Coran would have probably stuck it proudly on the fridge — he did that, once, Keith remembers, with a sketch he’d done of the whole team during a movie night. It’s still there; it’s been so long that Keith doesn’t notice it anymore.

There’s only one person who would pick up the discarded slips of paper and slide them in his pocket — only one person who’s that kind of sentimental. One person who prints every photograph he takes of every planet they’ve ever been on, who pins up every drawing gifted to him by young children no matter how objectively horrible, who tears off notes written in the margins of battle plans and keeps them in a jar on his dresser. Only one person who has a scrapbook with a dried blade of grass from Arus and piece of sea glass from the mermaid planet and a napkin stained with food goo from their food fight all those years ago. Hell, there’s only one person on this castle with enough skill with a needle and thread to bind a whole ass book.

Keith drops his bayard to the floor with a clatter, book clenched in his fist, and sprints out of his room. He flies down the hallway, ignoring the startled shout from Pidge as she jumps out of his way and the wide-eyed stare from Allura. He almost runs straight into his brother, spinning to the right at the last minute and rushing past him without bothering to entertain his questions. He runs all the way to the MedBay, where he knows Lance is taking inventory for Coran, and nearly crashes right into the pods because he’s too pumped up to slow down properly.

“Whoa there, cowboy, cool it before you give yourself a concussion. Christ.”

Lance places a cool hand on his shoulder, concerned, bin of counted bandages left abandoned behind him. Almost immediately his face coils in disgust.

“Aw, gross, you’re sweaty.”

But he doesn’t move his hand.

Keith stares.

How did he — how did he miss it, before?

“Keith?” Lance asks again, alarm clouding his face. “You okay, buddy?”

His fingers curve absentmindedly along the junction of Keith’s neck, and he leans in closer, and he smells so fucking good and he always does and Keith is lightheaded from more than just his cross-castle sprint.

“You’re in love with me,” he blurts, and he didn’t mean to say it like that but there’s no doubt in his words.

Lance startles, yanking his hand back in shock. Keith darts out to stop it, fingers wrapped around his wrist, keeping him from going far. Lance’s breath hitches.

“…What?”

“You’re in love with me,” Keith repeats, steadier this time. He waits a moment, then says, much more urgently: “The book.”

Mortification rings off Lance in waves.

“Oh,” he croaks. His pulse is so loud and so fast that Keith can feel it in his wrist. “I didn’t think it was — oh.”

There’s a strange quality to his voice, besides the embarrassment of getting caught, and then it clicks — he’s afraid. Of rejection, of disgust, of Keith. Keith isn’t sure. But he hates that it’s there.

Faster than he can talk himself out of, he cups Lance’s face with his free hand, relishing in the sharp intake of breath, and leans in and kisses him. There’s a moment of rigid shock on Lance’s part and it could spell trouble but Keith holds steady. He keeps his hold loose and the pressure soft and soon Lance — melts, into him, there’s no other word for it; he sinks in close and sighs and the hand Keith has gripped goes slack. His lips are soft, and his hair tickles Keith’s forehead, and Keith can still feel his jackrabbit heartbeat, and he still smells like that intoxicating mix of flowers and — sunshine, somehow, straight from the brightest days in Earth. Keith’s hands have never been steadier.

“You collected my doodles,” he says, staying close when Lance pulls gently away. He can see the deeper browns in Lance’s irises, the places where the gold gives way to near-black. They look like the flecks of the precious metal Keith would see at the bottom of the river mud in the mountains of Arizona.

“They were worth keeping,” Lance says quietly. He holds Keith’s gaze. The tips of his fingers trace Keith’s temples; they’re rough with old guitar callouses.

“You think everything is worth keeping.”

“Only the things that — bleed.”

Keith thinks that they’re both right. Lance can’t leave anything behind because he aches for the soul he finds in it. He finds the worth in everything. He found the worth in Keith.

He found enough to make Keith stay.

Keith grips the book in his right hand, left still cupped around Lance’s cheek. The difference in textures is startling, grounding.

“No one has ever done something like that for me before,” Keith admits. There’s a lump in his throat but Keith thinks it’s manageable, thinks he can talk through it. Thinks he might hold the strength for it.

Lance waits patiently.

“I want to —” Keith stops. He opens the book. The drawn Lance smiles up at him, beautiful. He looks up and Lance smiles over at him, breathtaking. “I —”

He doesn’t know how to say it. It’s there, bubbling in his chest, spilling out of him; obvious. But he doesn’t know the words for it. He’s not sure anyone’s taught him before.

“Okay,” Lance says. He tugs his wrist out of Keith’s grip then laces their hands together, squeezing. His smile only widens and he — sparkles, almost. Keith’s throat goes dry.

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Lance repeats, teasing. He leans in again. “I’m going to kiss you again, now.”

“Please,” Keith begs, and he does.

———

“Hnnngh,” Keith says, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He looks straight ahead, left leg bouncing, hair pulled back into a ponytail but flyaways everywhere. He keeps having to push up his glasses when they slide down his nose, nudged forward by all the tension in his eyebrows. “Being stressed before a stressful situation is not being nervous, Lance, it’s just my brain responding like a brain.”

Lance hides a smile. “You’ve met my family before, baby.”

Keith slows to a stop as they approach their turn, looking at Lance instead of the road for the first time in twenty minutes. His indigo eyes are wide and pleading. Lance is distracted by the tiny mole beside his nose.

“I’ve met your mom,” he says emphatically, breaking eye contact with Lance to crane his head to the left, checking over the hill for any cars. He’s far more careful than he needs to be — there’s never anyone on this road. But Keith is always endlessly careful when he’s driving other people around. “I’ve met your siblings. I’ve met your abuela. I’ve met the twins.”

“Mighty number of people,” Lance agrees. He looks at his boyfriend pointedly. “All of whom love you.”

“Because they love you,” Keith stresses. “You’re, like, their favourite person. You hyped me up so of course they have a nicer view of me. But this is like — your great grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and, I dunno, second sister in law five times removed —

“Not how that works,” Lance interjects, amused.

“—and now I gotta impress them all? At once? I still don’t know how I did that with everyone else! I panicked! I forgot all my lines and conversation starters! I just — was awkward, and they were cool with it because your family is cool!”

“Ah, yes, you were yourself and people liked you,” Lance says, nodding sagely. “How bizarre.”

Keith looks at him imploringly. He has a — really cute nose, holy shit. It’s crooked from the three separate times it’s been broken and Lance is kind of obsessed with it. All he can think about is pressing a kiss to the bridge of it and watching how Keith will crinkle it on reflex. He has to fight back a giggle.

“I am going to get eaten,” Keith says miserably. “My luck is going to wear out. I’m gonna say something stupid and offend your third cousin or trip over someone’s toddler and destroy your mother’s flan by crashing into the table and upending hot coffee on an elderly person. Then I’ll get arrested for assault and you’ll have to visit me in prison and my cellmate will make a comment about you or something and I’ll have to kill him and then I’ll get retried and the death sentence, probably, and then Red will bust me out of prison and cause intergalactic meltdowns and —”

Lance can’t hold back anymore. Quick as a dart he reaches out, fisting Keith’s collar, and yanks him over the gearshift, kissing him softly and soundly until Keith sighs, surprise fading into something calmer, relaxed. His hand comes up to cup Lance’s cheek.

“You need a Xanax,” Lance says gently as he pulls away.

Keith huffs, the manic look in his eyes replaced with something much softer. Relieved, even. “Yeah, probably.” He tears his eyes away from Lance, rechecking his turn and finally actually putting on his blinker and moving onto the right road. His free hand reaches over the gearshift and Lance grabs it, tangling their fingers together and resting them in his lap. “I just — I want your family to like me.”

Lance smiles, a wide one that brings a flush to his cheeks and makes him shy, even though he’s not self-conscious; a smile that makes something flutter so intensely in his stomach that it feels so intensely private.

“They’ll like you,” Lance says simply.

Keith exhales. His hand tightens. Lance squeezes back.

The rest of the drive is easy.

———

By the time they make it to Lance’s great-grandmother’s farm, he can tell that some tension has crawled back into Keith’s shoulders. But he’s always been brave, when fighting dictators or meeting parents, and doesn’t hesitate to pull into the gravel driveway and park the car. He squeezes Lance’s hand again before letting go, stepping out of the car and heading to get their stuff.

“Tío! Tío!” scream two voices, and Lance doesn’t even have half a second to brace himself before Nadia is launching herself at his stomach. He manages somehow to spin them both around to offset the momentum, keeping them both upright. Keith is not quite so lucky — Lance hears a slam, a startled oof, and then he sees their bags go flying out of the corner of his eye.

“Jesus Christ,” Keith wheezes, flat on the ground with Sylvio crowded on top of him.

“I got you!” the boy crows, scrambling off Keith’s body in order to adequately dance around in victory. “You went splat!” He whirls around to face Lance, still dancing around. “Tío Lance! Did you see?”

Lance adjusts Nadia on his hip, making no attempt to hide his amusement. “I did. You got him good, buddy.”

Beaming, Sylvio turns back to Keith, who’s finally managed to get enough breath back in his lungs to stand.

“You got me good,” he wheezes in approval.

“Just like you showed me!”

There’s no mistaking the smugness in Sylvio’s voice, the challenge, the I’m-little-you’re-big-and-you’re-a-loser.

Keith recognises the challenge easily, eyes glinting, and before Sylvio can run away Keith scoops him up, tossing him over his shoulder and whirling them around ‘til he’s dizzy.

“Just like I showed you, champ. Think you can get out of this one, though? It’s easy!”

Sylvio shrieks, pounding on Keith’s back with fists weak from laughter. Nadia squirms in Lance’s hold, so Lance sets her down, and in seconds she’s run and attacked Keith’s other side, climbing up his legs to try and free her brother. Keith scoops her up, too, throwing her over his other shoulder as she laughs just as shrilly.

“Clearly neither of you learned very much!” he shouts, grin so wide it practically splits his face. His already precariously dangling glasses slide right off his face but Keith doesn’t even spare them a glance, stepping over them easily and shaking the twins as he goes. “You’re trapped!”

It doesn’t take the bright twins very long to unite forces, attacking Keith with renewed vigour all at once. Lance bends down as they wrestle, scooping up Keith’s glasses and their discarded bags.

“He’s good with them,” Lisa says, sidling up beside him and sliding her hand around his waist. Lance mirrors her, squeezing.

“He thinks they’re hilarious. He loves them to pieces.”

“Believe me, they love him too. I heard about Uncle Keith so much on the drive down that I was tired of him before you two even got here.”

Lance snorts. “Yeah, right, dweeb. No one else here reads Jane Austen. You need your nerd buddy.”

“Indeed,” she says, grinning. She pats him on the hip, pulling away and taking one of the bags slung over his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get your stuff dropped off. Marcela will want to fuss over you, I’m sure. She hasn’t seen you since your last mission.”

Lance looks back at his boyfriend before following her, making sure he doesn’t need Lance’s help. The twins have wrestled him into doing their bidding, it looks like, or more likely he didn’t even put up a fight, and sit on one shoulder each, guiding him around the property with shouts and points and frenzied gesturing. Keith has his hand locked firmly over each set of knees, careful not to let them fall, as he wobbles around to make them gasp and laugh.

Lance smiles. He’s fine.

———

Keith finds him within the hour, Nadia and Sylvio off to play with their cousins.

“You abandoned me,” he pouts, hand wrapped around his elbow.

Lance notices, idly, that he’s slouching again; that his ponytail has been abandoned entirely and his hair curtains his face.

Hm.

“You were busy being a doofus,” Lance teases, brushing his hair out of his face. He nobly resists the urge to quote Regina George. “One of us has to be the mature one. We wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong impression about the saviours of the universe.

“You’re hiding out on a random couch on your phone,” Keith deadpans. He glances down at the screen. “You’re watching a seven year old vine compilation. On mute.”

“Like an adult,” Lance says primly. “Watch with me.”

Keith rolls his eyes fondly, but slides on the couch behind Lance, arms wrapped around his waist and chin hooked over his shoulder. Lance digs in his pockets until he finds Keith’s glasses, twisting around to slide them on his handsome face. His hands linger on Keith’s temples. Keith’s smile is small and crooked and bares the tiniest peek of crooked incisors, and Lance’s heart flutters.

He leans back into Keith’s chest as he plays the video, watching a compilation of dorky videos he’s seen a thousand times. He feels Keith’s grin press into the juncture of his neck as he starts to mumble along. His hand rests just under Lance’s shirt, flat on his stomach. Lance fights the urge to squirm.

You Are In Your Abuela’s House, he reminds himself firmly. Your Ancestors Are Watching You. And Jesus, Probably.

Luckily, someone calls out their names before Lance really needs to find a vat of ice water to dunk himself in.

“Leandro! Keith! Come eat before your hog of a brother takes it all!”

The two of them don’t even need to pause for a moment before throwing themselves off the couch, scrambling towards the kitchen at top speeds because Marco absolutely will eat their portion of the food. Not even because he’s hungry for it, just because he’s a butthead who thinks it’s funny.

“This is your fault,” Keith informs him, careening around a questionably placed side table.

“Nothing is ever my fault ever in the entire universe,” Lance shoots back.

(Is it Lance’s fault? Possibly. But in his defense, the several years he spent as a child waiting for Marco to be distracted before eating his favourite thing on the plate still make him crack up when he thinks about it. Marco just got so mad, every time. Plus his eyes bulge a little when he loses it. How was Lance ever supposed to avoid poking that bear?)

Luckily, they make it in time to wrestle a plate away from Marco’s snickering ass.

“Keith, Lance,” Lance’s mother greets warmly before Lance can crack a plate over his brother’s head. “I’m glad you made it!”

“Mother,” Lance squawks dramatically, hand flying to his chest, “I am the second to be greeted? You’re son? You’re youngest angel? The one who went missing for several years and returned to you, prodigal?”

She reaches over and flicks Lance in the forehead. Keith snorts. Marco cackles.

“Keith called me on the flight home,” she explains, ruthless. “So he is the son, and you are the son-in-law.”

Keith flushes as he always does when Mamá pairs them like that, when they’re both her sons, when she implies what it implies. Lance lets the warmth of that expression soak into his bones, deep in through his back, from every point Keith is touching him.

“I was sleeping off being maimed!” Lance despairs.

It does him no favours. Mamá waves her hands wildly, setting down her own plate in favour of placing her hands over her ears. “Gah! Sh! Do not tell me of these things! I am meant to pretend your job is nothing more than ornamental! Do not ruin that for me!”

“It was the slightest ever maiming,” Lance mutters, sullen.

Keith visibly bites back a retort to that, no doubt out of respect for Mamá.

(Lance knows that Keith would have been the world’s biggest mama’s boy had he grown up with Krolia. He has shared this hypothesis with Shiro, who had laughed so hard upon hearing it that he had sprained a muscle in his neck, and then explained later with a heat pack and a wryly smiling Adam that Keith used to scold Shiro for pushing himself with exact quotes from Shiro’s mother herself.)

“Nobody ever wants to hear my side of the story,” Lance laments.

Keith bends down to kiss him on the cheek.

“That’s because you are a liar,” he says kindly.

Lance catches his chin before he can pull away, kissing him to shut him up.

They head outside to join everyone else, plates stacked high with food and plastic cups balanced precariously with spare fingers. Keith starts to slouch again as they walk out the sliding screen door, but he keeps his hair out of his face, eyes flitting between different people. It helps that hardly anyone spares him half a glance, too used to random new people in such a big family.

“Hey, Patito! Over here!”

Lance whips his head up at the familiar voice, breaking into a wide smile when he sees his sister’s wilding waving hand. Keith, too, seems relieved when he catches sight of Veronica, rushing over almost faster than Lance is.

“Hey, losers,” she greets, flicking water from her cup at them as they sit across from her. “Took you long enough to get here.”

“Lance is a distraction and danger to the road,” Keith says immediately, because he is a snitch. He is also unfortunately very quick and manages to duck away from Lance’s pinch.

Veronica snorts. “Believe me, I know. Every ride back to the Garrison on weekends was a near death experience because he kept smacking me every ten seconds. A menace.”

“You manipulator!” Lance accuses. “I slapped you because you teased me! Constantly!”

Keith and Veronica share sharp, matching grins. Lance takes a nanosecond to ponder what he ever did to deserve the sufferings of their friendship.

“That’s because you’re so goddamn easy to rile up, sweetheart,” Keith says with a wink.

Lance attempts to shove him off his chair. Unfortunately, while he does flail backwards, he manages to stay upright.

“You two were supposed to hate each other,” he mutters into his congrí. “This friendship thing is bullshit.”

Neither believe him for a second.

They’re barely into their meal when the nosiness starts. In fact, Lance is honestly surprised it has lasted this long. Luis probably said something to convince everyone to tone it down, because he is a saint and also Lance’s favourite.

“So,” says his Aunt Vena, “…Keith.”

Keith freezes, cheeks bulging. Lance tries very hard not to laugh at him.

“Hi,” he says, swallowing. He says nothing else and looks agonized about it. His memorized conversation starters have no doubt fled his brain.

“You know, I feel like I already know you,” jokes Aunt Vena, never bothered by awkwardness. Or boundaries. “I only see Leandro a few times a year were the only thing he talked about for ages.”

Lance goes pale. Oh, please God, no. Please let Aunt Vena be suddenly gifted with the ability to read Lance’s mind, or at least notice him waving his hands frantically behind Keith’s head, making cutting motions at his throat.

“Keith this, Keith that. Keith Keith Keith.”

Lance cradles his face in his hands. So much for miracles.

“He did?” Keith asks.

“Stop investigating immediately or you’re sleeping on the floor tonight,” Lance threatens under his breath. Keith’s hand finds it’s way to his thigh and rests there, as if laughing at him.

“Oh, yes,” laughs Aunt Vena. “Every other word was about how you sat in class or walked in the hall or flew your planes. He was always angry about it, but he was quite focused on you. Oh, and your hair.”

Aunt Vena turns away to chatter with someone else like she didn’t just ruin Lance’s life. Lance would hate her if he didn’t find her so goddamn loveable, but he does, so instead he looks up and suffers Keith’s wide, shit-eating grin, and ponders deep in his heart how he will re-humble his boyfriend so they’re back on even ground.

“…You were big on the hair, huh.”

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll chop it off as you sleep.”

———

“Keith.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You dorkbrain.”

“I’m just saying!”

Keith’s hair is in a knot at the crown of his head, glasses pushed all the way to his face. He’s got Lance’s hand in his but he’s not paying attention to him in the slightest — he cycles between leaning back, then forwards, then craning his neck and shifting his eyes. Every few seconds he lets out a muted gasp.

A group of children run yelling in and out of the house, heedless of doors and stairs.

“You are such a mother hen,” Lance says with great amusement.

Keith is too distracted to even roll his eyes. “Some of them are very little,” he says worriedly. “Maybe they should play a game outside. There’s more space.” He looks around at the various adults sitting and chatting, aghast. “Should me maybe get a — pool noodle, or something? Just for the corners. So there are no head injuries. That’s the most common way they happen, you know. Tripping during play.”

Lance hums, leaning into his side. “Reading a lot of parenting books, are you.”

Keith is very deliberately silent. Lance flicks up his gaze to watch his face redden.

“…Akira.”

“It’s Shiro’s!” he says defensively. “It was — he had it on the shelf! I read it when I was younger! It was traumatizing! Do you know how easy it is to fuck up a kid? Very easy, Lance! Their heads are very squishy! They don’t know balance yet! They repeat everything you say!”

“Was this book,” Lance starts, choking back laughter with everything he has, “perhaps about raising toddlers?”

Keith’s jaw snaps shut.

“Children under two? Hm?”

Keith glances away. “It didn’t mention.”

Lance loses his battle, burying his cackling in Keith’s shoulder.

“How was I supposed to know that ‘A Guide To Raising Healthy Children For New Parents’ was about — babies? Shiro was the dumbass who had it!”

Lance laughs harder. “Did he — did he buy it when he —”

Keith puts his head in his hands. “He bought, like, forty books when he first started fostering me, they were all basically the same, he’s such a dumbass —”

“Stop, stop,” Lance begs, grasping his aching stomach. The image of Shiro, twenty years old, panicking after impulsively deciding to apply to foster the delinquent who stole his car, frantically googling advice for new parents only to unknowingly receive information about toddlers is the best mental image he’s had in a while. He’ll have to share with Pidge and the rest of the Holts the second they get home.

“You’re such a butthead,” Keith grumbles, but it’s half-hearted. His attention is still mostly on the way Mateo, Lance’s four year old second cousin, very nearly brains himself on the corner of the brick entryway trying to swerve away from his older sister. Keith’s sharp inhale would have been comical if Lance didn’t feel his own heart drop.

“Okay,” Lance concedes, “maybe it’s time for a new game.” He pats his boyfriend on the knee. “You’re up, champ.”

“Wait, me?” Keith asks, bewildered. “You’re their cousin.”

Lance shrugs. “You’re the worried one. Plus, I want to go get wine drunk with Rachel. Mamá said she just got here. She’s been avoiding my calls all week which means she has Information to share and doesn’t trust herself not to tell me immediately. I have to know what’s up.”

Keith still doesn’t look convinced. “But I’m a stranger to them, basically.”

“So start with Nadia and Sylvio, dummy. Once the rest of the kids see a cool newer and accidentally safer game to play, they’ll join fast. Plus, the stranger aspect is intriguing, probably. You’re like a new toy.”

To solidify his point, Lance calls his niblings over, gesturing to Keith. The twins light up, immediately abandoning whatever they’re doing — trying to shove a sleeping Luis’ finger up his own nose — to sprint over to them.

“Tío Keith has a game for you two,” Lance whispers conspirationally.

The twins burst into howling cheers.

“Game! Game! Game! Game!” they chant, each grabbing one of Keith’s hands and tugging him away.

Keith looks back at him, panicked. Lance blows him a kiss, then turns back into the house to go hunt for his sister.

She finds him first.

“LANCE,” she shouts, whipping around to face him. Lance immediately shifts backwards slightly, knees bent, legs widened, arms held out protectively in front of him. He smirks. She matches it.

She charges.

She aerials into a heel kick, as always, aiming for his skull. Lance back handsprings out of her reach, careful of the various relatives around him, who are well used to their brand of bullshit and don’t even pause their conversations as they lean away.

He comes back up just in time to throw up a block to her fists, aiming a kick to her stomach that she can’t fully dodge. She gets him right back, though, like she always does, aiming a sweeping kick for his ankles that he has to flip on his hands to avoid.

“It’s good to see you, fucker,” she pants, roundhouse kicking the dip of his waist.

“Likewise, asshole,” he grunts, grabbing her ankle and flipping her to the ground. She drags him down with her.

They’re both grinning.

“Tomorrow morning we box for real,” she proposes as they lay there, getting their breath back.

“Deal,” he agrees.

By the time they finally get back on their feet, they’re both parched, and since they also make frequent poor decisions, they head straight for the bad boxed wine. Lance pours them both heaping glasses and Rachel guides them to an open lawn chair, which they both sprawl on, a hundred percent in each other’s space.

“So,” Rachel says, chugging half her glass, “my grades are in. I’m graduating top of my class.”

Lance gasps. “Rachel!”

“And,” she continues, building up suspense with a grin, “I got word back from all my residency applications.”

Lance thinks he might explode. He remembers them when they were little, huddled on the floor of their bedroom at one in the morning, glow sticks guiding their planners, mapping out heir lives together. Where they would go to school, when they would bother with dating, how they would do it all together. Lance, best pilot to come out of the Garrison next to Shirogane. Rachel, the first surgeon to successfully transplant a brain.

“I got in,” she says, beam so wide it forces her eyes shut. “Lance, I got in!”

“Rach!” he screams, eyes blurry from tears and heart full to bursting. “Rach!”

He wraps his arms around her shoulders and squeezes, weeping with joy and elation and buzzing from his head to his toes. This is what Rachel has wanted since she was old enough to talk. This is his sister, his first and best friend, getting everything she has ever wanted, as she has always deserved.

“I’m so fucking proud of you!”

She squeezes him right back, her own tears wetting his t-shirt. Her relief is palpable, and Lance knows it, the indescribable feeling of finally crossing that goddamn mountain, finally getting what you’ve been working for for longer than you can remember.

“Everything is falling into place,” she says softly, pulling back and holding up her cup. Lance laughs and clinks them together.

They settle back into their shared chair, too happy for words, gathering themselves. Lance catches his mother’s eye and returns her soft smile, wine making him warm and happiness making him bright. He feels like he’s swimming in sun-warmed water.

He settles back with a sigh.

Rachel nudges him. “Hey, Loverboy. Look.”

Lance follows her pointing finger. Away from the tables and lawn chairs, in a wide, open space, there’s Keith — surrounded by every single child on the property, ordered in neat rows. Each of them has a hefty stick, held carefully in their hands, watching Keith with great intensity. Keith himself has his bayard out, stretched out in a battle position, back straight and shoulders loose. He has the same bright look on his face that he has during Lion training, or riskier missions. Excitement, steadiness, and a hint of cockiness that has Lance shivering. He demonstrates a move, and with a single minded focus, the children repeat it.

It has always been impossible not to want to be a part of everything Keith does, Lance has found.

“…You kind of scored,” Rachel observes.

Lance’s laughter is breathy, high-pitched. “Believe me, I know.”

There’s a rousing shout from the kids, then a cheer, then Keith shouts, “Ready?” and at their raucous response, chaos breaks out. Sticks are strikes and parried and children throw themselves dramatically on the floor in pantomimed deaths, scrambling to their feet seconds later to get back into the fray. Every few seconds Keith calls out rules and reminders, weaving through the children to point out places for improvement or congratulate someone for doing something right.

“I have never seen them all gathered this long without any crying or fighting,” Rachel says, something like awe in her voice. She pauses. “Well, real fighting.”

Lance smiles, something small and secret and over which he has no control. He catches his boyfriend’s eye and waves, which is returned at twice the enthusiasm.

“Keith’s good with kids,” he says quietly. To himself, he wonders if it’s possible to have a heart so full it bursts.

———

The blankets are scratchy but warm, and Keith smells as he always does, and Lance is half asleep. But the words come leisurely out anyway.

“You awake?“ he whispers, words tucked into the spot above Keith’s heart.

Keith hums. Lance feels the rumble of it in his cheek.

“Barely.”

His eyes are too heavy to keep open, so he lets them slip shut. He breathes deeply the smell of his boyfriend’s body wash, and traces meaningless patterns on his chest with his fingertips, breathing slowly, taking his time. He might fall asleep, but that’s okay. They have time.

“‘M glad you came, today.”

Keith’s breathing is slow and even, just like Lance’s, but he can feel the heavy weight of his gaze, those indigo eyes.

“I go where you go.”

Lance quirks his lips. The blankets rustle softly as Keith slowly slides up his hand, encircling his fingers around Lance’s wrist, palm resting on his forearm. After a minute Lance can feel his heartbeat, at the same time that he hears it, head pressed to Keith’s chest. “You’re good with the kids.”

Keith’s breath stutters. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I like them. And your family.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, you did.” He’s silent for a minute, palm heavy on Lance’s skin. “I wanna — do this, Lance. Forever.”

Lance turns his head slightly, just enough to press his lips to Keith’s sternum. “I will love you until the end of time.”

He feels Keith’s smile, sweetening the air.

Lance is sure of it. Beyond his usual shiftiness, his awkwardness, his tendency towards privacy. Lance knows his boyfriend, and he knows him well, and as such he knows enough to realise that his boyfriend is acting fuckin’ dubious.

Lance is going to snoop. (Yeah, yeah, ethical schmethical. Snooping fosters distrust in relationships and makes things tense blah blah blah. Lance recognises that. He also grew up with fucking Hunk Garrett and His Entire Family, so he also recognises that snooping is simply the best way to gather information. Fair’s fair.)

He waits until his boyfriend’s snores start to kick up, making the bedroom sound like an illegal motorized lawnmower race, and then carefully starts scooching out of his arms.

It takes a while — Keith likes to hold him. (Lance has to take a moment to calm himself down after the thought, lest he start to giggle giddily to himself, reminded that Keith loves him so much that at his most unguarded, his first instinct is to crush Lance in his arms. It’s exhilarating.) But slowly and steadily he manages to slide out of the arms around his waist, filling the newly hollow space with a pillow, and tumbles to the floor. He takes a moment, crossing his legs and sitting next to the bed, to look up at Keith, at the ratty mess of his bedhead and wide open snoring mouth and the tank top skewed across his torso, the hickeys Lance left all across his chest and collarbones peeking out.

“You are such a shit,” he whispers fondly. “I love you so bad it makes me want to, like, bite you or something. You make me weird.”

He watches Keith’s chest rise and fall until his legs fall asleep, wherein he flops onto the hardwood, wiggling his legs through the pins and needles and screeching silently into his arm (worst feeling in the WORLD) until his legs no longer feel like they’re on fire, and then he inches himself towards the right corner of the room like an inchworm.

(It’s three in the morning. No one is awake to judge him to give him shit or laugh at him or anything. He can do what he likes.)

He pulls himself up to his knees when he finally makes it to the corner, loosening his shoulders in preparation. The room is dark, so it’ll be a challenge, but this is not the first time he’s done this. Hell, it isn’t even the fiftieth. He’s a nosy person. He could do this in his sleep, probably, so in the dark is no problem.

As slowly as he can manage, to make sure it’s silent, he pries off the metal grate covering of the air vent, setting it down gently beside him. Laying down on his stomach again to get a better angle, he reaches down into the wide tube, following the curve of the cool metal, arm buried up to his shoulder, until he’s reached as far as he physically can. He carefully starts brushing his hands along the air vent, searching, feeling. It shouldn’t be too far down since his arms are way longer than Keith’s (Lance enjoys calling him T-Rex, which Keith hates and literally everyone else who knows them loves. It’s great).

Finally, his fingers brush on something small, compact, sturdy, and soft. He wraps his fist around it and slowly drags it out of the vent, keeping it in his fist as he crawls out of the bedroom and down the hall, somersaulting into the kitchen. He heads over to the fridge, figuring that if he uses the fridge light and Keith walks in, he can just pretend he’s getting a snack or something, shoving the thing he found into his pants. Keith’ll be too out of it to question it, anyway.

Laughing quietly and evilly to himself as he pulls open the fridge door, he brings his closed fist up to the light, examining the treasure he found. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, to take in what’s in front of him.

He gasps sharply when he processes, and the treasure slips out of his hands, clattering loudly to the floor.

He freezes immediately, listening for the telltale signs of his boyfriend snorting awake, noticing Lance’s side of the bed is empty, then the sound of his footsteps as he comes to look for him.

But, fortunately, there’s nothing. The only thing Lance hears are Keith’s continued snores.

Rapidly, Lance scoops up the box and brings it back to the light. It’s unmistakable — there’s only one thing that houses in a small hinged velvet box. It explains the shiftiness over the last few weeks, too, the nervousness that Keith has been disgusting as mysterious intrigue.

Keith is going to propose. Keith is going to propose!

Smiling so widely his face hurts, Lance flicks open the box, bringing his face closer to carefully inspect the ring inside.

It’s difficult to see in the dull blue light of the fridge, but Lance starts to cry when he sees it, because he recognises this ring. This is Keith’s dad’s ring; old, heavy gold, classic princess cut diamond, simple and polished and elegant. This is the ring Keith often wears around his neck, although he rarely has as of late, for now obvious reasons. This is the ring Keith has carried with him for almost two decades. This is, without a doubt, Keith’s most prized Earthly possession, and his intent is to gift it to Lance, as a promise of his love and trust and faithfulness.

Lance has to sit down so he doesn’t pass out. He grabs a dishtowel on the way to the floor, pressing it to his face to muffle his absolutely wailing sobs, the most ugly crying he’s literally ever done in his life.

He’s so glad he snooped. If he had this reaction when Keith finally summoned the balls to ask him, his engagement photos would be so embarrassing.

He paused mid-sniffle.

Actually.

A little embarrassed of himself, he slides up his phone, holding the ring box up to his tear-swollen and smiling face to snap a picture. He looks like a mess, but it’s important to him to have a physical memory of the moment he first learned Keith planned to marry him. He’s sure he’ll cry more over it the next time he’s feeling sappy and emotional.

He doesn’t realise how long he sits, fridge wide open, back to the cabinet doors of the kitchen island, staring in awe at the ring, until his watch starts to beep.

“Fuck,” he curses, scrambling to his feet. It’s six o’clock. Keith’ll be up in fifteen minutes to go on his morning run, Lance has literally been mooning over his ring for two and a half hours.

He runs back to the bedroom, barely remembering at the last second time muffle his footsteps, shoving the ring back into the vent and pressing the grate back onto the hole. Keith stirs slightly at the noise, so Lance abandons any thought of whether or not the ring box is positioned back exactly where he found it and fuckin’ dives for the bed, reburying himself in his boyfriend’s arms and hoping he can pass it off as just having shifted around in his sleep or something. Apparently he squirms and kicks a lot (which is a lie that Keith perpetuates to take attention away from the severity of his snores), so it should be fine. Probably.

“Wh—L’nce?” Keith mumbles, stirring from behind him. He inhales deeply, arms pulling away from Lance’s and stretching out above him. Lance’s heart pounds. He forces himself to stay relaxed, to avoid squeezing his eyes shut. He prays that Keith doesn’t notice how sweaty he is.

Keith leans over to press a lingering kiss to his neck, then chuckles. Lance can feel the imprint of his smile on his skin, and tamping down his own reflexive smile is literally the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his entire life.

“You’re warm as hell,” Keith murmurs, dragging his lips down his neck, across his shoulders. His hand comes to rest in his hip, curling into the hollow there. “Betcha you were squrimin’ around in y’re sleep last night, ya worm. Betcha I’ve got bruises on my shins.” His shoulders, pressed against Lance’s back, shake with his laughter, because he is a shithead who is so lucky that Lance loves him. He presses one final kiss to Lance’s skin and then rolls out of bed. Lance listens carefully as he gets dressed in his jogging clothes and runs a brush through his hair. He falls half asleep listening to the familiar sounds, rousing slightly again when Keith ducks back in to kiss Lance’s head one last time before heading out.

Lance smiles as he falls asleep for real, after the sound of the front door opening and closing.

He’s gonna clown that dumbass so goddamn badly.

———

Lance has a love-hate relationship with pranks. On one hand, the one and only time he was sent into an asthma attack so bad he had to go to the hospital was after he and Hunk wrapped every single thing in Veronica’s room with aluminum foil while she was away on a trip, and upon seeing her reaction laughed so hard his lungs basically collapsed. He still can’t think of that without laughing. On the other hand, he’s had more than enough cruel pranks shoved his way, and never in his life wants anyone to feel humiliated because of something he did.

He can’t not prank Keith, though. He’s literally beat Keith to his own proposal. A prank is in order.

Usually, he’d call Hunk for something like that. They’ve been partners in crimes for most of their lives, after all. Pidge too, honestly. He knows they’d both get a kick out of this whole situation as well.

But…even if those dunderheads were capable of keeping their mouths shut, which they’re not, Lance kind of wants to…well, he wants to keep his proposal to himself. He likes being in on it. He likes being to only one in on it, actually. Honestly, the only thing he wants to do is brag to Keith that he knows, which defeats the whole purpose.

He straightens abruptly. A smirk spreads across his face.

He has an idea.

———

The first step is recon. He needs access to the ring, regularly and long-term, but all will be for naught if Keith realises it’s missing. He needs to know if Keith stashed the ring when he decided to propose and avoided thinking about it, or if he checks on it frequently and stresses himself out about when he’s finally going to go through with it. Both are very Keith options. In fact Lance wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow managed both at the same time, as impossible as that seems.

To get around the issue, Lance goes Spy Barbie. He waits until Keith goes out for his weekly coffee date with Shiro and Adam and then digs through his makeup kit, setting aside what he needs and sitting next to the air vent grate. He spends a good amount of time polishing the metal, making sure it’s as fresh and untouched as it was when it was first put in its package, and then he uses a wide end brush to apply a thin layer of highlighter to the white metal. He takes great care to ensure that no colour is visible, only a slight sheen if one were to look closely. And Keith doesn’t have any reason to look closely, and since Lance knows the universe loves him, he won’t.

The next step is waiting. Lance acts completely normally when Keith gets home, if a little giddy. Keith most certainly notices Lance’s giggles and affection and the way he can’t seem to keep his hands to himself, but he doesn’t seem to mind or question it. Lance does sometimes get like this, after all.

He scored a hot as hell boyfriend. He’s allowed to be a little awed sometimes. He doesn’t feel weird about it.

He does, however, mellow out in the next few days. Keith takes him to a car show, which is fucking wicked, and somehow manages to get himself and Lance behind the wheels of two 200 horsepower Mustangs for them to race, which is so exhilarating that Lance doesn’t have words for it. He just yells and jumps around about it a lot. He doesn’t actually manage to find words for a couple hours after he totally smokes Keith’s ass, but whatever. It’s cool. Keith tried his best and everything, Lance is sure.

A week later, when Keith is out on his coffee date again, Lance gets to work. He cuts a large square of parchment paper and covers it with clear packing tape, careful not to touch the sticky side, overlapping strips so they make one giant tape sheet.

Once the parchment sheet is covered, he peels off the tape, and as planned it comes off in one large sheet, slightly bigger than the air vent grate. Again careful to steer clear of the sticky part, he places the tape sheet sticky side down onto the grate, pressing down hard and rubbing to smooth it out completely flat. Once he’s sure it’s totally stuck down, he picks at one corner until it’s loose, then slowly and meticulously peels the whole sheet back. He holds the tape, now showcasing the concealer-print of the grate, up to the light, examining it with the utmost scrutiny.

Not one single fingerprint in sight. Keith has not touched the grate at all, hasn’t dug into his secret hiding spot. He is taking the refusing to think about it route, then.

Lance smirks. He reaches down and scoops up the ring, placing the grate back where it belongs and skipping out to the living room, humming jovially to himself.

Excellent.

———

The first picture Lance snaps, while biting his lip so hard to keep back his laughter it bleeds, is once again in the dead of night, two weeks after Lance first discovered the ring. Keith is sprawled out on his back this time, arms and legs askew, sheets tangled somewhere around his legs. Lance shifts so they’re both facing the same direction, then holds up his phone camera, trying to figure out how to artfully position himself for utmost devastation upon discovery. He decides eventually on a classic.

He heads over to the dresser to pick out his cutest pajamas, settling on the red spaghetti strap top with lace and short-shorts, debating on accessorizing and deciding at the last minute not to bother except for lip gloss, which is always appropriate. He climbs into bed next to Keith, gently laying his head on his chest and maneuvering one arm to wrap around Lance’s hips. The other he leaves flopped on top of the pillows. He leaves Keith’s mouth wide open because it’s funny, and goes the extra mile to mess up Keith’s hair worse than it already is, because that’s funnier. Finally he flicks open the ring case with his left hand and holds it to his face, grinning widely, and uses his right to snap a picture of the two of them. Once he’s satisfied with it, he untangles himself from the bed again, puts the ring away, presses a sticky lip gloss kiss to Keith’s cheek for funsies, and crawls back into bed for real. His sleep is sound as a baby’s.

———

The next photo doesn’t actually happen for another month. Lance fears overdoing it, and also kind of fears getting caught with the ring, so he leaves it in its hiding spot until the opportunity for another cheeky photo presents itself.

The opportunity in question arrives when Keith announces that he has arranged to drive down to the secluded beach that Lance took him too early in their relationship to spend the day. At first Lance thinks he’s proposing for real, and to check he waits until Keith has the car all packed up and ready to go and then pretends to run inside to go to the washroom. Instead he ducks into their room and tears into the air vent, grasping around until his fingers close around the box.

He scoffs to himself. Wimp.

He quickly shoves the box into his fanny pack (fanny packs are COOL and CONVENIENT and Lance will not hear a word of controversy on the subject, they are absolutely nothing like Keith’s dweeb utility belt) and sprints back to the car. When Keith asks him why he’s smirking, Lance manages to convince him that he’s just excited for the beach.

Lance should have been an actor, honestly.

He mostly forgets about the ring while they’re there. He has enough sense to keep it in the car instead of on the beach so it doesn’t get stolen, unlikely as it is, and just enjoys the day with his boyfriend. He convinces Keith to go jet skiing with him and cackles to himself as he purposely sends Keith flying off the back of it. He screeches at the top of his lungs later when Keith scoops him up from his nap and literally chucks him into the ice cold water. The two of them make really garbage sculptures of their friends in the sand to amuse themselves. They gather ugly seashells and send pictures to their friends asking them if they’ve been turned into mollusks, since there is a resemblance. The whole day was a blast. Lance firmly slots it in his top ten days of all time.

When they go for a long walk to watch the sunset, Lance snaps a picture with the ring and a very teasing grin the second Keith has his back turned. He will bring up how this was a perfect moment to propose, and he will pat Keith’s head condescendingly about it. He can’t wait.

———

The third photo is another dead-of-night-situation. Lance knows it’s repetitive, but it’s easy and it’s funny and Lance can’t resist.

To change things up a bit, he decides not to be in the photo, and also to see just how much he can get away with.

Keith is on his side, this time, one hand tucked under the pillow, one hand held loose and open on top of it. He’s been tired, lately, and when Lance says he fell asleep the second his head hit the pillow, he is not exaggerating. In fact Lance is reasonably certain he passed out in the way down. He is KOed. He’s unconscious. He is absolutely dogged out.

The timing is perfect.

Carefully, aware of the consequences should Lance make a mistake, he removes the ring from its box. He realizes abruptly that it’s the first time he’s ever done that, despite his ridiculous quest, and he finds that he can’t quite let go of the ring just yet. The metal feels cool and smooth on his finger tips; worn, even. It’s shinier than it used to be, which means Keith has probably had it professionally retouched. Resized too, probably, although Lance can’t quite bring himself to check. The diamond catches the minimal light in the room and refracts into rainbows that fall softly on Keith’s lax face, highlighting his sharp jawline, his softly squished cheek, his relaxed brow. He looks so dorky when he sleeps, completely free of the furrow of concentration that usually resides in between his eyebrows, his resting frown. His mouth is always wide open when he’s out, and the echoing of his snores is so comically loud and ridiculous but absolutely something that Lance can’t live without. He has them recorded, actually, for the rare nights they’re not home together, on the rare night Lance has to sleep alone.

Smiling softly to himself, Lance places the ring in Keith’s open palm. He rests his hand on top of Keith’s for a moment, just because he can, just to relish in the scratch of Keith’s callouses on his skin, before pulling back and steadying his phone to snap a picture. He catches it right as Keith inhales heavily, right as his nose scrunches up.

It’s goofy as hell. It’s perfect.

———

The fourth picture is the riskiest, Lance thinks. He’s taken to carrying the ring around with him everywhere, almost as if he is the one planning to propose, just in case he has a moment when Keith’s back is turned. (There really aren’t that many. Keith faces him a lot. He likes to hold Lance hand and kiss his face, neither of which you can do from behind. Lance fucking loves his boyfriend so much.)

They’re at a Thing. Lance’s parents are celebrating their fortieth anniversary, and obviously Lance is bringing Keith, and since Keith is his mother’s favourite he is encouraged to bring his family as well, which means Shiro and Adam are coming, and if Hunk and Pidge weren’t invited then someone would cry and nothing would be right in the world, and of course Veronica is bringing Allura, and Coran comes because Lance’s dad thinks he’s the funniest man to walk the Earth. And of course all Lance’s relatives are there.

The point is that it’s a full house. A couple full houses, actually, since their neighbours are also involved. It’s a lot of people in one place.

As is protocol in crowded places, Keith is essentially glued to Lance’s side. Lance is quite happy with this arrangement, because he gets to show his boyfriend off like the hot piece of ass he is, especially to his rude ass great aunties and uncles who always had something to say about Lance and his single-ness when he was still rocking braces. So.

One thing about Keith, though, is that everyone who meets him is doomed to fall in love with him forever and ever, or so Lance has noticed. His niece and nephew are no exception, and immediately upon catching sight of their uncle — Keith, that is, Lance may as well be dead meat when Tio Keith is available, which, rude — they descend upon him not unlike a vulture may descend upon a recently deceased armadillo. Or whatever. Lance didn’t grow up in the desert, he doesn’t know what happens there.

Occupied as he is, one child hanging off each arm, Keith cannot keep his vice grip on Lance’s hand. Occupied as he is, two children talking at him in a mix of Spanish and English so rapid that Lance himself cannot keep up, which is saying something because his nickname for many years was and aptly so Motormouth, Keith cannot have his full attention on Lance. In fact, even, his back is delightfully turned.

Lance doesn’t hesitate. He flicks open the ring box and snaps a picture. His grin is nothing short of gleeful and he is entirely unapologetic.

When he turns back around, ring box stuffed back into his pocket, he realizes Nadia is staring at him with wide eyes.

“You, shush,” Lance says, and then switches to Spanish so Keith, who is still learning, will miss it, “or I’ll choose a random child to be my flower girl. I swear.”

She glares at him. “This is why Tio Keith is my favourite,” she mutters, because she is a snot who acts as if Lance does not and has not for her whole life taken her on all sorts of cool awesome amazing trips and bought her cool awesome amazing presents. Who was it who bought them recorders when they were seven to terrorize Luis with? Lance. Who was it to take them to a live rocket taking off the summer they turned nine? Lance.

“You’re a brat,” he informs her.

She sticks her tongue out at him, snickering. “Side genes.”

Lance unfortunately has nothing to say to that and also refuses to be roasted by an eleven year old, so he yanks Keith away as penance and takes him to a corner somewhere to make out. He feels very smug about it.

———

The fifth time doesn’t happen.

The fifth time is a clusterfuck.

The fifth time, it’s night again, and Lance honestly doesn’t even plan on taking another picture. He’s just next to the vent, lying on his belly, legs kicking in the air as he inspects the ring for the billionth time. He’s so excited. He can’t wait to wear this on his finger. He can’t wait for Keith to put it there. He’s can’t wait to be Keith’s husband, is the crux of it all. It’s like groundhog day except with literal euphoria. Lance is the luckiest man literally alive, and Keith hasn’t even hinted towards a plan to pop the question yet.

“You are the nosiest motherfucker in the planet, you shithead.”

Lance yelps, startling so bad he almost brains himself on the floor and nearly drops the ring. He manages to catch himself with the grace of God and also probably luck, or neither of those things, but either way Lance heart nearly pounds out of his chest.

“You scared me, you butthead!”

Keith chuckles. His voice is low and raspy from sleep, vowels still rounded from the accent that only comes out when he’s mad or drunk or tired. Lance’s belly swoops. Keith grabs Lance’s ankle and tugs, dragging him over to him, pulling him upright when he’s close enough. Lance goes into him fully, curling up into him, head tucked under his chin. Keith’s hands come to rest on top of his, sliding the ring box from him.

“How long have you known, you snoop?”

“Six months,” Lance answers. “In my defense, you were acting suspicious as all hell.”

Keith kisses his head. “Fair.”

“I need to know everything about everything or I’ll die. You know this.”

Keith snorts. He takes Lance’s left hand and smooths it flat, spreading out his fingers. “Yeah. Ruined my plans, though.”

“Oh, please. You and I both know there were no plans involved. You walked by a shop advertising ring retouching and walked in before you even thought about it.”

Keith says nothing. Lance grins and presses on.

“I bet you cried the whole time, too.”

“Shut up. I’m gonna keep the ring.”

Lance kisses him on the chest, the closest place he can reach, through his sleep shirt. “No, you’re not.”

“Mhm.” Keith plucks the ring out of the box with one hand, setting it on the ground beside them and grabbing Lance’s hand with his other. “You’re right. I’m not.”

He doesn’t move for a while, except to stroke his thumb over the palm of Lance’s hand, over and over again. Lance likes the feeling. He’s always likes the feeling of Keith’s hands in him.

“I know this isn’t a fancy dinner or sunset on the beach or with your whole family present,” he murmurs. “But I’m tired of waiting, if you don’t mind me jumping the gun.”

Lance smiles widely. A tear leaks out of his eye, dripping down his face and onto Keith’s hand.

“I don’t.”

“Good.” Keith holds the ring just above Lance’s finger, poised, ready to slide it on but waiting for permission. “Lance Sanchez, will you marry me?”

“Keith Gyeong, I would want nothing more.”

Unhesitant at last, Keith slides his father’s ring onto Lance’s finger, centring it so the diamond shines brightly in the middle. It fits perfectly.

The tears stream down Lance’s face, and he can’t for the life of him pretend that they’re not, not that he’d bother. He buries his face in his fiancé’s neck and feels Keith’s own tears soaking his hair.

“I took a bunch of sneaky pictures of me holding the ring in front of you,” Lance admits.

Keith laughs. “Of course you did.”

“I carried the ring around for months.”

“Checks out.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Lance.”

“I can’t wait to marry you.”

Keith hums, tilting his head up and kissing him properly, entwining their hands so they can both feel the ring press against skin. “No more waiting for you, sweetheart.”

———

———

Lance keeps his word — it doesn’t take long for him to really get the hang of his telepathy thing, and then he really is in Keith’s head more often than he isn’t.

That’s not entirely fair, Keith supposes. He has a pretty good hang of the telepathy thing too, and Lance showed him early on how to put up a pretty thick mental block if he needs some privacy, or even just a break. He knows how to keep his mindscape quiet and personal, if need be.

But the thing is…he rarely bothers.

He likes having Lance in his head, or vice versa. It’s crazy, and he never would have expected it of himself, but having the constant presence of his best friend in the back of his head; talking, humming, or just being, has turned into a massive comfort.

The desperate loneliness he grew up with, although slowly disappearing over the years he’s had Voltron, has faded into almost nothingness. He likes Lance’s noise in his head. It makes communication during battle a lot easier, too.

He’s yet to feel the rest of the team as strongly in his head — he certainly can’t hold conversations with anyone else — but he feels as if the connection that has been constantly present since they formed Voltron for the first time is stronger, maybe. As if he feels a little closer to all his friends.

That’s really mushy, Lance informs him in his mind. You’re a massive softie marshmallow. I can’t believe I ever thought you were cool.

Keith sits up, abandoning his fourth set of push-ups to find Lance across the training room, doing some sort of gymnastic routine (blatantly showing off for some of the younger members of the Atlas. He’s not even trying to pretend he isn’t, smirking whenever they point at him and whisper to each other in awe when he does a quadruple in-air backflip or something that serves no actual training purpose).

Keith frowns at him. I am so cool.

Are not. You’re a squishy softie marshmallow that cries during Finding Nemo.

Everyone cries during Nemo! Keith defends huffily. It’s a heart-wrenching movie!

Lance doesn’t say anything back, but Keith can feel the impression of his laughter. It’s a hard thing to conceptualise, because he’s not really laughing, and there’s no sound of laughter even in his mindscape, but Keith feels the teasing joy bleeding from him. The best way he’s come to describe it, after weeks of trying to put words to the feeling as he falls asleep, is the feeling he gets when a joke lands, combined with the kind of raw freedom that comes with running in a dead sprint for no reason other than the pleasure of running. Something concentrated and all-encompassing and heart-turning. That’s what Lance’s laughter feels like.

And Keith won’t stand for it. It’s one thing for Lance to tease him with his words, poking fun at him with his wide, sparkling grin, but to make fun of Keith for the thoughts he’s thinking in his own head?

He will not lie down at the dishonour.

Grinning in anticipation, he scoops up his luxite blade, lining up the shot and throwing with deadly accuracy. The blade spins through the air, so fast it whistles, directly at Lance’s head. If he doesn’t dodge, it will kill him.

But Lance will dodge. He knew Keith was going to throw the blade before he even made the decision to throw it.

Gasps ripple through the training room, several people shouting in alarm as the blade comes closer and closer to killing the Red Paladin of Voltron. Milliseconds before it hits, just as someone opens their mouth to scream a warning, Lance moves, faster than the eye can track, pulling out his bayard and transforming it in the same moment, batting Keith’s blade out of the air with his broadsword like it’s a baseball.

He grins, wide and manic and jumping to the challenge, to the spar.

“That all you got, Mullet?” he calls, swinging his blade like the cocky shithead he is. Keith can hear the impression of his laughter again; he’s dizzy with it, drunk off the heady feeling.

“Not even a little bit,” he says, activating his own bayard. Without needing to say a word, they both charge forward at the same time, arms drawn back and swords heavy with potential energy, meeting in the middle of the training room with a clash of their blades, so hard it sends vibrations up their arms.

The shouts of alarm from the rest of the crew turn into whoops of excitement, as people fan out into a circle to give them space. Keith is relatively certain he sees Pidge and Matt organizing bets out of the corner of his eye.

Ready for a show? Lance’s voice echoes in his head. Distantly, he hears Red’s howling roar, the proud lion wrapping her energy with her paladin, gleefully telling Keith how much she looks forward to seeing her cub wipe the floor with him.

She is a very competitive entity, Red. It sparks something in Black, too, who gets up from her perch in a rare display of headstrong pride and wraps her energy around Keith to match.

You’re going to lose, Keith taunts.

Fat chance, Mullet.

Their strikes are less choreographed, now that a real challenge has been issued, and more than their own pride is at stake. There is no real fight here — whether or not Keith wins, he doesn’t truly care.

(But he’d fuckin’ love having something to hold over Lance’s head for a bit. Better if he could be smug in Lance’s head, where he can’t stomp away with a sulk and a claim that Keith was cheating.)

Swordplay with Lance is difficult. It’s always difficult, because Lance uses a sword in every way except how a sword is meant to be used — Keith has seen him use it as a javelin, a bat, even a vault stick — but it’s only gotten harder since Lance has had access to his mind, because Lance hears and feels his every move, anticipating his every trick. Neither of them have managed to win the upper hand for long, and it won’t be long before the other resorts to dirty tactics.

Keith eyes his forgotten luxite blade. He might be the first, actually.

Forcing himself to think of a flurry of random things, practically throwing a wad of unconnected, unsorted thoughts in Lance’s presence in his head to distract him, he dives to the side, reaching for his blade. Lance realises a split second too late to stop him, and his broadsword comes millimetres away from the skin of Keith’s ribcage as he dodges. He closes his fingers around the softened leather of the blade’s handle, and whips around to face his opponent, bayard in his right hand and luxite blade in his left. By the time he’s ready again to fight, even though he’s only taken mere seconds to grab his weapon, Lance has already flipped several meters back, bayard in his hand transformed to his blaster.

Cheater, the both think at the same time, identical smirks on their faces.

Lance fires six quick shots, aiming at vital places in his body. His shots are all true — Lance doesn’t miss — and Keith barely manages to slide out of the way, one of the laser blasts grazing the side of his neck, burning him.

Lance hasn’t bothered to set his gun to stun. Keith can’t blame him. It’s more fun with the risk.

He rushes at Lance, both swords extended, aiming a slash at the Cuban’s arm with one blade and a stab through his torso with the other — he’ll only be able to dodge one. He’ll either have to yield or take a slice, get a painful hit that will slow him down.

Somehow, though, Lance contorts himself, bending his body in a way that it honestly should not be able to bend and narrowly avoiding both blades, hitting the floor with a heavy slam and aiming a sweeping kick for Keith’s knees to take him down with him. Keith jumps to avoid his powerful legs, somersaulting over his head.

“Oh, boo!” someone, who is most definitely Shiro, calls from the crew. Keith almost forgot they were watching, he’s so caught up in the fight. “Come on, Lance! Get his ass!”

If Keith had the time — that is if Lance let up his assault for even one second, which Keith knows he won’t — he’d roll his eyes. Since he doesn’t, he settles for making a mental note to raid Shiro’s room later and steal the last of the Reese’s he packed from Earth.

Oh, that’s diabolical, Lance thinks at him.

Keith grunts, swiping at the hand holding his blaster. If you help me I’ll give you half.

The offer startles a laugh out of Lance, distracting him for just long enough that Keith gains the split-second advantage, placing the blade of his bayard under Lance’s wrist and twisting until Lance is forced to drop his gun or lose his hand.

“Fuck!” several people yell at the same time. Next comes the unmistakable sound of money changing hands.

“Sucks to suck”, Keith taunts, because he can’t help himself.

But Lance looks undeterred. “It does, doesn’t it.” He aims a heavy kick right for Keith’s sternum, and since Keith is too close to move away and not flexible enough to dodge, it lands square where Lance aims it, the heel of his foot knocking the breath from Keith’s lungs and blurring his vision. He drops his swords when the sudden lack of oxygen makes his hands to weak to grip them.

Lance takes advantage of Keith’s momentary weakness, catapulting forward for an assault. Unfortunately for him, his intentions bleed loud and clear through their bond, and Keith hits the floor with a gasp so Lance can’t wrap his legs around Keith’s neck to choke him out.

Lance curses, falling forward with a flail when his assault doesn’t hit, momentum completely overshot. He barely manages to catch himself before his head smacks into Keith’s, and for half a second he stays there, hovering above where Keith lays flat and tense, ready for the next move.

You come here often? Lance teases, and it’s genuinely such a horrible line that Keith groans out loud. They tussle on the ground for several moments, each trying to gain the upper hand, but it’s literally impossible — neither of them is particularly stronger than the other, so there’s no advantage there, and not only are they completely matched, stroke for stroke, punch for punch, but every move they try is completely anticipated by the other. There’s no way that Keith can win. He can try to spend the next who knows how long exhausting Lance, but they’ve already been training for a while — they’re both tired as all hell. And as much as Keith kind of likes Lance’s hands on him, he can’t forget that there are people watching. He has a reputation.

Truce? he offers.

Yeah, Lance concedes, sighing melodramatically. I suppose I’ll let you call a draw.

Keith rolls his eyes as hard as he can — leave it to Lance to be such a goober about it, even though Keith can literally feel that he wants to call it as much as Keith does.

At the exact same time, they spring apart, setting some space in between them to catch their breaths. Once they’ve had a minute to recover, Lance stands, stepping over to Keith and offering his hand. Keith takes it, pulling himself up.

All the gathered crew groans out loud.

“Another draw?” one of the MFE pilots mutters.

“At least they’re wicked cool to watch,” her friend says.

Keith would be able to feel how much Lance preens at that even if they werent telekinetically bonded.

In minutes most of the crew has dispersed, no longer interested now that there isn’t a fight to watch. Some of them go back to whatever equipment they were training on earlier, but many of them file out of the training room entirely, moving onto other things. Keith and Lance make their way over to the rest of the team, collapsing down to the floor next to them.

“You guys are super duper lame,” Pidge informs them, offering them both a water pouch. Keith takes his gratefully, not bothering with the straw and tearing off the top, chugging them whole thing down in one go. Allura looks at him in mild disgust, which makes Keith grin, because if he’s being entirely, one hundred percent honest, he really only did that to get a rise out of her because he knows she hates it when he does that.

“You’re a liar,” Lance responds, sipping on his juice pouch much slower than Keith does. “We just provided you with what was essentially a full-stakes WWE fight, except Keith and I are both way cooler than any of those losers and there were weapons involved.”

“Weapons, but no drama,” Hunk argues. “You guys barely even spoke to each other. Just fight, fight, fight. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the nuance?”

“I didn’t hear you clown Keith even one time,” Shiro adds, because he’s safely out of range of Keith’s pinching fingers. “Two out of ten Keith and Lance fight. I’m disappointed.”

Keith snorts. “Oh, he clowned me plenty.”

The second the words exit his mouth, he feels Lance go rigid beside him, and a sense of panic comes through their bond.

Shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up, Lance tells him desperately.

Keith looks at him strangely, but Lance doesn’t provide any more context, looking at a particular spot on the floor as if it’s endlessly fascinating.

“He did?” Coran asks. He looks at Keith with a mix of intrigue and something he can’t place, something almost knowing. “I heard nothing of the sort.”

“Well, you wouldn’t hear it, per se,” Keith says slowly.

Lance screams unintelligibly in his head. Keith gets a distinctive picture of him in his own mindscape, yelling in anguish, as the Red Lion laughs herself to tears beside him.

What is your problem? Keith tries to ask, but mind-Lance ignores him in favour of his misery.

Pidge narrows her eyes at the two of them. “Clarify yourself immediately.”

“The mind bond?” Keith says, voice turning up at the end of the sentence like it’s a question. “You know, that Lance worked on with Red. So that we could communicate with each other using our existing emotional bonds with Voltron, just a couple steps farther. I know you guys haven’t used it much, but I just figured you weren’t into it.”

Silence.

Heavy, disbelieving silence. Each other member of the team looks at Keith with dropped jaws and wide eyes, like what Keith just said is something out of a science fiction novel rather than something they all should have been able to do for weeks, since that meeting with Iverson.

Keith suddenly gets the very distinct feeling that he has, perhaps, fucked up.

“Yeah, no shit,” Lance says, a little hysterically. His face is so red that he rivals his own lion. Keith can actually feel the heat pouring off of him, and the feeling from the bond is worse — Lance is dripping with mortification. “How am I in your fucking head and you still can’t follow my instructions?!”

“You didn’t tell me it was supposed to be a secret!” Keith defends, rapidly going red himself.

He can scarcely believe what is happening right now. Lance has told him that the point of the bond was to make the whole team get closer, but he’d only ever bothered to build something with Keith.

The whole time, from the very beginning, his goal was to share his deepest thoughts and feelings with Keith, no one else.

Oh, God.

“Oh, God,” Shiro repeats, but his tone is vastly different from the way Keith was thinking it. His expression can only be described as evilly and maniacally delighted, like every horrible hope of his has come true at once. “This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Oh my God,” Lance says, the third person to say it. His face is buried in his hands, body half-curled up, like if he compresses himself small enough he can disappear into nothing.

“So that’s why it’s like you two share one half a braincell!” Hunk exclaims. “You actually do!”

Pidge and Allura crack up at Hunk’s joke, or maybe it’s Lance they’re laughing at. Either way, Keith feels his head spin.

Lance has literally manipulated the quintessence of Voltron specifically and only so he can talk to Keith in his own brain, communicate the emotions he doesn’t have the words for.

Manipulated. The quintessence of the universe’s greatest and most mysterious weapon. To find more ways to talk to Keith.

Keith is generally kind of a dense person, but he’s sure as shit not that dense.

“Hey,” he says, shifting away from the rest of his team that has rapidly lost their minds and is laughing themselves hoarse, placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Look at me.”

I am going to kill you dead, Lance threatens in his mind, too embarrassed to make his mouth work.

No, you’re not, Keith replies, and pulls Lance’s hands away from his face, yanking him close and finally pressing their lips together, no longer waiting for some obscure and future proof that Lance loves him. It’s obvious, with the way he softens, melts into Keith’s hands, and the way something warm and soft and floaty flows through their bond.

Lance changed reality for him.

Keith rubs his eyes in the vain hope that when he opens them again, the scene in front of him will change.

No luck.

Still a pile of ashes.

“So when you said you made reservations at the fanciest restaurant in town way in advance…” Lance starts.

“I did so before the building burnt to the ground, yes.”

Lance’s mouth twitches. “And you didn’t, like, call to confirm, or anything.”

“I didn’t think I had to! There was — in what world could I have predicted this?! It’s not like anyone did a news report on it!”

Lance says nothing for a second, tapping away at his phone. Keith turns his attention back to grand scene of disappointment in front of him, wondering if he can maybe get his deposit back.

Probably not.

“Says here it was burnt down two weeks ago by three former employees who were fired for attempting to form a union,” Lance says, flipping his phone over to show Keith the screen. “If that makes you feel better.”

Keith glances at the article. “…It does, actually. Good for them.”

Lance laughs, tucking his phone away and then leaning over to press a kiss to Keith’s cheek. He grabs their hands, twining them together and carefully pulling them away from the ruins of the restaurant. “It’s okay, babe. I appreciate the gesture. Let’s head to my apartment and watch movies; Hunk’s gone till late so we can bang on the couch if you want.”

“What?” Keith protests. “No!”

Lance pauses, frowning. “You love banging on the couch.”

“No, not that.” He squeezes their hands together so Lance doesn’t get the wrong idea. “That’s great. I just mean…I feel like we always just chill in your apartment. It’s great, and there’s no one I’d rather hang out with than you, but I wanted to do something. I had plans. I wanted to treat you.”

A close lipped smile appears on Lance’s face; small, like he’s trying to contain it, making his nose scrunch adorably. He glances down at his sneakers, kicking slightly at the concrete, and his ears are delightfully red. He looks embarrassed and pleased — maybe Keith’s favourite expression on him.

“Alright,” Lance says eventually. He squeezes back. “Let’s go somewhere. Got any other fancy-schmancy places that aren’t burned down? We’re dressed for it, at least.”

Keith frowns, trying to think. It’s true that they’re both decently dressed up — Keith is wearing the slacks that make his ass look fat as hell and Lance is wearing his least scruffy converse — but Keith genuinely can’t think of a single fancy place that will let them in on such short notice on a Friday evening. The best place he can think of is the particularly well-maintained Dairy Queen on the other end of town, and that won’t cut it. Not that Lance would mind (he likes to be treated but has made it abundantly clear that he just likes spending time with Keith), but they’ve just done that before. Keith wants to do something special.

He brightens as the idea dawns on him. It’s no high-dining, but he knows Lance will like it.

“C’mon. Get in the car, I’ve got an idea.”

Lance grins. “Aye-aye.”

He lets Keith open the door for him, although he does roll his eyes (Keith knows his goober romantic ass is preening on the inside), and messes up Keith’s pre-set radio stations the second he has his seatbelt on.

“You could just plug in the aux, you know,” Keith grumbles as he carefully pulls onto the street.

Lance waves a dismissive hand. “The music is more enjoyable when I know I’m inconveniencing you later.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You’re so in love with me that it’s embarrassing for you.”

Keith sticks out his tongue, but doesn’t argue, because he can’t. Instead he reaches over and grabs one of Lance’s hands again, listening idly as Lance hums along to the radio.

Twenty minutes later, Keith pulls into a massive parking lot, stopping a couple spots away from a silver minivan.

“Costco?” Lance questions, looking out the window like if he stares hard enough the building in front of him will change. “Why are we at —”

“Be right back,” Keith interrupts, leaning over and pecking his boyfriend on the lips. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Lance trails off, confused.

Keith dashes off without a backwards glance, ducking in through the exit doors so he doesn’t get asked for a membership card.

Twenty minutes later, he rushes back out of the building, getting to his car as quickly as he can. He taps the passenger door gently with his foot, hands full, making Lance jump.

“We you trying to hotwire my car again?” he asks as soon as he opens the door.

Lance shrugs unapologetically. “You took too long. I got bored.” He squints at Keith’s bounty. “Did you buy…six hot dogs?”

“And two drinks!“

Lance’s brows crease, torn between amused and exasperated. “That’s nearly a pound of hot dog meat each.”

“Yup.”

“We’re both gonna fuck up a bathroom tonight.”

“Most likely.”

“Those things cost less than a dollar. They’re probably made of possum.”

“And they’re delicious.” He waves a hotdog enticingly at Lance. “Come sit on the hood with me.”

Finally, a grin breaks out on Lance’s face, wide and toothy and fucking breathtaking. “Okay.”

He steps out of the car, following Keith over to the front of the vehicle and heaving himself up on it. Keith sets the food and drink beside him, then digs out his keys and steps back.

“Hold on a sec,” he says.

Lance picks up a hot dog and unwraps it. “Absolutely not waiting for you. Hurry up or I’m gonna eat your hotdogs, too.”

Completely aware that Lance is not kidding, Keith sprints to the trunk, unlocking it and digging out the supplies he needs. He slams it shut and sprints back, hopping on the hood next to Lance and fluffing the blanket he grabbed on top of them, making Lance nod approvingly.

“Nice touch.”

Keith sets the other item he got in front of them.

Lance squints at it for several moments.

“A…megaphone,” he says slowly.

Keith nods. “Yes.”

“That you just…have in your trunk.”

“From pride,” Keith explains. “Pidge likes to sit on my shoulders and make fart noises at protestors.”

“Ah, makes sense.” He pops the last bit of his first hot dog in his mouth, wasting no time to open the second. “And you have brought it out because…?”

Keith unwraps his own hotdog, using it to point at a guy in horrible (even by Keith’s standards) cargo shorts who is abandoning his shopping cart in the middle of the street. “Figured you might like to heckle some assholes as you devour your possum meat hot dogs.”

Lance lights up. He carefully sets down his hotdog on the blanket, then picks up the megaphone the way a mother might pick up her newborn baby.

“Keith,” he says seriously, “this might be the best date I have ever been on.”

Keith grins. “I’m glad.” He takes a long, obnoxious sip of his soda as Lance gleefully turns on the sparkly rainbow megaphone and holds it to his mouth.

“Excuse me, Cargo Shorts,” he shouts. Cargo Shorts jumps out of his skin. “You are being a massive jackass. Please return your cart to the cart area.”

Cargo Shorts scowls at him.

“There’s a big red sign that says ‘Cart Return Area’,” Lance continues, unbothered. “In case you’re having trouble reading that, it’s the big cage with other carts in it, to your left, good sir.”

Cargo Shorts looks like he’s debating stomping up to Lance and strangling him. He glances at Keith, who glares harshly at him, and then wisely reconsiders, stomping his way to the cart return and then stomping over to his obnoxiously massive pickup truck.

Lance turns to Keith, beaming. “Seriously. This is the best. I love you.” He leans over and places a smacking kiss to Keith’s cheek, making an exaggerated ‘mwah’ noise. Keith turns his head to catch him in a real kiss.

He tastes like hotdogs. Keith is sure he does, too. It’s nasty.

He doesn’t care.

“Can’t take credit for it,” he says, polishing off his second sandwich (are hotdogs sandwiches??). Lance winces at his full mouth, but doesn’t say anything. “Shiro took Adam to do this very same thing many years ago. It’s where he proposed, actually.”

Lance looks at him in disbelief. “And that worked for him?”

Keith snorts. “He’ll never admit it, but Adam is down bad. He always has been. He likes to say his proposal had that small town charm that made him say yes, but everyone knows it’s just because it was Shiro who did the asking.”

Lance opens his mouth to say something, then he notices a woman who’s trying to leave her cart in the middle of a disabled parking space. The megaphone is on and wailing faster than Keith can blink.

“Absolutely not, lady! Keep ‘er moving! Yep! That’s it! Cart goes to the cart return area! Just like a matching game! There you go!”

He sets the megaphone back down as the lady huffily returns the cart — as if she has been so wronged — and turns back to his meal, poking his straw into his soda cup.

“You better not have a ring in your pocket, Kogane,” he warns. “It might have worked for your brother, but I’ll tell you right now I’m gonna say no. Absolutely not.”

Keith blinks at the subject change, then laughs a little too loudly, unable to hide the slight hurt bleeding through his voice. They haven’t talked about marriage yet, sure, but that seems a little…final. A little like the mere idea is ludicrous.

They’ve been dating for two years now. Keith has been subtly looking for a way to get Lance’s ring size. Is it really so strange for them to want to make things official in the eyes of the law?

“‘Cause I want the whole nine yards,” Lance continues, oblivious to Keith’s crisis. “The secretive bullshit, the talking to my parents, the cheesy speech. I know you have it in you. I am hereby forbidding the small town charm. I love you, and I also love being treated like I’m hot shit.”

“You are hot shit,” Keith says reflexively. Then the rest of Lance’s rant finally clicks, and he grins, wider than he knew he was capable of, turning to his boyfriend. “You want to get married?”

“Obviously,” Lance scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he’s avoiding Keith’s gaze and his cheeks are just slightly red. “Doofus.”

“Hey. Lance. Sweetheart. Look at me.”

Keith wipes his hand on a napkin the reaches out and rests two fingers under Lance’s chin, gently turning his head so they’re facing each other. “Look at me, my love.” He waits a second, heat pouring off his boyfriend’s face, for those brown eyes to flick up and meet his own. “I want to marry you too, you know.”

Lance rolls his eyes. His mouth twitches. “I know. I borrowed your laptop the other day and you had a tab open for a jewellry store. Coincidentally, my grandmother’s ring has gone missing, and I know I didn’t lose it, so.” He clears his throat. “I’m a size six. I’m rings. In case you were wondering, for no particular reason.”

Keith grins. “Noted.”

“This doesn’t count as a proposal. Or as me saying yes.”

“Noted.”

“I want you to kiss me now.”

“Noted.”

“If you say ‘noted’ one more time I am going to fucking say no when you ask me for real.”

Keith hesitates.

“Do not,” Lance orders.

He bites his lip.

“Keith, I fucking swear to God.”

“Noted,” he says, laughter bubbling out of him, and Lance is whacking him repeatedly before he can even finish.

“Okay! Okay! Stop! I’m sorry! Stop!” He grabs Lance’s hands, pushing him back and pinning his wrists against the window.

“Cut it out,” he murmurs, leaning in close.

“Make me,” Lance whispers back.

Keith does. Or he tries to. He closes the gap between them, pressing their lips together, but both of them are smiling too widely to kiss properly, giggling nonstop, chest shaking and bumping with the effort, skin covering in goose flesh.

Keith hates giving his brother credit for anything, but Lance is right — this is the best date they’ve ever had. Not-proposal and all.

———

Constantly.

He always has. Even at the Garrison, Lance can remember him just staring. Endlessly. Like he was looking right through you, or like he was staring straight into your soul. Sometimes both at once. He’d never spoken one word to Lance before they went to space, but Lance remembers that stare with complete clarity. (Probably because he was on the other end of it more than he’s willing to admit, with all his attempts to get Keith’s attention.)

The staring doesn’t stop when they get to space. It doesn’t stop when they accept their roles as teammates, when Keith finally starts participating in their (totally justified!) rivalry, when they begrudgingly decide that maybe they can peel back on the arguing, a little. When they realise how well they work together. When they start working together on purpose, and some of those stares come with a small smile, a quirk of the lips, really, that brightens indigo eyes and shows the tiniest peek of crooked incisors. (When tragedy strikes, and the stare is blank. After tragedy, when the stare only gets blanker, and they don’t talk about what happens next but when Lance comes into his room after days of no response, sits with him quietly, brushes the tangles out of his hair and reminds him there are still reasons for him to get up. When they really become a team, just the two of them, red and black and the leader and his right hand.)

When the stares only gets softer and softer, and when Lance is the subject of them more and more frequently.

“What?” Lance snaps one day, frustrated and embarrassed and tired of being the only one that Keith looks at so closely. “What are you even looking at? You’re always staring at me, man, like you’re trying to fuckin’ read my soul, or something. It’s weird.”

Lance feels bad as soon as he says it. It’s defensive and mean and he tenses, preparing for Keith’s upcoming scowl, the argument.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead Keith smiles. Not one of his quick ones, a barely-there quirk of the lips, but a real grin, wide enough to make his eyes squint and face brighten. The fondness bleeds from him; Lance couldn’t miss it if he was the densest person alive.

Slowly, like he’s given Lance time to back away, he reaches foreword and tucks Lance’s hair behind his ears, even though it’s too short for that and doesn’t do anything, even though it’s clearly all about the gesture, an excuse to touch Lance gently.

Lance’s breath stutters on his inhale. Keith doesn’t pull away, resting his hand on the side of Lance’s cheek, not quite cupping it but not quite not cupping it, either.

“God, I’m so lucky,” Keith murmurs, almost too quiet for Lance to hear. (But no. Not impossible. Keith could’ve said it at one decibel and Lance would have strained himself to injury trying to hear it.)

“What?” Lance asks hoarsely, well aware his face is flaming.

Keith only smiles wider. “How could I not stare at you?” he asks, like Lance isn’t losing his whole mind.

Lance clears his throat. Then again, and again. And a fourth and fifth time for good measure because what the fuck.

“Keith, what — what’s going on —”

“I am so lucky,” Keith repeats, firmer this time. He has the same stupid look on his face, like he cannot help but he besotted with Lance, somehow. He opens his mouth again and Lance knows that if he has to hear whatever mushy thing Keith has cooked up then he is going to melt into a puddle of flaming goo. Lance shoots out and slaps his hand over Keith’s mouth.

“Stop speaking,” he orders, face flaming. “Explain what the hell has gotten into you.”

“Those are opposite instructions,” Keith says, muffled, because he is a jerk. His eyes are sparkling in amusement.

“I am going to whoop your ass, Kogane.”

“Fine, fine.” He pulls Lance’s hand off his face and then links it in his, holding them in his lap. He rubs his thumb over Lance’s knuckles as he speaks. “You remember the mall food court? Two days ago?”

Lance tilts his head. “Yeah?” He doesn’t know what the hell that has to do with anything. They had a supply run a couple days ago, loading up on cleaning mods and food supplies and million other things, and he and Keith had stopped for lunch at the food court slash restaurant.

“You, uh, you remember that waiter?”

Lance frowns, trying to picture a waiter. All he can really remember is how Keith had laughed so hard at one of his jokes that soda had spewed out of his nose. He feels bad, but he can’t picture their waiter at all.

“No?”

Keith scowls. It’s such a stark difference from his sappy look before that it’s startling. “That weirdo, stuck up shithead who wouldn’t leave you alone. He called you pretty boy three separate times.”

Vaguely, Lance remembers some light flirting as the waiter set down the cheque. He can’t even picture the guy’s face.

“I mean, not really. I get called pretty boy a lot.”

He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but it makes Keith laugh. He looks relieved, like he’s been worrying about Lance and the waiter.

Like he’d been jealous.

The sappy look is back on his face. “Just made me think, is all.”

Lance’s throat is dry again. The air is charged, and Keith is staring again, eyes tracing every inch of Lance’s face.

Something is going to change tonight. He can feel it.

“Think about what?”

He’s leaned closer without realising. Keith smiles, noticing, and his hand comes back up to Lance’s cheek. This time he cups it blatantly, running the edge of a calloused thumb over Lance’s cheekbones.

“How lucky I am,” he murmurs, repeating his sentiment from earlier, “that we’ve got such a pretty boy on our team. On my team.”

Lance face flames. His first instinct is to deny it, vehemently, to ask Keith what the hell his deal is. Something ugly rears in his head, something hurt — how dare Keith make fun of him like that. How dare he mess with Lance about something he’s sensitive about.

But there’s not an ounce of meanness on Keith’s face. He’s looking at Lance in a way that can only be reverent, like Lance is the only person on the castle, the only person ever.

He remembers all of a sudden that Keith is the most honest person he knows. Keith, who can’t lie if he tries, who’s emotions are written all over his face all the time, who’s easy to rile up because he wears his heart on his sleeve, who puts every ounce of effort he has into everything he does. Who fights this war even though it’s hard for him because he loves everyone so much.

Lance blinks, and is more surprised than he should be to find his face wet. Keith’s face creases a little in concern, and he gently wipes the tears from Lance’s cheek.

“What’s wrong?”

Lance laughs wetly, more incredulous than anything.

“Mullet, if you don’t kiss me right this fucking second —”

Keith laughs. He doesn’t hesitate a second more, leaning in and pressing his lips to Lance’s, gently at first, then like he can’t get enough.

His eyes are closed, as he kisses.

Keith smiles. He doesn’t stop his hands from their constant brushes through his boyfriend’s hair, doesn’t shift or move. Lance stays where he is, too, full weight on Keith’s body, head pillowed on his chest, moving slightly with every breath.

“Yes,” Keith says. “I know.”

“Good.” Keith feels the rumble of Lance’s voice in his ribcage, the puffs of his breath on his bare skin. “‘Cause I tease you, a lot, so I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

“I do. I know.” He pauses as he runs his fingers over the shell of Lance’s ear, tracing the scar on his skull, before gently tapping his finger three times. For a while Lance simply breathes, sinking into Keith’s touch, then he shifts slightly, turning brown eyes up to meet Keith’s.

“How do you know, though? Like if you had to define it.”

Keith leans down slightly to press a kiss to his freckled nose, just to watch it wrinkle. It makes him grin. “I just do, Lance. You say my name like you love me.”

The answer doesn’t seem to placate Lance completely, but enough that he sighs, putting his head back down on Keith’s chest and reaching over blindly to pull their blankets up to his chin.

“Okay.”

Keith says nothing for a long while, humming to himself, enjoying the feeling of Lance’s soft skin under his hands, the weight of his body pressing him into the mattress. It’s a relief after a long day, a balm to his exhausted muscles and tired brain.

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

Keith tugs a strand of Lance’s hair in admonishment, not enough to hurt, but he grumbles anyway.

“Try again.”

“Maybe I don’t love the man who hurts me so,” Lance pouts, sticking out his bottom lip and rubbing his scalp like it actually hurts.

Keith rolls his eyes. Lance grins, then sighs.

“Just — someone said something, at training. Kind of huffed and said something about how annoying it was that we still don’t like each other.”

Keith snorts. “Well, you did shoot me.”

“I was justified! You were being irritating!” Lance shifts, moving to his belly so he can look at Keith properly, glaring. “And I put my bayard on stun! It barely hurt!”

Love of his life or not, Keith loves getting this man so riled up.

“Yeah, the giant bruise I have says otherwise.”

There is no giant bruise.

But messing with Lance is funny.

“You are not fucking bruised!”

Before Lance can get too enraged and start stripping him down to make sure, Keith laughs, giving up the game and grabbing Lance’s wrists. He pulls him forward so he loses his balance, arms around Keith’s neck, barely managing to catch himself before their heads smack together, face inches from Keith’s.

“You worry too much,” Keith whispers, nosing his way down Lance’s cheeks, peppering kisses as he goes. “I don’t give a shit what anyone else says. The whole point of keeping them in the dark is so that I can have you —” he bites Lance’s earlobe gently, pulling it slightly, making the Cuban’s breath hitch — “all to myself.”

“Still,” Lance tries to insist, but Keith can physically feel his resolve falling away, feel him melting into Keith’s touch. “It bothers me that people think I can do anything but love you. You’re — I dunno. You’re everything to me. You make me feel like I can keep going.”

Keith can’t help his smile, and he knows Lance feels it, pressed into the junction of his neck. He kisses slightly there, and Lance turns his head to give him access, slides his hands into Keith’s hair as he works a mark into dark skin.

“That’s gay,” Keith mumbles, as fondly as he can.

It takes a second for Lance to clock Keith’s words, too focused on the besotted sound of them, but he huffs when he does, shoving Keith away and glaring at him.

Keith bursts out laughing.

“You’re the worst,” Lance says, but soon he’s smiling, too. Keith leans in and kisses that smile, because he can and because he wants to.

“I know.”

“Jerk. I’m divorcing you.”

Keith hums, tugging him back down under the covers, wrapping him back into the position he was in earlier. “You won’t even let me marry you.”

“We are twenty years old,” Lance grumbles, but every time he says it he sounds less and less like he cares. “We’re not getting married at twenty years old.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lance settles into the silence, breathing evening again, wandering hands going still.

“I love you too, by the way,” Keith murmurs, suddenly worried that Lance doesn’t know.

He feels Lance’s lips upturn, and smiles to match it.

———

“Keith Kogane, you magnanimous dumbass, would it kill you to ask me out like a man. Something like that.”

Hunk presses the pause button. He tucks his phone back into his pocket. He turns to Shiro, expectant, prepared.

“So,” he says.

Shiro stares at the space in front of him, fingertips pressed together and in front of his face.

“So.”

“Your brother is kind of an airhead.”

“He is indeed.”

“No offense to Keith. He has his smart moments. Probably.” Hunk’s mouth twitches. “Sorry. I said that to not be mean and then immediately thought of the whole Voltron cheer situation and laughed in my head. I promise I don’t actually think Keith is stupid.”

Shiro’s mouth twitches. He forces his face to remain neutral. It is a challenge.

“Keith refused to name his pet gecko as a child,” he shares. “He insisted the gecko would reveal its name when it was ready.”

Hunk bites his lip very hard. He looks deliberately away from Shiro.

“He was thirteen.”

The yellow paladin presses his hands to his eyes. He tries visibly hard to compose himself. He fails.

“…I see.”

“My fiancé often said he must have been born blond.”

“Boy, do I have news for you.”

Shiro raises his eyebrows. “More news than your recording of Lance processing his love?”

“There was an incident beforehand,” Hunk explains. “You know how Lance does those leg stretches sometimes? When we have agility training?”

Shiro inclines his head.

“Well, apparently last week he did them in front of Keith and Keith was so distracted he walked into a wall and broke his nose. He had to go into a healing pod.”

Truly, Shiro would love to say that he’s surprised. He’d love to say that his brother, known gay, was not so fixated on a cute boy that he walked into a whole ass wall hard enough to break his nose. He would love for that to be true.

But he knows his dumbass brother.

“Oh my God.”

“And he still isn’t picking up Lance’s hints.”

“Oh my God.”

Hunk nods, patting Shiro’s hand sympathetically. “We gotta do something, man. I can’t keep watching this.” He pauses. “Also, I really want to stop hearing about what Lance thinks about Keith’s Galra form. I really can’t hear any more talk about fangs in places fangs should not be placed. It’s not good for my mental health.”

Shiro sighs. Even he has heard Lance’s mutterings about Keith’s fangs, and Lance still gets all shy and star-struck around him. At this point it’s gotta be a human rights violation.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises.

———

He finds his brother in the training room, because of course he does, getting absolutely demolished by the training bot.

“You’re getting your ass kicked,” Shiro observes.

Keith grunts.

Shiro makes himself comfortable at the edge of the mat, sticking a straw in a juice pouch and sipping it leaisurely as he watches the twerp get pummelled. It’s amusing, in the way watching those test-dummy car crashes are amusing. Or videos of kids crying in fear of Santa Claus.

“Level failed,” echoes the pleasant voice of Space Siri, as Lance and Pidge have dubbed the disembodied robot voice of the training room. “Try again?”

“Fuck off,” Keith mutters to it.

Shiro stretches out and pokes him with his toe. Keith only half-heartedly tries to slice him about it.

“Somebody’s brooding.”

Evidentially deciding he would rather vent in Shiro’s direction than fall for Shiro’s transparent attempts to goad him into a fight, he flops down dramatically, stealing Shiro’s juice pouch and rudely sucking back the rest of it. Fucker.

“He’s so confusing,” he says, free arm flailing. “Just — all the time.”

Shiro politely refrains from asking him to clarify. He knows who he’s talking about.

“Hm,” he says instead, supportively. “How unfortunate for you.”

“Right!” He throws his hands up in the air, sending his bayard flying in one direction and the empty juice pouch in another. Shiro watches it go with great sadness. “One second it’s — Keith, you suck so bad, ugh, you’re such a weird dweeb. And the next it’s I’m hanging out with Coran and you’re not allowed to come and also I hate you.” He looks at Shiro expectantly. “He’s so!” He gestures vaguely. Shiro assumes it’s meant to mean something.

Shiro stares at him.

“See, to me there’s no dichotomy there,” he says slowly. “You said that as if it was two different sentiments. But in fact that was the same opinion expressed twice.”

“The tone was different,” Keith insists. “The dweeb thing is affectionate. He says it in a friendship way. I’m sure of it.”

“Friendship,” Shiro echoes.

“Exactly,” Keith agrees.

Shiro hums. He’s quite sure, now, that he is not going to explain to Keith in any words of his own how much of an oblivious dumbass he is. There is no sentence or string of sentences that Shiro can use to demonstrate just how obvious Lance is being, and how obtusely Keith is responding. He’s going to have to be clearer than that.

But. For his own amusement.

“Could you maybe explain how Lance shows his friendship to you? So I can better understand, of course.”

“Well, for starters, he says we’re enemies but always wants to pair up,” Keith says. “That’s friendship, right?”

“That’s certainly one way to put it, sure.”

“And the fact that we hang out so often.”

“Of course.”

“And the clothes stealing, of course. Lance says I have gross mullet germs but he’s always stealing my jackets, so that doesn’t add up.”

Shiro purses his lips. That is — whew. Poor Lance is in the trenches.

Keith pouts. “I just don’t get why he flips around it all the time, man. I mean, one second he’s all smiles and nudging my shoulders, and the next he’s bright red and stomping away. He’s so confusing!”

Shiro can take this no longer.

“Keith, I am going to show you something,” he says, digging his phone out of his pocket and pulling up the file Hunk sent him. “Okay?”

“…Okay,” Keith says hesitantly.

Shiro stares at him for a moment longer. Then he sighs, shoves the phone into Keith’s hands, and presses play.

The video starts shaky, audio muddled, and when it clears Lance is lying sprawled on Hunk’s bed, pillow strewn dramatically to the side.

“I just wish I could get it through his fool head that he is loved by me particularly in such a way that I want to hold hands and kiss and generally be nuisances of the affectionate kind. You know, romance,” he is saying.

Keith goes still next to him. With every passing word his jaw drops lower and lower.

“You could also ask him out like a man,” Hunk is explaining.

“Choke and die,” responds video-Lance, and then the audio cuts. Shiro puts his phone away.

“So?”

“I have to go immediately,” Keith says. He’s up and halfway out the door before Shiro can blink.

“Shower first!” he calls. “You just sweated it up with the training hot for God knows how long. Wash off before you do anything romcom-y.” Keith disappears around the corner. “Keith, do you hear me? Shower first! Keith!”

———