It's a big will I won't I at this point

That gorgeous frown on his face. That mysterious furrowed brow. The guy who works one floor below him in their office building. And the guy he’d been thinking about for over a year. A year and one week, to be exact. 

He and Keith had gotten flirty at a company Christmas party the year prior. Lance pushed down the way his stomach flipped at the memory with a quick bit to his lip. It had all been going well until the lichee martinis they’d been ordering for each other caught up to Keith and he got super trashed. Lance had to help him home.

Lance leaned forward in his chair, then hesitated. They barely talked, since then. But still, Lance thought as he looked around at all the stopped traffic. It seemed they’d be there a while. He winded down his passenger window, waving his hands a little in the other guy’s direction.

“Hey, Keith. Keith?” he tried. Eventually, the man looked up, the furrow in his brow deepening a little until it relaxed with realisation. Then his face twisted into something Lance couldn’t quite interpret. Alas, he winded down his own window. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Keith smiled politely. Lance wanted to laugh at the sarcasm, but his mind was short-circuiting. Keith’s voice was so smooth, so deep without the slur of alcohol turning him giddy. His smile! It was even more enchanting than his pout. Lance coughed. 

“Ha, yeah. Hope the traffic clears soon, hey?” 

“Yeah,” Keith replied. “Is there a party waiting for you?” 

“Oh, yeah, no party could start without the chief of good times!” Lance smirked, rattling off his own plans. It was nice, thinking about Veronica’s desserts, Marco’s loud singing. He felt a little closer to them, even if he was so far away. It was a moment before Lance realised he’d zoned out a little. “How come you stayed back so late, too?” 

“Oh, you know,” Keith shrugged, leaning his elbow out on his windowsill. “Got nowhere else to be but home.” Lance nodded. He felt bad, going on about his family now. Was Keith really about to go sit at home? Get to sleep before the clock tick over, or watch the television specials all alone?

He could taste the stale air that had lingered into their conversation as Lance fell silent once more. Keith must have too, as with a curt nod, he wound up his window, his phone flashing on to life. 

Lance tried the radio. Emergency vehicles were struggling to get to the scene through all of the cars. It would be a while yet.

It was 11 pm. 

Lance typed out a message to his family group chat, saying that he didn’t know if he would make it. His finger hovered over send, a lump forming in his throat. He looked around. The highway is a total shit show by that point. People had stopped their cars, gotten out, and started making friends with the people around them. Where has that group gotten beers from?

Lance sniffed back the sad knot in his chest, knowing that his family was having fun together. He wanted more than anything to get home to them. He thought of Keith’s home, empty, still.  Lance pressed send, before winding down his window again and flagging Keith down. 

“Seems everyone has made themselves comfortable,” Lance said with a half-hearted laugh. Keith looked around with a gentle, disinterested yet considerate nod. 

“Yeah, I wonder how bad the incident is. Do you reckon anyone died?” Keith hummed. Lance’s eyes widened. 

“Oh, um. I… I hadn’t thought about that,” Lance said, feeling his stomach drop. Keith grimaced.

“Sorry, I made it weird. I’m not a very good conversationalist. Lance snorted.

“See, now you said that last year at the Christmas party, but if I remember correctly, we babbled on for hours.” There. He’d done it. Ripped the band-aid. He’d brought up the party. The party where that thing almost happened. The thing Lance stopped. It felt good for a second, really good. Until Keith brought a hand up behind his head, rubbing his neck.

“Oh yeah, I don’t really remember that night if I’m honest. Not a lot of it.”

Lance’s tongue caught in his throat. His face heated from his neck to his ears. All this time, he thought Keith had been avoiding him. Embarrassed for what had happened. Hurt, even. 

But he really just didn’t remember. Maybe he never cared to. 

“Oh,” Lance said. “Oh. Right. Of course.” The conversation went dead again quickly after that, yet neither man made to wind their windows back up. After a minute or two, the pair sitting in tick, tense silence, eyeing each other like they were in a polite reaction showdown, the people around them start counting. 

Lance couldn’t help it. The cheering, the making do. Lance let out a little sob. He wanted to be home. With his family. And here he was. Feeling like an idiot, stuck on the highway In the last ten seconds of New Years with a bunch of strangers and someone who he really wished wasn’t one.

The people around them scream ‘Happy New Year’ and Keith presses the overhead light in his car, casting him into darkness. Lance’s heart swirled down into the abyss with it, as the singing crowd around them sends Lance’s world crashing and churning with each mellow note. He’d missed it. And he was all alone, really, truly alone.

But then Keith’s car door opened. He leaned against it for a moment, hands in his trouser pockets, jacket abandoned, leaving him in a light blue button-up. In the glow of hundreds of headlights, Keith’s small smile shone like stars. Slowly, he took a step forward and opened Lance’s passenger door, sliding into the seat.

“Hi,” he whispered before leaning over and just kissing Lance, pulling them close together over the centre console. Lance remembered when Keith had tried to kiss Lance last. Lance had pulled back instantly, Keith was wasted that night. Lance surged forward, kissing Keith back so passionately that everything bled out between them. Everything Lance wished he’d been able to do that night. Everything he wanted to do so many times since. He gave Keith everything he’d been holding in for a year. A year and one week.

They pulled away softly, the crescendo of midnight fizzling away into the new morning. The singing around them bubbled up into cheering and suddenly the crowds around them were dissipating, people were crawling back into their cars as engines around them roared to life.  Lance looked ahead, where the bend gave way to sight. The cars way in the distance were starting to move. t Keith motions sheepishly with a thumb over his shoulder that he needed to go back to his car. Lance nods, wordlessly. Keith makes for the door handle but Lance catches his hand.

“Come to my house. Don’t be alone. Just follow me,” He says.

“Are you sure, you want me there?” Keith‘s beautiful thick eyebrows were raised in surprise. Lance shrugged. 

“My family’s parties go on until morning. The countdown is just the beginning.” The karaoke and the beer pong, the children stacked top to toe in beds upstairs. It no longer brought a tear to Lance’s eye. Just a burn in his heart. A firm beat that told him to get there. The fun was nowhere near over. 

“We won, no one got hurt,” Keith assured him. Lance raised a brow. Instead of retorting, he jabbed a finger into Keith’s rib, casing an immediate jerk reaction from his boyfriend who slapped his hand away. Lance pressed his lips into a think line pointedly. Keith stared back for a moment.

“No one got badly hurt,” He corrected. He could feel the weight of reality weighing down heavier, but it was easier for the both of them to ignore it for a little while longer. They were both so drained from the fight, it was better to keep up the loving banter, shovelling the dread off to future Keith and Lance. Lance rolled his eyes with a huff, eager to let it go for the moment as well.

Lance sponged a disinfectant wipe over Keith’s cheek before placing a band-aid on his wound, a small cut under his eye. He shook his head to himself, breathing out frustrated words under his breath that he didn’t let Keith hear as he used another part of the wipe to sop up the blood that had dried under Keith’s split lip.

Lance stood back and thought for a second, he tugged his lip to the side as if to shrug saying, ‘can’t put a band-aid on that’. So instead, Lance leaned down, offering a warm smile before pecking Keith’s bottom lip gently. He relaxed his shoulders as he stood. ‘All better’.

Lance placed his palms flat to the table, one either side of Keith’s legs. He looked down for a second, eyes darting back and forth, the previous few hours swimming in his head so impactfully Keith could almost pinpoint what part of the mission he was reliving. “You didn’t have to jet off away from the group though,” Lance told him. His voice was suddenly dull, gently being drowned out by the growing feeling of tension building up in the small space between them. Electrical currents zapped around in the mere foot that separated their faces. It was still a quiet hum, but it was also them. The dull roar was almost at its tipping point, like the muffled speaker of a house party that would become clear if someone just opened the door.

“I knew I would have him if I just pushed red to full speed, I had to take the chance,” Keith explained, his tongue the wistful hand that turned the knob.

“Yeah well, we couldn’t see you,” Lance shouted suddenly, his voice dark and deep as he slammed his hands down on the table where they laid. Keith jumped a little where he sat, not expecting the outburst. They were usually pretty good at keeping their cool until they settled their object permanence. Lance took a breath, closing his eyes in silent agreement. They were not about to fight. “Are you feeling okay?” He asked, voice calmer, quivering slightly, eyes darting to all the bruises he was yet to rub Altean healing cream into.

Keith could feel the tension under his voice like it was lacing his throat, sticking to each word as it passed but not quite willing to bubble over again. It was a really stressful battle when it could have been easy. They hadn’t been prepared. Keith knew how scared Lance got when they weren’t prepared.

They were best as a team when they all knew exactly what they had to do, saving some room for someone, usually Keith, to break line for some improvisation. He could see it in the tight miosis of Lance’s pupils, small with bright piercing blue irises showing like he was shell-shocked. Lance was angry at him. Very angry. And he probably deserved it too. But right now, they both just wanted to be close.

“Yeah, the hand-to-hand left me a little dusty though,” Keith said casually, not wanting to alarm Lance any further, attempting a last-ditch effort to lull the unrest back to sleep.

“Let me see your wrist,” Lance said flatly.

“My wrist is fine.”

“Let me see it…” he repeated sternly. “I told you to keep the brace on for longer.”

Keith hesitated but reluctantly held his hand out to Lance. The brunet took it gently and Keith watched intently as he pressed down on different parts carefully. He was afraid of another flashover. He never used to let people help him, scared to show people that he needed it. But Lance was so kind and understanding. He made things feel less serious than they were. But that spark of trust could ignite a conversation to come alive. The delicate circuits they kept insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounded by the emotional charge of tension. They’d get heated like they always did. They’d fight. Keith didn’t want another chance to lose him.

Lance trailed the pads of his fingers up over Keith’s palms to prod the centre of his wrist joint. Keith flinched, feeling the pain shoot straight up his arm like a jolt of electricity. The sudden movement pulled a hiss from him as his entire forearm was encased in pain. It was silent for a moment

“You just don’t listen, do you?” Lance looked up at him from where his head hung, depleted. There it was, the flashover. He wasn’t yelling anymore but his tone was so cold Keith would have preferred it if he’d gotten heated. He’d rather be screamed at by Lance than have to stare into his eyes as the truth settled in that Keith had lied to him, to everybody.

“I tell you,” Lance pushed himself off the bench to pace on the floor in front of Keith. His hands were clenched tight like he was trying not to punch something. “I tell you every. Single. Time. Keith. Don’t push yourself or you’ll be out of commission and no help to anybody, but you just don’t listen. It’s like my words don’t even matter!” Keith winced, he sounded exasperated.

Keith drops his eyes to his lap. They do. You know they do,” he grumbled, face red hot with shame and trepidation.

“Yeah, right,” Lance muttered as he came to a stop in front of Keith again, catching his wrist before he can pull it away. He took some bandages and began to strap the injured limb. Keith felt the heat in his face subside a little. Even when furious, Lance still took care of him, still showed him he loved him.

“Listen… You have to take better care of yourself. If not for you, then for the team. For me. So I know that you aren’t going to get hurt, the kind of hurt we can’t just fix.” Lance went on as he wrapped another layer of bandage, pulling it securely tight. “Look, I know you’re reckless, that’s you and I have learned to love you for it. You like to have a stab,” he even laughed a little. “But being reckless is about not knowing if you can do something and trying it. That’s basically how we run in Voltron. But when you know you can’t do something then doing it anyway isn’t reckless, it’s stupid. You are human Keith, even if it’s only half. You have limits and it’s okay to not be able to do everything. You have to stop this silly one-man team bullshit. You could hurt yourself and get in some sort of trouble that I can’t pull you out of.”

Lance took a deep breath, finishing his work. “I can’t lose you, Keith.” And the fighting was done, the banter was done. The pretending was over as Keith pulled Lance into a desperate kiss, afraid to ever let him go again.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered against his boyfriend’s lips. They ended up on the floor against the table, sitting side by side to look at the stars and revel in the aftersome of the war. How they ended up loving each other so much.

Keith was astonished to think of the bizarre sequence of accidents that brought them to that moment—as if he’d spent years bouncing down a Plinko pegboard, passing through a million harmless decisions, any one of which might’ve changed everything. It made that moment feel so impossible.

“You know, it’s 5 pm home in Texas, all the cadets would be heading down to the mess hall, classes and training done for the day. Life was so easy when you didn’t have to think about it,” he said, almost in disbelief that he’d ever been one of those cadets in this lifetime.

“It’s 4 pm in Havana,” Lance replied.

“Hmm,” Keith hummed, “happy hour.” Lance snorted at that, shrugging as he opened another storage compartment in the table. He pulled out two beers, handing one ice-cold brew to Keith before uncapping his own.

“Yeah, uh, coming mum,” he called back. They waited for her footsteps to disappear down the hall before Keith could even tear his eyes away from the door, relaxing against his bed as Lance let out his breath with a disappointed sigh. He knew what was coming.

“Okay, Romeo, out you go.” Keith patted Lance’s thigh as he pulled back the covers. Lance, left only in his sweatpants, laid firmly on the mattress shaking his head.

“Nooo, I don’t want to go. Let me stay,” he whined, attempting to pull Keith back against his chest before he could reach for the hoodie he’d stolen from him about a week prior. 

“Mum would kill me if she knew you’d been sneaking in at night, you have to,” Keith pleaded, eyes wide as he tried to force Lance out of his bed. 

“Keith, I’ve been staying here about three nights a week for the last two months! You don’t think she knows?” He asked, leaning over the bed to put his socks back on, tying his converse with a huff. 

“Nope,” Keith said frankly, shaking his arms until his hands poked out of the ends of Lance’s hoodie. He climbed out of bed, catching one of Lance’s arms as he grabbed his shirt, pulling him to his feet. “And she isn’t going to find out. Now, window. Out.” Keith gave Lance a gentle push towards the second-storey window, an easily slidable roof just underneath it that would drop Lance in the front yard of Keith’s house. Lance held his hand up to his heart, scorned. 

“Nine whole months I’ve loved you and here you are, forcing your dear, sweet boyfriend out of a window to ride his bike the whole way home. How you wound me,” he feigned. Keith raised an unsympathetic brow, arms crossed over his chest.

“Forsooth,” he mused, causing Lance’s facade to crack with the upturn of the corner of his lip.

“Ah, so you finally did your English homework,” Lance said, one foot already standing on top of the garage. He straddled the window sill as he slid on his shirt.

“I may has't,” Keith smiled before dawdling over to Lance, handing him his phone. “See you at school.”

“Don’t be late,” Lance said, standing fully on the roof so that he could lean back in, hands supporting him on the sill. “I love you.”

Lance kissed Keith sweetly, clearly not caring as much about morning breath as Keith did. 

“I love you too,” Keith said before leaning in again, even if he knew that Lance did it on purpose, because Keith really just wanted to kiss his boyfriend. “Bye.”

“Bye,” they muttered to each other between short pecks before Lance pushed himself up, slid down the roof, and landed skilfully on the lawn. Keith watched him as he ran down to the street, pulling his bike out of the bush he had stowed it in, and rode off towards his own house. Keith watched until he’d disappeared over the crest of the hill that led to his street, actually enjoying the warm sun and the singing birds because Mondays were always good when he started them next to Lance. 

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Keith was startled back to reality by his mother’s voice. He’d not even noticed she’d come back up to find him.

“Oh just… some birds,” Keith lied. Krolia stared at her son for a second. 

“Okay,” she replied. “Come get breakfast, we have to leave soon.”

“Cool, be down in a sec.”

***

Keith woke up tangled in sheets and all of the extra blankets he and Lance had thrown over themselves as they went to sleep the night before. His entire body was engulfed in the warmth of the strong arms holding him close, heat radiating off Lance’s chest that was pressed tight to Keith’s back. 

Lance groaned as they both stirred, instantly pulling Keith even closer as the raven wiggled around to face his boyfriend. Keith felt a sleepy kiss against his forehead as he tucked his face into Lance’s neck. It was warm there. No need or desire lingered to go anywhere else. 

Lance adjusted his feet to intertwine them with Keith’s. He, however, managed to pull the blankets with him as he did and for a brief moment, a gust of piercing cold air let itself into their safe cocoon. In unison, they gasped an indigent “Ah!” and huddled in together, giggling as they found themselves safe from the dreary Monday morning weather.

They laid in silence, sharing soft, lazy kisses as the rain poured on outside. The windows were fogged and if they tried just the slightest it was as if nothing else in the world existed outside Keith’s bedroom. 

Until they heard shuffling around in the kitchen below.

Keith let out a deep sigh, placing a few more kisses to Lance’s defined collar bone before patting his side solemnly. 

“Hhh, you should probably go now,” he weighed the unfortunate words on his tongue as he spoke. Lance merely groaned in response, snuggling deeper under the mountain of soft blankets where the sting of the outside couldn’t get him. 

“Keith, baby. You can’t possibly make me go out there. You wouldn’t make me ride home in the rain,” Lance begged, holding him and rocking him, like a half-hearted shakedown. Keith huffed, considering his options for a second. 

He peeked his head out of the covers, hair still a mess over his face. It looked so cold out there that his skin prickled just at the thought of it. But then he thought of his mother downstairs, catching them. Each rattle of a closing kitchen draw made his heart pound. It was a tough choice.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna make me ride home. I can’t believe my small, loving, sweet boyfriend is going to send me out like this. I could catch a cold Keith. Do you wanna be the one looking after this snotty-nosed bastard?” Lance persisted almost too loudly and pointed to himself. 

Keith snorted and placed his hand over Lance’s mouth to hush him. He thought about it for a second longer, eyes narrowed to a squint, shifting from the bedroom door to the window. Lance’s eyes remained wide as he awaited Keith’s verdict. 

“Fine,” Keith said after a second. Lance whispered an elated cheer before pulling the both of them back under the blanket pile to cuddle.

Keith didn’t know what his next move was, but while he was laying so comfortably and soundly in Lance’s arms he was sure of one thing. That move was not going to be for many, many minutes. He opened his eyes so that he was just staring blankly at Lance’s chest as the brunet carded a hand through Keith’s knotty hair​​—the pair simply pretending that it wasn’t as such due to Keith sleeping like the dead, and Lance’s fingers totally weren’t getting stuck and tugging on a knot every few strokes. 

Keith was almost completely lulled back to sleep when he heard a knock. 

“Keith, I called you already what are you up to?” His mother’s voice became increasingly clearer as the door opened ajar and without a second to lose he threw the blankets over Lance’s head, holding them tightly up to his chin. He hoped it looked like he was just really cold, and that their entangled bodies just looked like Keith under a mass of about four quilts. 

If Krolia knew anything, she wasn’t letting on; Keith thought he was safe.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Bit hard to get out of bed today. I have to plan my course wisely to get from here to the warm shower with as little time in the antarctic hallway as possible,” Keith explained, trying to appear nonchalant as Lance feathered kisses to anywhere he could reach on Keith’s chest without moving. Krolia nodded inconspicuously. 

“Okay, well, breakfast is on the table, get it while it’s hot,” she told him taking a step back out of the room. She stopped, however, just as she was about to close the door. “Oh, and there is a place set for Lance too,” she eyed Keith smugly, a faint smirk on her lips as she closed the door. 

He rubbed his hands together against the cold, breathing out a whirling cloud as he searched the grounds. Beyond the almost black bark of the oak trees, the only thing that stood out against the white was him. Old and worn skates tied in neat little bows, layers of dark clothing that almost made his small frame disappear beneath it. Lance frowned at his hung head, and hunched shoulders as he stood upon the frozen lake.

He watched Keith push himself to and fro, gliding slowly from foot to foot on the ice, a dawdle of a movement. Barely a scuff of his foot against the dark surface.

Lance tied his skates quickly, huffing out the cold air as it entered his lungs. He approached gently, not a twig or stone breaking as he drew near. Lance touched his blades to the bank of the pond, catching Keith’s attention. For a moment they just stood in knowing silence. For the pond behind the mansion was his now. All the money did belong to him. Out of the two things he had in that mansion that could be taken away from him, the world had picked the wrong one, leaving Keith with the thing he’d be happy to go without — stripping him of the other, which he’d held dearest.

Lance propelled himself gently towards Keith, stopping before him, and taking his ice-cold, pale hands in his gloved ones. He rubbed Keith’s cold knuckles under his concealed thumb, and soundlessly, he leaned down and rested their foreheads together.

It had only been days since his dad died. And he’d saved all his posters. Mere days since Lance’s hoodies were replaced with someone else’s. Keith’s father’s clothes hung off him loosely, pulling his usual strong stature to the ground. Keith crumbled under the sentimentality of the memory. Lance breathed in against Keith’s hair.

Keith didn’t smell like Lance anymore, and it was like Keith didn’t smell like himself anymore. But he wasn’t himself at that moment. Lance didn’t know if Keith would ever be the same self again. Keith’s dad was the best dad for him; he was all he ever could have needed.

He encouraged Keith to not be shy about his relationship at home or at school. He took Keith to concerts and hockey games. He let Keith be who he was, he let him be a normal teenager without the weight of everything that was coming to him. Cause money could be gone tomorrow, but his dad was gone today, and it was the only thing that couldn’t be undone.

“I’m happy I got to have as much time as I did with Dad,” Keith said, his voice wavering against the cold -- soft, like he hadn’t used it in a very long time. “I didn’t lose him as a little kid, ya know. We had a real relationship where he saw me as another adult. We were best friends.” He said, his skates sliding between Lance’s so that he could be pulled into his chest.

Lance could have said a million comforting things. But nothing could be said that didn’t already hang in the hostile air. Nothing that wasn’t being said in the way they stood together against it all. At the pond behind the mansion, nothing needed to be said out loud. It laid bare, it swam with the fishies. It was all they needed, so it was all they took.