Yikes.

Camp NaNoWriMo, April 2019

I haven't really written anything from the Voltron: LD fandom before, and despite how much I love the show and the fan-base in general, I know how vicious the community can be, particularly surrounding Voltron's innumerable ships. So, as an awkward not-quite-adult, might I ask y'all to keep the shipping wars away from this awkward not-quite-canon fic? Thank you!

Honestly if you haven't realised this is a Klance-centric story by now, I commend you for your astounding ignorance.

This story occurs pre- Season Six Finale - so if you're not up to date with all the happenings of Voltron: LD unto this point in the storyline, there will probably be spoilers, even if they're only indirect or mentioned in passing. I cannot say exactly when, for certain, but it's bound to happen at some point during this absolute mess of a fanfic. You have been forewarned.

Disclaimer: All names, characters and incidents portrayed in this entry are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, buildings and products is entirely coincidental.

Lance wasn't exactly sure when this - whatever this was - had become a thing, but as he shuffled down the icy corridors of the Castle of Lions, bare feet singing in complaint as the floor numbed his soles and prickling painfully at the points upon which his weight rested, he knew for sure that he definitely wasn't going to complain about the . . . routine that he'd settled into these past weeks. It was comforting, more so than he'd likely ever admit, to know that when all else failed, he still had one person to turn to, who understood everything.

One person with whom he never even had to share words to convey the pain.

As his half-numbed feet came to a stop outside the door, Lance pulled the blanket tighter around his broad, slender shoulders, curling in on himself in the process. He looked a mess - that much he knew without bothering to glance in the mirror. His face was warm and tacky with a thin sheen of sweat, a few shades paler than was normal; his hair no doubt wild from thrashing in his sleep. His eyes were likely rimmed with red. Shimmering trails, crusted now that the rivers had dried up, slipped from the corners of his eyes along the slope of his nose, plunging over his upper lip and disappearing into nothingness. The taste of sorrowful salts still lingered on his mouth.

Yes. A mess was perhaps an understatement.

He didn't even have to lift a hand to knock, or call out to be heard on the other side of that door. It was as though he'd been expected - and, quite plainly, he had been. This routine of theirs was unchanging. If it wasn't one, it was the other, and they'd taken to waiting for each other almost without realising. At times, he wondered why he hadn't simply mustered the courage to move into this room officially. It'd solve all their problems, he was sure. Then he remembered the . . . well, delicacy of their situation, and abandoned the thought.

Still, as the door opened of its own accord, a shock of warmth ran up his spine. Standing on the other side of the threshold was a familiar mop of hair, already gesturing for him to come inside. Lance stumbled forward; the door slid shut behind him, and Keith's hand snagged his wrist, gently tugging him further into the comforting dimness of his room.

Not a word passed between the two of them. Not as Keith led him to the bed; not as he shucked off his blanket and threw it atop the covers; not as they crawled beneath those covers; and not even when Keith's arms encircled Lance, cradling him close as they shared their warmth and fears. The silence stretched on, long into the night, but it was a comfortable one. After all, there was no need for Lance to put a name to the terrors that haunted his sleepscape - not when the same terrors plagued Keith.

There was, however, a need for Lance to put a name to ... this.

What were they?

Lance might have been laughed off as dense once or twice - and a lot more, actually - but he wasn't so blind as to not recognise that this wasn't a normal 'teammates' thing to do. He hadn't ever gone to Shiro or Coran for help with this - and he'd certainly never go to Allura; she was too nice about these things to be helpful in the short term. It wasn't even really a normal 'friends' thing to do. He couldn't imagine bundling up like this with Hunk or Pidge whenever the nightmares chased him out of his bed. So no. Definitely not just a friends thing. At the same time, though, they'd never actually done anything besides comfort each other. Sure, when the fear finally left his system and the tension in his chest lessened, when Keith had drifted off, still holding onto him, something twisted in Lance's gut and a surge of something warm and soft and frightening caught in his throat, but nothing had ever come of it.

Lover Boy Lance, flirting extraordinaire and intergalactic catch, had failed to make a move with Keith.

He was terrified of potentially ruining their tentative relationship. Even more terrified of losing this small piece of intimacy with Keith, of losing the only thing that had kept him sane and sleeping for these past days . . . weeks, and of tearing that same intimacy away from Keith, who was struggling just as much as he was. Sure, he'd considered asking Keith, but Keith was weird. Lance didn't mean that in a cruel sense, not in the slightest. He liked Keith just the way he was.

Didn't mean he wasn't weird, though.

Knowing Keith, the space-time-warped older Paladin likely did see this as simple friendship, or team bonding. And that made things worse, because as much as Lance wanted to ask, he was afraid of receiving an answer that he didn't want to hear.

As emotionally unaware as Keith could be, he seemed to sense something was nagging at Lance, and pulled the boy in closer. Delicate hands - calloused in familiar spots where the hilt of a sword and dagger should lay - splayed fingers over the span of Lance's lower back, carded them gently through his mussed hair. Lance sighed. Shivered a little. Tentatively, he moved, bringing one arm away from his chest to lay it over Keith's bare ribs - how the boy was always so warm, Lance never knew - his forearm slotting into the groove of his spine. For half a heartbeat, as happened almost every time Lance reached out to reciprocate Keith's comfort, the boy tensed up, but then he was stroking Lance's hair again, and the former Blue Paladin released a barely-audible sigh of relief.

So many nights had been spent like this. Either he in Keith's bed, or Keith in his, clinging to each other to ward off the horrors of their actions, their experiences. Real or twisted by imagination, it was something that neither of them could face alone. He remembered the first time, vaguely. A nightmare so terrible that it had left him choking, clawing at his ragged throat once he'd dragged himself back into the world of the waking. He'd felt suffocated in the isolation of his room. Needed to escape. Needed to run -

He didn't remember actually arriving in the unofficially official common area, or the actual journey there - a blur of panic and irrational fear - but he remembered the look on Keith's face. At the time, he hadn't known why Keith was sitting alone in the space, but as the older Paladin had folded him into his embrace and shushed him, held him close, Lance had been able to inch his way out of that red-zone of terror.

Keith had eventually guided him back to his room, but when Lance refused to set foot inside, shaking his head manically and muttering to himself in his mother tongue, the boy had given in and brought him into his own space, bundled him in his own blankets, soothed him to sleep. The morning following had been . . . awkward, but not half so bad as Lance might have expected. Soon enough, they'd developed their routine. Things became less awkward.

They got comfortable with each other, with facing their fears together.

It was part of some unspoken agreement of theirs. Things were tough enough as it was, and they didn't want to stress out the others with any public display of their own deep-seated issues. They also really didn't want to deal with any cheek from Pidge, which was bound to occur. So it remained between the two of them. Lance started following Keith to the training room in the early hours of the morning, when the tears had dried and the fear had ebbed into the ether, and no one really questioned anything. The others didn't need to know where they spent their nights, or who they spent them with.

It was exactly what Lance had needed. What Keith had needed.

Not yet.

Lance would hold out a while longer, enjoy these silent nights with the man he'd hated and come to love wrapped around him. One day, he'd have to stop kidding himself. Keith might respect him, might trust him, might have finally opened up to him, but he didn't love him, and Lance knew that. Someday, he'd have to find where things truly stood between him and his teammate, and he'd have to accept the distance that separation would put between them once more. But that was not today, nor tomorrow.

As he drifted into a dreamless sleep - real sleep - Lance allowed himself a small smile.

He could be selfish for a little while longer.

After all, it was just between the two of them.

A/N: This chapter has been uploaded a day early because I have commitments tomorrow that are very inconvenient, and I'd rather jump the gun than be behind the 8-ball so early in the month.

So.

Guess I'm doing this again.

Round 2 of Camp NaNoWriMo for me! This time, I've decided to share my creation with y'all, day by day. This poor account needed some love and attention, anyway, so here's my deadline-fuelled addition to the Voltron: LD fandom. I may re-write this in the future - a.k.a. when I'm not caught up with a lack of time to edit and exams and my YOU session on the 16th to prep for - but until then, this will have to do!

Please leave a review. I like other people's opinions. But I'm not telepathic.

I am not Allura. And you guys are not the mice.

Thank you!

Word Count (Chapter): 1470

Word Count (Total): 1470