It has been brought to my attention that nobody has written a re-take on the scene where Keith saves Lance's life from the airlock, and that is unacceptable. As recompense, have some fic of them fricking.
Keith's chest heaves with the exertion of dueling a killer robot while simultaneously managing to open the air lock door in order to save his fellow paladin's life, and Lance thinks, Oh, fuck.
It's too much all at once: the near-death experience, the ache of his hands from clinging onto a wall panel for dear life, the way Keith's stupidly tight black shirt clings to his frame...
Lance's arm still burns from where Keith had grabbed him, and the entire situation seems surreal, his world almost blurry around the edges, now that they're both safe.
"What were you doing out there?" Keith yells at him as he gasps for air, and his tone is fraught with panic. It's not so much the words that trip Lance up for a moment, but the way he says it. Lance knows, on some level, that the Red paladin cares about him – they have their rivalry, sure, but neither one of them wants the other dead – except Keith's tone rings clear with desperation and an underlying... something that burrows its way under Lance's skin and refuses to be forgotten.
It strikes him, suddenly, that the only time he's ever heard Keith sound like that was when they'd first rescued Shiro. Their reconciliation had obviously involved much less yelling, but the soft tones they had used to converse were filled with an undercurrent of concern for a friendship that Lance is certain Keith and him have never shared.
With Shiro, Keith had seemed as though he'd recovered something previously thought lost forever, and its return made Keith feel the need to do everything in his power to protect it. No, maybe protect isn't the right word. It's more like he cherished their bond.
It's unsettling, but Lance realizes that he hasn't answered Keith's question yet, and his mind is still too busy trying to reconcile Keith and cherished, so he blurts out, "Who was that guy?" in order to sideline Keith's question.
He takes the bait well enough, but all thoughts flee from Lance's mind the moment Keith says, "He was trying to kill me!"
The words strike fear in Lance's heart in a way that not even almost getting sucked through an air lock into space did. Keith is this... unstoppable force, all hotheaded confidence and bluntness, and the idea of him actually perishing during their quest to vanquish the Galra Empire seems impossible.
It's dumb, some part of him acknowledges, considering they obviously risk life and limb every time they climb into their Lions, but their brushes with death seem a lot less daunting when they're all protected by hyper-advanced Altean technology (and safe in the knowledge that healing pods are available if things should ever go poorly).
But the two of them nearly died, just now.
In fact, Lance would be dead, if not for Keith's timing and quick thinking.
He's about to sputter out a much-deserved thank you – although it would be infinitely more preferable if literally any other paladin had rescued him, because it's still Keith – when he freezes. Because Keith is looking at him, and his head is tilted slightly and his eyes are wide and his cheeks are flushed with blood from the effort of dueling a murderous training bot, and he looks so ridiculously attractive in the moment that the adrenaline pumping through his system from the near-death experience has Lance surging forward to kiss the expression off his face before he can even consciously acknowledge it.
When he does realize it, though, he's about a foot away from Keith's face, and both of his hands are splayed on either side of Keith's hips. This close, Lance can see the darker flecks of almost-black in his eyes almost as easily as he can register as the unmasked expression of sheer surprise riddled across his features.
Oh, fuck, Lance thinks again.
He shoves himself backward, wondering frantically if there's any way he can play it off as something that definitely wasn't leaning in for a kiss. Maybe he can say he tripped? But they were both already sitting down, shitting hell –
There is no way to talk himself out of this, Lance realizes as Keith, who is always too goddamn perceptive for his own good, jerks backward. His back hits the wall of the castle, hard, and it's awful but Lance hopes the jolt of pain catches him off-guard enough that he forgets why he did it in the first place –
Keith's eyes narrow, and Lance notices that he's blushing. Quiznak, there is no way he should look this good with a flush spreading rapidly across the bridge of his nose. "Were you about to – "
"No!" Lance says quickly, and he tries to laugh but it comes out sounding forced. "Nope. No. Definitely not. That's crazy, who would do that?"
In fact, they've probably wasted enough time here as it is, and Lance darts his eyes toward the hallway, eager to beat a hasty retreat. Maybe if he disappears for the next twenty years Keith will forget about his obvious bout of insanity?
"Wait," Keith says, but Lance is already turning away and attempting to escape, and couldn't the Red paladin at least give him this?
He's halted by another, more steady, "Wait," and the feeling of fingers wrapping firmly around his wrist. Keith pulls him back down until he's sitting on the floor again, and Lance steels himself for the inevitable freak-out.
"Try..." Keith starts, before he averts his gaze. "Try again."
"What?" This has to be a dream. Perhaps the castle did kill him, and now he's stuck in a hell where Keith lookalikes seduce him before brutally stabbing him to death over and over again for eternity.
"You heard me," Keith says, and he looks back up, eyes glinting defiantly.
Fuck it, Lance thinks as he closes the gap and slots their lips together in a bruising kiss. If this hell, it's worth it.
He really should have known that their rivalry wouldn't be put to rest even in the middle of a spit-swapping session. Keith kisses like he fights – he throws everything he's got into the action, like Lance is a Galran commander and the only way he can be defeated is through a violent, forceful collision of lips and tongues and teeth. He hisses as one of Keith's canines bites into his lip, but the noise only goads the dark-haired paladin on as he surges forward and threads a hand through Lance's hair and tugs, as though forcing Lance's head back will help him devour him more easily.
The taste of blood fills Lance's mouth, but fuck, somehow that's hot, too, and he rises to the challenge. He's not about to be bested by Keith, even in this fight, and their tongues slide against one another as they battle for dominance. Lance isn't even entirely sure it qualifies as a kiss, what with how often their teeth click against one another uncomfortably and how much blood as well as spit is being shared between them, but even if it's not the nicest kiss he's ever had it really is the best.
It has Lance feeling giddy with desire, and he presses Keith backward until his back is flush against the castle's metal walls.
"What," Keith exhales as Lance breaks the kiss, and he doesn't offer him a response. Instead, he nips and sucks his way down Keith's stupidly perfect jawline and down to the junction between his neck and shoulder, where his skin is hot and regrettably free of love bites.
He's not sure if Keith is aware how easily his skin bruises under the attentions of his mouth, but he's definitely not about to tell him. It fills him with a sense of pleasure, knowing he's the one marking up the pale skin, and maybe it's a bit overpossessive to suck so many dark bruises into the paladin's flesh, but in for a penny, in for a pound.
Keith is surprisingly vocal under his mouth, and the noises slipping past his throat send a hot arc of arousal through Lance's system. He doesn't want to shut him up, but he also desperately needs to reclaim those quickly-swelling lips, and he does so as Keith slips his hands under his clothing to rake fingernails down his spine.
"Fuck," he mutters, because the scratches burn. Irritatingly, as absolutely sinful as Keith's mouth is, it isn't enough. He needs to feel more than the sensation of their tongues sliding against one another, and he's so fucking hard in his jeans that if he doesn't come soon he might just die.
The metal paneling of the castle feels cool against Lance's knuckles as he presses Keith's shoulders back against it, and he faces his first real dilemma: the clinging black shirt stretched tightly across the Red paladin's chest is positively lewd, but right now it's providing an annoying obstacle in that it completely conceals Keith's collarbone, which Lance definitely wants to trace with his mouth. To remove the ludicrously sexy shirt, or leave it on and press his lips along more intimate parts of his body?
The bond between paladins of Voltron must be stronger than Lance thought possible, because Keith solves the problem for him, or at least tries to. He pulls away to slip his shirt over his head, and Lance memorizes every movement until he hears it.
It's a gasp of pain that slips past Keith's lips, not one of pleasure – maybe it's only been a few minutes since they first started making out, but Lance is fairly sure he can identify the difference between the two – and he places a stilling hand on Keith's raised arms.
"Shit, did I hurt you? Are you okay?"
Keith lets out a noise akin to a growl and shrugs off Lance's hand. "The training bot got a solid kick on me, but it's probably fine, I've had worse before – "
Internal bleeding, cracked ribs, he's still breathing hard, did he pierce a lung? Lance's thoughts race a mile a minute, and he doesn't even consider the repercussions of his actions before he shoves Keith's remarkably tight shirt up to inspect the damage.
There's a dark, ugly bruise forming in a shape that looks suspiciously like a footprint, and Lance lightly draws his fingers over the injury. Keith inhales a bit shakily at the touch, but doesn't hiss in pain again, and even though he really does seem to be alright other than the contusion, it's what sets Lance off. How dare someone other than him mar Keith's flesh like this?
"I'm okay, rea – ah," Keith starts to say, but his words trail off into a gasp as Lance flattens his tongue and licks his way down the toned flesh of the paladin's stomach.
There's only one thing to do, at least to Lance's lust-addled mind.
"After I'm done with you, this bruise will look like child's play," he says as he dips down to swipe his tongue over the bruised skin again. He hopes the cocky declaration will distract Keith from the rage that's building up inside of him at the idea of someone else hurting him, and he forces himself to focus on the task at hand rather than the fine tremor that runs through his body.
Whatever training regimen Keith is on works wonders on his abs, and Lance can't help but drag his teeth lightly across the defined planes of his stomach. Keith rewards his ministrations with a shudder as gooseflesh rises across his skin, and Lance smirks confidently.
He'd be lying if he said he knew exactly what he was doing, but judging from Keith's harsh, uneven breathing he isn't doing too badly. The Red paladin seems to be falling apart under his hands and mouth, and maybe it's a little immature, but he can't help thinking, Lance: 1. Keith: 0.
Placing a very deliberate hand over the bulge of Keith's pants, Lance turns his head up to flash a toothy grin just before he presses down with a hand and draws in the thin flesh of Keith's hip with his teeth. He doesn't bite hard enough to make Keith bleed, but it's definitely going to leave a mark, and anyway it makes Keith groan his name in a strangled garble that sounds more like gibberish than an actual pronouncement of his name.
Lance presses an apologetic kiss to the bite and soothes the hurt with his tongue, but Keith keeps making noises that are probably illegal on planet Earth, and it's getting more and more difficult to pointedly ignore the hard-on located very close to where his head currently is.
The obvious course of action is to take Keith into his mouth, and he has to swallow thickly around the sudden rush of saliva that fills his mouth at that idea. He makes quick work of Keith's belt– okay, that's a lie, he fumbles with the buckles for a solid thirty seconds before Keith makes an irritated noise and does it himself – but he feels dizzy with arousal as he pushes Keith's pants out of the way and almost comes at the sight of his erection bulging through his boxers.
"I think I want to suck your dick," Lance says through the loud heartbeat in his ears, and he knows he's about to ramble like he always does when he gets nervously excited. "But not right now because I'm going to come, like, really soon, and maybe it's cheesy but – can we come together?"
He hopes he hasn't overstepped some sort of boundary. There isn't exactly a guidebook on how to properly go about having frantic, desperate sex after almost dying, but Keith is Keith and Lance isn't entirely sure how he's going to act after this is all over with. Hell, he's not sure how he's going to act after this is all over with, and if this is the only time he'll ever get to fuck around with Keith then he doesn't want to fuck it up by doing something ridiculous like coming in the middle of giving a blowjob.
"Oh, god," is the response to his words, and then Keith's hands are all over him as he roughly tugs him over. It should be undignified, how haphazardly Lance is sprawled over Keith's form, but with his knees keeping him pinned to the wall he's hard-pressed to feel any shame. Like this, they're so, so close together and Keith's rough handling has his cock so hard that, for a brief, terrifying moment, he actually fears coming on the spot.
Keith's hands fumble to shove Lance's jeans and underwear out of the way in one fell swoop, and it's a blessing once his erection is finally freed from its confines.
"Shit," Keith mutters as Lance takes the opportunity to grind downward, and he privately agrees because it feels incredible. This is way better than anything he's ever done alone, and he has got to figure out a way to make Keith more amenable to instances like this in the very, very near future.
Well, he agrees insomuch that his hips jolt forward involuntarily to repeat the motion, and then his cock lines up perfectly against Keith's clothed one and they drag along one another and it's almost too much stimulation but still not enough.
They both moan at the sensation, and Lance doesn't realize his eyes are closed until they fly open as Keith wraps a hand around both of their dicks. He's still wearing his stupid fingerless gloves, Lance realizes immediately as the odd texture rubs against his throbbing erection, and once the thought hits his mind he can't help but look down to fully grasp the visual.
It's incredibly arousing, although that in and of itself is not truly surprising. Keith's cock is flushed pink against his more tanned one, and the black of his glove alongside his pale fingers is a mesmerizing addition to the display. They're both heavily leaking precum, and it sends a thrill through Lance to realize that Keith is hot for him, is hard and aroused because of what he's done, and he wants to grab their erections and help them come, but before he can move Keith's hand strokes up and down the complete lengths of their shafts.
Lance's resounding moan is veritably ripped out of his throat.
The sensations are remarkable: the rough calluses of Keith's hand provide respite from the more coarse material of his gloves, but it feels good, and Lance knows he's probably gasping like a fish out of water as Keith jerks them both off.
Neither one of them is going to last long, that much is clear, and Lance bends his head over Keith's neck as his hand speeds up around both of them.
"Lance," he gasps, and then he's letting out a low moan as his hand envelops them and twitches sporadically, and then Lance feels Keith's cock pulse wildly against his own.
His own groan is muffled against the hard flesh of Keith's shoulder, and he can't resist biting down until it yields against the sharp pressure of his teeth. Even through the cloth of Keith's shirt, he can taste the tang of blood, and, in tandem with the motion of Keith's hand around his engorged prick, it's enough to send him over the edge.
His cock spills over Keith's hand, and all he sees is white. Lance's entire existence is reduced to this moment, of Keith's hand wrapped around him as they rut against one another, and he thinks he huffs a disbelieving laugh at the feeling but his head feels fuzzy with endorphins and maybe he imagined it, after all.
When he comes back to himself, Keith is resting against the wall and breathing heavily, and they stay there, sitting and gasping for breath – again, although this was much more pleasurable than their near-death experiences – and Lance has never felt more content in his entire life.
The paneling of the castle's walls is blessedly cold against his overheated flesh, and Lance closes his eyes as he presses his face against the metal and his heart drums a ever-slowing beat within his ribcage.
They should probably go see how the other paladins are faring against the homicidal castle, but he figures if they've made it this long without raising any alarms then a few more moments won't hurt too much.
When the tell-tale fabric of Keith's glove nudges against his lax hand, Lance accepts the offering and laces his fingers with Keith's. Pressed against his own, bare hand, the cloth of Keith's glove is sticky and wet, and despite the post-coital bliss, Lance's face heats up as he realizes that he's never going to be able to look at those fingerless gloves without thinking of this moment again. Final score: Lance: 1. Keith: 1.
Somehow, the tie doesn't bother him.