Crossing Lines

by Lala to the power of 2

Okay so in retrospect, sitting outside of Keith's door while he was in heat was not Lance's best and brightest idea ever. But Shiro was the damned alpha round here and if HE refused to do anything when Keith was suffering so much… Well Lance just couldn't leave him alone. It wouldn't have been right.

Keith belonged to Shiro.

This fact was unspoken, unacknowledged, and so obvious there was no point in even someone as obtuse as Lance trying to deny it. Even if it wasn't for whatever subtle, muted affection that lined all their interactions, there was no point trying to unsee what was between them when you remembered that Keith was an omega and Shiro was the only alpha on board and this was just how things WENT, okay? It was basic biology. Lance and Hunk and Pidge were all just betas, and the moment the five of them gathered on that castle and looked at each other and realized what secondary sex everyone was every one of them knew what was going to go down when Keith's heats started up, even if they all wisely chose to ignore it.

Even Keith seemed to acknowledge their bond, because for all the pride and fight he had in him when Shiro said back down Keith actually did. When Shiro gave an order Keith always listened, always obeyed, even when Lance could see the fight and fire in Keith's eyes telling him to resist and lash out. He never did, always deferred, because this was his alpha, right? Well. ALL of their alpha, but Keith's especially.

And Lance knew this. He did, really, he understood perfectly where he stood. In fact as far as where Lance stood with Keith he'd known that even before Shiro was a thing he knew about. Because he wasn't an idiot and Keith was gorgeous and amazing and talented and strong, and back in their school days Lance had only needed to see him fly one time and just knew that this wasn't a guy who'd let himself submit to an alpha just because his body was aching with need. This was someone who wouldn't let himself be claimed by anyone he didn't want and he'd naturally only want the most impressive and badass alpha around, and at the TIME Lance had assumed there was no one like that, that no one would be good enough to touch the burning fire that was Keith's person. And then Shiro came crashing into their lives and yeah, had Lance mentioned he wasn't an idiot? The actual Perfect Man plus the most stunning omega he'd ever met in his life? Like. If you're in a DMV and you see two really ungodly beautiful people waiting there with you you instinctively KNOW they're there together because who else would each of them be here to talk to, one of the normal random slobs? Yeah. Exactly. Common sense.

So Lance wasn't so much of a jackass to think he was like, ENTITLED, or to be so prickly with Keith because of some kind of jealousy. He'd have to have ever entertained any notion that Keith might so much as give him a second glance to be jealous or entitled, so instead Lance's hostility was more due to… genuine annoyance. Everything about Keith annoyed him. His skills and his looks and his laugh and his goddamned smell . Lance couldn't freaking stand it.

Especially the smell. It had been a few months now since they'd been in space, and everyone had pretty much settled into routine. Their lives had adapted and they found a new kind of normal for themselves, to the point where they could almost forget that human society concerns like sex or caste even exist, much less matter . For one thing, Keith was anything but the fragile homemaker the media liked to portray omegas as and even if there had been other alphas around to scuffle with Shiro would never have been the type for those ridiculous displays of dominance anyway, so it was easy to forget the paladins weren't the normal perfectly functional group of betas Lance was used to living in. But lately, maybe just over the past few days, Lance felt like he was being punched in the face by pure sweet-smelling omega body heat every time Keith was anywhere near him. It was freaking maddening.

And it meant that either Lance's sense of smell had suddenly become five times stronger for no reason, or far more likely, Keith was going into heat soon. It was... Very hard not to think about. But at the same time, when Lance DID think about it, instead of tantalizing visions of sweaty naked Keith with his fingers inside of himself, the image "Keith in heat" now dragged up all instead very actively involved Shiro in a way Lance really did not enjoy, and would really like to be able to look at the red paladin without imagining their leader's hands and mouth all over his body.

Why was this only happening now, anyway? They'd been in space for eight months or so by Lance's guess, and most omegas went into heat two or three times a year, which was about every four months or so depending on the person. Obviously they'd missed that mark, and Lance was SURE he'd have noticed if this had already happened before. Unless… Unless Keith had been on suppressants because of course he was this was Keith. Yeah, it would take about that long for them to wear out of his system, which means that his hormones would be all fucked up and this heat would probably be really bad. Lance's instincts immediately said that it was good Keith was off the pills anyway considering they fucked with your body, but then again the main side effect was the common onset of permanent sterility which, well, Keith also didn't seem like he was very eager to be waddling around pregnant and had probably seen that as an upside, not down. The other health risks were all pretty low, so Lance didn't actually have the right to decide if it was good Keith had been on suppressants or not. Not that it mattered anymore, since. Clearly. He was out.

Lance was not the only one who noticed. For days on end everyone was tense, trying to avoid looking at Keith as he grew more anxious and overheated. Trying not to look at Shiro as he obviously avoided looking at Keith. Did like they usually did when it came to the subject of Keith's sex and pretended everything was normal and Lance wasn't going insane and pretended Keith wasn't piling food into his body and crashing into sleep like he was storing up fat for winter and pretended no one watched the sweaty line of his throat when he drank water after working off some of his excess frustration in the training room. It was a totally healthy and normal environment for everyone in every way.

It was obvious when it finally happened. Not even the filters of the ship could keep the smell from leaking out of Keith's bedroom, until it felt like every corner of the castle was rank with sweat and sex and honeymilk-sweet desperation. And God, Lance had been around omegas before, even being proudly trisexual and openly attracted to them didn't mean that scent affected him in the same ways it would an alpha. But this? This was some new kind of bullshit right here.

The first breakfast they all sat around the table with no Keith, not a single word of conversation was spoken. Allura and Coran must have been… delicately updated on the situation, because even the two of them waited in worried silence with the rest of the paladins, leaving no sound but the clattering of silverware and maybe the light sizzling of Lance glaring so hard at Shiro the man's head would probably start on fire from it.

What the hell was he DOING? Why was Shiro just sitting here eating space goo with them and wearing the expression of a man who was trying to hide the fact that his testicles were currently locked into a steel vice under the table? Why the hell was he leaving Keith alone , forced to suffer through a need so unbearable Lance literally couldn't bring his brain to imagine it, knowing full well he could be in there with him and easing that suffering? God, what Lance wouldn't do just for the chance to look at Keith right now, much less actually put his hands on that searing skin. And Shiro was just throwing his biological right to just go in and take what was his away to sit here in there with the rest of them twitching and trying not to breathe in the stuffy Keith-scented air. And as much as Lance was willing to admit he liked the fact that Shiro was in there right now instead of with Keith, Lance's opinion didn't have shit to do with shit! What mattered right now was Keith, and that Keith was alone and aching and it just wasn't right, not when he didn't have to be. Not when he had a stupid alpha boyfriend who was supposed to be protecting and taking care of him.

Hours passed. Everyone skipped morning training, too wound up to concentrate with Keith's glaring absence puncturing a jagged hole in the atmosphere. Of course this also meant that without the team to distract him Lance would spend all the way into the afternoon doing nothing but thinking about Keith, to the point where he was making excuses just to pass through the hallway his bedroom lie. He didn't even know why, Lance never even slowed down enough when he passed to listen for the sound of Keith's voice, just ended up choking himself on the cloying miasma of aroused omega on every pass as he paced relentlessly down the castle halls.

The average heat lasted from three to seven days. Lance was DEFINITELY going to go insane.

He had to find something to do with his body, or he'd end up pacing outside of Keith's door for the next week like a fucking dog. That in mind, Lance headed off towards the training deck to try to at least make himself productive during his slow decent into madness. This was just… something they all needed to get used to, was all. No big deal. Lance swore he had enough self control not to let the fact that Keith was in heat totally consume his brain and soul. Once he found something to do, and right now getting all physical on a droid's ass sounded like the best kind of catharsis Lance could think of.

Except of course, that when he got to the training deck it was already occupied. It was Shiro, shirtless and sweat-drenched and going bare-fisted at the Gladiator like it had killed his wife and burned his village to the ground. There was a moment when Lance first saw the half-mad gleam in his eye that he was struck by a cold surge of terror; Shiro was two hundred pounds of intensity and rage, alpha pheromones rolling out of his sweat and hitting Lance like a wave that shook his knees and ordered Lance to submitfleebeg .It was gone just as quickly as it had come, when Shiro's eyes flicked to Lance hovering in the doorway when the gladiator burst into nothiness at his strike they were almost normal. The fear left Lance in a wash, leaving behind an ugly stain of frustration and annoyance, because of COURSE Shiro was already here, if he wasn't that would count as Lance being able to actually escape this bullshit for five minutes, and life had to be fair for that to work.

There was something of a staredown for a moment, Lance's hostility sharp enough for Shiro to be look at him warily as he wiped the sweat from his face. "Lance," he acknowledged in a calm greeting after a stretch of time.

The anger churned in Lance's stomach like bile, thick and acrid until he was spitting words out almost against his will. "What the fuck are you doing ," he hissed, restraining the violent tension in his body to one emphatic jerk of his arm. "Do you seriously intend to just… Blow off and avoid this whole thing?! Like it doesn't even have anything to do with you?!"

Shiro's eyes pinched shut, and he let out a long, tired sigh heave out of him. "Lance…" His face and voice had the long familiar tone of a condescending parent or teacher trying to explain that Lance was too stupid or too young to possibly understand this complicated world of adults. "It really doesn't, though. You know that Keith and I… Our… relationship isn't like that."

Instead of any kind of relief at the confirmation that Keith and Shiro had never been… sexual on each other, only more annoyance and revulsion swelled in Lance until it felt like there was more emotion than his body could safely handle. It had been eight months - ONE of them would have noticed if Keith or Shiro had ever smelled like each other in that way; Lance had already known that they didn't do that. Or rather, that they hadn't done anything yet ; the inevitability of an alpha and an omega in a closed space gravitating towards each other looming even more imminent and predictable then a Galra attack. No, Shiro's words didn't bring any kind of comfort - instead Lance found he was just disgusted . Even to Shiro, even in his point of view - even he thought it was always about sex, then? Wasn't Shiro supposed to be better than that? "So, what?! " Lance found the word come out of his throat in a hoarse shout. "No one said you had to fuck him! Don't you know anything about omegas?!"

Shiro flinched at the word 'fuck,' but Lance barely noticed, drawn into dreadful memories from the past. His little sister presenting and going into heat for the first time, and how awful the sound of her cries had been. How every member of the family had taken turns sitting outside her door, because even in a house full of betas with no alpha pheromones to help calm the heat just the presence of someone else, someone she trusted outside where she could smell and hear them had been comforting. And how when it was over she'd hugged their mom and sobbed into her breast that she didn't want to ever go through that again, that she had only barely survived this time and how was she going to go her entire life like this she was so scared and thank you, thank you for not leaving her alone. "You don't have to touch him, you don't even have to be in the same ROOM as him! Don't you even know that just having his alpha nearby would be enough to make it a little better?"

"I -" When Shiro started the sentence the word sounded defensive, but he stopped and huffed a short frustrated sigh through his nose. "I'm not 'his alpha ,' at least certainly not in the way you're implying." His words were stiff and over-formal, bitten out through his teeth. "I can't go sit outside his door like a guard dog, it would be. Inappropriate." Even though his words were dismissive, the tension in the air only grew thicker as Shiro spoke, heavy as a thundercloud thick with the promise of lightning to come. "Keith's a strong person and he's done this before, Lance. He doesn't need me or anyone else around right now."

It was the excuse of a superior officer trying not to get too close to his subordinates, and Lance could read through Shiro's words like he was spilling out a book. Shiro cared about Keith, and not even either of them had ever tried to deny it. Shiro would never let someone he cared for suffer when he could help, not just because it was ' inappropriate .' If it had been any of the other paladins in heat right now Lance was sure he would be planted outside their door like an anchor, providing solidarity and the promise of safety just outside.

Which meant Shiro wasn't going to Keith's door because he was afraid . Afraid of himself and what he'd do, most likely - afraid he lacked the self control required not to let the moans from the other side of the door affect him. Or maybe just afraid that Keith would smell him outside of his door and think of nearby alpha as a threat instead of the balm it was meant to be - pretty unlikely considering that would have to mean Keith felt at all unsafe around Shiro, which. Yeah, obviously not.

Either way the answer wasn't good enough for Lance, who all but spat onto the floor like the words were sulfur, "Are you making excuse to convince me , or yourself? "

Shiro's face twisted again, frustration sharpening into a glare that would have sent Lance literally down to his knees if he hadn't been so wound up with anger and adrenaline and somehow Keith's fucking smell , even all the way in here, even Shiro's overwhelming aplha sweat not enough to drown out the constant maddening sweetness. "Lance," he started, in a cold, restrained voice, "you don't understand . It would be crossing a line." But Lance wasn't in the mood to put up with any more of this.

"You do whatever you want," Lance interrupted with a sneer. "Just know that if you're not going to help him, you better not be surprised when someone else does. "

He didn't see the look on Shiro's face at that because even before the last word was done leaving his mouth Lance was turning around, ignoring way the angry wave of pheromones roiling off of the black paladin made Lance's spine run cold and his legs shake unsteadily as he stormed off.

The worst part, Keith reflected tiredly as he stared with unseeing eyes at his bedroom ceiling, was how this heat had started.

He'd known better. They both knew better, knew Keith was far enough into his cycle that they should have been staying a three room radius away from each other. But he should have still had time, would have if this was a normal heat and not this awful goddamned pent-up supernova. They had been consistently careful, hadn't gotten too close to each other and even made sure they were always on opposite ends of the room when they could be, and yet . All it had taken was something as stupidly, maddeningly innocuous and Shiro tapping Keith's shoulder with the back of his hand to call his attention. That's it! That's all that had fucking happened!

Even through the thick leather of his jacket Keith had been able to feel the touch, searing hot and electric in a way that sent a hot shiver down his spine that had pooled straight in his groin. He'd tried to ignore it, jolted away from the touch and studiously pretended they both had not just felt that happen and that there was not now a growing arousal churning hot in Keith's groin. He and Shiro had immediately gone off into different directions, but separating hadn't even done any good because Keith's heart rate was going crazy and his senses were all turning up to overdrive and even as Keith was rushing through the castle to get to his room and maybe into the adjoining shower so he could cool down his overheated skin and when he did he'd be able to take his jacket off which was good because he could still smell Shiro on it . Half a second of skin contact that should have left no discernible trace had it been any other time of the month, but because had to be a goddamned omega and Shiro had to be a stupid alpha their body chemicals had been going insane since the last of the suppressants had finished clearing his system and now Keith couldn't even fucking look at his own best friend without someone's genitals screaming into wakefulness.

By the time Keith had reached his room his cock was half hard and he could feel his underwear damp with slick, every part of his body throbbing and humming with need and he felt every kind of gross that existed. And hot . Every kind of hot that existed, inside and out from his boiling blood to the fever flushing his skin, so hot that the moment he stepped through his door Keith was peeling his jacket off and shedding his clothes as he stumbled towards the bathroom.

He turned the water as cold as he could stand it, trying to coax his body into cooling down with the frigid water, but it was no use. Even shivering and freezing cold it was too late and Keith's dick was swollen hard, hole clenching and pulsating around nothing as his entire body ached to be filled.

Keith hadn't even needed to touch himself to come the first time, just turned the shower up to hot and let the feeling of warm water raining against his too-sensitive cock coax him into a small, shivering orgasm.

That had been last night. He'd felt just enough like himself again to leave the room, but knew better than to try do much more than drag himself to the kitchen to stock up on foodstuffs and, he supposed, it was probably wise to grab a few spare towels. He'd managed probably another good hour of wandering around the castle out of sheer stubbornness after that, determined not to lock himself into the next week's prison that was his own room until the very last possible moment.

It had been a long night, after that. At least, Keith was pretty sure the night had passed and it was day now. Hard to say, since the castle's version of "day" and "night" had more to do with the lights automatically shutting off after a certain time and their own body clocks than any other factors, so it's not like he had any way of knowing how much time had passed unless he could figure out how to read a clock, which was far too much effort in this state.

However much time had passed, it was spent in misery. Long hours of over-hot arousal, impossible to sate no matter how much time Keith spent with his hand fisted around his cock and his fingers in his ass. The best he could do was relieve the constant itching-hot pressure just enough to fall into fitful, restless sleeps, filled with fever-dreams of sex that woke him up aching more than ever.

The thing about heats was, Keith had learned, that you wanted to do the exact opposite of what your instincts were saying. The more your body cries out for more-faster-now , the less likely you'll actually be able to satisfy it by just masturbating. The best thing to do was take your time, and try to shove it to the back of your mind to focus on something else. The more you try to force it the worse it gets - the only times Keith ever found real relief were when he had gone as long as he could without without touching himself and was wound up so sensitive so it only took a few light strokes of his cock to come all over himself.

This was not one of those times. When Keith opened his eyes he wasn't sure if he was awake or still dreaming, visions of sweat and sex and broad shoulders with scarred up collarbones still echoing behind his eyes. His sex-starved mind was eager to pick up where the dream left off, fantasies of a metal hand closing hard around Keith's hip and of motion, bodies rolling together and a hot, hard cock pushing its way into Keith, who was so slick and open with wanting it'd just slide right in, so much larger and more satisfying than his fingers.

Not enough, it was never enough - his fingers were so thin and so short and only just barely reached deep enough to brush against his prostate in an irregular tease and he needed more . Needed Shiro, needed his alpha, Keith could smell him somewhere in the room, just the slightest hint of alpha pheromones somewhere at the bottom of Keith's bed and he found himself reaching blindly towards the floor, groping desperately until his own jacket was in his hand and he was hauling it into the bed with him. Keith never pulled the fingers of his left hand outside of himself for the the whole maneuver, still desperately plunging them in and out of his throbbing ass as he brought the jacket up to his face so Keith could take in the small traces of scent as much as possible.

Hot, it was too hot - his body was too hot, sweating and writhing off of his soaked bedsheets as Keith tried to bring himself to completion, humping the mattress in stuttered wild jerks out of time with the motions of his fingers. Keith blinked his eyes and found them watery with tears, and he slammed them shut again with a wretched sob tearing out of his throat. The awful pitiful noises kept coming, until he was biting into the leather of his jacket to muffle them, and every rub of his fingertips against his prostate was starting to burn too-hot with each touch, pain and discomfort overwhelming what little pleasure he'd been feeling.

It wasn't enough and he didn't know what to do, couldn't stop the unwanted desire that had taken control of his body. He needed to get off, needed to come - no, Keith needed to be fucked , needed a thick cock and a hard knot, needed to be fucked and filled and used until he was filthy and covered in jizz inside and out.

Mind fuzzed out with no rational thoughts left, Keith rolled himself out of the bed. He hit the floor with a soft thump, shakily pushing himself up to his elbows with the vague intention of crawling towards the door. He didn't know what he was doing or where he intended to go, just needed to get out of here and to wherever it was he could find someone to -

There was someone outside of Keith's door. This, he realized with sudden sharp clarity, was the first coherent thought he'd had in hours. There was someone outside of Keith's door, and while his body hadn't come anywhere even close to sated, just that was enough for Keith's brain to groggily pull itself back to reality. It took a few moments of brief panic to calm down and actually recognize the scent of the person outside, a subtle smell that was sharp and clean like fresh laundry. There was a slight unfamiliar spiciness to the scent, but it was still obvious who it was, Keith had just smelled this same scent wafting past his door several times over the past few wretched hours, but hadn't thought much of it since he'd smelled Pidge and Hunk passing by with worried frequency, too. But this was different - the smell wasn't just passing by this time, it was a solid stain leaking through the cracks between Keith's locked door.

Lance. It could only be Lance, and even with the last of Shiro's smell rubbed off of Keith's jacket while he was biting and rubbing his body against it Lance's scent shouldn't have been so strong and so noticable if he was just passing by, not unless he was sitting outside the door right at this very moment.

Keith tried to sit up for a moment, but his limbs were shaking and all he could really do was roll onto his back and flop back down onto the floor in a tired still-aching mess. There was no way he could get any relief just by touching himself right now, the best thing was just try to fall back asleep and wait this out. Keith turned his head towards the door, breathing deeply to take in as much of Lance's scent as he could through the thin metal barrier between them. Keith's body helpfully suggested that Lance being just outside the door meant Keith could very easily drag him in here and ride his cock for a while, but it wasn't so hard to ignore anymore. It was probably because he was a beta, but there was something about Lance's smell that Keith found soothing right now, like aloe vera over a fresh burn. Not enough to fix anything, just… cool down the heat a little.

Actually, when they'd first met, Keith hadn't much liked the way Lance smelled at all. He'd found the odor damp and cold like wet bark, slimy and creepy like the guy it belonged to. But gradually, as he'd gotten more used to being around Lance and noticing the subtle nuances in both his scent and surprisingly complex personality, they'd both grown on Keith and what was once akin to the sensation of stepping in mud somehow became the smell of curling your toes into the wet sand of a beach instead - cool and relieving and oddly soft, and exactly everything Keith needed right now in his overheated state.

It occurred to Keith that nothing he'd just thought in the last five minutes made any sense, but at least overanalyzing Lance's scent had distracted Keith enough for some of the blood to drain from his overactive dick back to his brain, and his arousal had quieted just enough for Keith to maybe get some rest through it. Slowly, he cleared his mind of everything, leaving no thoughts left but a great, vast blackness. And then Keith started to fill the void, concentrating on the slow task of calling stars into place one by one, name by name. Betelguese, Altinak, Saiph, Rigel. Mintaka, Bellatrix, Meissa and Alnilam - tonight, the first constellation was Orion. It wasn't even as difficult as it should have been to fall out of his overactive body and into the sexless void of space - maybe from years and years of staring up at it and dreaming, but the night sky was never hard for Keith to focus on. He used this technique for everything from anger management to his heats; the best way Keith had ever found to clear his mind.

Somewhere in the middle of drawing Ursa Minor and finally falling asleep, Keith's mind finally decided what Lance smelled like. That sharpness and wetness at the same time could only be the smell of impending rain; the heavy tang of lightning in the air, the cleanness of the sky in the short time just before a thunderstorm.

When Keith woke up the next time, He was sure he was awake. He was also aware that he was on his bedroom floor and his body was sticky-soaking wet with sweat and jizz and his own slick. Somehow, he'd managed to sleep deeply enough that he couldn't even remember his dreams, only aware that he must have had any because sometime during the nap he'd somehow managed to hump his way into another small orgasm, because his dick had calmed down to only an ignorable semi-hardness. He was also still warm, so it must not have been very long ago - Keith examined the stickiness of his own fingers with distaste and decided he'd somehow woken himself up when he came. Gross.

He didn't stand up, just hauled himself to a sitting position and looked, dazed, towards his door. "Lance?" He called out carefully.

There was a slight noise from the other side, but then nothing. Keith cleared his throat, tried again. "Lance, is that you?"

From behind the door Lance coughed a little, a rough shaky sound. "Um. Yes?"

Keith wasn't actually sure what to do with information now that he had it. He hummed to himself, a bit awkwardly. After a period of light indecision, he asked "What are you doing out there?"

A pause. "Uhhhh. I guess I just… came to ask if you needed anything? Like. I dunno, a glass of water? You want water?"

Keith felt his face twist into confusion for a moment before a short laugh burst out of his chest. "What?" He asked around the huff of startled laughter. Seriously, it had to have been at least a half hour since Keith fell asleep. Had Lance been out there the whole time? How long had he been there before Keith had noticed him? A panicked voice in Keith's head suggested he was out there laying in wait for any opportunity to strike at Keith during his most vulnerable time and another voice instead offered that he might be a pervert there to jack off to Keith's heat scent, but he managed to shake both ideas off without much trouble. This wasn't some creep alpha on the streets making passing gropes at Keith's ass - this was Lance. Lance, their blue paladin of Voltron, who respected Keith as a pilot but barely liked him as a person. The idea of him doing either of those things was absurd. Of course the idea of him sitting out outside the door for an hour to offer Keith a glass of water was also absurd though, so. Wherever that l anded him. "Seriously, how long have you been out there?"

There was a weird frustrated noise from Lance. "Okay, I'm gonna level with you because I just now realized how this might seem from your side of the door and I'm thinking sounding kinda sexist is better than looking like a creepy pervert." Well he'd certainly read Keith right on that one. "But uh, I guess I feel like I shouldn't leave an omega in heat all alone, not when you have. Uh. Family around, you know? So I'm sort of just… hanging out here like I used to do for my sister. When she was in heat." The next words were a mumble that Keith was certain he wasn't supposed to hear, and wouldn't have been able to at all if he weren't mid-estrus. "... Except ten thousand times worse for ten thousand reasons. "

Keith had actually heard of this behavior before, but… He was also pretty sure it extended only to actual blood-relatives and not weird little bound-together found packs like theirs. There was a very basic and obvious reason for this - Lance's sister's pheremones wouldn't have affected him of the rest of his family, not when they'd been exposed to constant hormone fluctuation of her puberty and grown immune through close contact the way families did. And that was when Keith realized the odd hint of citric spiciness in Lance's normally calm scent was probably arousal, because... Yeah. Not family.

Keith's eyebrows rose to his hairline. Ten thousand reasons indeed.

"So your plan is to just… Hang out there? For the entire week?"

A deep shuddering breath from Lance. "Well I was hoping to get Pidge and Coran to take a few shifts, but uh. Yeah, I guess so." Another long pause, before in an uncertain voice Lance asked "...Would you feel better if I left?"

Ah, wasn't that a question, Keith reflected. His first immediate instinct was to send Lance away, if for no other reason than the still active voice in the back of Keith's head reminding him that Lance is attractive and has a penis that could easily be inside of Keith at this very moment, and he couldn't fight the thought off in time for it to tease Keith with the notion that he could smell that Lance's arousal from here and it would only take a few seconds to get to the other side of that door and into Lance's jeans. But more importantly, Keith realized that that very heat-dizzy thought was far easier to brush off than it should have been on the first day of a heat Keith had been putting off for years. Something about Lance's presence, that rain-cool beta scent was keeping Keith anchored in reality and out of the prison of his own skin.

He looked back towards his bed where his red leather jacket lie bite-marked and jizz-stained. Shiro's metallic-thunder scent, right now, would have driven Keith into another disgusting frenzy, out of control of his own actions and a slave to his body's desires. But right now… Instead something about Lance's scent made Keith feel almost normal again. Made him feel… safe.

Keith inhaled a deep breath of air, holding it in his lungs for a few moments before letting it out. "Actually, there is something you can do for me, now that I think about it," he said very deliberately to Lance. Keith stood up, finding his legs shaky but stable enough to walk the two remaining steps to unlock his door. His heart was pounding too-fast in his chest, but that could have been for a million different reasons right now and Keith didn't find himself concerned by it. The door slid open with a quiet swish and Lance jerked his head up at the sound, their eyes making contact. Keith watched as Lance's eyes dilated and darkened under Keith's gaze, before Lance was snapping his head forward again to face the far wall and look away from Keith's still-naked body. Keith let his own eyes flicker down to take in the way Lance was sitting with his knees spread apart to give room to the erection straining against his jeans and the hands curled into a too-tight grasp on his own thighs that was turning his fingertips white from the looked back to Lance's profiled face, still studiously not looking at Keith as he answered in a low, uneven voice, "Wh… Uh. Yes?"

Keith bit his lip, realizing he was embarrassed. Whoops, too late now, right? "I'm feeling pretty gross right now and was… I'm gonna take a shower. Could, you, uh…" Lance was still looking away from Keith but his eyes were wide, and the tense line of his shoulders had started to shake a little. "Could you wash my bedsheets while I'm in there?"

Lance blinked, looking up at Keith automatically before he remembered the other paladin was quite naked. He still seemed to notice much less this time, startled confusion flashing across his face as he looked past Keith into the room behind him. Keith stepped back to gesture towards the small Altean washing machine in the corner of his room. This was a spaceship, and as long as you knew where to look pretty much any amenities could be found in each paladin's bedroom - the food Keith planned on surviving off of if the week was so bad he couldn't leave his own space was all in a cooler hidden high inside his wall. "Oh. Sure," Lance said, his voice light with surprise and the desire to actually be helpful. "No problem, happy to help," he said honestly as he rocked to his feet.

Keith slipped inside first and headed towards his shower, not looking back as he gently asked "And my clothes too, if you could."

Lance hummed in assent, and Keith thought he seemed relieved Keith had asked something so innocuous and easy of him. "Sure sure, take all the time you need. Good old Lance will get this place SPOTLESS, you won't even know it's the same disgusting hobo cave your Oscar-the-Grouch ass is so used to."

Keith couldn't have fought the smile off his face if he'd even tried. "I only need you to do the laundry."

"SPOTLESS, I SAY. IT SHALL SPARKLE WITH THE SHINE OF THE HEAVENS."

He laughed all the way into his shower.

Keith took his time. Set the heat to a mild lukewarm and stared up at the ceiling, letting the water soak into his skin until he turned pruny from it before he even picked up the soap. Just outside he could hear the domestic sounds of Lance shuffling around, oddly relaxing in their own right. Eventually, once the sounds went quiet and Keith was sure Lance had left the sanctuary of his room Keith turned off the water, let himself by dried by the hot blasts of air that activate once you step out of the shower.

His room really WAS cleaner, much moreso than Keith had even realized it needed. He'd managed to leave more than one set of old clothes strewn across the floor over the stress of the past few days that were all cleared from the floor and presumably stored in Keith's closet, and he found himself relieved to find his jacket, too, had been stashed away. He didn't even open the closet to look, just threw himself naked onto the bed and discovered somehow Lance had managed to even clean his mattress, because Keith was about eighty percent sure it had been damp and sticky and gross before this and the whole room had smelled stuffy with sweat and Keith's solo sex-stank and now… It still did, but not nearly as much .

In fact, Keith decided as he buried his face in his pillow, instead of reeking so badly of himself the room smelled more like Lance than ever. Especially the sheets, which were still just a bit warm from having been washed and mostly smelled pleasantly like lemon-chemical detergent and only carried the slightest traces of Lance's scent from when he'd made the bed only moments ago. Faint as it was the smell was enough that Keith could find it easy to imagine Lance's hands touching the sheets, long fingers carefully stretching fabric over the length of the mattress and smoothing out ruffled corners as he made Keith's bed, and Keith barely even noticed the tiny bloom of renewed arousal that had been growing warm in his belly for a few minutes now. It was oddly easy to linger on that image - Lance's well-manicured hands sliding slowly and gently across pale white fabric, and a shiver danced its way down Keith's spine as the sheets turned to skin in his mind and he was suddenly just imagining Lance touching him instead.

Once again Keith's first instinct was to banish the thought before it could progress. He liked Lance, weird and difficult a person as he was. Thinking about him while Keith masturbated would be crossing a line, making the distinct border Keith had drawn between liking Lance and being attracted to him blur a little too dangerously.

Then again, his rising erection informed him, if he didn't think about Lance then that would mean the only person on this ship Keith HAD thought about… during his heat was Shiro. Keith felt his face twist into a cringe at the thought, disgust welling in his throat like bile at the memory of the bite marked red leather. Okay that was… Weirdly good incentive, actually. It might be weird to look at Lance after this but it will definitely be weird to look at Shiro no matter what, so Keith might as well. In fact, maybe tomorrow he'd think about Hunk and then it'd be weird for everyone and therefore no one. How was that for a plan.

It was probably a thin excuse to give himself permission to do this, but Keith didn't really care. This time the arousal felt different than the usual desperate heat-lust, felt more… natural. Like he'd actually just gotten aroused on a normal day for normal reasons because maybe he liked the way Lance smelled on his bed, especially with that mango tang of Lance's own desire dancing both familiar and unfamiliar mixed in with that water-and-ozone Lance scent. He realized his breaths were coming shorter, drawing the intoxicating scent in to swirl around in his lungs, making his head spin warmly and slick once again dirty the space between his freshly washed thighs.

His brain couldn't even decide what to imagine, rich with half-formed ideas he'd never allowed himself to indulge in before. Because yeah, okay, Keith could admit he'd noticed how attractive he found Lance around the same time he realized there was more to the other paladin than bluster and ego and really that was exactly why Keith wasn't normally allowed to do this. This type of shit was just too much for Keith's poor gay heart. And it was also why it was so very, very easy to do so.

Keith ran gentle fingertips down his skin, starting where his left hand had been curled against his chest and trailing a slow path downwards. Lance took care of his skin, would have softer hands with fingertips that hadn't been burned with callouses like Keith's were, and he found himself worming his way under the neatly folded topcover of his bed so that he could twist the soft sheet underneath between his thighs as rolled onto his side, suddenly desperate for the silken feeling of the fabric sliding against his skin. It was strange, Keith never bothered in such tactile pleasures as rolling around in his bedsheets before, had somehow never managed to notice how soft they were or how good they felt against his overheated skin.

His mind produced a fantasy of Lance's voice chuckling, a low affectionate sound. Even just in his imagination the sound made Keith spread his thighs apart a bit, an unconscious need to be holding something solid between them, like maybe a set of slim hips. He slipped that wandering hand in between the part in his thighs, fingers playing across skin that grew wetter the further towards his groin they went until he was pressing two fingertips against the twitching rim of his hole, not enough to breach, just enough to enjoy the pressure. He let a sigh escape his mouth, long and content as he wiggled his hips until his cock was pushed nicely against the forearm he had shoved between his legs, settling into a comfortable position while he used his fingertips to tease his entrance with alternating pressure.

"Ah, holy shit," he heard himself mumble into his pillow. Holy shit, Keith felt amazing right now. And he finally understood why going into heat made your skin so hypersensitive to touch because everything about every part of his body felt like that right now, tingling and warm and comfortable and… yeah. It was nice. He felt… nice right now.

Keith allowed one finger to slip inside and a tiny breathless whine fell out of his throat. It had slid in easily like usual when he was this wet, but somehow it felt so much more satisfying than what was normal for him. He was so used to the constant rush of now-more-never enough that Keith was almost surprised to remember he was still in heat and not just pleasuring himself for the sake of it.

Wet and hot and tight around his finger, he could feel the passage flutter in want around him and didn't even bother moving the digit around at first, content just to feel the sensations and take in the smell of Lance in his room, strong enough he could pretend he was in there in Keith's bed with him. Pretend when he started to move that it was Lance, his middle finger slipping in to join the first and curl them both against the inside of Keith's body. The sound that came out of Keith's throat this time was more like a low broken moan, and he began to twist and pump his fingers with the phantom weight of Lance's arms around his body and his chest pressed to Keith's back and maybe, maybe he'd even let him do something perilously intimate like kiss his neck.

His breath was coming in hard pants now, hips rocking into his arm to get some friction against his also-leaking cock as he worked his fingers inside himself. Keith was probably making more noises that would normally humiliate him but he didn't care, and this time it wasn't because he was blind to the world in his chase to reach his finish. Instead it was because everything just felt too fucking good right now to give any kind of shit. Is this what heats were supposed to feel like? Was this was SEX was supposed to feel like? Because Keith really… He really hadn't managed to make his own touch feel like this before.

His middle finger brushed against his forgotten prostate and Keith moaned , loud even to his own ears. He shoved his fingers in deep and kept them there, warm and solid and thick inside of himself so he could flicker the tip of his finger against it repeatedly, hoping his body wasn't shaking so much that he'd dislodge his fingers and lose the exact perfect spot he'd managed to reach.

Even the feeling of his orgasm starting to build was different than usual, the tight coil in his groin tended to border on painful when Keith in the throes of heat but this time it felt more like… Building up a sneeze, maybe? He wasn't sure and he didn't care, just let himself sink into fantasies of Lance and his voice and his hands and his arms and his mouth and his scent, the cool odor growing more bitter with the citric taste of arousal and surprisingly still-functional logic center of Keith's brain supplied the information that Lance's smell could only be different from before if he was still sitting outside your door, which you really knew he would be doing anyway, didn't you?

When Keith came it was a surprise, but a pleasant one. Like stepping into a pond expecting cold water only to realize it was a hot spring, and the sound Keith made was more of a sigh than anything as his come splashed warmly against his arm and belly and his whole body relaxed into a happy boneless heap.

"Holy SHIT," he repeated quietly into his pillow. Whatever the fuck that was, it had been exactly what Keith had needed. He hadn't felt so relaxed in months, and fell into a heavy dreamless sleep before his body was even done shaking from the aftershocks.

Lance was the stupidest person to have ever lived. Just… holy fuck levels of dumb, all over the place. He had to be, or else why would he have gone out of his way to put himself in this goddamned situation when he could have played it like Shiro and just stay the fuck out of the way. That would have been the SMART thing to do.

Lance let head fall to rest on an open palm, propped up sitting on his knee. He pinched at his eyebrows and rubbed at his temples like the action could somehow dispell the way his ears were ringing loudly against the inside of his skull. Fuck. He hated to admit it, but he TOTALLY understood Shiro's stance on this issue now. As nice of the idea of keeping watch over Keith during his heat was in theory, when it came to practice it seemed Lance had severely underestimated how much he would be able to hear and smell from this side of the door, and how much aching-hard suffering he would have to endure for it. And Lance was just a dull-nosed beta - if this had been Shiro sitting here with his heightened alpha senses… Yeah. That would have been a bad call. For everyone all around. Bad plan.

And now he couldn't leave. Couldn't even bring himself to regret coming here, because for all the trouble this decision was causing Lance… Keith seemed to want him there. He had to - the guy was way too straightforward, would have told Lance to go away the moment he noticed him instead of… Inviting him in to do his laundry. Whatever the FUCK that meant.

Lance knew what it was - it was Keith accepting his help. Openly and obviously asking for a favor when Lance offered, which was as far as Lance was concerned as good as Keith directly asking him to stay. But there was something at the same time that seemed sort of off about the request, made Lance feel like he was being tested. Although if that was the case he doubted if Keith even knew he was doing it at all, much less what the test was actually for - he wasn't passive aggressive enough to do that sort of thing on purpose. But Keith also had paranoia and trust issues a mile wide, so… Yeah. Impossible to read the guy.

From the other side of the door Lance heard another tell-tale uncomfortable moan, and sucked a deep shuddering breath in through his lungs. Fuck, he should have tried to sleep while Keith had been. Now that he knew the other paladin was awake Lance wouldn't be getting any more catnaps, and it meant he really couldn't go wander off and ask Pidge to take over for a while so he could go take a piss and eat dinner. And go jerk off in his room, because Lance had been sitting here for god knows how many hours now and had been sporting an erection for at least like, six of them.

It hadn't been all that bad at first. Before Keith had noticed him, that was. It had been easier to put all of that out of mind when Lance still hadn't even been sure Keith wanted him there, wasn't sure he was helping anyone or anything yet. But that was probably because he had not yet actually seen Keith, naked and sweaty standing so close to Lance he could actually feel the heat coming off of his skin. And then when Lance had resumed his post outside, God. The fucking noises he'd made, they'd been unlike anything else Lance had ever heard in his LIFE. Lance's sister wanted kids someday so she never went on suppressants, just some birth control that made her heats less frequent but not enough that he and the rest of his family hadn't still spent many, many hours outside her door in sentinel. And yeah obviously he'd been listening to Morgan even less than he listened to Keith, but he wasn't deaf and he still knew that the sounds of an omega in heat were usually more pained and desperate than uh… whatever the fuck that had been.

Hot. Hot is what it had been. It had been the sexiest thing Lance had ever heard only moments after seeing the sexiest thing he'd ever seen all while smelling the sexiest thing he'd ever smelled and had he ever mentioned how stupid he was or maybe how unfair life is?

Lance was not doing a very good job of ignoring the sexy noises happening now, either. Well, they seemed more restless than sexy at this point, a lot of shuffling mixed in with the odd frustrated curse. Which could actually mean that Keith was either masturbating or just trying to find a spot on the mattress that wasn't wet with jizz, because Lance didn't know how long ago it had been since he'd been in there to wash the sheets but he knew Keith had come four times since then. Not that he was paying attention.

And he was also not paying attention to the sound of Keith rolling out of bed and wandering around his room, which meant he couldn't hear Keith's footsteps because he'd have to have been actually listening to catch those. Lance let a breath of air huff out of his nose, pinching his temples even harder. God, this was so fucked up.

"Lance?" The voice on the other side of the door sounded a bit slurred and dreamy.

Lance jolted a bit at the sound, surprised to be addressed again. "Yeah?"

There was a slight pause, before Keith eventually asked, "What time is it?"

"Uhhh…" Lance blinked, looking up at the dark hallway around him. The lights had shut off… maybe an hour or two ago? He knew they were motion activated at night and he could turn them back on pretty much just by standing up, but it hadn't seemed worth the trouble. He flailed an arm out now, the lights shuddering back into life and causing Lance to blink at the sudden brightness. "Middle of the night? I kinda didn't bring my phone for some reason, so…"

"And you've been here since this afternoon?"

"Well. I stole some of your stash while I was doing the laundry, so I did eat a while ago," Lance defended as though hunger was the most pressing issue discomforting him right now. Keith didn't respond with words, just more of the sound of bare feet padding around the floor.

Lance's spine tensed at the sound of the door opening just to his side, but was prepared enough not to look over when it did. His heart had sped up again and he tried not to show it, just lifted his head out of his hand to look straight ahead at the far wall. Next to him, Keith leaned his hip against the doorway, apparently considering something. And then, in a voice that sounded steadier and calmer than Lance's own, suggested "You should come inside."

A jolt ran down Lance's already tense spine and he barely stopped himself from jerking like a taser victim. Very carefully, he tried "Uh. That sounds like a bad idea."

Keith hummed, a soft dismissive noise like if he'd heard Lance at all he didn't care. "I can't smell you very well from out here, though, so. You should come inside my room."

Lance's mouth opened and then hung like that, not sure if he'd been trying to say something and stopped or just decided to gape. Finally he looked up at Keith's face, just barely resisting the urge to flicker up and down the sculpted bare flesh of his body so he could look into Keith's eyes. They looked a little clouded and dazed, seeming to be looking Lance up and down and staring straight through him into space at the same time. So, not as coherent as the last time they'd talked but not totally lost to the heat, either. Lance was ready to speak, had a gentle 'I don't think I should,' ready on his tongue but Keith quirked a waiting eyebrow at him and Lance found the word that came out of his mouth was "Okay."

Keith smiled, slow and small and bad for Lance's health and safety. And then, apparently just in case Lance decided he might try to back out of it, hooked one finger in the back of his shirt collar to drag him off his feet and with Keith as he sauntered back inside the dark of his waiting bedroom.

Lance tried to tell himself to be prepared for it after the first time he was in here, but the smell of Keith hit him like a wall when he stepped inside the small space, spicy-sweet and rich like ginger and chocolate. Except you know, in a metaphorical way because smells were hard to describe and it'd be pretty strange if a person actually smelled like chocolate all the time, right? Lance absently wondered why there weren't more words to describe smells, because Keith's was so complicated and nuanced there were no words in any language that could capture it entirely. But aside from that particular Keith scent the room also had regained that musty human-sweaty sex stink, and all of it mixed together was… Distracting, is the word Lance was going to pick for this one.

His eyes darted around the room searching for somewhere he could plant himself where he wouldn't be near or looking at Keith, but whatever plan he might have come up on that didn't pan out considering Keith didn't let go of Lance's shirt until he'd dragged him all the way to Keith's bed. At which point he unceremoniously dropped onto the bed like a sack of bricks and apparently instantly forgot about Lance entirely. Which. Okay cool, he could work with that.

Lance scooted toward the foot of Keith's bed and sat down on the floor, facing away and carefully arranging himself into a cross-legged position that wouldn't put any pressure on his already regrowing erection because thanks, penis, you really know what's appropriate in this situation don't you? God damn sexy ginger Keith smell.

It was impossible to force himself to relax when it was obvious Keith wasn't either. Next to him on the bed Keith continued to shift and change positions every minute or so, breath heavy and restless as he tried to make himself comfortable. Lance had thought it had been hard not to listen to Keith before, but now it was downright impossible to hear anything else, even the thoughts in Lance's own head drown out by the thunderous distraction that was every tiny shift of moment on the bed behind him. He could hear every ruffle of bedsheets, every tiny sigh and curse, could hear when Keith flopped onto his stomach and came to something approaching stillness.

A few minutes past with only twitching from Keith, and Lance managed to get his shoulders to relax. Hopefully, Keith would fall back asleep soon and… Lance could. He did not even know. Sit there more, he guessed. Fuck. Fuck his life.

Keith's breathing wasn't normal. Instead of growing even to fall asleep it was coming faster and harder, with deep shuddering inhales of breath and that made Keith's whole body shake lightly. Lance's could feel his own heart rate rise in turn, realizing that if Keith had just woken up from one of his naps then it was for more likely than instead of sleep right now he was… He was going to… Gonna need to… Yeeap.

Keith was shifting on the bed again, tiny little movements that Lance could imagine easily being the sound of Keith rolling his hips against the mattress needily.

Another restless dissatisfied huff from Keith, followed by him changing positions again, curling up into a little ball and then wiggling down toward the middle of the bed. Out of the corner of Lance's eye he could just barely make out the shape of Keith's body next to him, only just caught the movement he wasn't looking at that was Keith reaching between his own legs. Oh shit, he was gonna do this. Keith was gonna do this and Lance was gonna die.

He slammed his eyes shut, the temptation to turn his head just the few degrees he'd need to see everything a little too overwhelming. To his luck, somehow the act of shutting off his vision just made every tiny sound that much easier to hear, the image of what might be causing it rising behind Lance's blank eyelids just that much more easily. Keith was right next to him, right next to Lance's head and by the sound of it he was stroking his own cock. Lance wanted to see it, wanted to see what the shape of Keith's dick would look like in his hand, to see what size it was and watch how Keith liked to touch himself. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter,hard to the point that spots danced red and yellow clouding up his vision.

A tiny little half-gasp half-sigh fell from Keith's lips and the bed shook a soft bump against Lance's back, and in his mind's eye he could see Keith slipping two wet fingers into himself. There was more movement of… some kind, soft and fast and repetitive like the dry slide of skin on skin. Lance realized then he was holding his own breath, air stilled in his lungs and heart beating almost as violently as the throbbing of his dick pressed unpleasantly against the metal zipper of Lance's jeans.

The air was knocked out of his lungs pretty much literally when one of Keith's toned legs flailed out to stretch and wound up hitting the back of Lance's neck with it, and in the pain he reflexively looked over just in time to see a naked foot slung over his shoulder and next to his face before it withdrew and Keith was once again rolling around on his bed with a frustrated curse.

Lance shuttered his eyes closed again, horror dawning over him as Keith resettled on the bed, now completely upside down from where he'd started out. Upside down facing the foot of his bed, right next to where Lance's head was because life apparently had some kind of personal vendetta against him and needed to make everything as difficult as humanly possible.

Lance's hands curled to dig into his knees, fingernails sinking into his skin through the denim hard enough to be painful. He concentrated on his own breathing in an effort not to listen to Keith's, forcing slow and even lungfuls of air in and out every six seconds. It didn't do any good. It wasn't just the sound of Keith's breathing that was the problem - he could hear... Lane could hear fucking everything .

Keith was touching himself again, stroking his cock at an even pace. Lance could hear the wet slide of Keith's palm against his precome-slicked skin, the rougher sound of the inside of his arm dragging against his torso with each jerking motion. Keith was moving again, his hips shifting against the bed as he fucked himself into his own hand, and when the first moan spilled out of his too-close mouth Lance had to bite his own lip to restrain the urge to match it.

Somewhere in Lance trying to force himself out of reality and think of something else, the whole thing became a little surreal. What the fuck had happened to Lance's life? Trapped in deep space fighting a war and sitting next to Keith's bed while he masturbates, all at the same fucking time. WAS this even real? It couldn't be, right? It was too weird. Whatever this strong gingersnap smell fogging up the air was it was making him crazy, and his erection must have somehow called up the fantasy of Keith next to him because surely that was the only way logical explanation for this.

Like a man escaping from torture, Lance almost managed to convince himself of this. He wishes he could have, it would have made the whole thing easier to pretend he was hallucinating and detach himself from his body. In fact the sounds of Keith's increasingly frequent moans and sighs even only helped that conclusion since they were also way too sexy to be real life. Lance going insane would have been totally fine with him right now, truth be told!

But there was no way. No way Lance could possibly be anywhere other than trapped in his own skin, because all of the sudden Keith was moving again, twisting in the bedsheets while he touched himself and unconsciously flailing out a long arm. That arm didn't just hit the back of Lance's neck like his heel had; instead it landed after a few flailing gropes at the air, right on top of Lance's head.

Keith's breath hitched, the sound of the jerk of his wrist speeding up as his other hand curled its fingers into Lance's thick hair, and the feeling of the pull against his scalp shot straight down to his straining cock. The devil. Keith was the fucking devil and Lance was in the second circle of hell, being punished for his lust be a sweet-smelling incubus and unable to find relief in an endless stream of torturous temptation. Keith was making sounds again, desperate little fucky noises while he brought himself off, hand on his cock and breath close enough to warm Lance's skin and his hand, his hand fisted in Lance's fucking hair like a lifeline.

Lance had to desperately remind himself why he wasn't allowed to touch himself, why he couldn't even just pull down his zipper enough to relieve some of the pressure from his aching dick. He wanted so badly to, jesus christ he could bring himself off in a second right now, wouldn't even have to reach inside his boxers because Lance was sure just the feeling of touching his cock through his wet underwear would be enough with how long he'd needed to get off, but… But he just fucking couldn't. That would make this something it wasn't, make this something dirty and sexual and Lance had come here for Keith because he wanted to help , not jerk off to his heat-scent. No matter how tempting it was actually doing it would be crossing a line and making this about Lance when it was supposed to only be about Keith, and just the thought of Keith smelling Lance's come and knowing he got off on this and how dirty and betrayed he'd probably feel was enough to steel Lance's self control. He could do this. He was harder and hornier than he'd ever been in his life, but Lance was a MAN god damn it, and he could do this for Keith.

Keith's moans had become more sobbing and desperate, and his hand fisted painfully hard in Lance's hair for a moment, the biting down on his tongue to hold down another moan of his own. He didn't quite succeed, and if Keith noticed the sound his reaction was… Uh… Smothering it?

Lance didn't know. Lance didn't know anything anymore. He didn't know what had happened to his life because suddenly the hand had left his hair and he couldn't even be relieved because it was groping around and down, pinching at his forehead and cheeks until they found what they were looking for and two thick fingers were sliding between Lance's startled lips and into his mouth.

Lance's eyes were wide and his head bowed back, rising a little on his knees as his spine curved in an unconscious effort to lean back and give Keith better access. The taste. Jesus fuckign christ, he could taste Keith .

The fingers in his mouth had been the two he had just had plunged inside of his wet, wanting hole Lance knew. Almost against his will his tongue started moving, wrapping around those hot fingers to lap up as much of the copper-metallic taste of Keith's slick as he could, his eyes falling closed in tortuous pleasure as the air now filled with the sound of both of them moaning almost in tandem. He wanted more, more of everything, more of Keith in his mouth and more of the taste of his slick, wanted to lick it off of his thighs and eat it out of his ass until Keith was shaking and fucking his hips back onto Lance's tongue and begging for it .

Lance slowly spread his knees apart more to try to let off some of the pressure from his jeans, now even that too much for his oversensitive cock. This was beyond just hard now, this was Lance being able to come right there in his pants if he wasn't careful, Keith's taste was just too much and not enough and Lance found himself sucking on Keith's fingers to try to chase the last traces of that bitter sex taste off of his skin, desperately wriggling his tongue around the digits and in the space between down to the knuckle in hopes of another trace of Keith's flavor. Lance was shaking and Keith's breaths were hard and fast and his moans were so loud and frequent right in Lance's ear, little broken whimpers and gasps of "Ah, ah yes, yes, " so soft and slutty they sounded like they never could have been coming out of the mouth of such a - of someone as - from Keith .

Keith was close to coming, he was pretty sure. His whole body was shaking - actually both of them were, but Keith was shaking more, his body twitching and jerking out of time with the punched-put breaths he was pulling loudly into his lungs. The arm wrapped around Lance's head jerked and the fingers plunged even deeper into Lance's mouth, down his throat enough to gag him. Even though the digits weren't actually all that large they felt like they were taking up Lance's whole mouth, filing him up and hooking a bit on his tongue on the way to the back of his throat and he couldn't breathe around them which somehow only made it hotter. He was choking and he knew it and the thought only made Lance's cock throb even more, so much that he had to actively stop his body from coming right then and there just from this and somehow in trying to stop himself a humiliating release he ended up biting down, Keith's finger's soft under his teeth.

Keith howled , loud and wet and fucked-out sexy inches away from Lance's ear. His whole body jerked and wrenched, curling onto his side as his orgasm was ripped out of him to leave a shuddering, boneless puddle. The smell of his release was strong, pungent and hot and Keith was withdrawing his fingers from Lance's mouth but not from his person. Instead that hand wound itself loosely back into Lance's hair as Keith's whole body grew loose and Lance only dug his fingers into his own bruise-punctured thighs all the harder for it, unable to relax himself under the still-looming threat that if he so much as shifted in his pants right now he'd come all over them.

It took a half hour for Lance's erection to unwind enough for him to even slide into an exhausted mess on Keith's floor. Keith had fallen asleep after about two minutes. His hand never left Lance's head as he slept.

Everyone was surprised the next day when Keith showed up for breakfast. No one wanted to admit they were surprised, because omegas were known to work through their heats if their bodies allowed or if their financial situation required it, but considering how long this heat had been building up for they all honestly were. After putting his body chemicals so out of whack, Keith just shouldn't have been able to be up and about in this condition; not unless he'd gotten some kind of… Relief.

Shiro would also absolutely not admit he would personally rather Keith still be in bed, but that was because that was born purely out of a selfish desire for his own comfort. It really was good that Keith felt well enough to leave the confines of his room, Shiro knew better than anyone how Keith hated feeling like he was being restrained. Maybe Shiro could just… Invest in a nose plug, or something. Probably a good idea to jerk off more often, because even if Keith himself didn't feel so desperately needy that he couldn't function the chemicals his body continued to send out told an entirely different story, which… Was difficult for everybody around him.

Lance, he noted, looked like he had been keelhauled, beaten, and strung out to dry. He must have made good on his word, and Shiro shoved down the unwanted voice telling him that Lance had no right or no place to sit outside Keith's door while he was in heat. The fact was that Keith very obviously did feel better, so… So maybe Lance was why Keith was up and wandering around the castle looking for work. Maybe he had had a point, after all.

The idea still sat uneasily in Shiro stomach, the image of Lance standing guard over Keith. Protecting him where Shiro should have been. They may not have been a real pack as much as they were a poorly formed military unit, but he was both captain and alpha and he couldn't ignore the feeling nagging at him that it should have been him there instead, that instead of encouraging this he should have been trying to keep Lance as far away from that door as possible.

He must have been there all night. Lance absolutely reeked like Keith all day, more so than just the stuffy air around them already did. Shiro firmly reminded himself that if they had gotten relief in that way they'd smell like each other in a whole different manner, that as close as Lance had gotten - and it was close - they hadn't actually… Shiro frowned to himself, cutting off his own train of thought. It wasn't even appropriate for him to be thinking about this, two of his paladins like that.

It didn't matter, anyway. It didn't matter if they had had sex. It was none of Shiro's business if Keith smelled like Lance, there was no reason whatsoever for it to be bothering him. In fact, it would even be a good thing - whatever this strange, strained pheromone-rich air was between Shiro and Keith, it might finally settle and stop trying to draw them towards each other with such magnetism. All of this… whatever it was, it was good . Keith and Lance were good for each other.

And besides. Shiro had already known for a long time now, how Keith felt about Lance. So. If he had ever wanted any kind of shot at courting Keith, he should have done it a long, long time ago - he had already missed his chance by a longshot.