He gets woken up an entire hour and a half before they're set to be up for breakfast by Lance's steadfast, loud knocking on his door.
He has to blink a couple of times to process the reality of his own face staring at himself from across the threshold, but once he does, he slurs out an inquisitive Lance? that might have more vocals than it should. He's blaming that on being almost killed the night before by Galran soldiers and then having some weird, apparently untested alien technology fired at him that swapped his mind into someone else's body. Lance's body.
Lance cocks his eyebrows at him, makes a vague hand gesture that Keith makes out to roughly mean dude? are you gonna let me in or what?, and so Keith steps aside and lets Lance storm in.
He doesn't have the presence of mind to fight Lance's hands on his shoulders pushing him towards the modest ensuite bathroom; he yawns and lets himself get dragged in, hissing when his bare feet touch the cold floor (and how come tiles for bathroom floors are the one thing Alteans share with humans?).
He's aware of Lance talking to him, but he's still too asleep to try to decipher whatever it is he's blabbering about. He only starts paying attention when one of Lance's hands goes to the drawstring of his pajama pants.
"Whoa, what are you doing?" He asks, slapping Lance's hand away, cheeks warm.
"You," Lance starts, pointing at him (and Keith notices that for all he's made fun of him for the last forever for them, he's wearing his fingerless gloves), "are not screwing up my skin care routine, man."
"Really, Lance? This is your main concern right now?"
"Ugh, you wouldn't get it, man. You're, like, the only human on board surviving on natural looks alone. Even Pidge spends more time than you in the bathroom, and that's Pidge. You don't even brush that mullet thing of yours."
Keith frowns.
"I do brush my hair, Lance."
" Once a day. You comb through that thing once and then you're done. Curse naturally pretty people," Lance grumbles, looking through all these different products with labels that are incomprehensible to Keith… and to Lance too, probably.
"How do you know what those are? How did you even get those?"
Wait.
"You think I'm pretty?"
Lance glares at him, but the look is entirely undermined by the light dust blushing his cheeks and the shimmering pale blue bottle that seems to exude a cheery feeling in his hand. And, well, the fact that it's Keith's face staring back at Keith.
"Oh, come on, Mr. I am so hot and popular that half the pilot class wants to jump my bones, despite my terrible personality. Don't act all humble on me, because I'm not buying what you're selling. And I bought these on the last planet we saved from Zarkon's army of purple assholes."
Keith blinks a couple of time at the barrage of words. He should probably feel insulted, but his cheeks warm up at Lance's casual admission of thinking him hot, for some reason. Hopefully Lance's darker complexion will hide it.
"Like your personality is any better," Keith finally retorts when he stops feeling like he'll say something weird and stupid.
"I'm a delight," Lance boasts and Keith snorts. Lance pointedly ignores him in favor of carefully arranging all these different products next to Keith on the bedspread.
"I'm gonna rock your world," Lance says, wiggling his eyebrows as he puts one knee between Keith's legs on the bed, tipping his face up. "And sit straight, mom will kill me if I get a hump because you have terrible posture. Also, did you cleanse just like I told you?"
"Yeah, Lance," he drones back, "I used your exfoliation sponge just like you told me to, ten times."
"Don't underestimate the power of a good exfoliation, dude, do dead skin cells sound sexy to you?"
Keith doesn't get to reply, because Lance is suddenly all over him, fingers applying something cool and vaguely sweet smelling on him as he frowns in concentration and looms over him. The feeling of having his own face that close is surreal, but Keith can't help but stare anyway, looking at all the little things that look out of place in his face because they're obviously Lance things, all these microexpressions that scream of him and draw Keith's attention.
Lance starts rubbing the product in and before he's done, he's reaching for another bottle and squirting some of it in the mix and applying it too and Keith is lost. Does a face really need all this shit on it?
Lance rolls his eyes at him, as if Keith had said that out loud, and at some other time he'd probably have to think about whether he'd blurted that out, but he's very conscious of his mouth, his lips kind of parted awkwardly.
"It's moisturizer. Normally you just go with water or oil-based, you know? Based on whatever's going on up there in the skin department. Like, if you're covered in pimples, you want some water based moisturizer. But my skin's this combined thing you know? So I have to use these special products that apparently aren't available anywhere outside of Earth. Buuuut, being the resourceful and amazing guy I am, I found a combination of products that works."
Keith hums, unsure of what else to say to all that information, and Lance nods back at him as though that had been the exact contribution he'd expected. He rubs some of the slick over his upper lip and Keith's breath stutters. He feels the urge to shift around, but makes himself be still until Lance is done and reaching for another jar.
"Is this gonna take much longer?"
"Nah, there's just this for wrinkles and sunscreen, hold still. I know you can't wait to take my awesome bod for a ride but you're gonna have to—"
"—Wrinkles? Lance, we're nineteen."
"Hey, don't judge. It's never too early to start preventing looking like fucking Voldemort at age fifty or something. I mean, Ma's side of the family has great genetics and she doesn't look a day over thirty even though she is pushing fifty, but—"
"You talk a lot about your mom," Keith says, without thinking, just because he realized and he's never been big on filtering his thoughts. Lance's face, however, shuts down as soon as his words are out, and Keith knows he somehow landed on a landmine.
"Yeah, I guess," Lance replies, faking cheer as he drops a dollop of something cold and slimy under Keith's left eye.
Lance is silent and lackluster as he applies the slimy cream under and around Keith's eyes, and then a pasty ointment that smells faintly of something like watermelons and reminds Keith so strongly of Earth that it feels like being stabbed right through the gut. He can only imagine how it must feel to someone Lance, with so much more to miss than him.
He stays silent too, chest strangely constricted.
Breakfast's uncomfortably quiet, but princess Allura clears her throat at some point and cheerfully declares that Pidge, Hunk and her are almost done reverse engineering a cure for their 'little problem'.
"Good," Lance says, giving her a weak smile.
Keith nods, and then goes back to digging into his green goo.
The good thing is Lance is back to his loud self by their afternoon training session, thankfully.
The not so good thing is their training session that afternoon seems to consist of both Keith and Lance getting their asses handed to them by the gladiator and Pidge and Hunk laughing t heir asses off as they make complete fools out of themselves stumbling over their own limbs like they're toddlers.
"Why is your body so freaking long?" He yells at Lance as he tries to hit the gladiator with his bayard only to miscalculate the distance again and end up losing his balance again.
"Why are your limbs so short? What's up with your arms? Why are your eyes so shitty, I can't aim for shit," Lance yells back.
"Like you could aim before, dumbass."
"You're just jealous of my mad skills," Lance leers.
Keith knows it's bait, but hell, it works like a charm. He turns around and cocks an eyebrow at Lance.
"What mad skills?"
"Watch out," Lance yells out, and fires in his direction, the laser just a hair's breadth away from grazing his right shoulder. He hears the clunk of the gladiator being hit and turns around immediately, adrenaline pumping through him.
"Focus on taking the gladiator down, paladins!" Coran's voice booms through the speakers.
"Yeah," they both chorus, and as he charges towards the gladiator once more, Keith feels that connection to Lance that he feels sometimes on the field, or when they're forming voltron.
He clashes swords with the robot, and just when it's about to overpower him, he screams now and jumps to the side, in time to watch Lance shoot it down seamlessly.
"Hell yeah!" Lance screams, throwing his arms up when the bot goes stays down and the training room announces that the drill's done. He then runs up to Keith and slings one of his arms over Keith's shoulders.
"Hell yeah, buddy, we did it, hell yeah! You and I really do make a good team, huh?"
Keith smiles up at Lance, aiming for self-assured and confident, and trying to hide the fact that Lance's arm on top of his shoulders, even through his suit, makes him feel aware of every single nerve ending in his body, for some reason he cannot name.
"I hate to interrupt this touching bonding moment, really," Pidge comments as she walks up to them, smirking, "but the gladiator was set to level 1, guys."
Lance groans, but still smiles warmly at him and pats him roughly on the back before going up to Hunk, already going on about how Hunk is a total traitor for laughing at his misfortune.
Keith smiles at Lance's retreating back, and only notices he's doing it when Pidge hums under her breath, drawing his eyes to her pensive expression.
"Interesting."
"What is?" He asks.
She smiles at him, big and dangerous, and says nothing at all.
Keith figures it out that night, lying on his bunk with the lights off, and his palms sweaty, and itchy to reach down, where he feels hot and hard and needy.
He thinks about Lance that morning, hands all over him, knee between his. Thinks about Lance calling them a good team, about his arm over his shoulders.
Keith thinks back to Lance in that healing pod, that impatience, that niggling worry that only dissipated once he saw Lance out of it, making an ass of himself; thinks about getting agitated about a comment he knows was in jest, and trying to get Lance's recognition.
He's hard and breathing through his mouth like some kid with the flu, and shit he's in outer space and crushing on one of the other people the galaxy's counting on to save it from Galra.
He has a crush on Lance.
His dick twitches.
That morning he wakes up again to Lance's obnoxious knocking. He groans, turns around in bed and tries to ignore him, but the knocking turns into pounding.
"Come ooooon. I know you're awake. You're one of those dudes who are always ready for action."
Keith tries putting his pillow over his head.
The pounding grows louder.
"I can do this all day, man. Don't test me, I have four siblings."
Keith lasts all of ten minutes.
"I really miss my mom," Lance says, abruptly, when he's almost done with the moisturizer.
Keith holds very still, says nothing, doesn't know how to react or what to do, what does Lance want him to—
"I miss all of them. You probably saw them while we were mindmelding, or however you say that. My family, I mean."
Keith nods, and one of Lance's fingers slips to the corner of his lips. He starts rubbing there, eyes trained on a spot of Keith's face just above his eyes.
"I miss all of them, y'know? Big noisy family, always someone around and stuff. The Garrison felt like a break. I feel guilty about that now. And, yeah, I miss all of them, even my annoying little brother who used to break all of my shit and got out of trouble by being cute. But my mom's… my mom. And I just miss her."
"Why… why are you telling me this?"
Lance shrugs.
"Yesterday, after— after the mom thing. You just looked like you wanted to say something, like you were, I don't know, sorry? But I wasn't mad at you, man. You didn't fuck up. I'm just. I don't know, it's just something that's there and we ignore it a lot of the time, and maybe we shouldn't, you know? Maybe we should talk more about the stuff that's waiting for us on Earth."
There's nothing waiting for me back on Earth.
"You'll like my family," Lance tells him, and smiles this grin that's stretched and sunny, and not something he's very used to seeing on his own face. "They'll like you for sure. My grandma will love you. She looks like a sweet, innocent old lady, but you better watch out because she likes to pinch people's butts. She makes some mean humitas, though. Best I've ever had. Never say that to my aunt Sofía, though, she'll skin me alive and call me 'pendejo ingrato'."
Keith snickers.
Lance's smile grows warmer, and he pats Keith's face.
"I know you had it rough back on Earth, and even if you don't wanna tell any of us what that's all about, just know that now we're here, right? We're a team. Team Voltron Paladins, that's us. One for all, all for one, all that. And once we go back, it's still gonna be all of us together."
"Once we go back?"
"Once we go back. We're gonna be heroes by then. I bet we'll get that parade."
Keith rolls his eyes.
"A big ass parade, with floats. Bigger than Macy's, man. We're gonna get the whole works and it's gonna go down in history."
"Sure, Lance," he says, more for show than conviction.
Parade Lance mouths at him, and then goes back to applying the rest of his products.
Keith feels light. He lets himself enjoy Lance's hands on his face (even if they're technically his own), Lance's attention, Lance's good mood.
Training that afternoon goes better. They only trip over themselves a couple of times, and manage to beat the gladiator on level two after an hour or so.
Keith's evening goes to hell when they're all exiting the dining hall after dinner and Lance stops him.
Lance peers around him through the door, apparently waiting for the others to be gone. And then he takes a deep breath and upends Keith's day and maybe even his life with just a few words.
"Just so you know, I'm totally cool with you jerking off in my body."
"Lance! "
"No, no, dude, listen to me: we're all here in the castle training, working up a sweat, and a dude gets urges. Masturbation is not something we frown upon in the Suárez household, man. It's something natural, everyone does it, etc."
"Have you jerked off in my body?"
Lance splutters.
"Dude! "
"You literally brought it up first," Keith yelps back, a little hysterical.
Not picturing Lance touching himself in my body, not picturing his hands on my dick, not— oh god.
"I didn't do it! I mean, you haven't even given me permission yet, if I'd done it, it would've felt like taking advantage of you, you know? I am not that guy!"
Lance's words topple over one another, coming out as more of a string of word-shaped sounds than an actual sentence, but Keith still blushes at it, a bright red that he's sure shows clear as day even on Lance's darker cheeks, oh god.
"Do you… do you want to touch yourself, in my body?"
He winces at his own words once they're out.
Lance goes beyond red, he goes purple.
"How do you just say these things, oh my god," Lance sounds mortified, but also a little breathy. Keith's eyes zero in on Lance's mouth.
"You started this, Lance," He says, Lance swallows and his eyes follow the motion, he lets himself be brave and stupid and horny, "you… you can do it too, you know. If you want to. You can touch yourself in my body."
It comes out suggestive and thick and Keith has probably gone beyond what's acceptable in this situation, but how is he supposed to deal when Lance goes around giving him permission to masturbate in his body?
"Oh god, oh god," Lance says, and his face is still burning, and he's twitching, but he sounds… he doesn't sound at all revolted, He knows how he sounds when he's revolted. He also knows how he sounds when he's turned on. It sounds like this. Exactly like this.
"We are having a moment," he realizes.
"We're having a moment about masturbation," Lance replies, and he still sounds a little mortified, but that's giving into what Keith can read as arousal.
"We're having a moment," he repeats, and walks a few steps towards Lance, who walks a few steps back until his back is against a wall. "You're not denying this one," Keith adds.
"That was a joke, Keith, oh my god, everyone there saw me hold your hand. Fucking Sendaksaw me hold your hand."
Keith hums, and walks a few steps more until he's caged Lance, chests pressed together. Lance's a few centimeters taller than he is and that's allowing him to loom a little. He takes advantage of it.
"Do you…" He swallows. "Do you want to do it together?"
"Oh my god you want us to jerk off together," Keith breathes out, eyes on his. "Oh my god, Keith, you are bad for my health."
"I thought masturbating was natural?"
"Shut up," Lance says, and buries his face on Keith's chest. It feels great. Keith wants more, Keith wants everything.
"I can't," Lance says after a while of being pressed face first against the fabric of his own jacket, words muffled and pained. Keith's stomach drops. "I can't do it with you like this, man."
"What about when we get back into our own bodies then?"
Lance looks up at him. He's still blushing, but he's also wearing a smile that's coy and teasing.
"Wow, Keith, you are so aggressive."
Keith pinches one of his cheeks. Hard.
"Ow, fuck, Keith, that's low."
"Stop toying with me," Keith tells him then.
"Jeez, man, I'm not toying with you." His cheeks go a darker shade of red. "It's called flirting, you know?"
"Does that mean—"
"Yeah, Keith, I want it. Once we, you know, switch back. I don't want to have sex with you and look at my own face. I'm not that narcissistic."
"Can I kiss you?"
Lance scrunches his nose.
"I look like you, dude. Really?"
Keith sighs. He backs away from Lance, and Lance looks half relieved, and half disappointed.
"I'm off to bed," Keith tells him, and starts walking off. He pauses a few steps into the hallway and says, loud enough for Lance to hear him, "I'm jerking off tonight. Thinking of you."
"Keith, oh my god. "
He smiles all the way to his room.