{ Lance }

I may have underestimated Sendak. Just a little bit.

Pain travels from one side of my rib cage to the other as the rest of my body pinwheels across the passage deep within the bowels of the Castle Ship, Sendak charging after me like a bull who's seen red.

Okay, maybe I underestimated him a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

My back slams into one of many pipes, a valve further down the line suddenly bursting from place and flooding the small slip of space with lung-invading steam. Sendak escapes my notice in the blinding cover, leaving me vulnerable and open to attack.

I glance around for dark shapes in the thick air, backing against the cold metal wall, sweat gliding uncomfortably down the curve of my back.

Maybe I should have listened to Keith. You go back in there and I'll kill you myself, he said, less a threat than a promise. Great, so even if I survive Sendak, I'll still be dead by the day's end, because Keith will kill me. At least Keith'd give me a fair fight.

There's sudden movement to my right and Sendak roars as he emerges from the steam, swinging his bionic arm so far backwards that he almost topples over. I raise my hands to defend myself, but he's too close, too fast. As soon as his hand collides with me and packs my arms into my sides, I know that my life is over. I'm going to die. His hand begins to close in, and the world fades in and out of inky-ness, the colours dwindling and brightening dramatically.

I'm sorry, guys.

Sendak crushes me, my ribs cracking.

I'm sorry, Shiro, Pidge, Hunk.

My lungs begin to fail me.

I'm sorry, Allura, Coran.

Distant colours that I can't recall the names of merge together disorientingly.

I'm sorry, Keith, for everything…

And the last thing I see before I greet the darkness is a weird blob of red and white moving at speed towards me.

{ Keith }

I skid to a stop when Sendak laughs in that weird gravelly way that places finger-like shivers in my centre.

"So, come for your teammate, have you?" He laughs again, the action squishing Lance in his grip. I subconsciously tighten the hold on my sword, worry pacing back and forth in my head.

"Let him go!" I shout, the words bouncing off of the walls, too loud for such a confined space,"Let him go, or I swear I'll beat that smirk right off your face!"

He chuckles, the craziness half-gone," You think that I would be beaten by you? A child?"

Lance gripes uneasily, stirring from his slumber. My eyes shift to him, apprehension playing across my features. Sendak catches this.

"Oh. So, he is why you are so anxious for a fight. Wouldn't want such a pretty face getting hurt, now would we?" He taunts, shaking Lance raggedly. The Blue Paladin groans under the thumb of his high-tech arm.

The distressed sound kicks something within me.

"Shut up!" I scream, racing at him with my sword raised. He moves to the right, easily evading the weak attack.

I turn again but don't run, listening to his insane cackling.

"You are like a Galra in Grom." He sneers, and I know that Grom is a word for love, highly looked down upon in the Galra Empire. I breathe heavily, my lungs waging war on each other.

I am not in love with Lance. I'm not.

"K-Keith?" And despite the fact that I do not like him, my heart jumps at the sound of his voice.

"Lance!" I yell, startled when he opens his eyes," It's alright, buddy, I've got you."

"Okay." Lance replies, sounding constricted, though not from the arm around him, more from emotion clawing up his throat. Sendak sqeezes him between his claw like fingers, and Lance screws his eyes shut and grinds out something akin to a scream.

"Stop it!" I order, raising my sword once again.

Sendak grins at me in a bone-chilling way, before dropping a now unconscious Lance to the floor, who lands with a thud on his front.

"Whatever you say, Paladin." And then I watch in horror as he picks a gun from the floor and shoves the end of the barrel against Lance's back, pushing down between his shoulder-blades.

Then he moves his finger dauntingly towards the trigger.

"NO!" I scream, barrelling across the room and shoving against Sendak with a strength I didn't even know I had, tackling him to the other end of the passage.

I scramble for a firm hold on my handle, avoiding his agitated punches, before sinking my blade into his shoulder, to which he gives an outraged cry, knocking me back with his good arm.

My sword clatters away from me, but before I can even think where it went, Sendak is gone. In a flurry of battle armour, fury and bionic arm, he leaves me and my injured friend behind.

I don't have time to panic about how strange it is for him to leave a fight like that and what he might be up to as I skitter across the room towards Lance, who groans in protest when I pull him onto his back, holding him on my lap.

"Lance? Lance, you alright? Lance?!"

"Calm down, man, sheesh, I might get the impression that you actually care about me." Lance lazily peels open his eyes, grinning at me.

"Lance!" I yell, annoyed," Don't do that!"

He laughs, but it soon turns into a cough, and I pull him to me, pinning his side to my chest. We look at each other in the new close proximity, the joke somehow lost in our shared gaze.

"Put your arms around me." I say, exhaustion stealing the breath from my lungs.

"What? Why?!" Lance says, a strange red tinge spreading adorably from one cheek to the other. Well, not adorably, but well, oh, you get the picture.

"So I can carry you, dummy." I mutter, already getting up from the floor. Lance clutches me, groaning.

"You could've warned me!"

I grin down at him, and he just half-buries his head into my shoulder, grumbling.

{ Shiro }

"Why were you so worried, anyway? I was the one who was about to die!" Lance's voice gets progressively louder before the doors to the lounge open. An impatient Keith storms in, with an incredulous Lance tailing behind him.

"Exactly!" Keith grouches, stepping down to join the rest of us on the couch," I was worried about you, idiot!"

"Oh." Lance's arms fall from where they were hung high above his head, a scowl reaching his face.

"Yeah, oh." Keith mutters, with dying ferocity, before pulling Lance down to sit next to him, both with faces of thunder above their twin crossed arms.

"Sooo…" Pidge says, leaning backwards from her crossed legs, adjusting her glasses on her nose," I take it that everyone's okay?"

"I'm fine, Pidge." I say, smiling at her.

"Yeah," Hunk says," I'm great!"

"Good." Pidge says, sounding relieved," What about you guys?"

We all look to Keith and Lance for their answers, but they're both too busy sneaking glances at one another to hear us.

{ Lance }

God, why did it have to be Keith?

I wouldn't've minded dating a girl, settling down, having little Lances…

But nooo, I have to go and have loads of stupid drama with stupid Keith, with his stupid mullet and stupidly gorgeous eyes and stupidly nice grin!

I storm around the perimeter of the stationery castle, looking for a good place to star-gaze, fuming at Hunk and Pidge's insistence that the reason me and Keith argue so much is because we actually enjoy it and that it's just banter. Talking like we're flirting, or something. I mean, what do they know anyway?

I round a corner yelp as my foot catches something and the floor comes up to hit me, smashing my nose backwards into my face.

It takes me a second to realise that I've fallen over before I groan and push myself onto my back, holding my nose.

"Woah. Lance? Where were you going?" I groan harder at the worry in Keith's voice, sitting up to look at him. He blinks at me, those black orbs of temptation glowing in the moonlight.

"Nowhere." I mutter, shifting to lean against the steely castle wall next to him. Our shoulders brush, and I hold my nose tighter to focus myself.

"You're not gonna die, are you?" He says, smirking. Annoying, little-

"No. I'm fine." I seethe, taking my hand from my aching nose.

He snorts softly, then we go on to pretty much ignore each other for five minutes. Which I seriously can't take.

"Hey, Keith?" I say, not taking my eyes from the heavens.

"Mm?"

"Thanks. Thanks for…today. It was- It was really good of you, to come back for me."

"Yeah, well…"

I blush in the tense silence that follows, thinking about the slight twinkle I caught in Keith's eye when we were face to face earlier.

"Why did you come back? Shiro told me that he ordered you not to, so why'd you do it?"

Keith shrugs, pointedly looking away from me," I- I didn't want anything to happen to you, okay?"

I blink at him, then smirk as the words catch up to me," You didn't want anything to happen to me?"

Keith just blushes in response.

"Oh." I say, realising that he isn't joking. Oh.

"I just- I don't know, even though you're the stupidest guy I've ever met, and your jokes are the worst ever and you're egotistical as hell-"

"Yeah, okay, I get it!"

Keith looks solidly at me," Despite all of that, I still didn't want anything to happen to you."

And my chest constricts from the soft look he suddenly gives me, the raw emotion surprising me. I lick my lips, nervous. His eyes flicker down, then back to my eyes, and the atmosphere is suddenly inexplicably warm.

"I don't-" Keith sighs heavily, altering his weight to face me," I've never done, you know, this."

I knaw at my bottom lip, arguing with myself over a long kept secret.

"Neither have I." I say, but it sounds more like an accusation than a confession. Keith looks at me like I'm patronising him and I blow out a breath, annoyed that he thinks that of me.

"No." I say, firmly," Really."

"Oh. Really? But you-"

"Always seem so sure of myself?" I laugh. More a bitter breath than a laugh." Yeah, I know. Back home, on Earth, I used to make girls up completely. Make out that I was breaking a dozen hearts a day. My family always humoured me. But I know they didn't believe me."

I copy Keith and lean my head back against the wall, dropping my hand to the floor to brush his. He doesn't flinch at the contact.

There's a pause. And when I speak again, I feel obligated to speak quietly.

"I couldn't ever make someone like you up. I couldn't ever make someone up who wanted to stay."

"I'm only staying because you guys wouldn't be able to form Voltron without me."

I blink at him, surprised at his jarring words. Then I realise that he's joking and try to think about whether I've ever seen him smile like that before.

I can't. It's a nice change.

But I still say," Oh, right, funny. Here I am, spilling my heart out, and you go and-"

Keith half scoffs as he says," Would you shut up, you idiot?"

And he takes hold of my collar and pulls me to him, our lips meeting in the middle.

At first, the kiss feels experimental, new, strange. But, oh so good.

It's so good to kiss Keith.

My heart flickers like a candle flame, my face melts blissfully like ice over a fire, and my hand comes up to meet his, our fingers clasping together in a knot of something completely new.

And I think I'm going to like it.