When Keith opens his eyes, everything feels surreal. His shared bedroom is bigger than it's ever been before, the shiny metal and lights of the ship brighter than any sun he's ever seen. When he sits up, he's tense: his eyes dart around the room, looking for anything out of place. His ears listening for the shrill sound of an alarm.
That's when it sets in.
Silence.
It's not something he's unaccustomed to; most mornings, the castle is silent, save for the whirring of its machinery. But today is different – the quietness is far less imposing, less lonely, than it's been for the last six years. He takes a deep breath, lets his fluttering heart slow, and remembers. Remembers that they're all safe now. That he won't hear the alarms going off early in the morning, snapping him out of whatever miniscule sleep he's had.
The war is over. They've won.
He runs a hand through his black hair as someone rustles alongside him. The soft gray blanket wrapped around his waist shifts as Lance yawns, rubbing his eyes with a scowl on his face—annoyed at having to wake up from his so-called "beauty sleep" (not that he gets much of it anymore, either), no doubt. Keith lets a little smile stretch across his lips, bending down to kiss him, and though the other man is barely awake, he's already leaning towards Keith, as if he's expecting the quick, warm brush of chapped lips against his own. Keith's smile, once a rarity, intensifies as they meet, drawing the other man's lips into a mirror image of his own as they slide together. Lance releases him from the kiss, tapping his forehead against Keith's own, and wraps his arms around him, tugging Keith down to his chest with a soft thump.
"Good morning," he whispers, threading his fingers through his boyfriend's long hair. He's never exactly been good at maintaining it, Lance muses, picking through the tangles with a precision that Hunk and Pidge would probably be jealous of.
Keith stays silent as he does so, nuzzling his face into Lance and breathing more and more slowly as relaxation sets in. He's used to these long, contemplative silences by now, knows that there's something on Keith's mind, but doesn't push the issue until Keith is ready to speak up. He's almost finished combing through Keith's hair when the raven-haired man finally speaks, voice lacking the hormonal huskiness of when they first met all those years ago. Keith sighs and sits up, tracing shapes on Lance's shoulder with his finger as he makes eye contact with him.
"It doesn't feel real yet."
"Hm?" Lance cocks an eyebrow at him, his brain not quite awake enough to process what he means.
"All of this. Our fight against the Galra being over. Us returning back to Earth soon." Broken sentences and half-formed words dart across his tongue as he tries to verbalize what he's feeling, his emotions, his doubts, his fears, but nothing seems to suffice. "What's going to happen to all of us after, well, this."
"What do you mean?"
Keith pinches the bridge of his nose, speaking with a hint of frustration in his words.
"You know damn well what I mean, Lance. Them. You. Me. Us."
Lance grasps the finger that he's drawing with and answers him, his azure eyes locking with the other man's gray ones.
"Well, we went over the plan, right? We're all going home for a bit. We deserve to see our families and have a little break. We've been fighting for, what? Six years? And we've had days off, yeah, but rarely any significant chunk of time. We're all tired, you know?"
It's a valid reason. Keith knows that, knows that it's perfectly okay to let everyone go home and have some rest—they deserve it, need it—but even so, he can't help but wonder whether or not they'll actually return for him. Whether the plan that they agreed on will actually come to fruition, or if everyone will just ease back into their old lives.
Keith bites his lip and nods.
"So yeah, we're all going to go home. But we're still Paladins, you know? We saved the universe, but there's still a hell of a lot of cleaning up to we've gotta be around for that. We can't just go hide in a shack in the middle of the desert, you know?" He sits up, taking Keith's wrists in his hands as he chuckles at Lance's last sentence.
"I'm just worried." Keith admits. "Like...we're all so close. You're pretty much the only family I have, and..." he trails, trying to figure out how to word the rest of the sentence. "It's not that I think you guys won't come back to help repair things. I'm just...really scared of all of us going our separate ways after this. Living our lives, meeting our own goals."
Lance listens intently, mouth ever-so-slightly open as he interprets what's being said to him, the white of his teeth peeking through his lips. It's an expression that Lance only makes when he's fully absorbed in something; when, in a rare moment, he manages to tune everything out. Keith's eyes water as he speaks, but he blinks the tears away.
"Keith…," Lance trails off. He places a hand on Keith's cheek, rubbing the smooth skin with his thumb as he gathers his thoughts. Neither speak for minutes.
Finally, Lance begins again. He folds his hands in his lap and looks away from Keith, at one of the dressers behind him, as he summons sentences from deep inside his brain.
"Yeah. It's-it's going to happen. But," he pauses, widening his eyes, focusing on what's next, what needs to be said in order to not break him. "It doesn't mean we're not all connected, you know?"
Keith shakes his head.
"Everyone says that, Lance. But how many times have we gotten separated from each other with no way to contact everyone else on the team? What are we going to do when we're all galaxies away, with our own areas to fix? All of us...we're not going to be able to just...talk to each other anymore."
Keith grits his teeth, thinking about just how much he's changed over the last six years. How, in this situation, he would have been lonely, but could have fathomed dealing with it. But not now, not when all of their lives have been intertwined for so long, not when being apart from them for longer than a day makes his chest ache with the dread that he'll never see them again.
Finally, Lance clears his throat and speaks, crossing his arms over his chest.
"When my sister first left the house, I was devastated. I mean, I was happy for her, she was going off to school to pursue her dreams, far away from where we lived. But well, you know this already:my family's huge and we're all very close. She was the first person to really go off on her own, you know? So when it happened, I wasn't ready. I was scared that she'd forget about us, that she'd forget about her little brother with everything she had going on. And well, sometimes it did seem like she would. Sometimes when your obligations take over and you're not near someone, you tend to push them to the back of your mind." Lance bites his lip and closed his eyes, a look of shame crossing his face.
"I think that's how some of us have been getting through this," he admits. "I try not to think about my family, Pidge tries not to think about the mom she left on Earth. Hunk rarely talks about his parents. We do it out of necessity in order to focus on now, not because we don't care about them or anything. It hurts so much to do, but sometimes things just happen that way. But still...you never really stop thinking about them, even when you have other priorities going on. Eventually, my sister would remember to call us, just like how we think about the people we left behind from time to time. That's kind of the way family works, you know? Sometimes you won't speak to one of your relatives for months on end, but when you see them again, you can talk like nothing's changed.
"Everyone goes off and lives their lives, but we think about each other from time to time. Distance doesn't change how much we love each other. Neither does time. It's something that's kind of hard to grasp, I guess, when you haven't really experienced it for yourself, but family is family, and nothing can ever change that for any of us." Lance pulls Keith close, planting a kiss on top of his head and rubbing his hand in circles on his back. "Don't worry. We're all going to be okay. I promise. Well, okay, maybe not me, but that's in a different sort of way-"
"Lance, don't joke about that!"
Keith pulls away, giving Lance a playful punch to the arm. The other man winces in response, clutching his bicep with a hiss.
"Ow! Wrong arm, Keith." His hands shook slightly as he grasped his arm, a bruise hidden under his sleeve.
"Shit, sorry. I didn't mean to do that-" As if prompted by Lance's remark, he asks another question, shifting their topic of discussion away from the rest of the team and towards something a little more important. "How do you feel today?"
Lance shrugs.
"The usual. My hands are shaking, my legs are all numb and tingly, they hurt a little, too..." Lance replies, flopping back onto the bed with a sigh. He puts his hand on his forehead, brow furrowing as he thinks about the long day ahead of them both. Keith flips onto his side and props his face on one of his hands, elbow digging into the mattress.
"You think you'll be okay for the party?"
"Oh, definitely. I'll need to sit for a bit of it, but I think I'll manage. I'm thankful that I can still walk, at least." He bites his lip, glancing away from Keith.
"We'll just have to take it as it comes, I guess. Speaking of medicine, though, it's a medicine day, right?"
Lance nods.
"Yup. Going to have to take a shot between outfit changes tonight." Keith rolls his eyes, thinking of the plan for the evening. A massive gala, the kind that he still has some apprehension going to. even after years of attending them. He'll have to make a speech, the thought of which makes every hair stand up on his body. All of the paladins will be on stage in their battle gear at the beginning, changing into formal wear after their speeches, symbolizing the beginning of an era of peace. (Knowing Lance, he'll want to run around making last-minute fixes to everyone's outfits.) "You'll be the one to do it, right? It's kind of...one of those nights."
"Oh, uh, yeah. Of course." A small blush creeps across Keith's face, knowing exactly what Lance is referring to. The thought of it makes him a little nervous – always does – but he pushes it deep down in the cellars of his mind where the rest of his worries are buried.
He breathes: everything will be okay.
Walking around in his armor feels strange. His black flight suit presses against his body, feeling too tight around his limbs, and the white metal of his armor weighs heavily on him. Each crevice, each dent and speck of dirt tells a story; Keith brushes his fingers along one and thinks back to when all of them, a group of kids who really had no idea just what the quiznak they were getting into, first found the Blue Lion back on Earth. He recalls the gusts blowing through his hair as he drove down the side of a cliff, jagged, brown dust clouding around all of them; remembers the joy that pulsed through his body when he found Shiro again for the first time. And then, there had been the dread; the fear of dying, of being separated from the one person he'd been close to, as he was asked to defend the universe from a threat that he had barely known anything about.
He's come a long way. They all have, really.
Keith approaches the door to the main hall, finding the rest of the team standing there. Coran's outfit is tailored to a crisp: he's wearing a long, royal blue coat that cascades past his knees, with a complementary vest underneath in a steelier shade. His white button-down shirt provides the foundation for his outfit and finally, a golden cravat tops everything off.
He sweats visibly in the layers; Keith can see flecks of moisture forming on the white shirt, but whatever cologne he's put on is strong enough to mask the scent. His boots click against the floor as he darts back and forth between the paladins, trying to calm each of them down before taking the stage. Keith finds it incredible that, for all the experience they have negotiating with other civilizations, all of them still find it scary as hell to speak in front of an audience. It puts him at ease, tells him that everyone will understand if he messes up.
Allura's the next person he notices. Her hair is styled in tight curls, the silvery white wisps of hair dancing in the air as she tries to look through the crack of the door, gauging the crowd. Out of necessity to represent the last of her kind, she's not wearing her flight armor, and had instead opted for royal Altean garb a bit different from the sleek, draping dress she normally wears. No, tonight, she had decided, will be a ballgown night. The dress, though similar in color and design to her thinner one, is bulky, and Keith can tell from the look on her face that it's restricting her movement more than she would like. For her sake, he prays that she's not wearing heels.
Pidge is crouched alongside Allura, peeking through the bottom half of the door. She hasn't grown since they arrived at the castle, though she swears up and down that the machine took note of a height increase at one point—a quarter of an inch, to be exact. Having been the youngest when they were thrown into this mess of a fight, she's probably the one to have changed the most. She'd swapped her round glasses for a pair of rectangular lenses at one point, and her fluffy brown hair had been trimmed down to a pixie cut, the bangs kept long. He'd sometimes find Lance with her, attaching that small section to a curler, or pinning it back as she worked on a project that required burying her face in a machine. Some things never change; her love of machines is one among many. Even still, he sees the weariness in her eyes, the serious look that paints her face and makes her seem ten years older than she actually is, even when she's at her happiest.
Hunk hangs close to her, resting on the doorframe. At his core, he's still the same as he's always been: jovial, bright, and optimistic. But, like Pidge, a darkness paints him, one only gained from fighting for years without an end to the conflict in sight. One gained only from seeing too many people die, from being unable to save everyone. He hears the bitterness in his voice that sometimes seeps through when he gets emotional, the fatigue when he tells a habitual joke with detached interest. But even then, he carries himself with more determination, more assuredness than when they first met. When Keith thinks about him, he thinks of late nights spent baking cookies and other junk food, of secrets spilled in the midst of sleep deprivation. Of an unconditional, sturdy, platonic love.
And then there's Lance, holding onto Keith's arm as he walks, his balance a little more unsteady than usual. Lance, who was once that annoying kid from his class, the kid who had declared a rivalry against an unwitting Keith all those years ago and fought with Keith at every chance he could. The boy who later, somehow, had managed to worm his way into the most intense of situations, calming Keith's ever-burning anger down in ways that nobody else could, who had somehow managed to make his heart thump so hard, it felt like it would fall out of his chest and he had rushed to Coran, declaring a medical emergency.
(Coran laughed, told him he was fine and that he'd figure it out soon enough. In retrospect, months probably meant nothing in the grand scheme of time to him.)
Lance was the first to make a move, kissing him on impulse after a stressful mission. Keith swore heart split in two as Lance's lips crashed against his own, half of him ecstatic about being kissed by his crush, the other in crisis, asking himself if this was how Lance really felt. He avoided him for three days following the incident, doubt peppering his brain, only interrupted by his streak by Pidge shoving Lance into his room and yelling for the two of them to, as she said, "sort their shit out."
Keith had planned on directly asking about the kiss, had planned on delving further into Lance's feelings before revealing any of his own. But he lost control of train of thought as soon as he opened his mouth, his tongue clicking against his teeth and lips moving in ways that he hadn't commanded, truths that he hadn't wanted to say aloud just yet sacrificed to mend the rift between them. He had expected Lance to brush off his actions, to respectfully reject Keith's affections for him. He hadn't expected Lance to feel the same way. He hadn't expected for the intensity of his love to rival Keith's own. And he hadn't expected for them to still be together nearly four years after that initial kiss.
"Did you bring them?" Pidge asks Lance, snapping Keith out of his reminiscence.
He nods, showing her the box in his hand. It's a thin, black thing with a plastic lid. A set of ribbons is lays inside: all black, all with a magnetic strip near one end. Gingerly, each person standing behind the door chooses one and attaches it to their chest. Keith is the last to take from the bunch. When he does, his finger brushes against the satin.
It feels heavier than anything else he's ever held before. Biting his lip, he attaches it to the armor, the magnet hitting his shell with a solid clink. The crowd behind the door is getting louder and louder, and he knows that it's almost time. Allura glances at him and nods, signaling that it's time for them to go out. Keith instantly misses the pressure as Lance slides his hand away; now, he's more exposed. He doesn't like it.
Still, he has to do this. He has no choice, for this is the role he has grown into.
Allura heads through the door. Keith allows for a considerable space to grow between them before he heads out, Hunk wishing him luck before he takes the stage; Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Coran follow behind him. The stage is massive, so big that Keith feels like it'll swallow him whole if he steps the wrong way on it, with chairs set to the side for each speaker to sit in.
Though great hall is filled to the brim with guests—Keith can't even see the floor—he manages to spot Matt and Sam Holt in the crowd, beverages already in their hands. Idly, he wonders how drunk Pidge is probably going to get with them later, how they'll cheerily talk about their old memories of home, filling the room with laughter and hope for the future.
All chatter halts as Allura adjusts the microphone and begins to speak about Altea, about her past with the Galra empire. She's frank about her struggles, about how hard it is to wake up after ten thousand years knowing that you're the last of your kind. About how everyone needs to work together to assure their newly found peace. Keith knows that he'll be saying some of the same things—it's almost expected in an event with multiple speeches like this—so he tunes her out, choosing instead to run through parts of his speech in his head. By the time she finishes speaking, he's so absorbed in his thoughts that he nearly misses his cue. The crowd explodes in applause and cheers, and he prays that his speech can at least be just as good as hers. Allura steps down, offers him a pat on the shoulder, and flashes him a small smile of encouragement.
"You'll be okay," she whispers as the noise dies down again, sensing his apprehension. "Just like we rehearsed, right?"
Not just rehearsed, he thinks. You edited the speech for me because I had so much trouble getting my thoughts together.
Even still, he knows that how he delivers it will make all the difference. He thinks of how Shiro could stand in front of a crowd of people like this and speak to them with ease, of how, even after leading the other paladins for so long, he's still not great at speaking in front of people. No, he's not Shiro, he knows that well by now. He just hopes that he can keep it together without completely breaking down on stage.
Swallowing hard, he clenches his fists and takes a step up. The light from up there is nearly blinding and he squints, looking down at the crowd as he feels beads of sweat begin to form on his neck and his heart feels like it's going to fall out of his chest and oh god-
Breathe. He needs to breathe. And so he does, closing his eyes for a split second, thinking of the black ribbon crushing his chest. Who it's really for. Who he wishes could be here to see him now, but can't.
For a moment, he pictures Shiro standing at the podium, standing tall with his shoulders back. Slipping into that same posture, he starts speaking. Keith clears his throat and summons the speech he had memorized the day before. The tone is formal out of necessity rather than truth; the situation requires it, and he can't afford to be too casual when he speaks. What he say will dictate how the civilizations approach their restoration efforts, will affect the universe's political trajectory for the next few hundred years, at least. No pressure, Keith. Absolutely none.
He talks about being an orphan, of having his parents disappear from his life before his tenth birthday, of him knowing nothing but loneliness for most of his life. About how, if you had approached him twelve years ago and told him that he would find his family, he would have laughed in your face and said that he had no living relatives. About how he would have then gone home and cried himself to sleep as that fear, the fear that he would never have a family to call his own set in. His throat constricts as he gets further and further along in the condensed biography, closer and closer to where his memories of Shiro begin.
"Not long after, Shiro would enter my life," he says as the moisture begins to build in his eyes. He blinks it away, pressing on.
"I'm sure that some of you here remember him. He was our leader back in our early days as paladins. I knew Shiro a while before all of us was united. He worked to open up a lot of doors for me back on Earth, ones that had long seemed shut off for someone like me. He saw past my impulsiveness and helped me start to channel it into something more constructive. I'll be honest: it didn't always work." Keith lets a small chuckle slip past his lips and swears that he can feel the other paladins smiling behind him. "But I started to change. With every day that passed, I became happier and a little more optimistic. Even having just one person in my life that I could rely on made a world of a difference. Suddenly, I wasn't alone. Suddenly, I could strive for things and know that someone would be there to help me every step of the way.
"Shiro was a great man, and the closest thing to a brother I had. He disappeared twice in my life, both at the hands of the Galra Empire. Finding him after his first disappearance led me to this team. I..." he sniffs, trying to fight back the tears that threaten to fall as the memories bubble to the surface. "We…wouldn't find him after the second time."
The memories arrive in rapid-fire, getting more intense with each scene that pops up. He feels the warm fire of hope in his chest from when they finally received something regarding Shiro's whereabouts, the anxiety as he followed the clues and searched the planet, only for none of it to mean anything in the end. He'd punched his mirror that night in anger, screaming until his throat was raw and Lance rushed in, cradling Keith close to him.
"After the first time he disappeared, I was a mess. I'd lost the only constant in my life just as I'd started to build my own. I closed myself off from the world again. But by the second time it happened, something had changed. By then, I'd started speaking to my team more. I'd opened myself up to others. Slowly, I had begun to view the rest of the team as my family—the only real one I've ever had. And as time went on, as I saw more and more of the horrible things the Galra had done to our universe, I realized just how many other people were like me. Alone, lost, scared, with nobody to rely on until the right person happened to find them. And I realized, too, how many people weren't as fortunate as me, how many people had never found that one person."
He places a hand on the ribbon at his chest, takes a deep breath, and moves into the final section of the speech.
"As we rebuild, I want us all to reflect upon the countless lives that have been lost in this fight: Children, siblings, parents. Friends and lovers, soldiers and civilians. Think about what they have sacrificed, as well as what they have left behind whenever we see ourselves will not fight amongst ourselves, but listen and extend a hand of kindness instead. We will continue to make this world a safe haven for all who inhabit it. Finally, we will remember that in this vast universe, this is the one experience shared by all of us." Keith spreads his arms out in front of him, gesturing to the whole room.
"This makes us one massive family, if you think about it. And as a family, we have a duty to be there for each other as the universe heals, just like how my entire team has been here for me."
Keith takes a step back from the podium as the room erupts into applause and turns to face the rest of the team. The first person to smile is Pidge; she sets off a chain reaction, and the rest of the team's faces light up with warmth for him. Lance's arms twitch first, but Allura is the first to fully spring into action, crushing him against her body and whispering to him, voice barely heard above the crowd.
There's only one sentence he catches—
"He'd be so proud of you."
—before everyone breaks down.
It's a reminder of what Lance said earlier: how every single one of them is connected, and in that moment, he can't possibly see that bond shattering.
By the time Keith makes it back to his room to change, his face feels stiff, his tears having dried to a salty film on his cheeks. He barely remembers what the other paladins said during the ceremony; each syllable, each little sound they made would trigger memories in waves and it took all his strength just to remain sturdy enough to ride them. Lance had pulled him into his own embrace after, whispering to him about how resilient and wonderful he was, threading fingers through his hair as a few last sobs shuddered through his body. By the time he'd stopped crying, the others had left, giving the two space as they changed or acquainted themselves with the party guests.
Now, Lance hangs onto his arm, fingers curling tightly around his armor to maintain balance; it doubles as a ground for his partner. Keith's steps are slow, deliberate, so that the other man can keep up with him. Their door opens with a mechanical hiss and Lance loosens his grip on Keith, walking over to the bed as the black-haired man flicks the light on.
Once Lance is settled, Keith strips off his armor, dropping each piece to the floor before moving onto his flight suit. The garment is clingy and Keith huffs in frustration as he struggles to reach the zipper near the back of his neck. A soft pain sweeps through his arm as he stretches it to the piece, pulling it down and stepping out of it with a sigh of relief. Lance snickers.
"What are you laughing at?" There's an emphasis on Lance, but the phrase is said without malice.
"Nothing, nothing, just that you still can't undress yourself."
Keith rolls his eyes, ready to make a quip about how that's been Lance's job for the last few years, but decides against it. Clad only in his scarlet boxers, he walks over to the other side of the room, where a small, silver mini-fridge stands, a cardboard box sitting on top of it.
He slips his fingers under the lid of the box and opens it, mouthing numbers as he counts how many packets are left inside. Twelve. They'll have to pick up some more from the medical bay soon, he thinks as he plucks the twelfth one out. Then, he dips one of his hands into the groove on top of the refrigerator door, giving it a tug. White light releases from the fridge, quickly obscured when Keith bends down and reaches for another—the other—box, pulling it off the shelf with care and removing the tray of syringes inside.
He's always afraid when he does this, afraid that even though he's as cautious as he is, that even though the needles are all capped, that he'll still find some way to accidentally stick himself with one and deprive Lance of his medication. His heart quivers and he takes a deep breath, chooses one of the clear fluid-filled lifelines, and tucks the rest back in the box, placing it back in the fridge.
Gingerly, he carries the needle to the bathroom and sets it on the gray sink. He turns the faucet up to its highest heat and intensity, letting the water glide across his hands for a moment before pumping a drop of soap into his palm and massaging it in. Steam rises around Keith, heating up his already-warm body to an even higher temperature, or what feels like it, anyway.
"How the hell do you survive with the water that hot?" Lance calls out, seeing the steam floating out of the bathroom.
"Guess that's what being assigned to Red originally did to me," Keith muses. "Fire stuff and all that. Made me totally immune to high temperatures."
"Or, you know, living in a desert."
"That too."
He reaches for the nearest towel, drying his hands and heading to the other side of the room. Lance, meanwhile, works on removing his own armor, guiding each piece off with stiff ease. They clang to the floor in cacophonous rhythm and for a moment, Keith lets himself imagine that the noise is coming from a kitchen cabinet too filled with pots and pans, too packed to search through quietly. He sees a small home (apartment?) in cozy disarray and warm, muted colors. Visions of furniture and pictures and aged trinkets cycle in and out, half-formed and fluid as they morph into one another until finally, finally, Keith forces them away. Grabbing the syringe and packet, he makes his way over to Lance, sitting on the bed just as he jerks his flight suit down, revealing a pair of aqua boxers.
He twists his neck just enough to see Keith out of the corner of his eye.
"Red, huh? Guess some color preferences never die out." Lance gives him a wink and a grin, and if he weren't holding a needle right now, Keith probably would have given him a playful nudge back. For now, a grin suffices, and they ride out the wave of happiness between them. Fifteen seconds, a minute, maybe even ten—Keith has no idea how long it lasts, but when reality sets in again, he desperately wishes for it back.
But he can't, so they both have to keep moving forward.
"You ready?" he asks, setting the syringe down on the blanket. Lance tugs one side of his boxers down, exposing the skin of his rump, and nods.
"'Kay, hold still."
He'll tell him when he's done. He always does. The scent of alcohol—or something similar to it—wafts from the packet as he rips it open, and he can feel Lance's muscles tense ever so slightly as he rubs the pad against his skin. Taking the syringe in his fingers, he pierces the cleaned skin with it, watching as the liquid inside quickly depletes. He doesn't breathe until—
—he finally takes it out, capping the sharp closed.
They'll repeat the process again in a couple of days. Stomach, arm, leg, Keith has no idea where he'll have to inject Lance next—his boyfriend is much better at keeping track of his injection sites than he is, though that isn't much of a surprise to Keith—just that he'll have to rotate them. Really, it's astonishing how quickly Lance seems to have gotten used to all of this, considering that his diagnosis came in only a few months ago.
"Um, Keith?"
"Hm? Oh, sorry! You're good now."
"Too busy staring?" Lance teases, rubbing the spot where the needle went in. "Ugh, now my butt's going to be sore and not even for a good reason."
Keith blushes, then jokingly scolds Lance, pulling his underwear up and giving his butt a gentle tap.
"Ssh. It's medicine, of course it's for a good reason."
"Guess you're right. Never thought I'd get a shot in the butt past the age of like, six, though." There's something cold about the way Lance says it, and his expression darkens into something distant and unreadable.
Keith is about to say something, but Lance just shakes his head, takes the syringe, puts it into the disposal container near the nightstand, and runs a hand over his face. Rubbing his eyes, he glances around the room, his mind traveling to somewhere Keith can't pinpoint. It's not until he turns around and Keith sees the tears streaming down his face that he finally reacts, pulling him into the tightest hug he can manage and pressing to his shoulder, Lance's skin hot against his lips. Lance buries his nose into the crook of Keith's neck and sobs, sobs until he can barely breathe anymore.
"I just—I just thought of what ma's going to say when she sees me like this. How much she's going to cry. How I'm going to tell her that it's all fine when it's really not because I'm scared shit of the future and what'll happen to me because I have no idea how this disease is going to progress or what I'm even going to do," he chokes out, barely able to form words between his sobs. "I can't get around as much as I used to, I have a lot of off days and it sucks. Voltron—Voltron as we know it might be over, but we still have to help the universe rebuild and I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do. That I won't be able to follow you, that I won't be able to have a life with you, once we leave this place. That's...that's what kills me the most."
Those words hit Keith harder than the most powerful blast he's ever taken in battle, heavier than the realization that he had Galra blood flowing through his veins. They tear him apart at the seams, leaving him threadbare in a way that he hasn't felt since Shiro's second disappearance and suddenly, he feels so alone. Remnants of memories, of waking up in the middle of the night to complete silence and grasping into darkness, hoping that someone would be there to comfort him, crawl up his skin and remind him of how empty his life once was.
But then there was that other thing Lance had said. That he wants a life with him, that he wants to be alongside Keith when all of this is over, maybe in that cozy home that he had imagined, maybe on some manor on a planet galaxies away from here. And damn everything else, damn whatever challenges Lance would face—Keith would be there to help get him through everything else.
A sharp intake of breath courses through Lance. His head is still on Keith's shoulder, but his sobs have ceased, replaced by soft sniffles as he stares blankly at the wall behind him. Finally, he speaks again, desperation lacing his voice.
"Please, Keith. Just say something."
Have I been silent for that long, he wonders, pulling away from Lance. Reaching up to cup his partner's face in his hands, his heart beats faster as he draws him in, resting their foreheads against each other.
"I want a life with you, too, no matter what happens. I'll never leave you behind. None of us will, I promise."