It takes only a moment to fall completely and irreversibly in love with someone.
For Lance Charles Julio Esteban McClain, that moment was right here, right now, as Keith Kogane rushed ino the heat of battle, bayard blazing with the ominous purple light of the emanating from the walls of the Galran ship in which they had been cornered.
It was that moment, as the Texan's voice rose brazenly into a harsh, chill-inducing battle cry that pierced the depths of Lance's secret heart straight through the core.
It was that moment, as Lance suddenly realized that the two remaining Paladins were now completely surrounded, that Pidge and Hunk and Allura were far out of the danger zone and were probably safely in their Lions.
It was that moment, when they had had a choice: they could try to fight their way out of their predicament and take as many Galran soldiers to hell with them as possible, or they could die unceremoniously knowing that there had been a chance—a chance that they could have made it out alive, a chance that they could have survived and defeated Zarkon and his son for good, a chance to save an entire universe full of innocent people who counted on them as their saviors, as their knights in shining armor—knowing that there had been a chance, and they hadn't even tried to take it.
Lance had realized that.
Lance had panicked.
Who would pilot their Lions after they were gone? How would Hunk and Pidge and Allura form Voltron with only three Paladins? Who would lead the team if Keith died? Who would replace them if they really didn't make it out of this alive?
Keith had clapped him hard on the shoulders with both of his hands and had shaken Lance until he had calmed down and gained his senses back.
"We are not going to die!" Keith had snapped at him, grabbing the front of the Cuban's shirt and jerking his face close to his. Lance could clearly see the fires that burned deep within his leader's charcoal-grey eyes; the mere intensity of their heat alone almost made him shiver. "We're gonna fight our way out of this, and I swear to God, if you die then I'll bring you back to life and kill you again myself!"
And then he had turned and summoned his bayard. Lance could see the blade glint menacingly in the pulsing orchid light, and he shuddered visibly. He would've hated to be on the opposite end of that blade. It was a good thing he wasn't.
Yet, anyway.
"Keith, wait—!"
"There is no wait!" Keith had growled in response. "If we wait, then we die! Now, cover me!"
He had spun Lance around on his heels to where they were back to back and started slicing away at the armada of Galra soldiers advancing at them at full speed. "Hunk! Pidge! Allura! We need backup, and stat!" he howled into his radio, bringing the hilt of his blade down hard on a Galra soldier's head with a gut-wrenching crack. Lance could see the blood-spatter on his companion's hand where the force had split the soldier's head wide open. He now lay bleeding on the floor, jerking mightily with what Lance decided must have been some kind of seizure. "We're in trouble here! Move it!"
It had taken Lance only a moment to whip out his own Bayard and start blasting away their enemies one-by-one with precision speed, never missing a single shot and never hesitating to aim for more than half a second.
And that's where he stood now, after only five minutes that had seemed as if it had turned into an eternity, still fighting back-to-back with
[the man he loved]
his leader, still outnumbered and still taking down countless numbers of the threatening horde around them. Lance could taste salt of the sweat that dripped from his brow, could feel his abdomen start to ache dully with each direction he twisted to fire off another shot from his bayard, could hear Keith grunt with every blow he delivered to his foes, could feel the wind off of each swing of his blade and smell the stench of adrenaline-fueled pheromones from himself and the horde around him. Just as Lance pivoted to the left to take down a medium-statured Galra brute, he caught a sentry near the back place a finger on the trigger—with the barrel pointed directly at his comrade's chest.
A million different thoughts raced into Lance's mind in that second.
It's aimed at Keith.
It's aimed at Keith!
I gotta help Keith, I can't let anything happen to Keith—
It'll kill him, what do I do?
What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?!
What in the actual fuck am I supposed to do?!
"Keith!" Lance screamed above the chaos, motioning wildly with his free hand, "Get down!"
"What?!" his companion screamed back, momentarily losing momentum with his blade and breaking his focus.
But it was too late. The sentry fired
—save Keith I gotta save Keith I love Keith if he dies then I'll—
and Lance shoved his leader to the floor and leapt readily in front of the gunfire. He felt the shot connect with his gut with a sickening splat and felt a white-hot pain in his lower abdomen. The world seemed to freeze in place; the advancing army ceased its attack, the sentry that had fired the shot failed to load another in its gun, Keith's blade stopped mid-decapitation, a menacing snarl painted across the Black Paladin's features.
A moment later, Lance's body tumbled to the ground.
"Lance! Lance! Damn it!" he heard Keith screech in shock.
The world was fading in and out quickly, spinning in circles and somersaulting this way and that. He felt his stomach lurch as Keith grabbed his wrists and dragged him behind shelter. Lance choked on a bit of bile that bubbled up his throat and spat it on the ground as he was lifted up and leaned against Keith's thighs.
It was crimson-red, he didn't fail to notice.
Blood.
Lance tried to laugh, but he grimaced as the pain stabbed through him again unexpectedly, causing the laughter to stick in his throat and turn into another agonizing retch instead. He tried to keep his eyes open, but found himself failing miserably; each time his eyes blinked shut, he was met with different memory that he could have sworn he had forgotten since he had left Earth….
Kissing Evangelina Perez on the playground in third grade and having to write "I will not kiss a girl on the playground again" fifty times on the chalkboard (which, by the way, he did kiss a girl on that playground again, and would continue to do so until he was moved to the middle school).
Playing football with his brothers and sisters at family picnics and growing increasingly furious when Sophia would kick the ball into the wrong goal but there was nothing he could do about it because she was just a little girl, Mama said, she was too young to know better, Mama said, she was just a baby, Lance Charles, Mama said.
Signing up to be a cadet in the space program because Mickey told him he'd be worth it, told him he'd be a great astronaut, told him that there wasn't anything left for him on that little bitty island back in Cuba, told him that if he really wanted to make a name out of the McClain family, then he'd break the mold and just do it because Lance was just too smart to work at a family-owned grocery store for the rest of his life—no, Lance deserved more.
Only, ironically, Lance had gotten so, so much more than he had bargained for.
"Lance… Lance, oh crap, Lance, son-of-a-fuckin'-BITCH—" Keith swore as he began applying pressure to the wound in the Paladin's abdomen. "Frick, Lance, sweet Jesus. Stay with me. Come on, say something. Come on…!"
What was that?
Oh. It was Keith.
Lance chuckled again deliriously as he noticed the little bit of Texan drawl edging its way into that voice, as it so often did when he was tired or angry or on-edge. He had almost forgotten that Keith was even there.
Oh, Keith.
That invoked an entirely new set of memories in Lance's increasingly-sporadic brain.
God, Lance hated Keith.
Used to hate him so bad, used to loathe him, despise him. They were arch-nemeses.
He hated how he always seemed to surpass him in everything—at the Garrison, in the space sims, even in the Voltron team. He was even the leader now, the pilot of none other than the Black Lion itself. Even his race seemed to one-up Lance—oh, you're Cuban? Cool. I'm a Galra. Beat that.
But, then, he seemed to remember….
…telling Keith he'd give up his Lion for the sake of Voltron if Shiro could ever pilot the Black Lion again and Keith wanted Little Red back
("Leave the math to Pidge")
…stargazing underneath the colorful, innate galaxies with him after a long, sleepless night, when his chronic nightmares got the better of him and his head was filled with toxic loneliness
("I don't think your family would ever, ever give up searching for you")
…or just sitting with him in complete silence, drinking coffee and enjoying each-other's presence. Relying on him, when things got too dark to handle, when Lance couldn't breathe because of the crushing weight of his homesickness, because of the crushing weight of everything—
And realizing that, when Keith was by his side, he didn't feel as homesick.
When Keith was by his side…
…he was closer to home than he had been since he had first left.
And now, here he was, bent over Lance's broken body, gazing down at the Red Paladin in horror, watching the lights fade in and out of his ocean-blue eyes and praying for a shred of hope, for anything, that would keep Lance breathing long enough for Pidge and Shiro and Allura to arrive and save the day, long enough for a savior to come and deliver them from the hell that beckoned them so temptingly, so sweetly.
"Lance, please, just hang on—oh, shit, Lance—"
Lance coughed again and hacked up another clot of blood into his palm and stared at it in wonder before slinging it on the ground weakly. "You're… You're hard to keep up with, you know that?" he heaved, a flicker of a grin coming to the corners of his lips. He reached a trembling hand up and pressed his blood-soaked palm to Keith's cheek. "You're… You're too much for me. You always have been." He managed to chuckle again faintly. "You always… have been… aha-ha..."
Keith's slate-grey eyes widened in horror. His mouth opened and closed silently, mortified by what he was seeing. He wanted to say something. Anything. Anything at all. But his bottom lip was quivering so much that he was afraid to make a sound, afraid his voice might crack in two, afraid that he would lose his god-damned mind.
Lance's eyelids flickered open and shut as he gasped for breath. He was slipping out of consciousness at an alarming rate.
"Lance," Keith began, slapping his palm against the Paladin's face gently. "Lance, stay with me. Talk to me. Tell me something…! Please…!"
Lance laughed again, ignoring the pain that flared violently as he did so. He had a feeling that the pain wasn't going to last too much longer, anyway.
It was funny. All Lance ever wanted was to punch the crap out of the Texan above him, to let him know just how much he abhorred him.
But now, in this moment, all he wanted was to gaze at the dark-grey pools of his eyes and daydream, just one final time.
He wanted to imagine what it would've been like to wake up and see those eyes blinking open drowsily next to him, just one final time.
He wanted to imagine to expression he would've seen in those eyes if he would've just kissed him that night under the stars, instead of ignoring how loudly his heart was beating when Keith's hand came too close to his own, just one final time.
He wanted to see them blaze with joy and crinkle up at the edges when he laughed at one of Lance's lame jokes, just one final time.
Just one final time.
For only a moment.
A deep panic set itself within Keith Kogane's stomach as he caught the defeated, concluding expression in his partner's ocean-blue eyes.
He was giving up, Keith realized.
Lance was giving up.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Keith couldn't let that happen.
He wouldn't.
As if sensing his defiance, Lance's hand slipped from Keith's dirtied, blood-streaked face and back over the increasingly-incapacitating wound in his abdomen, his eyes squeezing shut and his eyebrows drawn together in unendurable torment. Keith bellowed out his name again, shaking Lance's shoulders and digging his fingernails deeper into the black spandex suit beneath his Paladin armor.
It takes only a moment to fall completely in love with somebody.
But, for Lance McClain, that moment had passed long ago.
It takes only a moment to give your life for somebody.
For Lance McClain, that moment was now.
…
Pidge, Hunk and Allura rounded the corner on a trail of fire, their bayards out and at-the-ready, prepared for action.
But when they saw the scene before them, Pidge gasped in terror.
There was a single Galra, in white and red Paladin armor, knelt over a coffee-haired, blood-stained body. Keith Kogane's Paladin helmet lay on the ground nearby.
It looked like the scene of a massacre. Dozens upon dozens of Galra soldiers lie dead on the ground, the broken remains of the robotic sentries underneath. There was the heavy, repugnant odor of iron in the air; it made Hunk's stomach churn and caused him to clap his hand over his mouth. The silence of the room was deafening, save the heavy breathing coming from the figure before them. The only living organism they could see in the vicinity was crouched right in front of them, in their leader's Paladin armor, with the Black Paladin's bayard and helmet scattered behind him.
"What are you doing there?!" Allura shouted in indignation at the figure, raising her bayard maliciously in preparation to strike. Pidge noticed that her voice sounded weak and on the verge of tears. "Where is Keith?!"
"No, Allura, wait!" Pidge said, catching Allura's wrist and lowering the weapon she so vengefully. "I think that is Keith!"
"Nonsense, why would Keith be…."
Her voice trailed off as the unknown figure turned to face them, slowly standing upright on a pair of trembling legs.
Tears were pouring down the oddly-familiar face. There was a crimson palm-print on his left cheek right below eyes, like someone had pressed their bloody hand against his cheekbone. "Pidge, Hunk… Allura, I… I…."
Hunk's eyes widened in shock. "Keith….? Is that you…?"
The familiar face before them crumpled in anguish as Galra-Keith dropped to his knees. "They got Lance," he choked, his voice thick and raw with emotion. The very sound of it made Pidge's heart shatter into a trillion tiny pieces. "They hurt him. They hurt him bad. I wasn't paying attention and he… He….!"
"Is Lance okay?! Keith, listen to me! Is he okay?!"
Keith hit the ground face-first, his fingers seizing fistfuls of ebony-black hair on his head in agony as his entire body shook with sobs. He let out a long, heart-wrenching wail that made all three of the Voltron Paladins before him tremble with sorrow before he was finally able to speak again.
"He's not breathing, Hunk! He's dying!
Lance is dying!"