Allura insisted that they do this, much to the complaints of everyone but Hunk and Shiro, who were always on board for anything involving so-called "team bonding". Apparently, it was absolutely crucial that Team Voltron go camping to "strengthen the bonds between the paladins of the mightiest protector in the universe." Which most of the crew called BS on, considering how well their first attempts at this turned out.
The team finally stopped their complaints about the sudden decision when Coran told them (while Allura was out of the room, excitedly making arrangements) that Allura really wanted to go. Apparently, she heard Pidge mention that they used to go camping outdoors with their dad and brother to do research. Allura, having never done anything like camping before, was excited to try it. And if Pidge was involved, Coran whispered to the guys, there's no stopping Allura.
The crew decided to go along with it, as Hunk thought it was the sweetest thing he'd ever heard, Shiro would do anything for Pidge, and Lance was entertained by the princess' awkward attempts to connect with Pidge. Keith had never been camping with friends before either, so he was secretly glad to have the chance to do so now.
So, under the guise of team bonding, everyone set out to help Allura with her mission. The crew found themselves stationed in a field far enough away from the palace-ship to feel truly out on their own with the Black Lion for protection, just in case.
"So," Lance started, after everyone settled the camp under the guidance of the more experienced campers of the team. "Is this the part where we tell scary stories and roast the alien equivalent of marshmallows around the campfire?"
"I, for one, vote strongly against the whole scary story business," Hunk immediately objected from across the camp, where he was watching Pidge operate whatever technology they managed to rig in the time it took to set up camp. He was having a good time making a game out of dodging their swift hands swatting at him for interfering.
"I doubt Lance could even tell a scary story without frightening himself," Keith said, chuckling at Lance's offended gasp.
"I could, too!" Lance marched toward Keith in what he thought was a threatening manner, but was more of an agitated waddle to point a finger to Keith's chest. "I bet I could tell a story so scary, you'll... you'll... Cry for Shiro to look for monsters before you go to sleep!"
"Good one, Lance," Pidge called, without looking up from their mechanical project. As annoyed as they pretended to be by Hunk's hovering, they genuinely enjoyed having him around, because he was willing to help and actually knew what he was doing, for the most part.
"Ha ha," Keith said, rolling his eyes. "Joke's on you because he'll being doing that anyway. That's why we have the Black Lion with us, duh." With that, he raised an eyebrow at Lance's hand before he grabbed the finger that was still pressed to his chest, and brushed past to go sit near the fire with Shiro while Lance sputtered, red-faced, trying and failing to come up with a witty response or a reason why he still had his finger on Keith's chest.
"I don't know much about scary stories either, or even marshmallows for that matter, but hopefully I have something that's close enough," Allura said, triumphantly carrying a large container, which she set down near Shiro and Keith. "I'm still not quite sure what they are, but hopefully these will suffice." With that, she opened the container, revealing palm-sized purple cubes, chunks of what appeared to be yellow chocolate, and some type of flat cookies. "This is how you make your 'some mores', correct?" She asked Pidge, as everyone gathered to inspect the contents of the container.
"S'mores. You smush the words together into one, like you do with the ingredients," Pidge said. "And this looks to be as close as we can get to them, with foreign ingredients. How did you get them?" Pidge picked up one of the purple cubes and lobbed it at Lance's head, who was making skeptical faces at the food while Allura wasn't aware. The "marshmallow" made a satisfying 'splat!', leaving a purple splatter on the side of his face, much to the amusement of Hunk, Shiro, and Keith.
"Coran made them, actually. He tried his best with the description you gave, so hopefully it doesn't pale too much in comparison to when you camped with your family," Allura answered, smiling sweetly at Pidge.
"Ok that's great and all, but who's gonna volunteer to try it first?" Lance asked. " Like, who knows if this stuff will combust on us or something?" Everyone fell quiet for a few seconds, no one wanting to be the first to try the new food.
"Well, since this is a team bonding experience, I think we should all try it at the same time." Shiro broke the silence, already placing a purple "marshmallow" on a stick in everyone's hands.
"Fair enough," Keith said, accepting his purple sweet.
"And this way, if anything goes wrong, we all suffer together," Shiro added, winking at everyone as their sudden objections started up. "C'mon, it can't be that bad. Now, gather around the fire, and the on the count of three, we'll all roast them together."
Taking their places, everyone counted together before placing their marshmallow in the flame.
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!"
"Nice! It's not exploding!" Hunk said, excitedly.
"Ok, so what do we do now?" Everyone but Allura looked at Keith in surprise for a few seconds before Lance spoke up.
"You've... Never had s'mores before?"
"No," Keith replied, preparing to defend himself against Lance's usual digs. "That a problem?"
"No, no! I was just surprised is all," Lance said. "I just love s'mores, so I can't believe you've never had one before. That's, like, a crime or something. Or, it should be. I should make a law when we get back to Earth."
"What's so great about a puff that's on fire? You can't eat fire." Keith looked at the flaming square that was melting at the end of the stick he still held it the fire.
"Of course not! But that's the fun bit. So the next thing you do is blow the fire out on the marshmallow and make the sandwich quickly, so it can melt the chocolate-ish...whatever we have. If it can. Not sure about that part though." Lance hurriedly went about showing Keith how to construct his sandwich, while Hunk and Pidge helped Allura construct hers. Said "help" entailed Hunk and Pidge absolutely insisting on the princess' first s'more being a "triple decker", and the three of them trying to safely stack three s'mores worth of sandwiches together without making too much of a mess.
"Ok so I guess it's up to me to give the taste verdict," Shiro said when he realized that no one had yet to actually eat one. Bracing himself, he bit into his treat. "Huh, a bit strange texture-wise, but otherwise it's actually pretty good!" At his announcement, everyone cheered, and went about making another in the case of Hunk and Pidge.
"Ok, is everything squished together and kinda melty, Keith?" Lance asked, preparing to eat his own s'more.
"Yeah," Keith nodded while keeping a close eye on his own treat as if it could run away from him.
"Alright. On the count of three, we both take a bite, ok?" With that, they both took bites of their nearly-s'mores together, with Lance carefully watching Keith's face to gauge his reaction.
"Huh," Keith hummed after swallowing his first bite. "Not bad. I can see why you like them so much." The treat was quickly eaten after his initial judgment.
"Yes!" Lance excitedly fist-pumped the air. He quickly set about preparing a pile of s'mores on their side of the campfire. "Now, how many can you eat without getting sick? My record is 14." The two immediately began to make the largest pile of s'mores they could and proceeded to race to see who could eat the most without turning green.
The number was 20, a close tie pulled off by Keith in the last few seconds before Shiro caught on to what they were doing. He put an end to it before either of them could incapacitate themselves with the treats, fearing the slight green tint the two had been developing.
After ensuring that neither paladin would suffer any long-term effects from the fast consumption of alien-brand s'mores, the crew contemplated what other things humans typically did around a campfire.
"Since scary stories are out, I don't really know what else to do," Lance said, laying down with his arms cushioning his head. "It's not like there's another troupe of campers that we can prank."
"Yeah, no," Shiro said. "Pidge, is there anything you often did while camping? I'm afraid I've only gone fishing while camping, but I'm not sure that would be advisable in unknown territory. Don't wanna fish something that could try to eat us."
"Well, we would usually stargaze and point out what we saw until we fell asleep," Pidge answered. Apparently they had this in mind for a while, because they then dragged over a rigged up telescope from a large bag they and Hunk took off the ship earlier in the night. The telescope was a patchwork device, made of parts from unused scopes found in the castle and of course, many electronic upgrades that only Pidge could accomplish.
"We could make a game out of it," Allura said, warming up to the idea. "See what we can make of the shapes. I used to do this with Father when I was younger."
The paladins were all on board with the idea, having nothing they would normally have on earth to do. The game turned out to be more fun than Lance thought it would be, as everyone seemed to be entertained by the "Burger in the Sky" he found outlined in the stars. Allura and Pidge also taught the crew how to measure distance with the stars, which Lance immediately forgot but Keith was amazingly good at. Soon enough, the group started to fall asleep in their sleeping bags one by one, which had all been dragged close together to have a comfy place to stargaze.
Pidge fell asleep first. Usually they were up late tinkering with some gadget or another, but apparently lying between Shiro and Allura was a comfortable place to be, as they were asleep soon after showing everyone the extent of their knowledge of the stars.
Hunk was next, as Pidge was no longer awake for him to annoy with his poking around. Buried under more than a few blankets as he was, he made the perfect backrest for Lance to lean against as he continued to watch the stars, despite the occasional jostle from Hunk's snores. Shiro turned in shortly after, gently drifting into sleep with Allura's soft voice telling Altean stories of the stars. Allura herself fell asleep not too far after, finding herself becoming the cuddle-buddy of a very deeply asleep, koala-like Pidge.
After a while, Lance got up to move Pidge's telescope over to his comfy spot, so he could look at stars that were farther away. On his way back to his pile of blankets, he noticed that he hadn't caught sight of Keith for quite a while. After a quick scan of the area, he concluded that he must be sleeping inside the Black Lion.
"Lame," Lance spoke the half-hearted insult in the general direction of the Black Lion, before going back to looking at the stars and continuing to create stories to go along with his own constellations. In only a few minutes of searching, he found a pattern of stars that he thought formed each member of their team. One sickle-shaped planet in the distance looked vaguely like Pidge's bayard, a string of stars formed Hunk's headband, and one particular cluster resembled the Altean marks that Allura and Coran share. Lance took a second to laugh to himself, as he found another strip of stars that he thought looked like Shiro's remarkably impressive winged eyeliner, reminding him that he always intended to ask the man exactly how he does it so nicely. It took him a little while to find what he could make of the stars for Keith. Upon finding the particular stars that reminded him of Keith, Lance sat back from the telescope to shake his head at himself.
"Way to be gay, Lance," he mumbled to himself, smirking at the stars in pride of his short rhyme. The stars he found to represent Keith made him think of the way Keith's face lit up earlier that day, after his first taste of a s'more on his first camping trip with friends. They were a small cluster of stars a little bit to the right of Shiro's, where they sat shining brightly. They reminded Lance of Keith's eyes when he realized that he actually enjoyed the treat, a look Lance had the pleasure of witnessing.
"What, exactly, is making you gay, Lance?" Said paladin jumped at the sound of Keith's voice suddenly in his ear. Keith laughed at Lance's now gaping mouth as he make himself comfortable next to his place at the telescope.
"B-b-b-b-," Lance stammered, trying hard to recover from his shock.
"Aw," Keith teased. "Don't go all silent now. You were just getting to the good part." Keith gently nudged Lance to show that he wasn't serious in his teasing.
"You're supposed to be asleep," Lance finally mumbled, crossing his arms and refusing to look directly at Keith until his face calmed down. "What are you doing up?"
"You're the one who decided that I was supposed to be asleep," Keith said, sitting back on his hands to join Lance in his stargazing. "Now, what's gay about looking at the stars?" After a slight pause, he smirked at Lance and added: "Besides what we're doing right now?"
"Your face, that's what," Lance said, trying to think of a way to get out of explaining himself. At least it was part of the truth.
"And here I was, under the impression that it was you who was the gay one here. All along it was me!" Keith laughed as Lance ignored him in favor of going back to finding shapes in the stars with Pidge's telescope. After a little while of watching, Keith pushed Lance's face away from the telescope so that he could use it and redirect the scope. "Here. That's you."
"Give me that," Lance said, trying to find the stars Keith was referring to. "What are you talking about?" Keith readjusted the telescope, and pointed in the general direction of the stars he was just looking at.
"There," He said. "You see those stars right there that sort of look like a stick figure slipping on something?" Lance looked again, before pushing back from the telescope to tackle Keith in retaliation.
"To think I actually thought of something actually decent for you up there," he complained, refusing to let Keith up.
"Oh?" Keith hummed in interest. "So was this the gay thought you had? It was about me?" He slowly sat himself and Lance upright, careful not to dislodge the other paladin from his lap. He reached his arms around Lance to bring the telescope to his own eye. "What stars were you looking at? What shape are they in?" Lance huffed a bit, before pointing Keith in the right direction.
"They're shaped like your eyes when you smile," he whispered, barely audible, even from their close positions. He tried to shrink away from Keith in embarrassment, but found that was a difficult endeavor from his position in the other paladin's lap. After a few seconds of shuffling, Keith's arm that wasn't on the telescope tightened around Lance to get him to stop, forcing him to give up his attempts and make himself comfortable against Keith's chest.
"Wow," Keith said upon finding the collection of stars. He pulled back from the telescope to look at Lance. "You're right, that is pretty gay."
He smiled at Lance then, the same smile that Lance couldn't look away from all those hours earlier. A few heartbeats passed as the two sat there, lost in two separate but similar worlds, before Keith closed the short distance between himself and Lance, gently pressing his lips to the other's. Lance stilled in Keith's arms, shocked at the sudden kiss, but it was only for a few seconds. His eyes slid closed as he gave in to the feeling of kissing his longtime crush, his face growing red and warm with the knowledge.
The kiss was sweet and brief, and both pulled away at the same time to catch the breath they were holding. Keith was the one to break the silence.
"I think I'm gayer than you, Lance."