fortune favors the brave, dude.
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(a pacrim au)
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i
The PPDC means something else to Keith. It's adventure, it's adrenaline, it's glory: something his quiet home town never promised. It is also revenge: something that planted and festered in him since he was ten and his mother trapped under fallen debris told him to run or the Kaiju will kill him. He remembers the look on her face every night, and it gets him through years of merciless training and crippling loneliness. Sometimes it's easy to block out. All he needs to do is blast some very loud music or laugh with the other pilots over rations.
But sometimes (the times that matter most), it's not so easy. In the lull and pull of the drift, his memories are drawn out and the painful ones are relived with the myriad of ugly emotion that course through him until he is paralyzed with fear, with desperation, with hatred. He's eight kinds of vulnerable, eight shades of embarrassed.
He's glad its Lance he shares this with.
ii
They fit so well together, it kind of weirds Lance out.
Keith and Lance share an ebb and flow that baffle the other pilots and the questions bubble up their throats but die on their lips when they see Keith hit the back of Lance's head with a bo staff and call him a brainless monkey. Then Lance yells back, all speculation are replaced with mutters of, "what the fuck did we expect?"
Nevertheless, Lance appreciates their tandem. He's still amazed that even outside of the drift, Keith's very person is like an extension of Lance's own mind and body. They need only share one look for them to affirm that they need to wallop the fuck out of this cocky shit from the north, or sneak into the kitchen to take all the leftover fries for themselves.
"This was a great fucking idea!" Lance yells to Keith as they run from the angry line cook threatening to filet them for stealing.
iii
Keith knows everything about him, and that's a little disconcerting. Lance blushes a brilliant pink when Keith winks knowingly when the pretty commanding officer walks by their table, and Keith laughs whenever Lance tries to deny that he does not sleep with seventeen Hustlers under his bed.
But Lance knows things about Keith, too, so it evens out. He can always point out dreams about motorcycle rides, smooth brown leather and terrible scenes of a devastated town.
"You know, it's kind of pretty fucking weird," Lance comments one time as they walk back to their room. "How you've probably seen me naked, but from my perspective and vice versa. How wild is that, huh?"
Keith doesn't even flinch. "Well, it's not a very pleasant view." He lies.
iv
Their first victory is bittersweet. The city is half destroyed and more people have died than made it to safety points. Lance remembers seeing the wake of destruction on the news: orphans crying, lands devastated, lifestyles ruined. It's not their fault, he knows. They saved the city from total annihilation and that meant something, right?
Right.
He still needs to tell himself this every time he closes his eyes and the fresh memories flash before him. He's sick (again), and he heaves into the toilet what little dinner he managed to force into his mouth earlier that evening.
He feels a hand on his back, soothing. "Don't be such a pussy, Lance," Keith tells him even as he brushes the brown that's stuck to Lance's face.
The black of Keith's hair reminds Lance of the starless night sky of his province, and foolish as it might be, Lance latches onto the idea that Keith reminds him of home.
v
They share a room and Lance is trying to fall asleep in the bottom bunk he sees Keith come out of the shower (and he's seen this more times than he likes). It makes Lance some kind of irritable because he starts feeling something weird, something he can't explain. His face heats up and he turns on the bed to face the wall and drags his duvet up over his face.
Keith rolls his eyes at his partner before he pulls nightclothes out of his cabinets and gets dressed for bed.
Lance clicks off the lights when he hears Keith settle on the top bunk. Close your eyes and try to get some sleep. Try to forget everything you've seen today.
Lance tells Keith about back home even though it is moot. Keith has been in every memory and every thought and there's even the secondhand nightmares to prove it, but there is a little comfort in voicing out the things he misses.
They sit on top of a tall scaffolding unit, back to back as Lance eats from Keith's plate unknowingly and Keith helps himself to Lance's coffee. Lance talks about the farm beside his house and how the woods beyond his land's border is dark and menacing. Philippine folklore is something that both terrifies and excites Lance so Keith listens to childhood stories about Lance's grandma telling him to keep his windows closed at night or the manananggal will steal him away and eat him, or about how when his mama was pregnant with her sister their father slept with a bolo on his bed stand in case the tik-tik came to feast on his mama's belly. About how his parents argued about letting him leave the countryside for education in the city, about how his mama wouldn't let him keep the old stray dog he'd named Peanut who he hid away in his closet for a week and fed corned beef and crackers until his brother ratted him out. Lance recounts how he grew up watching his brother excel at everything effortlessly; how he envied him but loved him all the same. He explains how to cook sinigang and raves about how he could suck anyone's dick for a good bowl of sinigang right now, and he feels Lance roll his eyes.
"My mom made wicked sinigang na hipon and its literally the best thing. One time I-"
Keith tells him to stop, that he's been talking about sinigang for a good ten minutes now.
Lance laughs. "You know, mama would have liked you. I wish you could have met her."
He forgets Keith kind of already did.
vi
"You ever miss home?" Lance asks one night when he's turned a hundred times under his sheets and sleep continues to evade him.
He doesn't get a reply so he listens to Keith's gentle snores instead.
vii
When confined to an underground training facility that doubled as a Jaeger base, one had to take their fun where they could get it.
For Lance it's in everything from throwing ketchup covered fries at the new blood from way up in the hanging scaffolding or setting off the fire alarm in the west residences. But recently, he'd woken up with his index fingers super glued to his nipples so fucking duh he was getting Keith back for this.
One night while Keith slept soundly (aided by the very illegal tequila they shared just after curfew), he bought out his "art supplies" and got creative throughout the night.
The next morning a pajama-clad Lance gets chased by a murderous Keith who sports a brand new bubble gum pink hair color.
viii
Lance finds an old mp3 player one day.
He's made to wait in the commander's office because of course he got in trouble for getting into a fight and shattering someone's cheekbones on the pipe of the waterlines that ran along the sides of the hall. He's being held at some office that looked like every delinquent's nightmare with the behavioral posters and imposing file cabinets. But that is beside the point. Commander had been called away by a dour-faced captain so Lance supposed he had time to kill.
Of course he goes through the boxes of contraband, pocketing a funny-looking gag toy and a box of cigarettes. He leaves the little dime bag alone, but he does help himself to the mp3 player which he takes back to his and Keith's bunker the same night.
He presses play and grins up at his friend when Sinatra blasts a tinny sound from the outdated speaker. "Dance with me, Keith."
Not even looking up from the magazine he's reading on Lance's lower bunk, Keith scoffs. "Not a chance, dickhead."
Lance takes the insult in stride and moves to grab Keith's ankles dangling from the end of the mattress.
"Hey, dude, what the fuck─" Keith yelps as Lance tugs on his ankles until his butt lands on the floor. "Jesus, Lance, I'm tired."
The darker boy only grins wider as he pulls on Keith's hands before he could get back on the bed. Lance sway their joined hands like some childish dance. "Dance with me," he insists again.
Keith rolls his eyes but relents all the same.
ix
In a devastating turn of events, they experience their first defeat. After a successful takedown of a nasty category two Kaiju, up comes a category three right out of nowhere and its great talons swiped and pushed and tore and ripped. Keith and Lance stands not a chance, especially when their Jaeger is ripped open right where the pilots hide.
Things fall apart so quickly, so uncontrollably. Wires are snapping and pipes are swinging. It only takes one broken beam with a ragged, sharp end lodging into tender human flesh to make a team into a corpse and a mourner.
When Lance dies, Keith is ten all over again.
How long does he watch, helpless, shouting, weeping, bargaining, as he watches something puncture Lance's chest as if in slow motion. How long does he stand there watching Lance die; how long does he let himself believe it can't be true?
When backup arrives, they're just too goddamn late. They do give way to a private grieving session.
Keith makes haste ripping his helmet and tethers off so he can run for Lance. And how awful, truly awful it is to dislodge a person from impalement and hear that sickening squelch of muscle and blood. When Keith lands on the floor with Lance in his arms, all he can think is: he's cold. Keith remembers feeling cold as well, a phantom drift.
Its deep in his lungs; a numbing cold that he figures he's felt before but after all this time, it's still a surprise. He supposes it's because they're linked not just by the head, but by the heartstrings as well. Machines beep and whirr but he can't hear anything. Not the sobs that tear from Lance's lips, not the explosions around him, not his own screaming.
But he's pretty sure he can hear Lance's heartbeat falter. A bad imitation of an EKG sound effect from a bad hospital show that's weak beeping at first, then the gut-wrenching flatline, all in his head.
His hands shake as they hold Lance with a tenderness no one knows he has. Keith's cold fingers pry Lance's head piece off and brush stray scarlet stains from his dark cheeks. "Fuck, don't move. Just… Just close your eyes, okay, Lance?" his voice cracks and a sob leaves hips lips. The dam breaks, and he trembles and weeps and calls for help he knows will never come on time.
x
Keith tries not to think about it.
He can feel Lance's warm blood on his skin and it pools under and around them like a gory halo. He wants to do so much for Lance: comfort him in his last moments, make him happy despite the gaping hole just under his chest, maybe draw a smile because surely this would be the last time.
Tell him I love him.
Tell him I can't imagine life without him.
Tell him life will have no more meaning all over again when he's gone.
But he can't; Keith feels himself slipping faster than Lance, consumed by panic and nostalgia. Even with Lance in his arms like this, Keith looks for a way out: a lit tunnel where both of them amble out together. He can't find his footing, and he can't do anything but fret and beg. "I love you, you fucking asshole. So please try not to die."
Don't leave.
xi
Oh, but he does. Lance coughs once, twice, splattering blood on Keith's cheeks, before he goes limp with his last exhale of breath.
The hoarse yell out of Keith's lips sound like a war cry.
xii
Keith is angry for years. He doesn't attend Lance's funeral (a quick and sparse event since no one had time to mourn the dead when there were Kaiju to watch for) and he never visits the slab of marble that piled up in a courtyard behind the station.
It takes Keith close to five years to return to Lance's final resting place, still as bitter as five years back and he finds it's not like it is in the movies when the mourner approaches the burial site and either bursts into tears or start with a lame hello, how are you, I miss you.
No, Keith can't find any sense in talking to gravestones.
So he just sits there. Slumped back against stone bearing Lance's name and makes his own lungs swell with breath, and then exhale through his teeth. It still hurts after all these years and Keith likens thinking about his fallen partner like being stabbed in the heart. Maybe this is the most honest sense of drift compatibility. Keith is pretty sure this is how much pain Lance felt when that beam pierced his chest.
He knows no suitable tributes to do. So instead, he lights a cigarette and sucks it between gritted teeth and in the space of his mind, relives those bright days in the hangar when his world wasn't so quiet yet.
note: The title is taken from Newton's quote in the movie! If you haven't seen Pacific Rim, please do! It's one of my faves. And of course, you can't have one mecha cartoon without another mecha au, amirite? I feel kinda shitty that my first Voltron fic is an AU but mannnn, I've been thinking of Klance in a PacRim au since I started watching, and I'm still on Episode 4 or 5 I think? So u kno forgive any shitty characterizations or whatever? I'm not even halfway done with the show pls
I saw posts on tumblr (and sorry if I can't pinpoint them) headcanong Lance as a Filipino. And since I'm Filipino as well, HEY HEY HEYYYY PARTY WITH THE HEADCANONS. I bet he loves sinigang na hipon. Who doesn't?
And also pls think abt Keith super gluing Lance's index fingers to his nipples because he wanted to teach lance a lesson about sleeping naked and lance getting back at him by painting his hair pink.