There Is No Lube In Space

by Lala to the power of 2

A journey through Keith's eyes as we explore the beginning of he and Lance's relationship; wherein he learns about sex, trust, and how falling in love can work for your mental illness and not just against it. Also, they both almost die in that huge planet-wide conspiracy Keith gets them caught up in.

2. The Bad (complete)

Super special thanks to my betas Titty-Now-Titty-Always and Damnspider, without whom this chapter would never have been completed.

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"You got it?" Pidge threw the distracted question over her shoulder at Keith, trying to focus on her own delicate task of affixing thin wiring to the lid of a shoddy Altean toybox.

Keith practically rolled his eyes. As if he didn't know how to make an explosive, this girl talked. "Oh, I'm already done," he assured, turning the flame off of his plasma torch as he finished soldering the in the last trigger. He waited for her to finish off the box and bring it over, the two of them carefully sliding his half of the project into place and safely locking it in.

"After this it just needs to be armed, right?" Keith asked once it was done, looking over the small plastic crate to make sure they hadn't left it looking any more suspicious than they needed it to be.

Pidge nodded, pushing her glasses up her nose with a dramatic flare. "We're set," she confirmed proudly, tucking the box under her arm and turning towards the door leading out of her lion's bay to the outside world. "Let's go fuck some shit up."

It was early morning, and Keith and Pidge had work to do. Actually, everyone had work to, but today Keith and Pidge were doing their work together because the paladins worked on a rotation system for reasons involving no one being allowed off by themselves and Hunk and Lance's unfortunate habit of trying to call each other as field trip buddies at first opportunity. But either way today Keith and Pidge had work to do together, which as far as the two of them were concerned just meant today was going to be as efficient as a well-oiled motherfucker. The two of them were, if he understood the concept correctly, best bros themselves.

Their friendship, it can be noted, was based almost entirely on mutual suppressed rage. When the two of them were alone they could drop all pretenses about good cheer and politeness, freely complaining and gossiping and just generally being bitchy without any kind of worry about anyone's stupid feelings getting hurt. It was incredibly cathartic.

"Here looks good, right?" The two of them wandered into Fyrestone's red-tarred streets, finding a side road with less foot traffic on the sandstone sidewalks than the most of the area and even fewer passing vehicles. Pidge set the trap box down on the sidewalk, not quite in the middle of anyone's way but obvious enough to catch their eye. The reason the street wasn't very busy was because it was on one of Fyrestone's few steep hills, so all they had to do to find a vantage point out of sight to watch from was wander up the hill a little ways and hang out behind the low stone wall separating the walkway from the street.

And the other reason Keith liked hanging out with Pidge? Because they did shit like this together. Pranks were an endeavor Keith didn't normally deign to waste his time on, but a favorite pastime of the green paladin. And as they were no longer allowed to team up with her preferred partner of Lance because the two of them had no sense of scale and tended to wind up endangering lives ("Why does something always blow up when I leave you two alone?!"; "It's called friendship, Hunk, and it means we're doing it right!"), Pidge had been in need of a new partner in crime. Keith had mainly needed something to do with his time, and had agreed because hanging out with Pidge was as good of an idea as any other. As it turned out, rigging Lance's underwear drawer with that itchy space pepper was a blast and a half, and Keith had ended up her go-to coconspirator when she needed stress relief. And as Keith was fully aware of the absolute bullshit that was Pidge's life, any kind of mischief she needed to get into as an outlet for her bitterness and rage was all good by his standards.

They waited with patience, watching as passersby glanced at the box as they walked by it, a few stopping to poke at it tentatively before moving on. Finally they struck gold, an onion-skinned alien man stopping to pick the box up and inspect it curiously. Keith and Pidge held their breaths, watching warily as the man shook the box to listen to the slight rattle the device made against the inside walls. Pidge leaned forward over the side if the short wall, watching with heart-pounding anticipation as the alien lifted open the latch of the box's lid… And after the loud popping noise and burst of high-speed indigo, burst out laughing at the absolute bewilderment on the alien's ink-stained face.

The onion man blinked in confusion, box slipping out of his hands and falling to the ground like Elmer Fudd dropping a present from Bugs and looking around frantically as if the answer to what had just happened to him was hiding in the bushes somewhere nearby. This was of course ironically true, but he did not manage to look far enough up the hill to notice Keith and Pidge where they were trying to smother raucous laughter into silence under their hands. Keith nudged Pidge's shoulder, nodding down the hill. She nodded back and sucked in a deep breath of air to calm her laughter. Schooling her face into seriousness, she jumped over the wall and started dashing down the hill towards the confused alien.

"Oh, no!" She shouted, and Keith wished so desperately he could see what kind of face she was wearing for this act. "Oh no oh no, oh no! My ink!"

The alien man looked up at Pidge as she ran towards him, dumbly sputtering out "Uhhhhm?"

"The ink I need for my boss! I can't believe I dropped it, I can't believe it EXPLODED! Of course it exploded, I had the carbanoid nitrodioxicide in there with it! I'm such an idiot!" She grabbed at her hair dramatically, reaching the man and picking the box up off the ground to look inside like maybe there'd be some ink leftover she could still use. "Oh, nooooo…"

Keith hopped over the wall and started down to meet the just as the onion man was apologizing "Oh, oh goodness now, I am so very sorry for opening that…" He slugged out in a thick voice, holding his leafy hands up in an automatic defensive stance.

Pidge stood back up, looking like she had just noticed him for the first time now. "And oh God, look at your face! I made you BLUE! I'm sorry sir, I'm so sorry!"

The alien shook his teardrop-shaped head quickly. "N-no…" He dismissed awkwardly, but by then Keith was running at them and interrupted whatever he was trying to say.

"Fox! Fox, what happened to the ink?! It looks like there was an explosion here or something!" Keith shouted, doing his best to look mad and worried at the same time as he ran down to meet them.

"Dana!" The two of them had long ago discovered aliens tended to regard he and Pidge as siblings, even when standing next to the other paladins. They said it was because of their similar physical builds, but Keith knew it was because the strangers could recognize the matching expressions of utter disdain pairing their faces. Either way he and Pidge had learned to use this assumption to their advantage, and she had coached him into a near perfect "Codependent siblings" act with her to suit their nefarious purposes. Nefarious, of course, meaning they usually used it when they were trying to escape the repercussions of their mischief. Pidge stared up at him now with watery eyes, croaking apologetically "I- I dropped the box I was picking up for my boss and when I came back looking for it…" They both turned their heads to look at the flustered onion man. "Th- the carbodium was in there, too."

"Damn it, Fox, if you don't get that delivery to him you'll be fired again!" Keith scolded. "You shouldn't have had them both in there at the same time! And you!" He directed his glare the alien. "What were you doing opening a random box in the middle of the street, anyway?"

The onion man shook his his head quickly again, sputtering out "I'm sorry, it was… I was just…"

"What are you gonna do now, Fox?" Keith ignored him, rounding again on his pretend sister. "Can we replace the ink? How much was the cost when you picked it up?"

She rubbed at her eyes as if to wipe the tears away, scrubbing at her face to make it look redder." I don't know, he just gave me a card to use and I already gave it back!"

Keith clicked his tongue. "We're just gonna need to try to replace it, we can't afford to lose another job right now."

"We can't afford to buy this much again, either! And the carbanoid nitrodioxicide was for work, too!"

"Are you serious right now?! Ugh, maybe if one of us picks up a second job…"

"You already have two!"

"A third job, then!"

"W-why don't I just give you the money for it?!" They both whipped their heads to turn back to the onion man, wide-eyed and flustered under their gaze. "I - it is my fault it exploded, I shouldn't have opened someone else's property in the first place, right?"

"Oh, no -"

"We couldn't possibly, sir, it's her own fault -"

"- we could never accept such generosity -"

"- and we can definitely take care of our problems, we don't need to bother you -"

"Especially when it's my fault you're blue in the first place, I should be the one offering you money..."

"P-please!" The alien held up his hands again, eyes darting back and forth in between the two of them as he fell backwards a step. "It's no trouble at all, just," he pulled some kind of wallet out of the pocket of his ink stained jacket, "please let me leave!"

Keith and Pidge both spoke at once, fervently trying to deny the offer with large gestures. The man's response was somewhere along the lines of throwing money at them and running away.

They stared at his retreating back for a moment, before looking down at the cards he'd handed them.

"Well, shit," Keith said after a while. "I didn't think the second part of this plan would actually work.

"Yeah, I didn't really either." Pidge agreed with drawn eyebrows. "We totally just conned that poor guy. That makes us awful people, right?."

"Awful, terrible people." They stared at the money. "We should probably like. Find him and return it or something, huh?"

"Yeah," Pidge agreed seriously. "We really should."

They used it to buy lunch instead.

To their credit buying lunch was, in fact, a large part of their information-gathering tactic for the day. They chose the most normal and nondescript diner they could identify, ordered enough food to excuse the two of them sitting there for the next several hours refilling their drinks like assholes(1), and listened.

"So why is it," Keith was asking Pidge, both of them keeping one ear open to the quiet din around them, "that we can understand everything everyone says to us on any planet, but I couldn't read this menu if I had a cipherkey?"

The bubbles Pidge had been blowing into her soda halted. "That's actually a pretty interesting question," she said, sitting up from where she'd been slumped over the tabletop. "Okay so you know that we have that connection with our lions where they're sort of in our brains? That's part of it. I haven't even come close to figuring out how this magitechnology the castle runs on works, but I know that the lions are translating any speech patterns we hear into recognizable ones" She pointed to her temple as if to demonstrate 'all in here.' "It even does the reverse, which is probably more impressive. They're constantly reading and analyzing the brainwave patterns of the speech center of the brain in everything around us including ourselves, sampling it and converting it into this sort of like.." Pidge's hands twitched and circled in the air as she fished for the right words. "...Translator matrix, so that when we speak what we THINK coming out of our mouths is our standard English but it's actually whatever the most prevalent local language is!" She paused. "Well, Allura said we all have awful accents in every language we speak, so I clearly it's not a perfect system."

Keith blinked stupidly, mind whirring as it tried to comprehend the explanation. "Okay, I think I get that. So why can't they just analyze the patterns of things we see, too?"

She shrugged. "I think it's because they can't connect the patterns they read in text with the patterns heard in speech. These things are supposed to have a full database with every language in the universe on it, but that's all ten-thousand year old data now, it's not accurate anymore." Pidge leaned back in her seat casually, taking a sip of her drink. "Same reason they'll translate Japanese but not Spanish, I imagine. English and Spanish are both romantic languages born from Latin, so the lions can't even tell they're different from each other. But when I had Shiro try some Japanese I could understand it, I guess because the origin was halfway around the globe so they have enough differences."

Keith had not actually thought Pidge would have an answer to his mostly hypothetical question, and couldn't help but be impressed. "And how much time did you spend deducing all of this, Agent Mulder?"

Her face twisted into the grimace of someone who could not be more disappointed with their life. "Only like, a day," she said morosely, as though the idea of a project that would take ten years of her life to comprehend was her greatest wish in this world.

Beside the table their waitress had come once again to loom over them with a stony glare. "Is there anything else I can get you?" The disgruntled Geruda asked with terse politeness, pouring enough water into Keith's still-full glass that a single nudge to the table would cause the careful bubble of water rising above the rim to burst and spill off the table into his lap.

"We're fine just chilling here, thanks," Pidge waved her off.

The server turned around to leave them, the motion whipping her tail out behind her to bump one of the legs of the table as she passed, and Keith slapped the palm of his hand over the top of his glass just in time to hold it down to the shaken table enough to minimize the inevitable spill. He shook the water off his hand, and cleaned up the rest with his last napkin. The glass still was still too full to safely pick up. "Are you done with that straw?"

"Sure." Pidge flicked it at him.

He was just sticking it into his water glass and dragging out a long sip when the first useful thing all week finally happened. Behind them towards the back of the restaurant two people were coming out of a soft-swinging door, one of them wheeling out an empty dolly as they talked.

"You're here earlier than usual, D'argo. I thought you always did your Concordia deliveries first?" The old Geruda woman in a manager's uniform asked.

Keith couldn't see the other speaker from where he was sitting without turning his head, so he just listened. "Yeah, I can't get in there yet until my new visa clears. Forgot to renew the damned thing before I came here now I've been putting off going down to that godawful license center like a fool."

"You still haven't been there? Honey you better get comfortable, then."

"I know, I know, I'll be here for days. But I'd have been here for days anyway, so. Can't blame a guy for procrastinating, right? I'll do it after I hit Elzar and Zaahn's places and finish today's deliveries"

"Well good luck with that sweetie. I'll be seeing you here for dinner again then, I suppose?"

"Well, I don't know where else I'd eat!" D'argo laughed, and wheeled his empty cart out of the restaurant.

Pidge and Keith were looking at each other. "What are you thinking, Agent Scully?"

"You know what I'm thinking, Mulder." Keith said, eyeing the door. They scooted their chairs out from under the table almost in unison.

Keith pulled out the cards they'd gotten from the onion man, looking at them critically. "Do we know how much money is on these?"

"Nope," Pidge said, standing up. "Do you know how much our bill was?"

"No idea."

They paused. "Leave all of them here and hope instead of shafting that poor server we gave her a really, really big tip?"

"That was my plan," Pidge agreed. Terrible, terrible people, they were. The others should stop leaving them unsupervised, honestly.

They left to begin following their quarry.

Admittedly, following the delivery man to two separate restaurants just to to find the licensing center was probably unnecessary when such a thing as 'asking for directions' existed, but that's what the two of them did anyway. It was probably just as well - otherwise they might have gone into it tomorrow looking for a normal passport, which Elpis did not provide and politely shut down like a steel trap if you asked. What they DID issue was work visas, and not just to anyone, either. When it all boiled down to it, the only way to get into Concordia was if you had something to sell.

But on the plus side? Look who'd finally figured out how to get into the city, eh? Efficient as a well-oiled motherfucker.

In the foodservice industry, in which Keith spent far more months bussing tables than he would ever have liked, a customer who takes up a table for half the night and preventing anyone from getting extra tips via turnover and clogging up the waiting list is usually referred to as "an Asshole"

"So… Do we have anything we could sell?" Lance asked the table at large. The five paladins plus Allura had reconvened at a bar later that evening. The live music from the band and chatter of the patrons around them was loud enough that any of the six of them could only just barely hear each other speaking over it, so Lance had to raise his voice to add "Because I feel like we can't pose as merchants very if we have no wares."

"We really only have what's in the castle with us," Hunk said dubiously. "We only just got that greenhouse running again, it's way too early to try to sell any of the food we're growing there."

Shiro managed to sit in his chair in a way that made the other patrons in the bar all walk around him in a wide berth where they shamelessly bumped against and slid past the others. "How important is it that we actually sell anything? When we can get into the city we don't need to keep posing as merchants if we can find what we're here for, right?" He looked at Allura. "How likely is it that we'll be able to talk to someone important quickly?"

"Not good," Allura just shook her head grimly. "The royal line of Sheba has always been very clandestine in their support of rebellion. Even if we miraculously managed to find out way to a senator or chancellor or duchess, there's a chance they aren't connected at all; and the ones who are will be hard pressed to tell us such." She looked out the darkened window at the far wall. "And nevermind the fact that I don't even know where the palace is anymore - this city has grown so much larger than it was in my day, I haven't the faintest clue where to even begin. I'm afraid we have to be prepared to be in Concordia for a long while."

"So um, no offense…" Lance twirled a hand in the air. "But how important is it to stay here and do this, exactly? Can we just…" He waved the hand dismissively. "Give up and leave, maybe?"

The others looked inappropriately hopeful at this, but Allura once again shot them down. "Even if it's not through the royal family, if we're going to find whatever revolution against the Galra this galaxy has been building up, Concordia is our best bet. The fact of the matter is as much as I'd like to keep other people out of this fight, we can't do it by ourselves." She looked at them all, eyes circling the table to meet each one of them in turn. "We need allies, and this is city is our best bet in finding them. There's a reason this city is practically the universal center of the black market - Concordia is City of a Centillion Secrets, past, present, and future."

There was a few moments where no one spoke, the boisterous din of the bar filling their silence.

And then Shiro said with complete seriousness, "That's a lot of fucking secrets."

"Well," Allura clapped her hands together to call attention back to her, and cheerfully added, "On the plus side, we actually do have plenty of wares to sell! Might have some trouble getting them from the castle all the way into town to sell, but we have more than enough to last us however long we need!"

The paladins all stared at her, trying to decide if they knew what she was referring to. "Ancient Altean antiques..?" Hunk hazarded.

"Yes, actually," Allura flashed him a dazzling smile. "Ten thousand year old furniture should fetch a pretty good price, if I'm not mistaken."

Which did in fact sound like a huge pain in the ass to move into the city considering where they'd parked their damned ship. What did ancient Altean furniture look like, anyway? Like, credenzas and shit? Did Keith even know what a credenza was? He realized he did not.

Lance frowned, kicking at the table a bit. "Okay, but if we're advertizing that it's ten thousand years old they'll probably check that out and figure out it's Altean. We might as well be painting a big sign on our backs saying 'Lookee here, we got us some Paladins!'" Which was a good point, if phrased in a totally weird sort of way.

"We can say we stole it," Pidge offered with no hesitation.

Hunk rubbed at his chin. "...Actually that's not bad."

"The castle did appear to have been already heavily looted when Coran and I took stock of it. It's not far out of reach to assume we're selling looted goods from when everything was still shut down." Allura said.

"The timing is a little too convenient though, isn't it?" Shiro argued reasonably. "A group of people show up with a ship we can't show anyone apparently full of Altean artifacts not even a year after Voltron has reappeared? Lance isn't wrong, it'd be a neon warning sign."

"Well that's not hard," Keith shrugged. "We can just say we stole it all recently - snuck in and looted the place while all of us were out distracted being Voltron." They left the place totally empty often enough that Keith was surprised it hadn't already happened. Well, they usually left either Allura, Coran or both behind to watch over things - today was Coran's turn to stay behind, as it were - but considering the Galra-related difficulties they've had in the past and the fact that it was only two people, Keith was sure that a person could sneak in and out without being noticed. "Maybe on Thuban 9, there was plenty of time for us to be robbed when we were there last month."

Even Shiro had to stop at that one. "...Actually... that could work. If we can be convincing… space bandits, I guess, and not show up in an obvious group of five we might be able to pass by with that."

At the words 'space bandits' Allura lit up like someone had just set a Christmas tree on fire. "We… we get to pretend to be space pirates!" She realized with the deranged glee of someone whose dreams have just come true.

"I, uh. I said bandits, actually…"

If she heard Shiro she made no sign of it. "I'm going to be so good at this, I've read all the great stories! Captain Bon Clay the Mimic Prince, Roronoa the Three Headed Razor Beast of Zou, Big Mam and her famous deadly tea parties…" She listed off like any one of them had ever heard of these people before and even knew if they had existed or were fictional. "Oh, I'm so excited, I wonder what kind of clothes we have left in the castle to dress up in!"

The paladins all exchanged weathered glances. With Allura that enthusiastic about the idea, they'd be hard pressed to talk her out of it. Looks like starting tomorrow they were going down to the license center in town and pretending to be space pirates. Or bandits. Whichever.

"Welp," Lance slammed a hand down on the table. "Now that that's all sorted, it's clear what we have to do." He flung an arm out behind him in an extravagant gesture towards the performing band. "There's a party going on around us, we've gotta join in!"

Keith huffed a short sigh out of his nose, his mouth occupied with trying to fight off a smile. Of course. Lance was hardly the type to throw away an open opportunity for a good time like this, wasn't he? They were lucky they'd gotten him to sit still and listen for as long as he had.

Lance was scanning the crowd of dancing aliens next to the band with unconcealed excitement, not even facing the table anymore as he called to them "So, who's joining me for a round on that dance floor?"

Hunk pushed out of his seat with noisy scrape of his chair. "You know I can't resist the chance to totally upstage you with my sick moves," he broke out a rather impressive pop'n lock maneuver to demonstrate. "No one ever expects the big guy to be able to move."

"Oh, you'd better bring it," Lance grinned. "Only way you're gonna look better than me out there is if you throw down all the game you've got, my friend."

"Says the guy who dances like a cartoon character," Hunk laughed back.

Keith was watching this exchange with only mild interest, perfectly content to observe until a hand was thrust unceremoniously into his face. He looked up to find his boyfriend beaming a hopeful smile at him. "Join me?" He asked in a cobbler-sweet voice.

Keith supposed if he'd thought about he'd have known better than to be surprised. Why WOULDN'T Lance expect Keith to dance with him? They were dating, after all, who the hell else was Lance supposed to expect to dance with him but Keith, right? Nonetheless, Keith was reluctant to agree. Dancing was the sort of thing that was only fun if you knew what you were doing or had the self-confidence not to care that you don't, and while Keith had no problem recognizing his strong points he knew anything involving a noisy room full of complete strangers was not gonna be in his comfort zone. "Uh," he flashed Lance one of those hesitant 'I really am quite fine thank you' smiles common to all people trying to sink into the background and blow off their friends. "I'd better not. You definitely won't be upstaging anyone if I go out there with you."

Lance didn't look put off in the least bit, smiling even wider and laughing "Like anyone actually cares. Come oooooonnnnn, come dance with me. We'll look ridiculous together."

And as charming as the bastard was, he really did make it sound tempting. Keith looked back out at the writhing mass of bodies undulating on the sticky tile floor and tried to imagine himself out there with them, another faceless moving body in a sea of sweaty drunks. A full shudder racked his body. "Sorry, I'm still gonna have to pass." It was strained, but Keith was determined to hold his smile. If Lance knew something was wrong he'd never go away and leave Keith alone, which was really definitely what he didn't want right now. "I don't even know how to dance, we'd just be stomping on each other's feet."

"Then we'll make sure to swing by Hunk and step on his feet, too." Oh, god. Lance's voice was hopeful and his smile was handsome and Keith really didn't want to disappoint him, but… Somehow the more Lance tried to convince him to go the worse Keith's anxiety got, until just the thought of stepping out there was enough to shorten Keith's breath in his chest.

"Lance…" Keith swallowed around the lump in his throat, kept any sign of strain from his voice as best he could. "I'd really prefer to stay here. If you don't mind."

Lance gave him a considering stare, long enough to make Keith want to twitch under the attention. He didn't, keeping his back straight and managing not to break eye contact long enough for Lance to drawl out a low hum and shrug, "Suit yourself." He turned his attention to Pidge, sitting hunched low in her chair on the other end of the table with her face in an ECHO screen. "Pidge, you're up!" He declared cheerfully, not giving her the chance to say no before he was grabbing a thin wrist and yanking her out of her chair.

"Wha-? Hell no, Lance!" She was shouting as he dragged her towards the dance floor.

"I just got rejected by my OWN BOYFRIEND, Pidge! You have to use your magic Little Sister powers to comfort me in my time of grief," Lance insisted passionately, pulling her into a tango stance and marching off in grand style.

Despite her continued protests Pidge quickly ended up giggling, aforementioned Little Sister magic letting her easily adapt to the phenomenon that was a ridiculous teenage boy trying to make her laugh. Keith watched the two of them spin in extravagant loops and twirls, apparently making no effort to avoid colliding bodily with the other dancers and not minding in the least bit. In fact Pidge might be doing it on purpose. Pidge was kind of evil like that. You know, in the good way? Fun evil.

When Keith tore his eyes from the two of them to search the crowd for Hunk, he found him leading Allura onto the dance floor, both of them laughing as they sashayed their hips into the crowd. Keith didn't even bother looking at where Shiro had been sitting to look for him, having watched from the corner of his eye as Shiro stood up and headed towards the bar practically the instant Lance had said the word 'party.' He was still there now, sitting with his back to the bar so he could keep a parental eye on the dance floor, liquor glass still full and no fewer than three Geruda girls flocked to his side and trying to pull him into polite conversation.

Deciding that sitting alone at a table for six was an invitation to be paid attention to if nothing else, Keith stood up and edged his way over to the side of the room to lean his back to a wall. He didn't mind the bar scene in general, but he wasn't much for this kind of boisterous atmosphere. Bars should be quieter, he felt. How were you even supposed to talk to each other over this band? It was impossible! A good bar had a set of the same regulars sitting around the scattered tables and a cheap electronic dartboard, and if you didn't want to make conversation with the stranger you're playing billiards with you didn't have to and it still counted as being friendly. This place? The exact opposite. It was an anxiety-inducing kind of bad, and Keith was about as comfortable here as a balloon in a cactus patch.

The air was thick with smoke and the smell of liquor and writhing… he wanted to say humanity but there were only like, four humans in the crowd out there and the rest were aliens so… People...ity? Peopleness? Fuck it, it was gross either way, and he couldn't breathe. Keith wanted to step outside for a breath of fresh air, wanted to leave outright and go back to the damned castle, actually, but could hardly leave without everyone else. Even just getting himself outside was practically impossible just for the simple fact that he'd have to weave his way through the crowd to get to a door, and the thought of that many strangers all outnumbering him like that was more trouble than it was worth. God, this place was a fucking deathtrap, is what it was.

The second that thought occurred to him Keith realized how easy it would be to kill someone in this room. This many people in small poorly lit space, with the perfect level of background noise to cover up any suspicious sounds? It was the perfect ideal. A person could sneak up on someone completely unnoticed, slip a shiv in their side or a wire around their neck and quietly dragging them off to the side of the room where the body would be dumped to the side, unnoticed for hours. It'd be even easier to poison someone - drinks were abundant and unguarded, and before he thought about it Keith's head was automatically swerving back to where Shiro was at the bar, relieved to see his drink still all but untouched even fifteen minutes later as his friend tried to politely extract himself from what looked like horribly awkward small talk with an ever-expanding flock of girls of a now largely diverse variety of species.

Keith looked back towards the band again, scanning the crowd in an almost desperate need to search out the others. Allura's hair caught his eyes in a flash of silver-pink under the lights, hand in hand with Pidge and so far perfectly unmurdered. He even found Hunk and Lance not too far away from them, apparently engaged in the promised dance battle. And oh my god was Keith glad he hadn't gone out there now because they looked ridiculous.

They were having fun, Keith told himself firmly. They were all having fun and enjoying themselves without worrying about how they were obviously letting their guards down because they were fine. They were fine and everything was fine. They had Keith and Shiro still alert and watching for trouble, and there was, above all, no actual reason to suspect someone in the room was currently plotting their deaths. There was no reason to be worried. Keith told himself this again, sure he had almost managed to convince himself. There was no reason to actually worry about anything, and who was that coming near him with a drink in their hand, he swore to god if someone tried to interact with him right now they were getting a bayard in their FACE.

The stranger's eyes widened at the malignant aura Keith had sharpened into a glare, and they swerved around him to try to chat up some more receptive patron further down the wall.

Somehow the brief flare of rage had been the exact distraction he'd needed. Keith hadn't managed to calm down and relax, not by far, but he'd managed to break out of that toxic train of thought. Keith just needed to… to stay calm and keep his eyes open, and everything would be fine.

Everything was not fine.

Over the course of the probable two hours Keith had spent with his back to that wall, he had not only utterly failed to cool his head, he had actually managed to grow more tense and miserable, wound up tight as a tripwire ready to blow. Leaving the bar, the walk back to their podships, the subsequent drive back to the castle - nothing had eased the tension starching his nerves and spine. The others all gave him a wide berth, able to tell how out of sorts he was with himself and thankfully able to recognize his need for space, and when they got home Keith was left to wander the empty hallways of the castle, finally alone.

It didn't help. Being back in the castle and under barriers wasn't helping Keith feel any safer. Everything was too big and too empty with too many dark spaces, and every shadow Keith looked at he swore he saw movement in. He felt like - he felt like he wasn't alone. Like there was something or someone on this ship with them, watching and waiting and laughing as Keith pulled his hair out of his scalp trying to tell himself everything was actually okay. Every wall and ceiling panel he passed Keith wanted to pry off its screws, the fact that he didn't know how this ship was built or if there was a hollow space big enough for a person or bomb to hide driving paranoid suggestions into his brain and God, how had he ever thought of this place as safe? This castle wasn't safe, it was TERRIFYING. This place was supposed to be their home; it was sadly the closest thing to a home Keith had ever had and that was only because of the people that were in it and if Keith lost any of them…

Keith remembered Kerberos. Keith remembered having only one person in this life who had ever cared about him and then losing them. And Keith remembered subsequently losing all of his shit and getting kicked out of the Garrison, left to wander the desert alone and chase conspiracies because he hadn't had anything else left in the entire world because Shiro was dead...

His feet had automatically taken the turns Keith needed to find Shiro, walking so quickly towards the bridge the panic-fueled stride was nearly equal to a full run. He only relented when he heard the sound of Shiro's perfectly alive voice from the other side of a corner, slowing down to stop and peer quietly around the wall to see Shiro and Coran talking about tomorrow's plan for the license center. Well, that was two people who were alright, but Keith was still certain something was wrong somewhere. Allura, he realized, if Coran was here where was Allura? And Keith was set off down the dark hallways because he was suddenly sure she was in danger and the only way Keith would be able to convince himself she wasn't was if he saw her with his own eyes.

She took longer to find than Shiro did, and Keith realized with a bit of horror he had no idea what the princess did with her free time. It took a full, miserable half of an hour before he stumbled across her, and he only had by following the sound of her merrily singing to herself as she rummaged through a trunk of old costumes in a small theater stage that wouldn't have looked out of place in an elementary school gym. Keith didn't have time to be relieved to see her well, just kept right on walking past the cluttered room and tried to calculate which of the last three paladins would be easiest to get to from here.

Pidge was perpetually the easiest person on the ship to find, right at home in Green's bay tinkering with a computer in the silent company of her Lion and pet robot. Hunk he found in the newly revived greenhouse trying to figure out Altean soil pH levels, which only left Lance whom Keith no longer had any real difficulty locating at any given time.

The problem was that if he wasn't already with one of the others, he was probably in his own room. His own room with the automatic door, and since Keith couldn't see or hear through it that meant he'd have to actually like, step close enough to it for it to open instead of standing here staring at it imagining all the possible ways Lance could be dead on the other side. Or even worse, alive and happy to see Keith, because he'd already wasted nearly an hour as it is and who knows what could have happened in that time he needed to get moving again and check on Shiro and the others and he couldn't do it if he was frozen here.

Keith nodded to himself. Opened the door. Confirmed Lance was in there and safe long enough to hear his boyfriend pull off his headphones with a startled "Huh?" and marched back into the hall to resume his sentry. Right, that'd do, this room was clear, time move on.

Coran was still near the bridge but Shiro wasn't, which of course wasted more time than Keith had to spend looking for him. Looking for all of them, it turned out, because Allura had moved while Keith had been hunting down Shiro in the hallway and then sneaking out of said hall before Shiro noticed him and Keith had to explain why he was stalking everybody. Pidge was still in the same place but Hunk had wandered off to the kitchen and Keith was wasting so much time wandering around the castle looking for everybody he'd never be in the right place when something bad DID happen, and why couldn't his stupid friends just hold still and stay in one big panic room where Keith could keep an eye on them?! Something was coming, something was here and lurking in the wings and Keith couldn't do anything but chase his shadow in circles and none of them were safe, nowhere in the entire universe was safe, from here to Earth or anywhere as long as the Galra still existed, any moment of any day of the rest of their lives Keith and all of his friends could suddenly all be killed, wiped out so fast none of them even knew what was going on until it was all nothing but the endless black void of death and there was nothing he could do stop it.

When he passed by Lance's door again it was still open, and Keith hurried past it only to realize he hadn't heard any sounds from within and therefore failed to confirm Lance was actually still alive. Fuck. Fuckity fuck, please don't let Lance notice him, Keith could not deal with that right now. He doubled back enough to peek his head in the door, and of course came face to face with the concerned visage of his boyfriend asking "Keith? Was that you here about an hour ago, too?"

Nope. Nope, can't deal with this, not gonna. Keith turned around and started walking away as quickly as he could without making it look like he was freaking out, berating himself and trying to figure out how to get by Lance's door unnoticed on the next pass. Lance was apparently having none of this, though, chasing him out into the hall calling "What the hell? Dude, Keith, you gotta tell me what's wrong with you."

'What's wrong with you?' the words repeated in Keith's head, first in Lance's voice and then echoed in the memory of a frustrated foster mother days before he'd been shuffled back into the system and moved to a new house. What was wrong with Keith? Hadn't that always been the question, his whole life?

The sudden onslaught of despair that simple question brought hit Keith like a semi to the face; abrupt and life-shattering in a way that made his feet stop dead in the middle of their panicked flee. Which unfortunately seemed to Lance like he had stopped to wait for him to catch up, so he could reach out to grab Keith's shoulder and ask "You've been acting a little weird for a while, is something up?"

The touch was unwelcome in a way Keith had never had the displeasure of experiencing before, the harmless grip like a cold stranglehold around his throat. Keith slapped it off of him by the wrist with immoderate force, stumbling forward a couple of steps from Lance as he turned to snap out "Can't you ever just fuck off and leave me alone?!"

Both of them reacted to Keith's words with the same wide eyed surprise, Lance backing away and holding his hands in the air with a placating wave. "S-sorry, man," he still sounded like he was worried more than anything else, and Keith couldn't deal with that, could just not fucking deal with any of this clearly or that wouldn't have happened in the first place, and he turned to flee off into the halls.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, what had just happened there? How was he such a bug-fucking moron to have just let that happen? As if Lance didn't get to see enough of Keith's bad sides all the time as it was, now he was going to figure out that Keith was out of his mind, too, had managed to brilliantly show off his paranoia and violence and total inability to deal with human interaction all in one fell fucking ten-second span because Keith was just that magnificent and Lance didn't deserve to have to deal with all of this, Keith didn't want to deal with his OWN bullshit he couldn't shove the burden that was Keith's entire fucking personality on Lance, too!

Keith wasn't quite running anymore but hadn't slowed down to a walk, either, striding through the hallways like a man with a mission when he in fact had no idea what he was doing or where he was going. He couldn't go back to following around the others now, the fear of being seen by one of his friends in this state now greater than the irrational terror that had been propelling him to check on them. Six counselors, doctors and psychologists over the span of six schools had all unanimously assured him the feeling that someone was out to get him was imagined, but the other fear right now, the fear that one of his friends was going to see him right now and realize what a fucking crackpot he was, was very real. Fuck. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do and he didn't know where he was going but he had just realized his teeth were sunk into the tender webbing between his thumb and forefinger and oh, shit, when had he started biting again?

The paranoia-born hyperawareness, at least, was enough to alert him when he was about to barrel face-first into someone as he rounded this next corner. Fight-or-flight reflexes activated, the first thing Keith's instincts told him when he saw Shiro was to kick him in the nuts and run. Naturally, this was not an actual real life option, which resulted in Keith standing there frozen solid and doing his level best not to move any part of his body even the slightest bit, breath halting in his throat and eyes stilled ahead, staring at Shiro's neck.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Shiro seemed to be taking assessment of him, but as Keith was still staring at his collarbone and concentrating on not breathing or twitching for reasons he could not actually explain, that was rather a guess. And then the black paladin sighed. "Come on," he said tiredly, turning around and walking back down the way he came without checking to see if Keith was following.

Keith did, if for no other reason than because he couldn't manage to think of anything else he might be able to do with his body. He shook his hand out as if the act was all he needed to make the bite marks stop hurting, a brief thought dedicated to hoping his friend couldn't see them before remembering he was still wearing his gloves, so. No he could not. At least there was that.

Still nowhere near being in his right mind, Keith didn't even consider the question of where they were actually going or why, just followed mutely and focused his efforts on not running out of here at top speed and hiding in an air vent. Even unthinking as he was, Keith still managed to be completely unsurprised when they reached the training deck. It was a good thing he didn't stop to wonder why they could be there, because he wouldn't have had the time to. Before the door was even closed behind them Shiro was turning to throw his body into a strike that Keith was only able to dodge because of the hypervigilance animating his strained guard.

The moment Shiro recovered from his momentum he swung his arm into another attack, Keith stumbling a step back in the second it took to grab his bayard for an awkward block. If he had wanted to counterattack he didn't have the chance, because Shiro had used the haphazard stance Keith had taken on to block him to grab his wrist, yanking Keith forward off his balance and then using the grip on his arm to throw him onto his back. Keith's shoulders hit the floor with a painful snap that nearly knocked the wind out of him. He twisted blindly on the floor, rolling to sit up on one knee and then snap forward into his own attack straight from there without pausing to actually stand up in between. Shiro parried it with the sickening metallic ring of his arm sliding against the steel of Keith's sword, ducking low under the blade to pile-drive a hard shoulder into Keith's solar plexus and bowling him over so effectively Keith ended up a few feet away on the floor, clawing at the tile as he choked on his own heaving coughs.

Shiro was not, in any regards, holding back right now. Well, that wasn't strictly true - Shiro was only holding back as far as not activating the white-hot plasma of his cybernetic arm and frying Keith's hand off like a hot knife through butter. Other than that small leeway, however, he was doing no one any favors, coming at Keith like one or more of them was possessed, not giving the red paladin enough space to gather any thought in his head beyond their fight. Keith didn't even notice, so perfectly absorbed in the thrill of combat as he was. Didn't notice that his mind had cleared of tortuous whispers, didn't notice that he wasn't afraid. Barely noticed the pain in his shoulders and feet and… inner torso organs, holy SHIT do not let someone hit you in the solar plexus. All that pain only registered in his brain after a few minutes of frantic blocking and dodging (and beatings), until Keith finally got his bearings enough to cool down and plan his offence.

At some point, Keith did start to notice things again. He noticed first that Shiro had started over-relying on that fancy arm and would occasionally leave his left side wide open during an attack. Then, the slightest gleam of manic desperation in Shiro's eyes, hidden under the controlled precision of his attacks. Noticed finally that that his own shortness of breath was only the familiar heave of physical exhaustion now, that somehow under the pain of his increasingly worn and battered body he was finally loose and relaxed of the tension that had been wrecking him for hours.

Both of them were slowing down, thinking more in between their attacks and putting more space between them as they grew more exhausted. Eventually Keith realized that nearly an hour of time must have passed by now, and somewhere in the process of the two of them just sort of getting tired and giving up on the fight to sit down on the floor, he decided he was probably okay now. He didn't really feel anything else besides okay, either, but that was fine, too. Keith was empty, and exhausted, and completely relieved to feel that way.

The two of them sat in silence for a while, letting their breath return to normal and stretching out various newly sore limbs. "So," Shiro eventually threw out into the room in an inappropriately fatherly tone, "feel better now?"

Slowly, Keith answered in a nod. "I do, thanks." He said in a voice that sound tired and quaky to his own ears. He turned his head to look at Shiro, exhausted on the floor and staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. "How about you?" Keith knew Shiro was more stressed than the lot of his other paladins combined, and could hazard a guess as to how thrilled he was about this entire Elpis operation on whole.

"Yeah," Shiro answered in something like a beleaguered sigh. Of course, the thing Shiro himself had decided was the most stressful part of his own evening bordered on hilarious to Keith, as he complained offhandedly: "I'm just so bad at dealing with girls, Keith." Because Concordia and the Galra Empire combined did not leave Shiro half so discombobulated and weathered as being popular with teenage girls did.

Keith didn't quite laugh, instead snorting in amused surprise. "Kinda sucks that you're straight, then."

"It really does," Shiro agreed mournfully. "If I could switch teams I would."

"Then you could date Coran," Keith offered helpfully.

Shiro didn't hesitate for a second. "Don't think I wouldn't. Take that mustache for a ride."

With a comment like that, Keith didn't really have any choice on how he might like to respond; he burst out laughing.

When Shiro went to bed shortly after that, Keith had a pretty good idea as to what he should do right now. Which was, of course, to go apologize to Lance for stalking him and then flipping out on him.

So if course Keith found himself in Red's bay instead. It was, upon reflection, without question the closest thing Keith had to a 'safe space' in the entire universe. And it was here that he was best able to think with a clear head.

It had been a while since he'd had an unprovoked attack like that. Keith had a couple of fits like this since coming to space, but for the most part they had all been in more predictable circumstances like after the castle had turned on them and that time Keith had spent eight hours floating alone in space in his dark, comatose Lion. This one felt… A little out of the blue in comparison. He couldn't write it off as a fluke after last night's little mini attack as well, it had clearly been the buildup for tonight's Paranoia Extravaganza. He'd had times like this more sporadically and often back on Earth, when his life had been a stressful string of foster homes and schools and daycares and any other kind of place the system could think to shove a kid who doesn't belong anywhere.

Stress. His brain caught on the word, letting the concept roll around in his head. Was he stressed out? What had happened yesterday that had set him off? He'd spent the whole day distracted and frustrated and then… And then he and Lance had sex. Which at the time had felt like rather the opposite of stressful, actually, so it seemed pretty counterintuitive for THAT to have been the trigger. Of course it had been immediately afterwards that he'd freaked out, but it hadn't been because he'd been thinking about the sex itself, it was because…

It was because he'd felt lonely after the fact. It was because he had felt lonely and he hated it, hated feeling weak and helpless and irrational and all day Keith hadn't been able to focus on what they were actually supposed to be doing for barely more than a minute because everything about Elpis touched on Keith's every nerve and he'd managed to spend the entire time he and Lance were in town together being annoyed by him and Keith hated that about himself, too. Look at how quickly and easily he and Pidge had figured out what to do today: all they'd had to do was sit a table and eavesdrop for two hours and they'd gotten more than a combined six people had the entire day before!

Ever since they'd started dating just being in the same room as Lance messed up Keith's head. It made him feel nervous and vulnerable and scared, and yeah it was usually all in a good way that Keith found kind of thrilling but… But that didn't mean it actually was good. Keith didn't even feel in control of his own emotions anymore. When they were together he was intoxicated by Lance's presence, giddy or nervous or horny and usually all three at once. And when they were apart Keith was STILL usually thinking about him; wondering what Lance would have to say about any random stimulus Keith came across, or remembering one of those accidentally charming things Lance was so good at waylaying Keith with, or even just wishing Lance were around, usually with the idea that Keith would really like it if they were touching right now...

Lance was a distraction. Even if Keith was fairly certain Lance wasn't any worse for his mental health than Keith himself was, there was no denying he was distracting Keith from what was really important.

Zarkon.

The war they were still fighting, he was now certain, and the guilt about his newfound ability to completely fucking ignore it had been the root of today's…episode. Here Keith was, drafted into space on the most important mission in the entire history of the universe, and he couldn't get his head out of his ass and focus on a simple reconnaissance mission because he was too busy mooning over his boyfriend. God, Keith was such a fuck-up.

So then what was he supposed to do here, break up with Lance? Keith didn't want to do that. Well, a tiny part of him would be very relieved to do so, but that was the same part of Keith that generally liked to suggest the solution to most of life's problems involved running away to Mexico and hiding under a rock, so Keith was pretty good at ignoring it. Breaking up seemed like the correct thing to do in theory, but in reality Keith still had to spend time with him and therefore still wouldn't stop thinking about him. All it would really mean is the loss of things like cuddling and sexy make-out time and replace them with loneliness and needless pining. So that sounded pretty stupid.

On the other hand: two hour paranoia-fueled panic attack. Also, space war. Hm.

Well, either way, Keith was also pretty sure of one other fact: the middle of a now undercover mission was an absolutely terrible time to break up with your boyfriend. So he could safely put this decision on hold for a while. Maybe it was even for the best that he not decide immediately.

Keith looked up from where he was sitting, leaned against one if his lion's legs, peering up at her unmoving metal face. "And you," he said whimsically, "just do not give any kind of shit what I do as long as we still get to go outside and fight things."

A hum purred through his brain that if Keith were forced to describe he might call "the satisfaction of mutual understanding." Or maybe just the words "damn straight." Either way he smiled - at least here was one relationship he was pretty confident he couldn't screw up.

Speaking of which, Keith rocked himself up to his feet. He should probably go apologize to Lance. Whatever he decided later on, Keith wanted the time he and Lance did have together to be as enjoyable as possible, which involved a certain amount of manning up and not acting like a bitch.

When Lance's door opened Keith was startled to find Lance already standing in front of it, apparently with the idea of leaving the room and, if Keith suspected correctly, finding him. Which, he supposed, sort of worked out in both of their favors.

"Keith!" Lance blinked, startled. "You're here! Uh, obviously. Are you, uh… feeling any better?"

Keith nodded shortly, clearing his throat a little to mumble, "Yeah, uh... yeah. Thanks." They both just stood there for a moment, not saying anything. Keith finally looked up to meet Lance's eyes, hesitantly asking, "Can I… come in?"

Lance blinked, then must have realized he was standing in the middle of the doorway and stumbled backward to give Keith room to step inside. They didn't really go much further than that, actually, rather just sort of stood around fidgeting. "I, uh…" Keith eventually started, swallowing a lump in his throat. "I'm sorry for… sort of freaking out on you earlier."

Lance coughed, shook his head. "N-no, I'm sorry for, uh. Running after you and startling you like that, I could tell something was up and should have known to just leave you alone."

Keith cringed and desperately fished around for something to say. "You were just worried," he shrugged after a few moments of fumbling.

"I still am," Lance admitted, scratching at the back of his neck. "Any chance you're gonna tell me what any of this was about?" There was a hint of desperation in his own voice, and Keith knew how helpless Lance must have felt right then.

Keith really owed him some kind of honest explanation, he knew. But the honest truth involved several years of backstory regarding Keith's psychiatric profile and other details he absolutely did not want to discuss, and he was left at rather a loss. Some of the truth, he bargained, and eventually settled on saying, "I had an anxiety attack."

His boyfriend failed to look satisfied by the answer. "Yeah, I guess you did," Lance responded a little dubiously.

Was there anything else he could say other than 'I am crazy, you are dating a crazy person'? Fuck. Fuck this apology was a disaster. Keith really could not get any one thing right tonight, could he? "It's… a thing that's been known to happen from time to time," he offered weakly.

Lance gave him a long look, sighed. "Okay," he finally said, forced acceptance in his voice. "Okay, fine. As long as you feel better, I guess." He looked at Keith's face critically, reaching out with his fingertips to gently brush a lock of Keith's bangs behind his ear and away from a fresh bruise blossoming at his temple from one of the many times Keith's head cracked against the floor this evening. "I was kind of hoping you'd explain why you came back looking like you ran head first into a wood chipper, but I guess I can just assume you and Shiro beat the crap out of each other in the training room."

Oh yeah, Keith… Hadn't even thought about that. He probably looked like shit, huh? Actually, wait, how had Lance known Keith hadn't been alone? He looked up at Lance from where he'd been gazing away at the floor, question on his lips.

A question Lance apparently foresaw from the sheepish look on his face, and before Keith could open his mouth to wonder Lance was already stuttering "Er, see the thing about earlier is. So, I'm pretty used to being told to fuck off, but usually when someone does they look more annoyed than, uh… terrified?" He flailed around a little. "And I didn't know why that was and I realized I like, don't actually know that much about you or your life and that made me kind of panic. So since I didn't know what was wrong or how to handle it, I kind of… ran off to fetch Shiro in the hopes that he would know what to do, which it seems like he did! Since you feel better now."

Of course running into Shiro hadn't been a coincidence - and Keith had kept out of sight well enough for Shiro not to have noticed on his own, so someone telling him he needed to go find Keith was the most logical reason for him to have ever ended up there in the first place. Lance looked like he expected Keith to find a reason be angry at this admission, contrite as a child who had just tattled on their sibling. Keith was not angry. Slightly overwhelmed, yes, but not because of any fault in what Lance did - in fact rather just the opposite.

Oh, Lance. His Lance. Always making sure Keith is taken care of, even when he couldn't be of any help himself. Even right now, still worried about Keith above all else. Keith felt his eyes sting, didn't know if he was going to cry or what but stepped forward and buried his face in Lance's neck, wrapping his arms around Lance's waist because Keith was feeling way too many things all at once and at that moment really just wanted to be held by his stupid terrible perfect boyfriend.

Lance tentatively wrapped his own arms around Keith's shoulders, and the two of them were standing there in Lance's room in an embrace just as awkward as the rest of the night had been. As much as the simple physical contact proved to be instantly soothing, Keith still felt terrible about the entire thing. At the very least he had to give Lance a better explanation than "I had an anxiety attack," but was still having trouble figuring out what the hell kind of excuse he might give. Not to mention Lance had a point about Keith's constant reluctance to share any information about himself, even now when his boyfriend was all but directly asking… There had to be something Keith could tell him.

Lance didn't push anything, just stood there holding Keith and lightly stroking a hand through his hair because this was Lance and he could never resist it. Eventually, Keith managed to fish out the words he wanted, but stayed buried in Lance's collarbone to speak them. "So, you know how we all came up here already complete with our own emotional baggage? Like Allura losing her whole species to genocide, and Shiro with the PTSD, and your inferiority complex?"

"I don't have a-" Lance cut himself off. "I mean. Yes?"

Keith shifted a little on his feet, mumbled the next words with his mouth pressed against the skin of Lance's throat. "And you remember how when we were in the Garrison, the campus was in Texas?"

Now sounding downright confused, Lance agreed, "Yeah?"

"I was actually from that area, you know? Sending me to the Garrison was the state's version of shipping me off to the nearest military school. So some of my baggage includes an adolescence as a homeless gay asian orphan. In Texas."

There was a moment of silence. "That," Lance said in a strained voice, "certainly does paint a picture." After a moment, he added "Plus anxiety."

"Plus," Keith agreed, "among other problems, social anxiety, yes."

Lance rubbed at his shoulders in a manner that was probably supposed to be soothing. Keith decided that Lance must have been too distracted to take a shower earlier, because he smelled really good right now - Lance had such a sexy, manly scent once he sweat off all the soaps and cheap colognes he always covered himself in. Still, neither of them managed to come up with anything useful to say, but at least the silence wasn't so loaded this time.

Eventually Lance stepped back far enough to force Keith to look him in the eyes again. "I get it, I see," he said loudly. "I know what went wrong earlier tonight." And then, with so much cheer injected into his tone there was no way it could be sincere declared, "You were just nervous because you don't know how to dance, right?"

That definitely caught Keith off guard. "Huh? Uh…. No?"

"Nonono, come on, Keith.," Lance clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "I said," he repeated meaningfully, "you were just nervous because you don't know how to dance, right?" and looked at Keith expectantly.

Baffled, Keith could think of nothing but to play along. "Uh…. yes? You got me?"

"There we go, was that so hard to admit?" Lance said with unnatural confidence. "Fortunately for you, I happen to be an amazing dancer!" A fact Keith could already protest, but didn't as Lance grabbed his hand, the one he had on Keith's back sliding down to change their embrace into a dancing stance. "And as such it would be no problem to teach you."

Keith let himself be swung in a lazy half-circle loosely resembling a spin, a small smile curving his lips. He didn't particularly want to learn to dance, and he knew Lance knew at least that much himself, but… They both deserved the opportunity to change the subject, right? "I dunno Lance, from what I saw earlier tonight I might be better off going to Hunk for this."

A mortally offended scoff. "Betrayal! Utter betrayal!" Lance cried out with his usual excessive drama. "Rejecting me twice in the same night; you're so cold, Keith. You know rats can die from loneliness!"

Keith couldn't have kept the smile from his mouth if he'd tried. "You know you just called yourself a rat, right?"

"Every word out of your mouth is a vicious attack upon my person." Lance took a step backwards towards his bed, taking Keith with him in fumbled parody of a dance step. "Now shut up and dance with me," he said decisively, groping behind him on the bed to grab his phone.

Keith had pretty much already decided to indulge him, waiting in a patient half a dancing pose while Lance fiddled with his phone long enough for it to start playing music. Not even a note had played before Lance was balking at the screen, uttering "Er, but apparently this will not be a very LONG dance lesson because I totally forgot to give my phone to Pidge to charge and the battery is about to die."

"That definitely works for me," was Keith's response, and in only a moment Lance was shrugging and tossing the phone over his shoulder onto the bed so he could pull Keith into what seemed to be some kind of tango stance.

"Okay," Lance said firmly, directing Keith's hand to rest on his waist. "So I know a little bit about a bunch of different styles of dancing, but honestly never actually got good at any of them. But I got pretty good at figuring out the basics and faking it," he started explaining, pausing to count down along to the song's beat for three seconds and starting the dance with a long step to the side when he reached 'one,' slow enough for Keith to follow without stumbling. "And I started out by learning tango. Well, pretend tango, because me and Gwen were like, eight when we started? Maybe younger, I just have memories of being a little kid and practicing dance moves we copied from movies with my sister." The song was cheerful and lively, the beat running faster than the careful steps Lance was guiding him in. "Here, feel my hand on your shoulder blade here? I'm gonna be like, using my hands to guide you and show you where we're gonna step, you just have to relax and follow my lead."

Lance was using the hand he had linked with Keith's in the air to pull Keith with every step, the hand spread out on Keith's back just under his arm acting as a steady anchor to guide Keith's body as they moved. It did indeed make following the steps Lance was taking easy and surprisingly unclumsy, but at the same time it gave Keith an intimate understanding of the differences between leading and following in dancing, because he had no control of how or where they moved across the small room. Oddly enough though, it wasn't the unpleasant sort of loss of control. It felt more like… Being swept off his feet, maybe?

"Alright, now stop looking at our feet and look up at me," Lance's voice was colored warm with amusement, and when Keith looked up meet his eyes Lance was smiling. "You actually got the hang of that way faster than I thought you would. I keep forgetting you're like, supernaturally graceful or whatever." Which was bullshit because Keith was about as naturally graceful as a ground vole on meth, but Lance was a bit of a flatterer, wasn't he? "So now that you've got the hang of this, we can move on to the fun stuff."

Keith tried not to sound dubious. "Fun stuff?"

Lance flickered his eyebrows and grinned, "Dips and twirls!"

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

"Considering how small this room is you might actually be right," Lance agreed brightly, nonetheless aiming their steps to the largest open space. He took the hand that they had linked in the air and brought it up to his own shoulder, leaving Keith's hand behind to rest just by Lance's neck. His own hand went to Keith's lower back, and he directed "Now, put your weight on one leg and sort of bend at the knee a little."

Lance leaned forward and twisted them to the side, the hand on Keith's lower back an anchor bearing nearly all his weight as Keith's back curved and his foot slid out from under him. It was a strange sensation - the world slipping out from under Keith's feet and rushing past his head, all the while staring Lance straight in the eyes as he allowed himself to be carried completely, too unsteady on his one bent knee to trust it to hold him up without Lance's hands steadying him. And then Lance was turning back, standing them both upright again and moving back into their easy dance steps, all so fast Keith barely had time to register more than the blood rush to his head.

"Holy shit," Keith said softly, several steps after he was already upright again. "I really thought you were gonna drop me for a second."

"Why is everything you say mean?"

Keith's lips twitched with the shadow of a smile, looking into Lance's eyes. "No, I mean. You didn't, though."

Lance raised an eyebrow, but returned with a smile of his own - one of those charming smiles that only happened when Lance had no idea how suave he was being. "Well, what do ya say? Trust me enough to give it another try?"

The question made Keith's palms sweaty and sent his heart beat to double-time, loaded for all it's apparent innocuousness. Did he trust Lance? With his life, certainly. With his body, pretty much completely. With everything else… Well. Keith swallowed thickly, nodding a little. "Yeah. Yeah, let's give it another go."

Lance blinked a little, suddenly turning awkward like he had realized the accidental weight of Keith's answer. He coughed a little, sputtering "R-right, naturally." He continued leading them in aimless little circles for a bit, getting the rhythm back into their steps before he moved Keith's hand to his shoulder again and Keith knew to bend his knee as Lance tipped him backwards again in a smooth, playful swing that bowed Keith's back so low he was sure his hair must be brushing against the floor. And then Lance pulled him back up again and stepped them both into a dramatic spin, a giggle bubbling out of Keith's throat as he landed back against Lance's chest.

Lance was beaming at him, cheeks split open from his grin and red with warmth. "And the twirls don't really need any explanation, mostly because we never actually figured out how to do it the right way in the first place." He took Keith's hand again and raised it above their heads, using the hand on Keith's waist to push just lightly enough for him to get the idea and spin his body under their joined arms. Which, when they were facing each other again, just resulted in their linked arms being turned awkwardly upside down in the air, and before Keith could let go to change his grip Lance was ducking under their joined hands in a twirl of his own to right the twist in their elbows.

"I don't think that's how those are supposed to work," Keith smiled wryly.

Lance answered with absolute confidence. "I know for a fact it's not but I think I proved it works just fine," he winked at Keith. "Okay now you dip me, then I'll twirl you one more time?"

Keith snorted, nodding in assent as they flipped their stance so that Keith was now leading. "If I drop you at least we know you'll deserve it," was his version of a warning before leaning them down to dip Lance, who flailed a leg dramatically in the air behind Keith at the bottom of the swing. As soon as he was upright again Lance was twisting their linked arms so Keith had no choice but to twirl under them. But at the end of this one Lance just pulled him into a second short spin that landed Keith startled with his back to Lance's chest with their linked hands settled on his own breast.

Lance's other hand made itself comfortable on Keith's waist, low towards his hip. "And basically we'd do a lot of that," his voice was a warm breath against Keith's ear as he tried to subtly bury his nose in Keith's hair. His voice dropped low, deep and breathy in an almost-whisper that sent shivers down Keith's spine with each word. "But by then I'd realized that chicks totally dig a guy who can dance, so I started trying to figure out how to use that," Keith rolled his eyes. Lance rolled his hips, holding Keith's body against his with that hand so that they moved together. "...And picked up the type of dancing you do at parties and clubs. I feel like this style has a name but I can't think of what it is."

He kept moving them like that, gently rolling their hips together in a slow rhythm not dissimilar to the beat of the song Lance's phone was playing, an oddly sensual dance to meet such a happy tune harmonizing about falling in love with love. "Is it 'dry-humping?'" Keith asked, unable to resist any opportunity for dry humor.

It didn't even give Lance a moment's pause. "You know, I think it might actually be that." They both laughed a bit, and Keith liked the way he could feel both of their bodies shaking from it with the way they were pressed close together like this. He could definitely see the appeal in all this, all warm in Lance's hold and moving together to music, but it seemed to him like the last kind of dancing he'd ever do out in public with a complete stranger. To each their own, he supposed.

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that before the song was ending, changing to a more appropriately sexy latin-pop beat. Which was why it sort of threw Keith when the next thing to happen was Lance throwing out the cheerful non-sequitur, "And that's about when my little sister Morgan took up ballet."

Keith blinked in surprise. "You know ballet?"

"I know how to do exactly one thing," Lance countered, and placed his hands into a firm grip around Keith's waist. "Straighten your back," he commanded lightly and Keith obeyed without thinking, tensing his spine just as Lance was delightfully declaring, "Lifts!"

With horror, Keith cried out in warning "You'd better not -" but it was too late. Lance was heaving him in the air right there and Keith was suddenly, startlingly two feet off the ground. Impassioned hisses of violence fell from Keith's lips as Lance laughed, setting him back on the ground and spinning Keith to face him again before he could regain his balance. "I hate you so much," Keith muttered, but nonetheless accepted it easily when Lance pulled their bodies close, looping his arms in a low hold around Keith.

"That's to be expected at this point," Lance offered no trace of shame. "By the way, did you know you're heavier than a nine year old girl? Because I could get Morgan all the way above my head more than once. Tossed her around all day, swing-dance style."

At the words 'swing-dance,' Keith tried to take an instinctive step back in an attempt to break out of Lance's arms and flee into the night. Lance laughed, pulling Keith back to his chest. "I'm just teasing, I don't know anything about swing dancing. All I've got left is normal boring prom stuff; I'm done torturing you, I promise." He ran his hand over the length of Keith's spine in the soothing strokes of someone who only just gotten their stepmom's angry maine coon to sit still long enough to be pet for the first time in its life. Despite himself, Keith couldn't deny the small pleasant shivers the touch elicited, melting a little against his boyfriend. "Just relax and dance with me a while. Please?"

It was the one thing Lance had been asking of him the entire night, and Keith really couldn't find in himself to deny the request any longer. He looped his arms up around Lance's neck in the spirit of playing along, and they started a lazy shuffle, carelessly carving the same small circles into the floor. "So, what's the difference between this and the first kind you showed me?"

"It's less effort, and I get to put my hands on your ass," Lance answered with a cheeky grin, dropping his grip a few inches down from Keith's lower back to playfully grope at his butt.

Keith's laugh didn't go as far as leaving his mouth, just shaking his body a little as he leaned his head down to bury his smile in Lance's conveniently-located collarbone. It wasn't hard to relax into the dance, enjoying it for the excuse to hold your lover close and sway slightly that it was. He let the barely-audible spanish of the song's lyrics wash through his ears without trying to comprehend them, the part of his brain that actually knew a bit of the language only leaving the words "with you" to echo uselessly in their wake like a slowly blooming ink stain. The warmth from Lance's body was spreading to Keith's, heating him up from the outside in and baking a hot blossom of contentment to swell in his chest until he was warm and safe and happy; a Keith-shaped baked potato of muted bliss. No, meltier than a potato. Like a cake, he decided. Keith felt like a cake.

And that's about when the battery on Lance's phone died, cutting off the music abruptly mid word. Ah. Keith slowly came to a stop, figuring that was pretty much the end of that, when Lance was pulling him back into movement again, refusing to miss a beat as he just picked up singing where the music had dropped off, in a low and quiet voice that Keith could hear something just a bit like desperation in as he sang, "...Que ironía del destino no poder tocarte. Abrazarte y sentir la magia de tu olor..."

Whoever had written this song, Keith immediately decided, had made an incalculable mistake when they put these lyrics to a pop-dance beat. He had barely noticed the words so drowned out were they by their background music; but here like this, being whispered into his hair by Lance's voice like honey-nut roasted sex right in his ear… If Keith had felt gooey before this now he was downright molten, a hot liquid puddle of chocolate flowing easily in Lance's hold. Oh, this son of a bitch. Unfair, cheating son of a bitch, pulling whatever underhanded methods he had to to get his own boyfriend to dance with him. How did he keep doing this to Keith, overwhelming him and making him feel so many things at once until he felt like he was going to explode from it all. How had this even happened? An hour ago he'd been having a panic attack and fifteen minutes ago he'd worked himself into a depression and yet somehow here Keith was, warmed and valued and thoroughly, utterly seduced as he tried to press himself as close to Lance's body as he could possibly manage.

Lance was singing slowly, drawing the song out long and low and even Keith's mediocre comprehension of the language was enough for him to know exactly what was being said, so earnest was the skill in which Lance sang to him. "Yo quiero estar contigo," I want to be with you, "vivir contigo," live with you, "bailar contigo," dance with you.

Keith's heart was pounding, and his arms had wound tight around Lance's shoulders to help keep him steady on his buttery knees and his thoughts had been reduced to something along the lines of 'Lance, Lance, Lance...' and he was just so pathetically gone for this boy. He wanted to do something for Lance, to show him how grateful Keith was just for being here and caring about him and making him feel like this, wanted to find some way to do for Lance what he was doing to Keith and make him feel this ridiculous liquid-candy good as he did right now.

'You should suck his dick,' a voice in Keith's pants helpfully suggested.

'Don't ruin the moment,' he thought back to his libido sharply. This was a romantic moment, god damn it. It was a lovely dance; not everything had to automatically lead to sex just because they were eighteen and couldn't keep their hands put of each other's pants.

His rapidly-increasing horniness reminded him that cocksucking was plenty romantic, otherwise why would they call that shit 'making love?' And how on Earth was it supposed to ruin the moment, anyway? What was Lance gonna do, shove him off and cry out 'Oh you pervert, why would you sully this beautiful dance by trying to put your mouth on my penis?' Yeah, right.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly of all, his nethers reminded him, Keith seemed to be actively arguing for an excuse to suck his boyfriend's dick. That by itself was obviously the best reason to do it - when asked why you just sucked that cock the only correct response was invariably 'because I fucking wanted to,' which Keith obviously had covered.

Well shit. Did that mean this was happening? He was really doing this? He must be, because just the idea of pushing Lance onto the bed and dropping to his knees was making him all kinds of hot. Oh man, he was definitely gonna do this. Keith hid his devious grin in the collar of Lance's shirt, delightedly reveling in the thought that Keith was going to absolutely fucking destroy this gorgeous bastard and he still had no idea.

He let a pleased sigh ebb from his chest and sunk comfortably into Lance, stretching one arm out lazily behind Lance's shoulder while the other curled around his neck to play with the curly hairs on his nape. The moment Keith had decided on how this night would end his heartbeat had started to speed, his whole body washing over with excitement just from the anticipation of what was to come. For now he swam contentedly through their slow dance, basking in the shivers that cascaded down his spine with every word of the love song being serenaded into his ear.

Lance was dragging out the song slow and sweet, letting each note linger in his mouth before moving on to speak the next. Trying to keep Keith in his arms as long as he could because he knew Keith would pull away as soon as he was done, but didn't know to look forward to when Keith did just that. Keith liked that, made him feel impish and mischievous in that sexy way that could only result from a plan so delicious he was already turning himself on just from the idea of it. But he thought he'd like to clue Lance in even more with a hint of what was to come, leaning his head up at first just enough to rest a kiss against the sensitive skin just under Lance's earlobe. He was gifted with the slightest bit of reaction, a hitch in breath in between lyrics and Keith rewarded himself for that victory with the pleasure of running the tip of his tongue in a teasing stripe down just as much of the length of Lance's neck as he could reach without moving to crane his head. That caused a full stutter from Lance, extra noticeable in the fact that the word he stuttered on was just a drawn-out vocalization of the sound 'Oh.' Lance's hands tightened around his waist, fingers curling harshly into the black fabric of Keith's shirt until the material bunched under his fingers enough that he was touching the bare skin of Keith's lower back, and his fingers felt searing-hot perfect there. They'd feel even better if they slipped down under the seal of his jeans to touch underneath there instead, but even though Keith had lost his boots in the hallways trying to avoid being heard by Shiro and his jacket in the greenhouse looking for Hunk he'd managed to never take his damned belt off for the very important fact that it's what his bayard and knife were attached to. Well. They'd fix that in a few minutes, he resolved, and sucked Lance's earlobe into his mouth.

Either the song was over or Lance had just given up on it, because he was gritting out, "Jesus christ, Keith," and tearing him off of his ear to pull Keith into a fierce kiss, wasting no time with his usual gentility to suck and lick and bite into Keith's mouth with a ravenous hunger that Keith loudly echoed. Lance had to practically pry Keith off him to break their kiss, and he only pulled away at all because Lance had managed to yank Keith's shirt up to his armpits in the effort to remove it and Keith agreed that being as naked as possible was important right now. Between the two of them they got it off him and onto the floor, but Lance tried to draw him back into another kiss Keith was placing a still-gloved hand to his chest, letting a coquettish grin curl his lips as he walked forward three paces to lead Lance to his own bed.

Lance's eyes were wide and blown-out with arousal, looking straight into Keith's as he was led backwards so he didn't notice when the back of his knees hit the mattress. He fell to sit without looking away from Keith, watching almost dumbly as Keith leaned down to press one last gentle kiss against his lips, pulling away to stand in front of Lance with the sweetest smile he could conjure. And then, very deliberately, dropped to his knees.

"Hooooly shit," Lance cursed softly.

Keith ran his hands up and down the insides of Lance's thighs slowly, making himself comfortable for what he intended to be a good while sitting on the floor and dropped his voice into something low and breathy to gently command, "You should take your shirt off, too."

Lance tried to nod but the gesture was cut short by him tearing the shirt from his body as fast as possible, and that little rush of power once again thrilled through Keith. He let his eyes drop from Lance's to rest forward towards the seam of his jeans and quickly discovered this was not the limits of how strong and sexy he could feel as he watched the crotch of Lance's pants slowly tent just from Keith sitting between his legs and teasingly stroking his thighs over his pants.

He leaned forward to press his mouth against the straining seam of Lance's jeans, grinning against the fabric at the gasp the move elicited. "Oh my god, this - this is a thing you're doing?!"

Not sure if that was a question or a statement, Keith just raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to put his mouth around the hard outline of Lance's dick. Lance audibly groaned, the hand on the bed next to Keith's head raising in the air to flail around uselessly like it was reaching for something. "S-so, uh, not to seem like I'm at all discouraging this thing you are about to do in any way, but um." He swallowed lump in his throat nervously. "You DID have some kind of panic attack for a lot of the night and I kinda just wanna make sure you're not still feeling… uh. Fucked up, or whatever?"

Keith hummed a little before he pulled back to answer. "Yeah," he agreed with a contented sigh, figuring if he had to stop what he was doing it was a good time to at least unbuckle his belt and undo the button on his own tight jeans. "And you're right that usually after something like that I feel hollowed out and shaky for the rest of the night. I definitely felt like that earlier." He watched Lance's eyes follow the movement of Keith deliberately unbuckling his own belt and then, just because he could, stopped to sink a shallow bite into the meat of Lance's thigh. Lance hissed, that hand moving in the air again like he wanted to grab Keith's head but didn't dare, and Keith spat the dry taste of fabric out of his mouth before continuing. "But then I came here to see you. And now instead, I feel safe," Keith reached out to stroke the conspicuous bulge calling for his attention under Lance's pants, "and content," he flicked at Lance's button, a bit tempted but not nearly ambitious enough to try to undo it with his teeth quite this early, "and more than a little bit turned on." Keith didn't look away from Lance's face as he talked, didn't look away as he inched the zipper slowly down.

Lance shuddered under his hands, squeaking out a creaky "Just thought I'd check," while Keith pulled open the fly of his pants and reached inside. "Since, you know, I wanna be able to, uh." He choked back another whine as Keith curled his hand around the stiff shape of Lance's prick through his confining boxers. "...Enjoy this completely without anyone feeling weird about anything."

Keith had to pause to bury his face against Lance's thigh long enough to smother a laugh. This guy really didn't ever shut up, did he? Keith was already having so much fun. He snaked inside the slit in the front of Lance's boxers, letting his fingers lightly tease the sensitive skin, dancing fingertips over the length of him before finally drawing Lance out of his shorts. And okay, um. Wow, geeze. There was, uh, this thing about perspective that meant, uh… From this angle, right next to it… Jesus christ this thing looked huge. Keith was going to be able to fit far less of it in his mouth than he had hoped.

Now that he actually had a dick in front of his face, Keith was suddenly just as nervous as he was excited. And just sort of sitting there staring dumbly at it was only starting to make him feel awkward as well, which meant he had to do something pretty much right now before things really did get weird. He wrapped his hand around it. Lance swore. Keith instantly felt more confident.

He moved his hand a bit, a few light strokes to get used to the feel of bare skin and the weight of Lance's cock - thought for a second about taking his gloves off before remembering there might be teeth marks that still hadn't faded and shrugged it off to lean forward and press a tentative kiss to the underside of his boyfriend's dick. Lance reacted immediately and without shame, whimpering a little as the muscles in his abdomen visibly twitched. Okay, yeah, this was already kind of awesome, Keith decided and let his eyes flutter closed. He began to place a few more brief kisses down the length of his shaft before licking a stripe back to the top, holding the base of Lance's cock with one hand to keep it steady while Keith explored its taste and texture and shape. It tasted of course, mostly just the same as any other skin tasted. Something about it was dark and musky too, though, and Keith imagined it tasted a bit like how Lance smelled and as such found he rather enjoyed it. So he figured he'd just keep going with this doing-whatever-he-wanted idea and started licking his way up and down Lance's cock, because he liked the taste and he liked the smell and he liked the way Lance shivered and hissed under his tongue. He swirled the tip of his tongue around Lance's head for a moment before opening his mouth to slip it between his lips, and Keith thanked god Lance's moan was so loud because it meant he hadn't been able to hear Keith's.

Okay, so he'd had an idea that he might want to do this since about two days after he figured out he was gay, but Keith had not realized how much he would he would actually enjoy it. Just the feeling of Lance filling up his mouth, thick and huge and defined against his tongue was so satisfying, and when he started to play with Lance's cock in whatever way happened to come to mind his boyfriend instantly reacted. When Keith rolled and wriggled his tongue Lance's breath hitched. When he sucked in a breath through his nose and bent down to see how much of the hard cock he could fit into his mouth, Lance swore and trembled. When he pulled off to mouth his way down the length of hardness that couldn't fit inside of him, sucking lightly for a second or two each time before moving to a different spot to do it again Lance whimpered and finally landed his hand on the top of Keith's head.

That, too, felt oddly satisfying, Keith decided, and found he was not opposed to the idea of his hair being pulled. Lance did no such thing, just left the weight of his hand on Keith's head as he had his way with him, and Keith decided he was having far too much fun to be disappointed.

And it really was fun. Enough so that he totally forgot about the idea of using his hands, until the thought occurred to him in passing when he made a second attempt at seeing how much of Lance's dick he could fit down his throat before he gagged. He waited until he was certain he could only fit about half of it in before he was forced to pull back - actually nah, he was gonna try again real quick, Keith was sure he could fit more down his throat and even the sensation of gagging on dick was oddly arousing as long as he pulled back right away. The same result, and Keith finally remembered to stroke his hand down the length he couldn't cram inside his throat as he started to bob his head shallowly. The head of Lance's dick rubbed against the roof of his mouth, and Lance's fingers curled in hair, biting out a breathy "Fuck, Kitten, that feels so good."

Oh. Oh, shit, that was hot. Keith felt his body flush with renewed heat - he'd been so distracted by trying to make Lance come undone he'd totally forgotten how turned on he was himself until that tiny bit of praise shot right from the palm of Lance's hand on his head down Keith's spine and straight to his dick, and fuuuuck, when had he gotten this hard? Thank god he'd had the foresight to unzip his stupid pants before this.

Keith did it again, twisting his head down so that the top of Lance's cock was sliding against the ridged roof of his mouth with every movement as Keith continued slipping his dick in and out of his mouth. And then realized he'd gotten distracted and stopped moving his hand again, and when he picked back up the motions of his wrist Lance hummed and sighed "Yeah, Sweetness, just like that," and Keith instantly choked himself by trying to get as much of Lance's cock down his throat as he could possibly manage until his eyes stung from the effort. When he pulled off to catch his breath both of them were shaking, and Keith looked up to find Lance staring down at him with the blown-out awestruck face of a man being totally wrecked. Keith grinned, smiling against the spit-slick skin of Lance's cock as he moved his fingers out of the way to lick at the base again.

"Oh my god, Keith, you're gonna freaking kill me," Lance groaned, and when Keith gradually licked and teased his way back up to the tip he was greeted by the tart flavor of precome beading against his tongue. A small, needy sound escaped his throat. It wasn't the taste itself that had Keith trembling - musky and bitter, the highest compliment he had was that it wasn't unpleasant. No, it was something less tangible than that; it was the fact that it was Lance's come. It was the fact that Keith was between Lance's thighs with his mouth stuffed full of hard cock and Lance was panting and rambling and going to come because of HIM. Because of something he was having fun doing, and God, Keith felt that same rush of tangled contrasting feelings he was starting to realize sex with Lance would just always stir in him, that sexy-powerful-wrecked-and-defenseless tide that left him shaking and sucking Lance's dick back into his mouth to chase the taste and feel of this person who could destroy Keith so completely.

The hand Lance had rested on his head started to stroke through Keith's hair, and when Keith hummed in pleasure at the sensation Lance let another string of nonsensical praise fall from his mouth. Somewhere in the middle of swirling his tongue around the well defined shape Lance's head inside his mouth Keith remembered that part of sucking dick generally involved, you know, actually sucking on dick, and opened his eyes again because if he hadn't remembered that himself then Lance DEFINITELY hadn't and he wanted to see the look on his boyfriend's face when he started. Like, needed to see, even - Lance had this beautiful way of reacting to every single thing Keith was doing and yeah, you know what? He totally wanted to see the look on Lance's face when he made him come. That was a thing he needed to happen.

Gently at first, sure not to use too much force and wear his jaw out faster than he could bring Lance over the edge, Keith began to suck. Lance's face collapsed into a curse and his hips bucked to rock more of his cock into Keith's mouth. And God, when Keith was sucking down like this it made Lance feel that much bigger in his mouth so when he pushed more of his cock inside he really did moan because fuck, did he love the way he felt so full. And Lance moaned too, which just made Keith suck even harder, sucked Lance against the roof of his mouth which left enough room for his tongue to wriggle and roll against the underside.

"Oh fuck me, jesus christ Keith, Honey, you're so good your mouth feels so good, look so pretty taking my cock," Lance's mouth was running pretty much non-stop at this point, and the taste of precome was getting stronger, sticky and heady and heavy against Keith's tongue. He pulled back so that only the head was in his mouth again, chasing that taste by sucking down with as much pressure as he could force his mouth to manage. The fingers threading through Keith's hair were finally pulling, and suddenly Keith's face was being yanked up by the bangs with just the slightest jerk, just enough to force his head up so Lance could get a better look at Keith's face as he slowly ducked his head down to suck more and more of Lance's cock into his mouth.

Jaw tightening into soreness, Keith let up on the pressure of his mouth, sucking a few more hard pulses around the hardness before he intended to pull off, maybe start over and go back to licking for a while. Intended to, anyway, until Lance hissed out the words, "Shit, I'm gonna come, Keith baby you're gonna make me come," and Keith could hardly resist that temptation, now could he?

The idea of making Lance spill was enough motivation for Keith to ignore the light twinge in his jaw, sucking Lance's dick back into his mouth with renewed enthusiasm. Lance made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a sob, and Keith wanted to glance up to enjoy the desperate fucked-out look on Lance's face but he had just realized that as much as he may desire to do so, he did not yet possess the coordination necessary to do everything he wanted to do to Lance's dick all at once and would need to actually concentrate on what he was doing. He tried to suck harshly and bob his head at the same time, but when he remembered that he wasn't moving his hand the brief distraction was enough for Keith to accidentally drop his head too far and barely avoided biting down. He slowed down, tried to just suck at Lance's head while he stroked the rest of the shaft with his hand, but when Lance's hips once again jerked and shoved more of his cock into Keith's mouth he forgot to keep sucking in favor of trying to instinctively draw more into his mouth, and the whole thing was pretty much a mess from there. He was so hungry and horny and desperate and could feel every bit of how Lance was all the same things too, twitching and leaking against his tongue and Keith just couldn't keep his head straight enough to even think of what he was trying to do anymore. The pain in his jaw was less a deterrent than it was a reminder of how stuffed full he was right now and Keith just abandoned any ideas other than to gorge himself on cock, putting one steadying hand on Lance's hip to hold him down while Keith slurped as much of his dick down his throat as he could. He drew back only just at the point before he was going to start choking, holding Lance's dick there at the threshold of his gag reflex for as long as it took to take a deep breath in through his nose - oh fuck, the way Lance smelled right now was so intense it made Keith dizzy - before he started to suck again, so determined and so forceful he managed to make his own teeth hurt.

He looked up just in time to watch Lance's eyes slam shut and his mouth open in a gasp, prying one eyelid back open to look at Keith as he warned, "Fuck, I'm serious, Keith, I'm about to come, you gotta…" and gave a half-hearted push at his head to say 'it's really time to stop now.'

Keith met his look with a raise of his eyebrow to communicate 'that's the fucking idea, stupid,' and Lance's eyes went wide as he lamely shouted "In your mouth?!"

Figuring that was a question that did not need to be answered, Keith ignored it to let his eyes fall half-closed in an attempt to look more slutty. He tightened his grip with the hand still wrapped firmly around the base of Lance's cock, tugging a bit downward with that hand while he drew his head back to slowly draw his cock out of Keith's mouth, not letting up on the suction for the entire long pull. Lance was shaking and cursing under the hand pinning him to the bed, and when Keith eased up on the pressure of his hand and sucked Lance's dick back into his mouth Keith was greeted with startled confusion with the feeling that there was a lot more in his mouth than there should be right now, and it was wet and it tasted like - oh. Oh, Lance was coming. Awesome.

There was a split second in which Keith recognized that there was currently a lot occupying his mouth and he really needed to do something about it. Before he could even think to make the decision Keith was swallowing, throat working open only to realize his mouth was already full again with another flood of warmth. He gulped down another hard swallow, and then once more to clear out anything still left floating around his mouth as he finally let Lance's cock fall away, one thin string of come trialing long and sticky from the tip of his cock back to Keith's swollen lips, breaking off to spill down his chin after a second.

Lance whimpered, loudly proclaimed "Holy FUCK," and immediately fell backwards onto the bed, chest heaving. "Oh my… holy shit, dude," he panted. "Jesus quiznak you just fucking killed me. I can't believe you swallowed."

Keith wiped at his chin, watching smugly as his boyfriend slowly stopped shaking as he came down from his high. Keith's jaw ached terribly but somehow it was impossible to find the sensation unpleasant, possibly having to do with the way Keith's tongue was still unconsciously rolling against the bottom of his mouth like it was still trying to feel the weight of Lance's dick, aching for it's sudden emptiness. "I'm glad," he hummed, "by try not to stay dead too long, because I still kinda want you to get me off, too."

Lance pumped a fist in the air. "Yessssssss," the arm he had raised wobbled slightly in the air before dropping back to the bed with a muffled thump. "In just a second." Keith counted to ten. Lance gave one last long shuddering sigh and declared "Okay, let's blow your mind," springing back up into a sitting position again with an eager grin. Which for some reason fell from his face when he looked at Keith, turning bright red with oddly-timed embarrassment as he gestured to his mouth and muttered "Uh, you still got a little…"

"Thanks," Keith beamed, and wiped the last of Lance's come from the corner of his lips. Lance made a sound like a turkey being asphyxiated to death and tackled him to the floor, sucking Keith's mouth into a dirty, messy kiss.

Keith shuddered himself now, body so wound up that the skin-on-skin contact of having Lance pressed against him again was torturously hot, and he couldn't help but spread his legs enough to make room to drive his hips upwards against Lance's, desperate with the need for friction. Lance chuckled a little against his mouth, half because he had already come himself and was back in his right mind and half because he was a giant bastard.

Lance's hands planted on Keith's hips, fingers curling inside the opened waist of his pants to try to yank them downwards, breaking the kiss to murmur "Lift up your hips; I need to get you naked." His mouth landed somewhere on Keith's jaw, biting and licking at it for a moment before he continued almost to himself "We've had sex twice and I still haven't gotten you completely naked, that's so ridiculous."

Keith shimmied his hips to help Lance pull his jeans and underwear down. "No, we've had sex one and a half times, unless you forgot you still have work to do here."

Lance laughed against the skin of his throat, sitting back up so he could peel the regrettably tight fabric from Keith's legs. He tossed them aside, and the still-crazy part of Keith's brain told him the sound of his belt clattering against the floor meant it was out of reach to grab a weapon should they suddenly find themselves under attack, but fortunately Lance was grabbing Keith's naked legs and settling between them and just the feeling of being touched again was enough for him to decide they'd be quite alright just the same. Lance bent down to lick a long stripe down the length of Keith's abdomen, starting from sternum to trail down until Lance was plunging his wet tongue into the dip of Keith's belly button. Which, really, why the hell was that even hot? It tickled more than it actually felt good but for some reason Keith was yelping and clutching at Lance's shoulder, a shiver running down the length of his spine.

Lance's tongue swirled around Keith's belly button for a moment before he was continuing his trail downward, mouthing his way down to Keith's pubic hair until his lips were so close to Keith's cock he could feel the hot dampness of Lance's breath whispering against the sensitive skin with every exhale. He trembled a little with anticipation, waiting with uneven breaths for Lance to finally touch him… And waiting... And waiting. "Lance?" he asked, less aroused and more trepidatious with every passing second of inactivity.

"Uhhhmmmm," Lance's voice was strangled and pathetically hesitant, and Keith's head hit the floor with a disappointed thump. "Just a second here, it's just uh. You know from way up close like this, your dick looks like, WAY bigger, and uh… Just need a second here."

Keith wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. Firmly reminded himself he'd needed a minute, too. Drew in a patient breath. Please make up your mind soon you useless fucking straight boy, because Keith's ass was getting colder by the second laying on the floor like this. "Take your time," he said evenly, unable to keep a bit of frost from his voice.

Lance made another noise that sounded like it was supposed to be a scoff but ended in a strained whine at the end and… Uh, the word Keith was gonna use here is 'attacked.' He attacked Keith's dick, sucking way too ambitious an amount into his mouth that scraped his teeth hard against Keith's skin and choked Lance's dumb self at the same time. Both of them jerked away from each other, Keith swearing loudly "Fucking hell, teeth," and Lance coughing, and Keith was officially more frustrated than turned on now.

"I'm sorry," Lance managed between light coughs, "I can do this, I swear."

Keith's palm slapped against his face, and he sighed into it. "Look, if you don't want to suck me off we can -"

"No!" Lance said quickly, scurrying back to press placating kisses to the inside of Keith's thigh. "You just gave me a blowjob I'm gonna be waking up hard from dreaming about for the next ten years, there's no way I can half-ass this. I can't let you one-up me, man."

"'One-up you?'" Keith quoted with a frown. He'd say he was still getting less horny, but each of the kisses on his thighs was a hot spark reigniting him like a stove left on simmer. "I feel like you don't understand how badly I wanted to suck your dick, Lance. Having to force yourself is kind of creepy."

"If the one thing I really really really wanna do is get you off right now I don't see how it could possibly count as forcing anything," Lance argued reasonably. "Now shut up and watch me amaze you." And this time, thank the lord, started off slower by licking a few careful, kitten-like laps at Keith's aching cock. Which, obviously was still not going to get him off yet, but at least they were on the right track now, right?

Lance apparently had steeled himself enough to make another real attempt, grabbing the base of Keith's dick to aim it into his open mouth and ohhhh, that felt nice.Warm and hot and wet and Lance immediately started flickering his tongue against the head of Keith's cock and he definitely moaned, spine twisting into a small arc as one of Keith's hands buried itself in thick chestnut hair. Yeah, okay, Lance seemed like he had a fine handle on this after all and Keith could probably relax into a nice mess now.

This thought and Lance both betrayed him with another hard slip of teeth, and Keith used the hand in Lance's hair to automatically yank him off his dick before it was bitten off. "Jesus damn it!"

"Sorry," Lance muttered, shaking his head a bit pausing to let his face open into a cringe that wouldn't look out of place on something in the process of coughing up a furball. Very encouraging, just the look of distaste one wanted the person sucking their dick to wear. "Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this," he promised, and dove back in like a Navy Seal into water.

The thing was, Keith decided quickly, as long as Lance kept doing whatever it is he was doing with his tongue then no matter how badly he managed to fail at the rest of the blow job - a truly impressive amount, by the way, since he seemed to be forgetting to do anything BUT use his tongue at the moment - Keith would still be able to come pretty soon just from the skill of that action alone. Also because he was so fucking hard he could pole-vault with the damned thing the way it was now.

His shoulders were shaking and Keith let a thin moan spill from his lips, finally able to feel the first swell of his advent orgasm. Which of course, of course, was about the time Lance made another terrible surprised-disgusted noise and pulled off of Keith. He sat up just in time to watch his boyfriend rubbing his tongue against the back of his hand like he'd just fucked up a tequila shot. "I'm sorry, I really thought I had that but the taste was suddenly like, like how a glue stick smells or something and..." He cut himself off with a huff of breath through his nose, looking back down at Keith's leaking dick. "Quiznak, you - you're really getting wet, huh? That's kinda hot." His face involuntarily scrunched up again, recalling "Except for the taste -"

Keith sighed and sat up to slap a sweat-damp hand against Lance's mouth. "Lance, I appreciate that you want to do this, but can we maybe practice some other time and just fucking put your hand on my dick? You're - you're very special but I was ready to come like, ten minutes ago."

Lance's face fell, crestfallen as a man being told to give up on his dreams. And now Keith was horny, frustrated, and felt like he'd kicked a puppy while he was at it. "But - Okay, look, I have an idea that'll make this easier for me, but it's gonna sound uh… Probably... perverted?" he threw out.

Tired, Keith shrugged and waved his hand in a go ahead. Lance swallowed thickly.

"R-right, so, could you maybe, uh… Like. Squeeze my head with your thighs?" Keith apparently let his bemusement show on his face, because an embarrassed Lance was shifting to lay forward on the ground more, grabbing Keith's legs and placing them over his shoulders to frame Lance's red face between his thighs.

Keith's eyes widened as he understood what his boyfriend was trying to get out of this, and not sure if it was an accusation shouted, "Y-you mean like if you were eating me out?!"

He watched something hot and familiar flash through Lance's eyes and they darted down from Keith's face, down past his hard cock and to his exposed -

Keith shivered, hard. Lance looked back at his face, once again bashful. "Uh. Yes?"

And then because by this point Keith's brain had all but just shut down entirely, he blurted tactlessly, "Do you want to eat my ass out?!"

The question made Lance, for some ungodly reason, look hopeful and hungry. "Can I - am I allowed?"

Which, what the fuck? Lance couldn't suck a cock because the taste was too strong but he was willing to ram his tongue in Keith's ass?! How did his brain even WORK? Keith's jaw dropped open for him to gape for a moment, before he helplessly agreed, "Help yourself," because what was he going to do here, say no? Besides; Lance couldn't be any worse at it than he was at cocksucking, right?

That voracious gleam was back in Lance's eyes, which fell back down to stare at Keith's ass while his boyfriend unconsciously licked his grinning lips. His hands were still on Keith's thighs and he moved them again, not so much slipping them from his shoulders as much as just pushing them forward against Keith's chest until he was bent nearly in half. Keith's heart was pounding loudly in his chest again, nervous and embarrassed and Lance was about to touch a place Keith rarely ever had opportunity to touch himself, and he was leaning in and Keith was saying "W-wait!"

Lance looked up at him, eyes silently begging for Keith not to take this away from him. Keith, who hadn't actually meant to speak, swallowed nervously and stammered, "There's a bed less than two feet from us, why are we both lying on the floor?"

Lance blinked, mouth opening. "Ah. Yeah, that's not a bad point, actually." And then instead of like, letting Keith get up himself or giving any kind of real indication he was about to do this, Lance grabbed Keith by the hips. He used the grip to haul Keith up to his feet, just so that he could turn him around push at the top of Keith's back to tell him he should bend over the side of the bed - the perfect mix of manhandling and suggestion. Which, hadn't actually been what Keith had been aiming for bed-wise but fair enough this was probably the easiest way to go about this. Keith didn't spread himself out over the bed, though, just braced his palms against it and spread his legs a little to pop up his hips invitingly. It was less embarrassing if he couldn't see Lance right now anyway, right?

Despite Keith's very clear opinions on the matter Lance saw fit to take his sweet time, starting off with wide hands groping and kneading the flesh of Keith's ass. And don't get Keith wrong, it felt good its own sexy-teasing way, but his balls were about to fujckign shrivel up here and he really just wanted to get this show on the road already. "Lance," he said in what was supposed to be a warning voice but was starting to just sound pathetic instead, and as far as he could tell Lance's response was to bury his face in between Keith's asscheeks. Keith yelped at the sudden wetness of an eager tongue licking a flat line down his crack, and Keith needed a moment to re-steady the lock of his elbows. And when he'd regained his balance Lance was already distracted with a new surprise for Keith by letting go of one handful of Keith's bottom so he could sink his teeth into it. Fucking god damned tease, next time Keith was getting his first and it could be Lance shaking and aching-hard with need.

Lance was already back to licking by the time Keith could get a curse out of his mouth, this time starting low at the perineum and dragging up before circling a teasing ring around Keith's waiting entrance, already fluttering with anticipation. When Lance's tongue finally pushes against the sealed muscle just hard enough not to breach inside Keith let a moan slip from his throat, open and needy as his legs start to tremble.

Another soft lick, and then Lance's lips were sealing around Keith's hole and sucking and Keith's moan turned into a sob, fingers and toes curling at once. "W-what the fuck, Lance," he babbled. "You can't suck dick for shit but -" his sentence garbled into a thin whine as the suction broke off and Lance resumed his playful licking, "- but this, this you have no problem with, I don't even get you…"

Lance stopped laving at Keith long enough to answer in an earthy rasp, "Then you don't have an understanding of how much I wanna be inside you." And then Keith was gasping as he did just that, the tip of that wicked tongue breaching its way inside him with a wet wiggle.

Oh, this wasn't gonna take long. Keith's breathing had turned into a hard pant, and he reminded himself that if he tried touch his dick right now he'd fall over. Fuck fuck fuck, this already felt too good, just the barely-there squirm of Lance's tongue flickering in and out of the twitching rim of his entrance and Keith couldn't stop the noises falling from his mouth. Too sensitive, he was too sensitive here - Keith was so used to masturbating as seldom as possible, and he saved this kind of play for when he really needed to finish himself off in a hurry so this was... Lance's tongue squirming it's way deeper into Keith's ass, licking him open and tasting Keith from the inside was just... "Oh, fuck," Keith sobbed, head hanging low as a pathetic stream of pleas and curses poured out of him, desperate for that little bit of something that would push him over the edge. "Fuck, Lance…"

Lance sighed, long and low and happy, and Keith could tell from the pleased moan that definitely hadn't come from himself that Lance was getting everything he'd hoped for and more from this. He flicked and rolled and trilled his tongue in ways Keith couldn't even comprehend, and the last rational part of his mind had the jealous realization that of course Lance was good at THIS considering where his past experience lied. Fortunately the thought didn't have time to stick, because one of the skills his boyfriend had invented was to start sucking on the rim of Keith's asshole as he worked that magnificent tongue of his and Keith's mind didn't have room for anything beyond the chase of his re-impending crescendo.

He wasn't aware when his voice begged out "Please, please, close, I'm so close," mostly because his shaking elbows had given out their hold and Keith had to catch himself on his forearms to not land face-first into the bed to bite at Lance's bedsheets. The longer his torment continued the more Keith realized that no matter how amazing this was it just wasn't quite enough, not deep enough or hard enough or thick enough, the wet wriggle simply not possessing the length necessary to reach Keith's prostate no matter how deep Lance fucked his tongue in. Keith's hips were working back now, fucking himself onto Lance's face in a desperate attempt to get harder-deeper-more, reaching for that last little touch of absolutely anything that would send him over the edge. The last strength in his arms wobbled out and Keith faceplanted in the bed, body jerking downward as he fell against the mattress, Lance following without missing a beat. Keith's throbbing cock rubbed against the soft bedspread and his eyes shot open, and Keith struggled to raise his jellified body just enough to shove his left hand between himself and the bed. His fingers wrapped around his wet cock and Lance's tongue pressed down hard to give the rim of his asshole the slightest stretch and finally, finally, that was it. Everything was wet and everything was white and searing-hot and Keith was coming, a scream torn out of his throat so thunderously loud it echoed in his own ears and body shuddering around Lance's still-moving tongue.

Lance moaned again nearly just as loud, not that Keith could really hear it with his brain exploding the way it was. Keith was all but dead to the world for a few seconds after his orgasm; after being so crazy wound up for so long the release felt draining: a steel torsion spring uncoiled and melted limply into a toy slinky on Lance's bed. Except that Lance was still licking at him, gently now but still too much for Keith's oversensitized body and he shook as one last quiet whine was torn from his chest. Keith blindly reached behind himself to shove Lance's head away, sighing in relief and exhaustion even as Lance pressed a series of insistent kisses on his tailbone.

"Damn, Kitty-Baby," Lance's voice was husky and wrecked, and he rubbed a loving cheek against Keith's backside. "That was so hot, if you hadn't left me such a fucked-out mess I'd be so hard right now."

Keith's eyebrows twisted together, face apparently still capable of heating up into another blush even with his own tone rather horrified and incredulous. "'Kitty-Baby?'"

Lance paused. "I think I was trying to say 'Keith-Baby' but my brain's kind of mush right now." Which Keith could definitely relate to.

Keith finally rolled himself over, just enough strength returned to his quivering limbs to sit halfway upright. He and Lance looked at each other for a moment, both of them smiling goofily and for some reason blushing again, and when Lance broke out into a laugh Keith joined him.

Lance had his hands propped on the bed much the way Keith had been a few minutes before, so he only had to crawl forward a couple of paces to reach Keith for a kiss. Which was a lovely sentiment but Keith found himself catching Lance's face by the cheeks just as his breath hit Keith's nose and he yelped out "Think of where your mouth just was, man!"

Lance blinked, face squished ridiculously between Keith's fingers, all the more silly for the cartoonishly put-upon expression it fell into. "Whaaat? But I kissed YOU after you blew me!"

"Well for one thing, no one asked you to do that -" Lance reeled back dramatically, throwing the back of his hand against his forehead to cry about betrayal again, "- and for another, YOU'RE the one who's always going on about hygiene, the least you can do is brush your teeth first!"

"Fiiine," Lance sighed, standing up in a fluid motion that was all long legs and spine, only to lean down at the waist to plant a kiss on the top of Keith's head. "You'd better still be exactly this naked when I get back."

Keith smiled a little to himself as he watched Lance's retreating back, pushing himself all the way up off his elbows to finally sit upright again. And finally noticed he was still wearing his gloves, now wet with sweat and spit and sticky with his own jizz and even Keith wasn't a gross enough person to ignore that kind of bullshit. He started to pull his right glove off by the wrist, but his heart slammed against his ribcage and the glove snapped back in place when Keith got a glimpse of what was underneath.

Fuck. Fuck, he'd forgotten that his teeth marks might still be there. They should have worn off by now, faded to white and then invisible with the hours that had passed, but apparently he'd managed to break the skin even through the leather of his glove because there was still an angry red ring next to his thumb. Keith told himself it didn't matter, that it was fine if he just took off his glove. Even on the odd chance Lance saw it - which, with the bruises and scrapes still littering the rest of Keith's skin wasn't all that likely, right? - even if Lance did see he would probably know better than to ask questions, would be able to tell that Keith did it himself because Lance was already starting to get clued in what Keith's was really like…

What Keith was really like, which was still fucking crazy. And suddenly Keith was every kind of exhausted. His body felt ten thousand pounds and his head ten times that, and every bump and scrape from Shiro were suddenly all aching where they'd been once so easy to ignore. He really wanted to sink into Lance's bed right about now, preferably with its owner within reach for Keith to wrap himself around and pass out into unconsciousness. But even more than that want, right now Keith needed to be able to keep this one thing private. After everything else today the thought of Lance of all people seeing those bites, the blatant evidence that Keith was susceptible to something as pathetic as self-harm and looking at him with pity in his eyes… He couldn't stand it. Couldn't do it, not after how wonderful everything had just been and Keith was ruining it again without even doing anything, just by being himself…

The next room over the sound of Lance's humming to himself had become garbled with toothpaste, and whatever Keith was going to do it had to be now. Just ignore everything and lie down? If his wet gloves were annoying him this much there was no way Lance wouldn't notice and insist he take them off. So then, take the gloves off now and gamble on Lance not looking at his hands before they fade? Yes, because the odds of his boyfriend not trying to hold his hand again tonight were really that low. Fuck. Fucking fuck.

When Lance came back into his room Keith was up and wrangling his pants back on, and the sigh that poured out of Lance at this point was just defeated. "Seriously?" he asked flatly. "I'm gone two minutes and you try to sneak out like you've got a wedding ring hidden in your purse?"

Keith made the decision to not look at his face right now, instead grabbing his shirt and yanking it over his shoulders. Since he hadn't had time to come up with an excuse and he didn't want to lie to Lance, he thought for a moment before he tried in a quiet, sandy voice, "Yeah, I… Guess I'm not feeling as…" Good? Normal? Sane? Keith's shoulders dropped low once he got his shirt back on, weighed down by the irons of his own insecurities. "...much better… as I thought I did," Keith finished lamely, turning his body away from Lance and towards the door.

Lance made another low tired sound that perfectly conveyed his disappointment. "Right. Yeah, I get it," he said, and without even looking Keith could tell when Lance hung his head and scratched at the back of his neck. "I guess I was just hoping… for the best, or something."

If Keith could have shriveled in on himself like a rotting flower that's exactly what would have happened. "Sorry," he bit out.

"Don't apologize," Lance said in a tone that could almost be a scold, and the sound of the footsteps coming towards Keith were firm and even. When Lance reached him he just stood behind Keith, hands coming to lightly rest high on the biceps of Keith's tense arms and gently rubbing soothing fingers down the line from his shoulder to elbow and back. "I'm never gonna get mad at you for needing space."

Despite Lance's reassurances, the air felt thick and heavy between them, and Keith wasn't sure what to do knowing he couldn't walk out when the silence continued to congeal around them like this. Eons passed and Lance heaved out another long sigh, fingers curling into the black fabric of Keith's sleeves as his forehead bowed down to rest against the top of Keiths spine. "I just…" his voice was soft and fractured, grainy like saltwater that stung each one of Keith's wounds. "I feel like the harder I try to hold on to you, the faster you slip through my fingers, you know?"

Keith choked on nothing, nails biting into his abused hands as he fought back the sting of his eyes and forced his breathing to stop shaking his chest. It took the long wet crawl of an eternity for either of them to move again, and when Keith did it was just to reach across the stretch of his own chest to rest the fingers of one hand on top of Lance's.

He didn't want tonight to end like this. He'd been so close to a good ending to a shitty night before he'd gone and fucked it up, and Keith had even managed to wreck most of Lance's night while he was at it and he just… Didn't deserve that. Neither of them did, no matter how messed up Keith was. And even… Even if later on it turned out the best thing really was for them to break up, that didn't mean tonight had to be anything less than as goddamned beautiful as Keith had felt ten minutes ago. Reminded himself that he wanted Lance to feel beautiful again, too.

Keith took a deep breath in through his nose, holding it for ten seconds like his counselor had instructed. Let it out through his mouth, long and slow to let the tension in his shoulders drain out with the air. And when he spun around to face Lance again, managed to surprise them both by how genuine his smile was. "Pretty morose thought for a guy whose every story ends with me swooning into his arms," he tried to joke, and it took a few long moments of Lance gaping at him before his boyfriend finally chuckled. Keith leaned up to kiss Lance, trying to convey through a medium as impalpable as the gentle pressure of lips and tongues that he, and they, and everything would all be okay. He must have done alright because when he pulled away the lightness had returned to Lance's eyes as his gaze followed after Keith's smile. "I'll see you in the morning, Lance," he promised.

And then, half for good measure and half just for fun, used the palm of his soaking wet left glove to give Lance's cheek two firm, loving pats on the cheek.

"OH MY GOD, is that jizz?! Did you just slap your jizz onto my face?!"

Keith burst out laughing and scrambled out of the door before Lance could grab him, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight," over his shoulder.

In the end, it took Keith giving up and pulling out Lance's still-unreturned jacket to slip under his head as a pillow, but he managed to have a good night sleep himself.

---

(1) In the foodservice industry, in which Keith spent far more months bussing tables than he would ever have liked, a customer who takes up a table for half the night and preventing anyone from getting extra tips via turnover and clogging up the waiting list is usually referred to as "an Asshole"