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.

9. For Better

When Keith woke up in his healing pod, his first thought was that he should have stayed in the med bay where Lance was. His second was that it didn't matter because he needed to talk to Allura first anyway.

And then the door actually opened.

Keith fell forward with a surprised lurch, sleeping legs collapsing out from under him before he even opened his eyes.

It was, both surprisingly and not surprisingly at all, Lance's welcome arms that caught him before he hit the ground. Well, good, Lance was okay, then. That question out of the way, Keith could move onto more urgent matters. "Where are we," he gasped before he was even on his feet again, "How long was I asleep?"

Lance's arm was steady around his shoulders. "It's been a few days," he said, sounding sorry. "We're… Way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere. Allura's pretty mad the whole planet seemed to know we were there, and apparently we're waiting for Queen Shirun or someone else from the RA to contact us?" Keith opened his mouth to ask a question, most likely something along the lines of 'Well where the hell is she anyway we need to TELL her,' but Lance was already speaking again. "I've only been awake for a couple of hours myself, but I… I told Shiro everything." He swallowed thickly, looking away when Keith's fingers curled into his biceps painfully. "Before I even went under actually. When you ran off to the bridge and he was trying to get me into a healing pod, I think I might have ended up screaming a little?" A self deprecating smile. "I don't remember really well."

Keith thought he might be shaking again, just from thinking about it. "Did he… Did understand you?"

Looking grim, Lance nodded. "From the look in his eyes, I'd say he did. Just told me we couldn't deal with anything until the two of us were fixed."

"Well, we're fixed now!" Keith said quickly. "Let's go find Allura and -"

"Keith," Lance cut him off firmly; looking tired, resigned, and directly into Keith's eyes. "Shiro was in the med bay when I woke up. He said…" he sighed. "He said we're waiting. No one is doing, or even planning anything until UAGRA calls us back."

Keith's nails dug into Lance's arms hard enough to bite through the fabric of his shirt into his skin as he demanded in a painfully hoarse voice, "You mean we're not going back?!"

Lance's frown cut deep into his face, and Keith could see his eyes screaming with the same rage as Keith's even through the almost professional calm of his voice. "There are, as of right now, no plans to return to Elpis."

Fuck... Fuck! That was ridiculous! What kind of… half-assed defenders of the universe were they?! "We're just… not going to do anything?!"

This time Lance just looked helpless, shrugging listlessly. "I don't know, I'm still hoping we're just waiting on the Queen to set up an attack plan, but I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone's told me anything at all is… Well, so they wouldn't have to be the ones to tell you, quite generally."

Sons of bitches. Well. Okay no matter how you looked at it they were right about leaving Lance and him alone with each other for when he woke up, but they didn't need to let Lance be the one to drop all that on Keith by himself. He finally released his grip on Lance, noticing for the first time he was still wearing the white healing suit Keith himself had also at some point been crammed into, and deciding that was probably a more important issue at this exact moment anyway. "And… How long have you been awake, anyway?"

Finally, Lance brightened up. "Two whole hours, which means you were more injured than me so I win!"

To his surprise, Keith felt a chuckle burst out of him. "Well, I did have an entire hole torn straight through the inside of my body, so. I can see why that might take more to fix than just a bit of external damage," he smirked, waiting for the rise from Lance.

His boyfriend snatched the bait immediately, placing a girlishly offended hand against his breast to scoff out "UM, excuse me? How about the entire layer of flesh seared off of my body, that's not a big deal?"

Keith grinned, stepping back into Lance's body space to bump their foreheads together and show he was only teasing. "I really don't see how it could be. I mean, you're standing aren't you?"

Lance made to reel back dramatically to bemoan the lack of love, but Keith was already pulling him back in with a light laugh. "But no really," Keith said, dropping his voice back into seriousness. "How are they? Any weakness? Have you even looked at them yet?"

Lance's face quickly fell back into a grimace. "They feel kind of… overly-warm still, so I've been too afraid to peek." He shook it off in an instant. "What about you, your shoulder okay? Full range of movement, stiffness, anything like that?"

Not a bad question, actually. Keith wound his right arm experimentally to get a feel for his shoulder, then the left side where he'd actually been shot through. "I don't think anything did permanent damage," Keith assessed after a moment. But, since it had taken them so long to get into healing pods…

Keith reached blindly behind himself, groping for the seam of his jumpsuit and yanking it down a few inches. Lance raised an eyebrow, to which Keith could only bashfully offer his back and ask "Undo my zipper?"

Lance blushed because he was adorable, sputtering "We're not even in the medbay, Keith, this is still the bridge! Why are you undressing?!"

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Keith turned around to give his back to Lance, even going as far as to lift his hair out of the way in case it was impeding the zipper. Or, he was pretty sure it was a zipper? Altean clothes were weird. "'Cause I wanna see, obviously. Shiro's got a ton of scars, it's not like they just don't exist in space because of the fancy technology." Shouldn't Lance of all people be the first person to know that?

"Ah, yeah," Lance muttered hesitantly behind him. He took hold of the fastener and slid it slowly down, the skintight suit falling with it to pool around Keith's exposed shoulders. "Nng," Lance made an uncomfortable noise behind him, and Keith shivered lightly at the feeling of a gentle fingertip tracing a tiny circle onto the skin of his shoulder blade. "You got me, it definitely left a mark." Another gentle touch to the other side, running is fingertip in a short line close to Keith's armpit. "Two," he corrected morosely. "You've got two scars." A head thumped onto Keith's shoulder, and Lance sadly whined "Ahhh, your lovely back…"

Well, that kind of sucked. At least he'd gotten Veret in the return, bastard probably had to dig the hairband teeth out of his torso with tweezers. Keith reached around to pat at Lance's head. "I've already got scars just from daily life, these aren't the first or last." Another whine from over his shoulder, and Keith had to ask in a light tease, "What, am I that ugly?"

"Never!" Lance tackled him into a hug, which since he was only a foot and a half away to begin with ended up bowling both of them to the ground. "Your body will always be perfect and sexy, no matter how badly you mangle yourself!" Keith pushed himself off the ground to sit up, Lance following with his long arms still wrapped around Keith's shoulders. In a much quieter tone, Lance admitted into Keith's ear, "I just want to be able to look at your naked back without remembering how I watched you get shot."

Aahhhhhh. Yeah he was there to see that, wasn't he? Whoooops. Lance settled so they were sitting together properly, Keith's back to his chest and knees knocking together on the floor. Speaking of which...

Keith put a hand on Lance's ankle, right where his own healing suit ended to reveal bare feet. "Your turn, Handsome," he said firmly, patting Lance's ankle. "Show me the damage."

Lance froze behind him, and Keith realized if he hadn't changed back into real clothes Lance wouldn't have thought to check himself yet. "Uhhhhh," he fumbled, arms tense around Keith. "I'm sure it's fine!"

Keith turned his head to give Lance a flat look. "You wanna do this now, or wait all day until worrying about it kills you?"

A pause. "You suck," Lance said bitterly. "Stop being good for me."

Figuring that was its own answer, Keith grabbed Lance's hem and peeled white fabric up a few tentative inches.

"See, so far so good!" Lance crowed. "No scars on my ankles, everything must be fine!"

Keith rolled his eyes. "You were also wearing boots," he reminded, making to pull more fabric up Lance's calf.

"I was, wasn't I!" Lance interjected in a squeal. "When do you think they took those off us, huh? And the handcuffs, neither one of us had gotten our handcuffs all the way off, but here we are - "

"Stop trying to stall," Keith didn't wait for any more of a response, rolling his pant leg up all the way to the knee and immediately wincing at what he saw.

Lance wasn't looking, head resting on Keith's shoulder. He must have felt Keith tense up underneath him, because instead of more tactical nonsense Lance only managed a meek, "How's it look?"

"Uhhhhh," Keith hesitated, trying to decide what Lance's version of 'bad' might be. The skin didn't looked raised or abraded at all, just…. Red. Rorschach blotches of angry redness painting the outside of Lance's gorgeous bronze calf, and Keith continued rolling surprisingly elastic fabric up past his knee to see the scars wander from halfway up his calf to halfway down his thigh. "Not that bad, honestly. Some… slight discoloration, is all."

Lance didn't raise his head. "This is the side the explosion wasn't on."

Keith winced, face twisting into a grimace. "Oh. It's probably pretty bad, then."

Lance made a whiny sort of noise, finally unwrapping himself from Keith enough to actually assess the damage to his own body. "My gorgeous skin…" He lamented. "All that moisturizer, for THIS! Ah, man, it's way too early to be getting my first space battle scars, I'm not supposed to come out with these until like ten years from now when we've been battling evil for ages and are all gritty and disillusioned from war!"

Keith had to pause at that. First scars? Uh… there was… No way he could not know, right? "Um, Lance?" Keith frowned, wondering if Lance had somehow managed to forget just because they were on his back. "What about from that first explosion? You know, that time you saved Coran and went into a coma?"

He could hear the furrowed brow in Lance's voice even without turning around. "What about then?"

Ooooohhhhhh shiiiiiiiit, he DIDN'T know. How could he not know?! Keith hadn't ever said anything about them because he'd figured Lance was probably self-conscious about it, had everyone else on the entire ship also just assumed he already knew about them and never mentioned it? Oh, shit. They sucked. They all sucked, is what this was. "Well," Keith could turn this around, couldn't he? Deliver bad news as though it were good news or something, right? He kept his voice light. "Um. About that. On the plus side, it's mainly a few knicks from shrapnel! Your paladin armor protected your back from most of the blast, so it's actually nowhere near as bad as- "

Lance was already scrambling into a stand, arms flailing behind his back to find his zipper tag and struggling out of the top half of his suit. Then proceeded to do an even more absurd looking dance where he started to twist around trying to look at his own back, contorting his torso in truly cirque du soleil levels of ridiculousness before quacking, "AH! There's really something there! Oh god, why did no one tell me?! And its all red back here, too, jesus!"

"We all thought you knew!" Keith apologized helplessly. "It's your own body, you seemed like the first person who would already know!"

Lance sunk to the ground miserably, hiding his face in his hands. "You don't understand, Keith." His voice was muffled by his palms, but still positively dripped with dramatic woe. "You're not the one who has to explain all these scars to my mom."

...Well that was not a thing Keith had taken into account, no. "I can help?" He shrugged helplessly, wondering what it was about Lance's mother that made this seem such a daunting dilemma.

Lance groaned again. Unburied his face to look down at his right leg. Sighed miserably. "It's not fair, your scars still manage to be hot and I just look like a walking burn ward."

Was this a good time to mention all the times when they'd been making out and Keith's hands had trailed up the back of Lance's shirt, only to shiver in excitement when his fingers brushed against the thin raised lines of Lance's shrapnel scars to be instantly reminded of how badass it was that Lance had shoved someone he'd only just met out of an explosion like some kind of Actual Action Hero? ...Maybe, but Keith was bad at reading signs, and so would go with the safe bet of 'Not now.' He opted for the edited version: "I dunno, I always thought your scars were pretty hot."

Lance sighed again, shorter and with less drama. "I guess that's something. I… It's not how it looks that's the problem. Well it is, but…"

Keith shuffled over towards him on the floor. "But… you're having problems communicating the thought?"

Lance looked confused by the way Keith had said that for a moment, before he remembered his own words with a huff of self-deprecating laughter, ruffling a hand through his hair. "Right. Shit. I'm supposed to actually talk about my feelings now, aren't I?"

"If I have to you have to," Keith urged him with a careful smile. "If it's not the way it looks that bothers you, why are you so upset?"

Shifting his weight until he had his arms wrapped around his knees and looking more towards his legs than at Keith, Lance thought about it. "It's permanent. Even if we kill Zarkon and go back to Earth, even if we find some way to go back and live normal lives…" He squeezed his eyes shut. "There's a war veteran my dad knows. Came home more than thirty years ago and he still has nightmares from it."

Oh. That… Was something that warranted worrying about, Keith supposed. "Even mine have already started," he offered with a frown. "I've woken up sweating and terrified more times than I can count."

A huff of sardonic laughter from Lance. "And now… I can't even pretend I'll be okay anymore. There's no way I'm ever gonna get over…" The crack of a man's skull under his hands. "...the things that have happened since we got here." He raised his bare, burn-red leg into the air. "And now my family will all be able to see what happened up here, even if I try to tell them it's all okay and I wasn't in that much real danger. Even if I go back to Earth… Nothing will ever really be normal again, will it?"

A heavy swell of… pity or sympathy or sorrow or something rose up in Keith's chest. Yeah, telling your mom about the time you exploded and burned your legs half off would be a pretty heavy conversation, even for someone as good at twisting stories as Lance was. Keith couldn't really empathize with no home or family that would be worried about him. "I… don't think I ever really planned on going back to Earth in the first place," he admitted. "I mean, I didn't really have anywhere to go back to anyway, and at least here I've got Allura and Coran." A pause. This conversation sucked. Weren't they supposed to be happy they were both alive? What would Lance say if he were the one trying to cheer Keith up and not the other way around? "Unless they decide to park the castle on Earth after the war," he decided. "That I guess that would work for everyone. There'd be no reason to stay in space if I was doing it alone."

Lance opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to say something and looking like whatever he wanted to say had something to do with Keith abandoning him for the endless void of space. No words actually came out though, and he closed his mouth and forced a weak smile to agree, "They'd actually blend in pretty easily with humans, huh? Can't imagine what they'd do for jobs, though."

Oh thank god he wasn't going there. Communication was one thing, but there was also shit that just didn't need to be dealt with today and whatever happened at the end of the war was a fight that could wait til much, much later. "Well they've got alien magic and understanding of superadvanced technology, so… Probably theater. They both got pretty into that space pirate schtick."

A genuine laugh from Lance, music to Keith's ears. "Sounds perfect. They'll take Broadway by storm."

There was, finally, a moment of silence that wasn't tense and miserable. It… Did not last long. There was a question Keith hadn't needed to ask to know the answer to, an unpleasant churn of worry gnawing away at him from the bottom of his stomach. "Please stop exploding," Keith pleaded out of nowhere. "I know you somehow got this ridiculous impression that you're like, less valuable than the rest of us, but it's not true and you're not replaceable and I REALLY need you to stop doing things that almost kill you."

Lance looked momentarily taken aback. It slid off quickly, replaced at once with contriteness as he argued back, "Okay but you weren't there! If I hadn't set off that guy's grenade then I really WOULD have died! I was outnumbered and pinned down and had like, zero other options available at the time!"

The sick roiling in his gut became even worse at the mental image. "I just need you to be more careful with your own life, okay! You SAY you had no choice this time, but I bet you also said you didn't have a choice any of the times you threw yourself in front of one of us, and god damn it, if I had to promise to think before I do stupid shit then so do you!"

Lance's jaw was open again like he had an argument ready, but cut himself off before any words came out with a sharp inhalation of breath. "I can't help that I want to protect you guys, okay?!"

Stubborn son of a - "You're not the only one, stupid, we all want to protect you, too!"

A moment of stunned silence. "I…" Lance started fruitlessly. Put his forehead in one hand. And then, after a long, froglike noise, began to laugh. "Okay," he agreed between peals of quiet, exhausted laughter. "Okay, you got me." He lifted his head to extend his hand to Keith, offering his pinky finger. "Promise to try?"

Keith looked at the proffered finger. Figured the appropriate thing to do was hook it with his own and agree, "Promise to try." It wouldn't stop either one of them from sucking so hard, but it was a start.

After they shook on it they didn't bother to break their hold, resting their hands on the cold floor between them with twining pinky fingers joining them together.

And that was about the time someone finally showed up on the bridge. "Keith!" Shiro could be heard calling before he was even visible in the doorway. "I got a flag saying your healing pod opened, is everything…" When he did appear in the doorway it was with a raised eyebrow, having already caught sight of Keith and Lance before they noticed him. Which, come to think of it, they were kind of sitting on the floor with their jumpsuits half peeled off with no visible explanation as to why, so. Yeah. A little confusion was warranted. "Okay…"

Lance seemed to agree. Why his reaction to such awkwardness was to slowly lift one leg into the air, Keith would never know. "Wimmy wham-wham wazzle?"

Shiro looked mildly concerned for him. Lance rolled to his feet to dust imaginary lint off his legs, and declared, "AS IT WERE, I was just on my way to get some pants! New pants. Excellent pants, even. SPACE PANTS."

Keith and Shiro watched as he awkwardly backed out of the room, fingergunning away as he slunk into the hall. Shiro blinked. "Is there... Any kind of explanation for what just happened?"

"Covering blind panic with a flashy exit, I'd wager." Keith decided, rising into standing. And he would also wager he knew the reason for Lance's hasty retreat as well, and that reason was over six feet of pure disappointment that had just walked in to stand next to Keith. He drew in a deep breath of air, turning to Shiro with the question, "So you know what happened down there, right?"

Shiro's eyes closed, and he sighed a heavy huff of breath through his nose before opening them again. "Yes. We haven't made contact with UAGRA or the Queen since we left, but we were able to confirm what Lance was telling me through a line between Pidge and Lala. It's… pretty gruesome." He looked towards Keith. "But what we haven't been able to piece together yet is what exactly happened to you and Lance to put you in such a shape in the first place. The last thing any of us knows is that you were both at dinner the night before, then by mid-morning you were shot half to death with four geruda and a fleet of Galra with you. It's… a little concerning."

Keith kind of wished he could barrel-roll out the door and into hiding, too. Awkwardly avoiding eye contact, Keith waded through his thoughts to find something he could say. Shit, he hated this part. Admitting to Shiro he'd done something stupid and almost died, again, was just about torture; Keith's heart felt tight and hot like it was being squeezed by the force of his own anxiety. "I… It's my fault. I thought I had a lead, and I got too eager and jumped in without thinking, and Lance noticed and jumped in with me." His hand balled into a fist at his side, rushing through the rest as quickly as he could because he needed to get that band-aid off now. "I knew that Veret would lead me right to the Galra, but we just both ended up getting captured. While we were escaping we couldn't avoid combat, and… Lance exploded. Because that's apparently just what he does."

"And rushing head first into your own death is apparently just what you do," Shiro huffed angrily, the harshness of his tone biting into Keith. "You didn't tell anyone, you didn't bring your communicator, and you didn't give any consideration to what all the rest of us would do or feel when we realized you had just vanished!" Keith's head was bowed, staring at his chest with stinging eyes and feeling the kind of small and ashamed that only knowing he had disappointed Shiro could make him feel. As if he didn't feel guilty enough for almost getting Lance killed and scarring his legs, now he had had to endure this, knowing how much he'd frustrated and let Shiro down...

Shiro sighed again, deeper and heavier and far, far more exhausted. "I just… I know you can be better than this Keith. You're smart and you're capable and I trust you can make good decisions, but you get all worked up and rush head first into terrible ideas and I don't know how to get you to stop and just think for a minute."

"I know ," Keith's voice was low and strained, and he winced at the slight crack at the end of it. "I just - I was all fucked up in the head and I wasn't thinking and I know, okay? I know I fucked up." Shit. Shit shit shit, this was the worst, this was the thing he'd always been most afraid of, that'd he'd say or do something so stupid and ridiculously Keith that'd he'd lose Shiro and god damn if this wasn't enough to get him kicked out of here and -

A shorter final sigh, and Shiro's hand landed heavy on his shoulder. "You did succeed though. You both survived and you found what we came here looking for. Even if you keep making me feel like Police Commissioner Gordon in the process."

Keith blinked, shaking the anxious train of thought off to look up at Shiro. "You... are not the first person to compare me to Batman this month."

"That's not a good thing Keith. Batman is a crazy person."

Keith ducked his head into his shoulders timidly. "Sounds about right?"

Shiro rolled his eyes. "You're not crazy, Keith, you're just… wired differently than most people. Everyone has their own shit to deal with, and your…" He frowned for a moment. "...The things they used to medicate you for back on Earth happen to be some of your shit. It doesn't make you any different from anyone else on any planet."

Oddly enough, that actually did make him feel better. "I'm still sorry."

Shiro let a long moment pass. Then, slapped Keith hard on the shoulder. "You should be. I can't stand lecturing people like this, you look like a kicked puppy right now."

"Yeah," Keith let a small chuckle fall from his throat. "You're really not cut out to be the Head Adult In Charge. I kind of feel sorry for you."

"You should," Shiro lamented dramatically. "I never wanted to be Mufasa, Keith. No one does. I just want to watch cartoons and eat cereal in my underpants."

"Don't we all," Keith agreed wistfully.

They let a comfortable silence settle between them, in which Keith considered that he wished he was wearing clothes because his unzipped back and shoulders were getting cold.

"This sucks," Shiro declared. "When was the last time we just hung out? It's like every moment of our lives is just worrying."

Keith thought about that. "I feel like the only thing we do is train together." He directed an awkward, if genuine smile at Shiro. "Let me go put on a shirt and I'll meet you in the Rec Room."

The Five Ball was sitting right against the side bumper, smiling stripe-side up like it was waiting for Keith to tap it into the hole just ten inches away. The Ten was sitting just in between the cueball and his intended target, and he had yet to decide if he wanted to through it or use its force to bump the Five.

Straight through, he decided. Crouched down over the table to line up his shot. Carefully aimed, and…

"DON'T SCRATCH" Shiro shouted, just in time to surprise Keith's pool cue into banging against the floor of the table and scrape against the cueball enough to send it into a light spin and nothing more.

"God quizkacking son of a bitch!" Keith swore, barely resisting the urge to turn around and break his pool cue over Shiro's stupid head.

"Oh, man," Shiro said from behind him, voice thick with fake sympathy. "After I just said not to scratch."

Keith felt his hand fist tightly around his pool cue, and he took in a deep breath. Shiro, he knew, did not get many opportunities to be an asshole, and seldom took advantage of them when he did. He knew this, which is how he knew that when Shiro did go out of his way to be obnoxious, it was always for the same reason. He was stressed to the point of snapping and Keith was the only person he was close enough to be able to pick on. Well. They were all stressed, right? Even Shiro needed a bit of catharsis.

And oh, what an honor it was to be this man's surrogate little brother. "How careless of me," Keith said flatly, leveling a glare at Shiro as he went round the other side of the table to try his own shot. "Let's hope you have better luck…" Keith watched Shiro lean over the table, waiting for the exact moment Shiro pulled back his cue to finish with "- on yours," with a sharp kick to one leg of the pool table.

Shiro's hand slipped, changing the course of the cueball as it spun. But only enough so that it veered to hit the Six ball next to the one he'd actually been aiming for, sending both balls rolling unsteadily to fall into the left center pocket one after another.

"You son of a bitch," Keith swore to Shiro's great entertainment. "You absolute asshole, how do you keep DOING these things!"

Shiro wasn't even trying to contain his laughter, walking around a few feet to line up his next shot, which was of course, the last ball he had left to make. "I blame you for suggesting we play." Keith didn't bother trying to mess with him again, watching with mild annoyance as Shiro easily sunk the shot. "In fact, wasn't it your idea to even build this thing in the first place?"

"Yeah," Keith agreed absently, still caught up in the train of thought that was hoping for Shiro to choke on his final shot. "Lance and I hadn't figured out how to hang out yet, so most of our first date ended up being the lot of us building something to do."

Shiro's eyebrows drew together while he took aim at the Eight ball, and he stopped to look at Keith with the question, "That was your first date?"

Oh yeah, they'd never told anyone about how they started dating because it was moronic and embarrassing. "Uh, it was a little short notice? Lance still insists he could have done better, but I figure if we both had fun then it was a good date."

Shiro just kept looking at him like he was trying to decide if he had something to say about that, and Keith couldn't help feeling a little defensive. "I mean. We also like, talked and stuff, we didn't spend our entire first date around other people."

Shiro's mouth closed and he raised up his hands in a gesture that was technically designed to show he was unarmed but considering he was still holding a pool cue just looked kind of placating. "No, I'm not thinking anything like that, I guess I'm just." He lowered his hands, looking reluctant to continue. "Impressed you guys even had a first date at all."

Keith felt his head jerk back in offended alarm. "And what's that supposed to mean? How are we supposed to have not had a first date?"

The bottom of Shiro's cue hit the floor with a tap, and he averted his eyes from Keith. "Well, neither of you bothered to tell anyone when you started dating, so I guess we all just assumed it started on accident because you guys kept making out."

Keith felt his jaw drop. "Wow. I am… Just so god damned flattered by the collective opinion that instead of actually liking each other we just couldn't keep it in our pants."

Shiro's eyes rolled to the ceiling with a huffed sigh. "I didn't mean it like that. I just - you never said anything! If there was actually anything to actually say about it then at least Lance would have told someone, but you guys just started… cuddling and playing footsie with no explanations of any kind."

That… was a good point, actually. Lance of course had had no idea what was going on at the time because the idea that he could date Keith had not yet managed to occur to him, but Keith could have told Shiro about it like, the next day if he'd wanted. But… It had been too new and too uncertain and too private, and putting it into words would have added too much weight. Admitting to Shiro that he and Lance were together meant admitting to himself that there was something actually there and not just one of Lance's random whims, that whatever was going on was real, and god, there was just too much to lose… There had always been too much to lose, and subconsciously he'd always known it, but. He'd ignored it, because Lance was warm and funny and Keith liked the way he felt when they were together. "Ah," he said lamely. "Yeah, we kind of… did end up keeping it pretty private." Still, though. "But I'd still hope you know I'd have better judgement than to randomly start making out with one of my teammates. There's only seven of us for fuck's sake."

"Don't be like that," Shiro said tiredly like a teenager's guardian trying to have an argument with them. Which… was actually sort of exactly what he was? "Nobody ever said there was any problem, right? It's not like we were looking down at you like a pair of horny barnyard animals." He scratched at the back of his head, looking truly exhausted. "How do I begin to put this…"

Keith raised an eyebrow, but didn't go as far as uncrossing his arms. Shiro seemed to have something to say, even if he couldn't imagine what.

Finally looking back at Keith as he leaned his weight casually on the pool table, Shiro started, "When I first realized you two had started getting… romantic, my reaction was instant disappointment." He didn't give Keith time to relax, quickly moving on with, "A little bit in you and Lance, but mostly just disappointed in myself. For not having seen this coming."

Keith was not sure if he wanted to be offended or not yet. "Oh… kay."

"Because when I thought about it," Shiro continued. "I realized how completely and totally inevitable this had been. Partly because you're very gay and Lance is very Lance and eventually those would… intersect, but mainly just because of how you guys were. I still haven't figured out at what point your flirting became intentional, because it started as soon as we got to space."

Keith felt his face flush. "W- I was not flirting from day one!"

"You were," Shiro assured him with conviction. "In your own Keith way." He raised his voice inaccurately high in pitch as he adopted an exaggeratedly sultry tone to recite, "'Hey Lance, I got you your lion back~' "

"Fuck you, I did not sound like that!"

"You did, though, I heard it with my own ears. Honestly, I was embarrassed for you." Shiro grinned, deftly avoiding the kick Keith aimed at his calf. "But no, I'm not kidding. When I stopped to think about it, I realized that it didn't matter how it actually happened, because it was always going to. We could be in some bizarro timeline where Lance somehow started dating Allura the day we got into space, and it would do nothing except delay the point in which the two of you wind up indiscriminately snogging. It could have been years down the line, but fortunately it wasn't, and we did not all have to go through some awkward unresolved sexual tension built up from years of mutual pining."

Keith was… floored, maybe? He was having trouble registering ideas or emotions right now, possibly because of how distracted he was by his face starting on fire. "O-oh. That's, um. Romantic."

"Something like that," Shiro said in a tone that said it was more inconvenient than anything. "So, yeah. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I think, or what anyone else thinks, and it never has. The only thing matters is whether or not you're happy, and I'd be damned to claim that Lance hasn't at least been able to do that for you."

Well. That was a nice thought, that warmed Keith's little heart, but… It really wasn't true though, was it? Shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other and back, Keith tried not to look uncomfortable. "Well. Besides the space war, anyway."

Shiro finally looked at Keith again - really looked at him, like he was searching for something in Keith he'd only just realized he'd never seen before. "The space war is important, yes, but… You know that it still doesn't take priority over your actual personal well being right?"

Was… Was he really having this conversation? With Shiro this time, of all people? "I don't know about 'well-being', but I mean. The billions and billions of oppressed lives seem a little bit higher priority than whether or not I'm having a good day."

Shiro's eyes pinched shut, and his whole body drew up tense. "Keith, that's not how this works. Living like that will only break you. It's impossible for a person to live only for the sake of others, you have to take care of your own happiness first or you'll never be able to take care of anyone else." Opening his eyes to look at Keith again, he said seriously, "You're allowed to be selfish sometimes, Keith. You're allowed to have things for yourself, even if they're hard work." A pause. "Whatever that happiness might be for you."

He... was really supposed to believe this, huh? Keith knew in theory all these things, had been told them before, but that was usually by therapists and Keith had never particularly trusted them to begin with. It seemed impossible and incomprehensible - what was his one stupid usually miserable life weighed against the lives of everyone under the entire Galra Empire? But at the same time he couldn't say that being miserable and alone and crazy certainly been helping him be a more efficient soldier, either… "I… I guess I know that," he tried reluctantly.

Shiro just looked defeated, picking his pool cue back up to finish off the last shot they'd put off. "Just think about it, okay? Eight ball, corner right."

Eventually, he was cornered. Pidge and Hunk finally caught up with Keith after a few hours, tracking him down to Red's bay where there were a few choice words regarding almost dying and then ditching the healing pod before his friends could see he was okay. Which, yeah fair, but Keith was also still massively humiliated about how they'd almost died, and didn't really wanna relive his own stupidity when they inevitably asked what the fuck had happened.

Fortunately for Keith, Pidge and Hunk were awesome, and accepted 'I don't wanna talk about it' with little objection, though obviously carrying the (extremely accurate) assumption that Keith had done something stupid.

After that… it was just kind of weird. Keith had been clawing at the walls with the need to get off Elpis and back into space, but now that that had finally happened he just felt… empty. Like he'd failed himself and an entire planet, and had no choice but to twiddle his thumbs and hope for the best.

Probably because that had been exactly what happened.

Aside from that, unspoken and unintentionally, he and Lance were locked in an awkward orbit around each other where they both felt like they were supposed to be saying or doing something with no idea what. By the time dinner had come and gone Keith had found his stomach twisted in too many inexplicable knots to be hungry, and had afterwards done little more than go back to his room and catch up on sleep.

He didn't know how long the nap lasted, only that he woke up to a knock on his door. And whom should appear when he opened it but Lance, in all his awkward handsome glory. "Hey, Keith," he sounded more nervous than he really needed to. "What's up? Er, napping, I bet, but um. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to like… Go for a walk with me?"

Keith blinked. "A walk?"

"Yeah," Lance nodded, scratching the back of his neck before ending it in a shrug. "You know, to talk or whatever. Get to know each other better."

Get to… Oh. That was what he'd said that first night he'd accidentally asked Keith out, the words that had confused Keith into thinking it was supposed to be a date in the first place.

Something inside of Keith broke apart in that moment, like a glass wall shattering under a tidal wave. The tsunami that swelled inside of him was warm, though, somehow comfortable and unearthly intense at the same time, and Keith couldn't have fought the smile if he'd wanted to. "I'd like that."

"So this was just a day job for Javier, he had a real chef's position in another restaurant but it was the slow season so he picked up this simple line cook job. And he's only supposed to be working the grill and fryer technically, but being who he is and compulsively working hard meant he ended up making half the food in the kitchen. So one night the manager tells him to make a pot of split pea soup. And normally this would be fine, but the thing with Javier is there's only one food in the world he can't stand, and it's split pea soup."

A little huffed laugh from Keith, supplying an interested noise to prompt, "Oh, yeah?"

"Oooh yeah," Lance grinned, waving the kitchen knife in his hand inappropriately before returning to his cutting board and story both. "So he decides, fuck it, this isn't his job anyway, right? He was gonna make this soup so awful they'd never ask him to make it again, and that'd be the end of it."

"That's one way to handle that," Keith snorted as he finished peeling another weird vegetable and putting on the table for Lance to dice.

"So he starts off making the soup like normal," Lance continued, slicing the round orange foodstuff into halves to rest flat on the board. "And then when he's about done he adds the salt. And then more salt. And then, for good measure, a little extra salt."

Keith couldn't help but match Lance's grin, taking up the other half to cut himself. "Jesus, did anybody die from it? Dried up and shriveled from dehydration like snails?"

Lance laughed. "Oh, even better. So the cook next to him is like, what the hell are you doing, man? But Javi just smiles that wicked little imp smirk and raises his eyebrows like he knows exactly what he's doing, stirs it all in. And obviously he's not gonna be the one to test it first, he doesn't even know what that shit is supposed to taste like, so he gets the other cook to try it first. And he's dubious 'cause he saw what the fuck Javi did to it, but he has the first spoonful anyway. And my cousin stands there grinning to himself, watching the way the sous chef's eyes go wide, and he's like 'dude, go get the manager.'" Having sliced up their selection of unknown fruitstuffs, Lance moves from the cutting board to the pan warming on the stove.

"Do you have any idea what you're trying to cook right now?" Keith interrupted, watching Lance pour a random measure of a liquid approximately the color and consistency of coconut oil, but smelled more like bananas. Actually the smell was kind of familiar, how did Keith know this?

"I am a genius at everything I do; silence, faithless one." Lance assured without looking at Keith. "Anyway, so the manager comes for a taste, and Javi's ready to hear it, right? And the manager gets this surprised looker on her face, and tries a second spoonful," the oil was heating up in the pan enough for the burned-banana smell that he'd passed by in Concordia half a dozen times, and Keith realizes that it was the exact scent that had wafted off of the stall selling lube that Keith may or may not have purchased but not tested yet. Thankfully Lance was too preoccupied by sliding the assortment of vegetation they'd chopped up into the oil to notice Keith blanch in embarrassment, going on to finish his story with, "...and she says, 'Shit Javi, what did you do? This is the best god damned soup I've ever tasted.'"

A short bark of laughter was surprised out of Keith, derailing his odd train of thought. "Wait, seriously?"

"Yuuup," Lance grinned. "This asshole's so good at cooking even when he TRIES to fuck up he can't."

"Amazing," Keith praised with a light chuckle, leaning over Lance's shoulder to watch their makeshift dinner start to sizzle. "So, you learned to cook from him, then?"

"Nah, he lives in Cuba so when we see each other we don't have time to do anything but fuck around and party. I can only cook like, three things on the planet and two of them involve noodles and the last one involves rice."

Keith blinked, then raised an eyebrow at the pan over Lance's shoulder. "I knew it, there was no way you knew what you were doing. Even Hunk barely knows what he's doing in here and he actually can cook."

Lance rolled his eyes, but there was still a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "It's stirfry, how hard could it be? If we screw up all we have to do is drown it out in hot sauce and Hunk told me which bottle is the one with chili powder in it so as far as I'm concerned there's no way we even CAN screw up." He took his eyes off the pan to turn to Keith, looking like he only just thought of something. "Unless you know how to cook? You lived by yourself, you probably cook better than I do, I basically only needed to know how to make macaroni to please the kids."

Keith considered his own history with cooking, and wondered how badly he'd get made fun of for it. Well, not like he was gonna lie about it, right? "I… can make a wide variety of canned goods by stovetop. Mostly beans."

Lance looked genuine horrified by the answer. "You survived a year in the desert on BEANS?"

"Well, I mean. I like baked beans, so. Yeah, that and some spaghetti-o's."

Lance's horror enveloped his whole body, like Keith had just told him he'd been eating dogs that entire time. "You ate baked beans, alone in a desert shack. FOR A YEAR. Voluntarily." He buried his face in his hands. "You're a cowboy. I'm dating an asian cowboy, what has happened to my life."

Well that was… Not everyone from Texas was a cowboy. Probably. Instead of that, Keith decided to try to make the situation worse by offering. "You're dating a gay asian cowboy. In space."

"Cojones d'fuckin' Dios." That did not sound like a real swear people said, but it did sound like it translated to 'God's fuckin' balls,' which was close enough. "And I like you. I like the weirdest person in the universe."

Keith grinned, bumping into Lance's shoulder with his own on the way to lean over and poke at the stir fry. "Yeah, but at least the weirdest guy in the universe likes you back."

When Lance raised his head out of his palm he was smiling, and he returned the bump to Keith's own shoulder. "Well I hope Shiro can cook at least, because I know Pidge can't and so far we're at one for five."

"We're definitely at one for five," Keith confirmed. "Shiro's favorite food is Fruit Loops. That man needs to be saved."

Lance actively laughed, and the sound was so breathtakingly refreshing Keith instantly realized he didn't know the last time he'd heard his own boyfriend genuinely laugh like this. Whooops. They'd get better at this, he swore. "HE needs to be saved, when your favorite food is apparently baked beans. At least fruit loops aren't an old man food, dude, you lived like a literal hobo."

"You really think calling me a hobo all the time is gonna help you get laid, stupid?" To spite the words Keith was chuckling, too, relieved and happy that the tension had finally drained enough for them to tease each other again.

Lance's grin turned into a smirk and he lifted one flirtatious eyebrow to turn on Keith with, "I think the only thing I need to do if I wanna get laid is touch you."

There was a pause where the two of them looked at each other, mutual embarrassed flushes heating their faces while dinner sizzled loudly next to them. "Um," Lance hesitated, looking like he wasn't sure if he was trying to take the words back or not.

There was an unspoken understanding between them that it was, at this stage, too early to jump back into having sex again. That left them at rather an awkward standstill right now, neither of them sure how to proceed after this without having to actually say something stupid like 'Obviously, not tonight, though.' The silence went on long enough to pass being awkward straight into absurd, and it was broken by Keith snorting a laugh back up into his throat and grinning, "You're such a douchebag."

Lance laughed himself, but it was with relief. "I kind of am, yeah."

Plucking a heat-seared piece of yellow fruit into his mouth and finding it to taste like if a coconut and a pineapple fucked and had a mutant baby, Keith declared, "But you're a douchebag who actually pulled dinner off, on the plus side."

The slightly self-deprecating smile on Lance's face beamed from the force of his ego to turn into a familiar smirk. "I told you stir-fry was easy! This is why you need to trust the master; I, the great jack-of-all trades, have once again saved the day, feeding my useless and eternally hungry boyfriend after you skipped another meal like a dummy!"

It was quite possibly the most Lance thing he had ever heard. Keith couldn't have kept the smile off his face if he'd tried. "My hero," he praised, and though to Lance it probably sounded sarcastic because that's kind of just what Keith's voice did… he really kind of meant it. He'd missed hanging out with Lance so much.

Dinner was done by that point, and there wasn't much room for conversation while they ate. Mostly because Lance was right on both accounts, that being that Keith was starving and dinner had, in fact, turned out well with or without egregious chili powder usage.

"I've heard this one," Keith interrupted, cutting off Lance mid-word in his story. "This is the one that ends with you and Nick trying to learn how to juggle knives, right?"

Lance's face fell. "You've heard this one? It's only been three months I can't be out of stories already!"

A short laugh. "That's what you get for talking all the time," he teased, pushing the last vegetables around on his plate with his spork and trying to decide if he had enough room left to try and eat them.

"If you don't like how much I talk then you shouldn't be dating me, it is ninety percent of what I do." Keith only laughed harder, and Lance scowled at him so hard Keith couldn't actually tell if he meant it or not. "Since you're SO sick of my stories already, why don't you tell one for a change?" Oh shit, he kind of had Keith there, didn't he? Lance made a vague spinny sort of 'go ahead' gesture with one hand. "Tell me something I don't know. How about you tell me about one of these mysterious expulsions I've heard so much about."

Keith thought about this, considering which of said occurrences would make for the most interesting story. Well, he knew which was most flattering out of them, so he might as well start there. "Okay, uh, then eighth grade, before I ended up at the Catholic school. I was fourteen, and Louisa Jeffries was a grade higher than me so she must have been fifteen at the time."

Lance looked intrigued. "Louisa Jeffries?" He asked on cue.

Keith nodded, pretty confident he knew how to tell this story coherently, if not interestingly. "Yeah, we were in art together, the school cut funding on art so grades eight and nine just crammed together in the same drawing electives. There were no assigned seats but she and I always sat at the same table, because everyone else in the class were all friends and we were the only two who never talked to anybody."

"And she got you expelled?"

"No," Keith instantly denied, then hesitated. "Well not directly, anyway. There's… kind of a whole story to it."

Lance made an appropriately 'go on' sort of face, and Keith settled in to tell the tale, a little self-conscious knowing that Lance was so much better with words than he was. "Uh, so we sat next to each other pretty much the whole semester, but never particularly talked. But it was obvious she was taking this class for fun and not just to get the credit because she was actually really good at drawing, took her time on all her projects and they always turned out amazing, even if she always turned them in late. And um, at the end of the year for her last project she took a frame from a superhero movie and a panel of the original comic it was based off and redrew both of them, I don't remember what the assignment was but I remember watching her draw them both.

"And she turned them in late like she always did, so she wasn't gonna get her grade back on it right away. But then it was a few days later and Louisa kept asking the teacher if she'd gotten a grade back yet and the teacher kept dodging the question, and said something weird like 'it looks so good it could be a photocopy,' which sounds like a compliment but then the second time he said it became kind of obvious it was more of a backhanded accusation than a compliment on her art. And Lousia got upset because she took her art seriously, and to be accused of cheating and photocopying a project just for a lousy art grade in a class she wasn't even failing? Like, I'm not even an artist and I can tell that's fucked up. And she got mad in that half-crying way that comes with anxiety and standing up to an authority figure, I have a short temper that overrides my anxiety but that's just because anxiety isn't my biggest problem and without that anger there's just fear -" he cut himself off with a frown, not liking the direction he'd wandered off into.

"And anyway she tried to, um. Stand up for herself, saying that he was insulting her integrity as an artist, and I remember that integrity is the word she used because the teacher took it and turned it around on her, and in a fucked up and just plain grammatically incorrect twist brought up the time she wore a shirt that she didn't know turned transparent under fluorescent lights and ended up showing everyone her entire bra all day, like even if she had done it on purpose showing off her tits had ANYTHING AT ALL to do with her integrity as an artist! And she got so mad she just shut down, and was just standing there shaking and trying not to cry, and I was right there listening to the entire thing not two feet away, and it was just so disgusting… " Keith spat out the word, remembered righteous indignation on the behalf of someone he considered no different than himself. Louisa had been quiet, and terrible with people, and got upset too easily, and had never judged Keith for being the exactly the same way. "So, I kind of. Punched him. Because she wasn't gonna do anything, and I didn't know how else to deal with the situation and didn't think to just like… say that I'd watched her draw it instead of assaulting a middle-aged Mormon school teacher."

When he finally looked back at Lance from the general direction of the ceiling Keith had been concentrating on, his jaw hung open. "I don't even… what the shit," was all he managed to express. "I can see where you came from; what a dick. I mean, yeah violence probably was not the absolute wisest reaction, but…"

"No but it is how a crazy person would react, which is how I got there," Keith muttered, more by accident than intent.

It was a mistake to say it. Lance frowned at him, dismissing Keith's phrasing with an easy, "Don't say that, you're not crazy. Just… Impulsive."

And shit, there was the rub. Because what this here was? An opportunity to be honest. Fuuuuccckkkk, Keith did not want to do this, especially not now of all times… Shit. He was totally doing this, wasn't he? "Well," he said shortly, staring at the light yellow oil trail smeared across his plate leftover from his stir-fry. "In a very technical, legal sort of sense...I am?"

He didn't have to look to hear Lance's frown. "Because of… the anxiety? What do you mean, legally?"

Staring even harder at his plate, Keith leaned back in his chair that he might look casual. "Um, the anxiety a little, but mostly I mean my uh… fully diagnosed personality disorder, paranoia. That I took medication for. Back in foster care."

Lance's voice was strained. "Para… Waitwaitwait, you mean like, 'my landlord is a lizard man' PARANOIA paranoia? I…"

Keith's gut was roiling, and he kind of wanted to throw up all the food he had just eaten, but okay this was cool. "That's not quite how mine manifested itself but… basically in theory yeah that's… that's the one." A brief silence where both of them figured that warranted a tad more explanation, which Keith considered. "I don't have hallucinations or anything, but um." He let his eyes drift to the ceiling, still unable or unwilling to look at Lance. "Let's see, like… I don't remember much from my first couple years, but I know the places I lived all really sucked. I didn't have any concept of that at the time, I just knew that the first time I wound up at a foster home that wasn't terrible I knew something about it was different. But I guess since I had no idea what a childhood was supposed to be like, when the lady I lived with was actually nice and there were no other kids and enough money to feed both of us, I didn't know how to deal with that and got suspicious. But I was also like, five and didn't know what I was afraid of, so the only thing I could think of was that she must be a witch trying to fatten me up to eat me, so I stopped eating food at her house."

"Jesus christ," Lance swore, but Keith needed to peel this bandaid off and didn't let it pause him.

"...So at some point I guess a teacher caught me rifling through the dumpster for apples and called a bunch of adults together to figure out what was going on with me, and that's around the time they started coming up with diagnoses, and uh, paranoia was the one we landed on. And so they moved me to live with someone more equipped to deal with mentally ill children, which, did not work out either, since nothing ever does. Or. Did back then, anyway."

He finally chanced a look at his boyfriend to find him slack-jawed and wide-eyed from his horror. "I… did not notice even a little bit," Lance admitted in awe. "Like… seriously? This is like an actual serious mental thing, and like, nothing you did ever even seemed weird." Brows drawn together tightly, he ran an exasperated hand over his own head, messing up his short hair terribly. "I mean, the MGE being a gang and the whole Veret thing you were both RIGHT about, does that like, even still count as being paranoid?"

"Oh, it definitely does," Keith promised, suddenly feeling terribly tired.

Lance looked concerned still but not directed at Keith, rather more like he was frantically searching his brain for examples of Keith being crazy. "I mean, I guess you were way more threatened by that Arusian with a stick than you needed to be, and I think I remember at one point you accused the mice of treason..."

"Okay, that Arusian was their greatest warrior, and it was a fully functional weapon not a stick!" Keith defended automatically, which, maybe not the point he should be focusing on. Also, just because they supposedly had some connection to Allura did NOT mean it was okay just go ahead and completely trust a set of superintelligent mice without even questioning it, like, let's be practical here. Those assholes were suspicious as fuck, and what did they care if the castle belonged to them or the Galra, huh? Oh shit, he was doing it again. Damn it, Keith.

"Or… whatever, there's also a lot of shit I haven't told anyone about because I know it's irrational because I know I'm crazy," like his secret fear that Shiro really had died on the Kerberos mission and this was an imposter or his brainwashed corpse trying to trick them all, but that one was usually dispelled just by talking to his friend for a few minutes. No one but the real Shiro could possibly be so filled with such exhausted cynical despair. Or a fake would at least be better at hiding it. "But aside from all that, there's also the issue of like, jealousy and trust problems that means people with paranoia are kind of shit at maintaining relationships. Which, you might have noticed."

Lance sat back heavily in his chair, exhaling a low overwhelmed breath of air from his lungs in a long huff. "Jesus quiznakcing fuck. Like, seriously, I have ADHD and middle-child syndrome but that's nowhere near an actual mental illness." Personality disorder, Keith did not correct out loud. "I barely even know what this means, much less how to deal with it…"

"You don't have to," Keith said, ready to sigh himself. "I already have it pretty much under control, and it's not even a particularly severe case. It just… seemed like the sort of problem that might come up in our relationship, and maybe I should mention it before that."

He heard more than saw Lance's head thump onto the tabletop. "Yeah, no kidding," he muttered listlessly. When he raised his head it was only as far as to drop it into his hands. "That is it though, right? Not hiding anything else you really should have told me about ages ago?"

Did Keith starting to suspect he might actually somehow be a Galra count? Nah, that was another one of those paranoid things that didn't make enough realistic sense to share. "No," he denied. "Oh, wait," he reconsidered, all that mess about Keith's waffling on breaking up was probably… Well he was really leaning towards a hard 'no' on that one so it probably didn't matter anymore. "Nah, nevermind, there's nothing."

Lance glared at him. "You're giving me the feeling it's definitely Something."

Keith hesitated, knowing this would only stir up more trouble but at the same time understanding that it was kind of unavoidable. "Er… well, it uh, doesn't so much matter anymore, but for the last few weeks I was kind of… trying to decide if us dating was even a good idea in the first place?"

"KEITH!" Lance barked, hands slamming on the tabletop as he leaned over it enough to jam their faces into a space only inches apart. "YOU HAVE TO TELL ME THIS SHIT!"

"I'm sorry?!" Keith jerked back with an apologetic shrug.

Beyond distraught, Lance flailed about. "What did I do?! Was it because of that fight we had?"

"No!" Keith shook his head so fast his hair whipped his eyes. Then hesitated again. "Or… also yes? Not technically, but it was because of one of the things we were fighting about, but I had been thinking it before the actual argument..." He sighed shortly, then ran a hand through his own hair to have an excuse to break eye contact, because Lance kind of looked like Keith had plunged a hand in his chest and started routing around to try and find his heart.

"It was just… me being me, and I didn't like how I can never get you out of my head and started panicking about it." The words came out easier than expected, and more honest than he'd expected as well; a torrent of his doubts and anxieties spilling forward at once. "I kept thinking there should only be room in my head for the war, I feel like I'm distracted and about to be blindsided by an attack or tragedy at any moment and now that I say all this out loud it kind of actually sounds ridiculous but it's been bothering me a lot that I'm not like, on edge like I usually am and I feel like somehow I'm in a constant state of letting my guard down, which, come to think of it, is probably... supposed to be the point of dating in the first place, huh?" He finished lamely, forehead starting to hurt from how tightly he'd had his eyebrows drawn. And also because he'd given himself a headache from his own stupidity, probably. "I don't know, not the good, intimacy-kind-of letting my guard down, I guess, but the… everyone gets murdered kind."

Lance, because everything he did he used his entire body for, flung backwards into his seat and slapped his hands to his face to run down dramatically, like Keith's stupidity had taken tangible form and had to be scraped off of his skin like mud. "How did you manage to get your entire brain to work backwards," he pleaded to the heavens, before looking Keith seriously in the eye. "Okay, so obviously a lot of this you didn't tell me because it's coming from the paranoia and I get that there's no way I can understand that." He looked momentarily indecisive, before pushing up out of his seat to stand. Keith met the gesture without thinking, and they were both standing to the side of the table to look each other in the eye properly, because maybe this was not a conversation to have while three feet across from each other and sitting down.

When Lance started again his voice was heavy, one hand reached out close enough to bridge the miles-deep gap between them with one hand landing high on Keith's arm to sear his skin with warmth through the thin cotton of his shirt sleeve. "But it sounds to me like that's just living in fear instead of fighting against it, Keith. We're not living our lives for the sake of fighting in this war; we're fighting in the war for the sake of being able to live our lives." Lance looked desperate, and a little sad, and Keith ached for him so badly he wanted nothing more in this world than to be able to hold his hand. When he did, Lance's skin wasn't as soft as he had remembered. "I… I don't wanna be in this war, Keith. Every battle gets more and more insane, and I'm nineteen with no combat training to know how to deal with any of this shit mentally, and I wanna go home. And when I'm so sick with that feeling that all I wanna do is take Blue and fly away as far and as fast away as I can, or curl up in a ball and never get out of bed, it's not my god damned responsibilities that keep me from cursing my fate and wishing I'd never found part of Voltron in the first place. What I think about is…" his face twisted like broken glass barely unshattered, "Is the fact that you're the one thing I could never have had if I'd stayed on Earth. The thing that makes it worth all this fighting and fear is… because I wanna come back and live the moments in between the war. And I wanna spend those moments with you, Keith."

His heart seized in his chest, and Keith could feel his hand's grip tighten around Lance's, who was returning the gesture with the hard pressure of a squeeze of his own hand laced with Keith's. "Lance, I…" Keith didn't even know what he had meant to say, just knew his voice was shaking when he tried to say it. He swallowed, throat dry. "I want to spend those moments with you, too." And he did, he realized. Keith wanted to spend his mornings training with Shiro and his afternoons being bitchy with Pidge and his evenings hanging out with Hunk or Allura or even Coran and he wanted to spend every night with Lance. Fuck. He might be able to understand what Lance's homesickness was like after all, because Keith was definitely, finally, home right here in this weird too-big castle.

Lance was somehow impossibly closer than ever, close enough to gently rest his forehead against Keith's. His voice was soft and his body was close enough to smell like… like himself, and when he quietly asked, "You don't… actually want to break up with me, do you?" Keith felt something that could have been a shudder or shiver or both run down the length of his spine.

Minutely, he shook his head, looking down to where their hands were joined to notice he was close enough for the ends of his hair to brush against Lance's collarbone. "No," he answered so quietly he felt the word in his throat better than he heard it. "I never really did."

Lance sighed, grip on Keith's hand tightening even as the rest of him visibly relaxed. "Promise to tell me if you ever do so we actually have a chance to work out our problems?"

A miniscule nod. "Start telling me when you're homesick," he returned. "You're not allowed to feel lonely when I'm around."

A light chuckle that Keith felt on his skin as much as he actually heard it. "Yeah, you got me," he sighed. "I promise."

Lance's other hand slid from his bicep down to grab Keith's and lace their fingers together. They stood for a moment, faces a heartbeat away from kissing and holding both of each other's hands."Thank you, Keith," Lance eventually said, what could have been hours later for all Keith knew. "For trusting me."

Keith definitely shuddered this time, eyes sliding closed without thinking about it. Lance met him halfway for the kiss even before Keith had leaned up to hint for one, a simple gentle meeting of lips on lips, nothing like fireworks but instead something warmer and safer and somehow more complete.

They kept kissing for a while after that. At first it was just that, a chaste exchange of lips on lips, mouths moving softly against each other as they parted and met in small kisses just for the feeling of coming together. And then they kept on kissing, mouths opening a little too wide for the temptation of tongue not to slip in as innocent meeting became nipping and sucking, falling into something passionate before either one of them realized that's what they were doing.

And, just… God, how Keith had missed this. He'd always liked kissing, it was stupid that they had ever stopped kissing. Except that that had been for a reason, and even now Keith could feel that familiar tell-tale warmth blooming low inside him as his body tried to melt against Lance's, and not that kissing had to lead to sex every time but Keith had been thirsty for weeks and it was all too easy to drag this into dangerous territory.

He broke off the kiss, Lance making no efforts to stop him as Keith stumbled backwards a pace. Lance's face was red and Keith could feel his was, too, both of them avoiding eye contact for a few embarrassed seconds as Lance coughed awkwardly.

"Dishes!" Lance declared. "Never got around to washing our dishes from dinner, I should really get on that."

"Yep," Keith nodded, covering his mouth with the back of his hand like he could wipe the embarrassed blush off his face with it. "Yeah, you should do that, and I should go like… Maybe take a shower. Never showered off all that healing pod… smell."

Lance nodded quickly with a hum. "Oh yeah, gotta take care of that. Hygiene and all."

Keith did not want to shower. He wanted to stay and go back to kissing Lance. They both hovered right there for a moment or two, before decisively, Lance leaned forward to press a quick kiss on Keith's cheek and grabbed their plates from the table.

Embarrassed, half wound-up, and completely unable to handle his emotions, Keith all but ran from the room.

Keith couldn't fall asleep that night.

He was showered and in bed and not particularly in pain from his injuries, but he couldn't stop his mind from reeling. It may have been days ago for the rest of the universe but for Keith he had just gotten out of those sewers this morning, and there was no way to keep what he'd seen in Concordia from spinning through his head.

He couldn't believe they were just going to do nothing. But at the same time, here in bed with nothing to do but think, he could also understand why. The Galra were all hidden underground and their smallest Lion was still massively gigantic, it was hardly like they could take them in there to start fucking shit up. They'd probably end up destroying the city itself by making it collapse into its own sewers, and considering the city took up almost a quarter of the planet trying to go in without Lions was absurd when they only had seven goddamned people. There was nothing they could do but wait for the RA and hope their number count would make up for Voltron's lack of maneuverability.

Maybe… Maybe they could lure out a bunch of Galra to fight in the air while the RA took back the city? He didn't know what kind of armed these rebels were, or how well-organized. Not to mention Concordia's skies were clogged with… Half the fucking city, and they'd have to lure the Galra all the way out to space to avoid smashing every building for miles around. God damn it… the most powerful weapon in the known universe and they were completely fucking useless. Keith hadn't felt this helpless since he'd wandered lost into the desert to find a shack that was supposed to be his only legal property; an inheritance no one had thought to seize from him because no one else had any earthly use for it. Not until he'd lost every good thing his life had ever gained.

Well this was depressing as hell. He needed to fall asleep. He shouldn't be thinking like this, he only had… seven hours before he wanted to be up to get back in the training room. He could always sleep in the extra two hours until they gathered for their real training, but he wanted that extra time to warm up and like. Find his zen, or whatever. Keith had always exercised in the mornings, it had never felt right to do anything else.

Oh, except for that time just when they were getting into Concordia, and Keith had cut off his training after just his stretching and basic warm-ups before he decided that Lance would benefit from a little bit of extra training himself and had, thus far, proven himself very reluctant to say no to anything Keith suggested. And then instead he'd just climbed in bed and napped with him for an hour, which he still couldn't talk himself into thinking of as a waste of time because it had been really, really nice. Falling asleep with someone else in the room had never been easy for Keith, but something about being curled up on a too-small bed and sharing Lance's body heat…

Man, he couldn't wait to spend some normal time with Lance tomorrow… It had been way too long since they'd been able to just hang out and spend time with each other like they had tonight, Keith had missed it so much. That was something that wasn't depressing to fall asleep thinking about - what should he do with Lance tomorrow?

The first and most obvious answer was to try and re-invite Lance to the training deck with him, especially now that Keith had noticed how good at shooting he'd been getting. But for one, Lance probably still wasn't um… completely okay about that whole 'felt-a-man-die' thing yet, and even if he was… well, the last time they had trained together as just a pair it had kind of turned into sex really easily. Yeah, he was guessing the whole idea was out.

Could always watch a movie and cuddle up? Ah, Keith had tried to turn that into sex last time, too. And the dancing, Keith had also turned dancing into sex, and come to think of it was he the one who had initiated sex all of the times so far? Ohhhh… no, the fingering time was definitely all Lance. Keith still wasn't sure if that made him a pervert or not, because that was like, one for four.

Was the reason it was suddenly so hard to think of anything other than sex because he was horny, or had be made himself horny by thinking too much about sex? God damn it. He was just trying to sleep.

Well, he considered. Since he was already here, he might as well jerk off, right? Since Lance was the one who had gotten freaked out about it that meant Lance also had to be the one to initiate the next time they had sex, so who knows how long it could be til they started doing this stuff together again. Plus maybe if he took care of some of this shit now he'd be less likely to get handsy when the two of them were alone, get back to dating normally like they had for like two straight months in the first place.

Okay sweet, that was decided. Keith rolled over, flopping from his stomach onto his back and shimmying into a comfortable position, kicking his sheets loose to give himself room to reach his pants. Good thing he'd started wearing these Altean pajama pants to sleep in because his own day pants were way too tight to comfortably get a hand into. Which he knew from occasions where Lance had tried to sneak a hand down his pants, he remembered with something that was in retrospect probably a smirk.

Even before that first proper time Lance had always had the tendency to get handsy when they made out, and Keith couldn't count the number of times he'd had his ass grabbed. Not that he minded, obviously. Having your ass grabbed felt awesome, it was like the pressure of a massage in overworked muscles except also sexy. Really sexy. Keith was super fucking gay and the idea of having a man pin him down and ravish him was all kinds of up his alley. And Lance had never been shy, constantly getting some part of his body in contact with Keith's ass like marking his territory or something, letting Keith know exactly what he wanted and exactly what he thought was sexy about Keith and… ugh, yeah. Good stuff.

He was getting properly warmed up now, and sliding his left hand over the seam of his pants to palm at his hardening cock through the thin fabric, feeling it thicken and rise under his hand. On his back with his eyes closed it was easy to think of Lance's cock instead of his own, because that previously established gayness very much extended to Keith loving dick, it turned out. As he had always suspected it might.

Actually, more than he had suspected. In theory sucking dick sounded kind of gross and kind of entertaining at best, but in practice… like, what even, why had that been so much fun? Lance, hard and panting and coming undone by Keith's touch, filling his mouth and taking every ounce of Keith's concentration to see what he could do to make him come, just by using his tongue for a few minutes… He licked his lips, realizing he had been unconsciously moving his tongue around inside his mouth like there was a cock in there it was trying to rub against, ending up massaging the roof of his own mouth for want of something to fill it. Shit yeah, Keith was definitely hard now.

Keith drew back his hand to lick his palm, knowing how dry it would be if he tried to touch himself directly right now. The feel of his own dick in his hand when he got there was easy and familiar, a light squeeze to the base before he started stroking himself at a languid, natural pace while he let his mind wander.

He was gonna have to do that again, clearly. Suck Lance off all the time, get really good at it. Smothering a mean chuckle into his pillow, Keith thought that they were gonna have to practice a lot to get Lance better at it too, because that had been... almost hilariously bad, actually. Augh, of course he'd kill for even a terrible blow job right now, just imagining looking down to see Lance's mouth around his dick... shit, his hand was not nearly wet enough. Once he got into it Keith had realized he didn't really need to use lotion, tended to generate enough precome that he could just use spit to slick himself the whole time, but he guessed he wasn't there yet. Sure would be convenient to have some fucking lube around, wouldn't it?

Keith blinked, hand slowing to a pause as he slowly sat up, and slowly turned his head towards the closed door of his closet. Where he actually did have oil… of some sort. It was certainly edible, they had proved that much tonight. Not everything that was edible was safe to put on your junk, but hell, there was a shower like three feet away if anything started burning, right? Now seemed like a really good time to test that paopu shit out.

He let go of his dick to hobble towards his closet, kicking off his loosened pants to wind up naked by the time he got the door open. And when he did the first thing he saw was not the jar he was looking for, but the line of very limited amounts of clothing hanging right in front of everything, and very obviously among them at the far right end of the small space was the jacket he had never managed to return to Lance.

Oh… Hm. Nah, it had stopped smelling like him ages ago, there wouldn't be any point. An indulgent little chuckle as he rifled on the floor behind his paladin armor for the jar he wanted, thinking that if nothing else Lance would have found the idea of Keith masturbating with his jacket pretty hot. Aha, actually, that wasn't a bad idea, he grinned to himself in entertainment. Do something ridiculous like jerk off wearing nothing but his boyfriend's jacket just for the sake of telling him about it later and watching Lance's mind explode out of his skull.

...Yes. Yes it was worth it just for that, he decided as he slipped the coat off of its hangar. When he slipped it on over his naked shoulders the fleece inside was soft and worn, and he giggled inanely as he kicked the oil jar towards his bed, feeling like a man who'd just gotten his hands on a secret weapon. Er, except without the bloodlust part that came with that. Red was kind of a thirsty bitch too.

Shaking that unproductive line of thought off Keith slipped back into his bed, unscrewing the lid to his oil jar now so that when he'd need it in a second here it'd be right where he could reach. He hadn't bothered masturbating at all much since he'd gotten to space and with no lube or lotion he hadn't even bothered to try any of his favorite dirty stuff; the only times he'd had his ass touched in more than half a year had been the two times Lance had gotten up in there. But man, for a while, though… when he found out that excessive masturbation was a fairly common way of dealing with grief he'd stopped feeling weird trying to jerk off in his shack and rolled with it, bought himself a vibrator and bottle of lube and pre-downloaded a bunch of porn onto his phone from a Denny's because they have free wifi and his home did not and had himself… like a month. A month of that. He still didn't feel weird about it, he'd been eighteen years old with no roommate for the first time in his life and a desperate need not to think about his current life situation. Fucking himself stupid was kind of the natural reaction to a situation like that.

Oh man, he remembered, stroking himself slowly as he settled into a comfortable spot in the corner of his bed, pillow shoved between his back and the wall. And when he'd found out about prostate orgasms and realized he could come more than once if he didn't touch his dick, and then got so ridiculously good at it that one time he somehow managed to fuck himself for two hours straight and had come more times than he could even count because of how fucked-out his brain was and at the end when he finally finished it by touching his dick he'd come so hard and so much it had splashed on the wall like some kind of porno. Actually, if he had recorded that, the whole thing probably would have made a great porno. Keith didn't know. He didn't remember a whole lot other than screaming.

He felt his asshole twitch and clench around nothing at the memory, shivering a little as he stroked himself faster. He'd have to try something like that again… not this time, it was too late now that he had already started jerking off, there was no way he could stop himself now to concentrate on only his fingers in his ass. He'd never make it to more than once tonight. But he could definitely finally have some fun.

Keith leaned forward enough off the bed to dip his fingers into the jar, leaning back to settle on one hip and curl his other leg up towards his chest. He'd be able to reach his dick again with the arm he was laying on, but more importantly he had plenty of room for the other one to reach behind himself.

This kind of thing was why he already knew he wanted to get fucked so badly. He shivered a little at the first touch of cold oily fingertips, just a little pressure against his rim while he went back to slowly stroking his cock. He already knew the kind of crazy shit he could do on his own with just fingers and a cheap twelve dollar vibrator, imagining the feel of an actual cock, all hard flesh that gave just enough to still feel soft, especially at the head… that was gonna be some good shit, when they got there. God, and Lance had already proved he could be so patient when he was trying to take care of Keith, had had his tongue inside of him for ages, if Keith could teach him the right way to get at his prostate just imagine the insane things they could do together.

Biting his lip a little bit unconsciously, Keith pressed the tip of his middle finger inside, surprised at how easily it slid in all the way to the first joint without even trying. Oo, holy shit this was some pretty good lube, huh? That weird jelly-man merchant had certainly known his shit.

Fuck, just imagine the things he could do to Lance since this was the one sex thing Keith actually knew about. Or - he seemed to be okay at blowjobs, he hadn't expected watching porn would actually help on that one but Lance had come before Keith's jaw had completely worn out so he must have been doing it right.

The rest of his finger slid in just as easily, and Keith sighed a little at pleasure of filling himself up, enjoying the hot pulse of his own body around his finger. He didn't bother looking for his prostate, knowing it would probably just finish this off too fast. Instead Keith just started moving it, little curls of his finger as he slid it slowly in and out of himself with a shudder.

But he definitely knew what he could do to Lance's prostate, even if like, all of foreplay kind of eluded him. But aside from that detail Keith was gonna totally fucking mess Lance up, finger-fuck him til he wore out both his wrists and then once with his cock, make him scream so loud and so long he'd wear out his throat from it. And then get his turn and have Lance do the same to him. Just, make a whole day of it and fuck each other and take naps and never put on pants. Roll in bed and kiss for hours until they could get hard again, and not spend a single second of the entire day without somehow touching one another

He slowed the already languid pace of his hand til he was barely more than holding his cock, concentrating instead on pushing a second finger in next to the first. There was a bit of pain, but not in any kind of deterring way. Just the familiar pain of a stretched muscle, barely different from how he felt after a few hours on the training floor except in his ass instead of ankles, and the payoff was wonderful. He loved feeling stretched out deep inside like this, felt dirty and sexy and made him greedy to feel even fuller.

God, how he'd needed this. There was just the lightest hint of Lance's scent still lingering just at the back his jacket's collar, a slight tease that wasn't enough to properly soak in and it was driving Keith half insane, especially as the sweet smell of the oil started to overpower it entirely and just made Keith wish he were here right now even harder. Made him fuck himself harder too, slow explorative touches speeding up to become rougher as he let his mind wander.

Mm, you know what Keith really wanted to do sometime? Fuck in one of their Lions. In Blue, he decided; that way the next time they flew for battle Lance wouldn't be able to help but remember the last time he'd been in that seat, with Keith on his lap and riding his cock.

Keith smirked to himself a little, which just turned into biting his lip again when he decided he wanted a third finger. But before they fucked, he thought to himself with a loud shuddering inhale at the burn of his ring finger forcing its way inside of himself in an oily glide. Before that Keith wanted to take Blue out to fly. A nice long ride, and Keith would act all normal and datey so Lance would never suspect that Keith was gonna spend the whole ride back sucking his cock. And whenever Keith's jaw got tired or Lance started to get too close to coming or started flying unsteadily Keith would stop sucking and stroking his dick but he wouldn't pull back. Keith would keep Lance's cock in his mouth the entire time, see how deep he could get it into is throat and just hold it there, just hold him deep and still in his throat like his mouth was there just to keep Lance's dick warm. Fuck, that was hot; trying to imagine what Lance would think of that. Imagining the way he was gonna look down and see Keith's head relentless in his lap, imagine him wondering what Keith was doing and trying to figure out if he was just trying to tease Lance and keep him hard or really was so thirsty for dick he couldn't stand to have it out of his mouth while his jaw recovered. Wondered if Lance would think Keith was slutty for it, and fuuuck, why did he kind of hope he did?

Keith was definitely panting pretty hard now, and he'd just noticed that at some point he'd taken his right hand off of his cock entirely in favor of trying to cover his mouth with the back of his hand to keep the noises down. But he already knew these bedrooms were soundproof, so Keith let go a little and let a few low moans escape when he wrapped his hand around back around his cock.

And maybe it'd rile Lance up so badly that when they landed he'd yank Keith's head out of his lap, not even try to use his mouth to finish in favor of spinning Keith around and bending him over the dashboard. Just pull his pants down and take Keith right there, fuck him right on Blue's control console in the open hangar, pound his cock into Keith's ass as hard as fast as Keith's fingers were ramming into himself right now...

His right fist tightened around his throbbing cock and he knew this wasn't gonna last much longer, so when his fingers brushed against his prostate this time he went with it. Choked out a loud moan and rammed his fingers against it as fast and hard as he could, mind blurred out with fantasies of being fucked in his boyfriend's Lion getting vaguer and harder to hold on to by the second. Not that it mattered, not that he needed it to get there, not when Keith was shaking and fisting his dick and fucking sobbing in pleasure like he was right now, only seconds away from the edge and throbbing, both underneath his fingers and around them.

The last flashes of thoughts before his orgasm were barely even coherent anymore. Fantasies and memories jumbled together, thinking of fucking Lance and being fucked by him and mouths and hands and thighs all covered in sweat and he thought of Lance's legs and he thought about his voice and he remembered that last first kiss from just a few hours ago…

Keith came hard, so hard that some of it hit his chin in an embarrassing mess.

He came down slowly, sighing a little as he shook against his bedsheets and buried his face into the hood of Lance's coat. Ohhh, he was relaxed now. And he needed to get up, didn't he? Keith had to wash his hands, and the sooner he got this jacket in his laundry the better.

He did not get up. Keith fell asleep, instead. Curled on his side at the top of his bed like a stray cat, half naked, completely filthy from fruit oil and bodily fluids, and with more peace of mind than he'd had in weeks and weeks.

Yeah, he was a disgusting dirty hobo of a person like Lance said, but… maybe, he could believe that one of the things he wasn't was too crazy to ever be happy.