Lance can't sleep. The thing with the healing pods is, despite the multiple days of being comatose, he always comes out of them exhausted. Normally, he would eat whatever Hunk put in front of him without tasting it, then stumble to his room and collapse into a dreamless sleep for a minimum of 12 hours. He had made it all the way to his bed, managed to close his eyes for what felt like a grand total of two seconds, before a nightmare woke him up, screaming.

He feels too big in his own skin. His room feels too small, smothering. He stands and stumbles, catching himself with a hand against the wall. When he looks at his hand, pink with new skin, he feels disconnected from it, like it doesn't belong to him. He lurches out of his room.

He finds himself on the skydeck.

He always feels so small, looking up at the stars around them. The constellations are unfamiliar, bright and sharp without a single hint of light pollution to dull the view. Lance leans his back against the wall and looks up. It's late, he knows it is, and his eyes are starting to droop when someone clears their throat off to his right.

Lance looks up. Keith is standing there in a pair of shorts and a black tank top, arms crossed over his chest. His hair is pulled back in ponytail at the base of his neck and a shiver runs down Lance's spine.

"Hey, sharpshooter," Keith says, stepping closer to where Lance is sitting. "This seat taken?"

Lance wants Keith to sit next to him, wants to put his arm around him and hold him close. He wants the physical reminder that they are both ok, breathing and alive.

"How could you let me go?"

"Nah, sit down, man," he tries for casual, but he can feel his walls go up and his shoulders tense. He tucks his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs. Keith sits down next to him, not close enough to touch but close enough that Lance can feel his body heat. Keith mimics his sitting position and for a while they sit in silence. Normally, they would be talking back and forth in whispers, but Lance can't think of anything to say.

"I'm glad you're safe," Keith finally says, and Lance's heart wrenches in his chest. "We were… I was worried."

There is something soft and vulnerable in Keith's voice. Lance from before would have been flying from that admission alone, but now he feels powerless, like nothing he can do would make things better. His chest is tight and he feels sick.

Keith's face on the Wolkian's body hovers in his mind. He turns his head to look at Keith's profile, the lines of his nose and lips, his eyelashes in the dark. A tendril of black hair curls around Keith's temple and Lance's hands - unscarred and tender, lacking all the calluses he had built up - ache to tuck it behind Keith's ear.

"Why couldn't you keep me safe?"

I can't do this, he thinks, a knife in his chest.

"I'm gonna head to bed," he says, standing abruptly. "Night."

He's not running away. He's not.

Keith doesn't understand what's going on. He had planned on either A) going back to normal with Lance or B) going back to normal with Lance, but with the added benefit of being able to kiss him and hold his hand. Lance avoiding him completely was not something he had prepared for.

Sure, he sees Lance, but it only during group functions. When they have mandatory group training or eat dinner together, Lance always avoids his gaze, only talking to him if Keith says something first. Keith looks for him at night, but he never finds him in their usual hang out spots. They don't train together, they don't watch Altean dramas, they don't whisper to each other under the stars. They don't even talk.

Keith wonders if Lance telling him that he loves him was just some kind of weird fever dream.

The entire thing feels like rejection or like Keith has done something wrong. When he tries to catch Lance's gaze, Lance looks away. When he tries to go for a friendly jab in the training room while they're sparring, Lance laughs but says nothing back. If he tries to strike up a conversation at dinner, Lance will give him one or two word answers, and then the conversation dies.

Keith wants to scream.

It's a week later when they get their next mission. It's nothing they haven't done before. A small planet on the outskirts of the solar system had been taken over by a platoon of Galra who are using the planet and its resources as an outpost. The distress signal had gone up, and Voltron had responded. It's an easy win and the inhabitants of the planet are grateful.

When they get back to the ship and walk out of their lions, Keith knows immediately that something is wrong. Lance doen't walk out of his lion, puffed up and proud, grinning from ear to ear like he normally does. He stumbles out, face haunted and pale. He doen't say anything to anyone even as he b-lines past Hunk and Pidge who are congratulating each other over the win.

Without thinking, Keith chases after him.

Shiro watches them both go, Allura at his side. When she rests a hand on his arm, he glances at her, smiling grimly. "They'll be ok. They have to figure it out themselves at some point."

"I know," she murmurs, her lips pursed in concern. "I just worry about them. They're both very young."

"They are," Shiro agrees. "They are."

Lance has to get away. A panic attack is clawing at his throat, dragging him under. Even as they had brought the lions into the castle he had been shaking. He can't breath, he feels like he's choking. His team is celebrating their victory, however small it is, and he feels like he's dying.

So he runs away.

It's all too much. He can't get the Wolkian out of his head. He can't shake the fear of losing someone else. He let someone die and he can't let it happen again. He failed his team. He failed himself. He failed someone he was supposed to take care of.

Being in Blue should have been a comfort, but it wasn't. Fighting Galra with his team at his back should have been easy, but it wasn't. As soon as the alarms had gone off, the churning, inexplicable dread that he had felt during his time on Wolkan came rushing back like it had never left. It hovers over him like a curse. He's exhausted. The nightmares won't stop plaguing him.

Keith follows him and he wants to turn and run back into his arms. He wants Keith to hold him and tell him it's ok and reassure him that he's safe. He wants it more than anything else, but he can't. He can't let himself get closer. He's done something unforgivable.

"Lance!" Keith shouts after him. His voice is too loud in Lance's mind, too much. His panic is a vice in his chest, he's dizzy with it, and tears prick at his eyes as he runs. "Stop, damnit! You can't run from me forever!"

Keith is right. Lance can't run from him forever. This castle is too small and Lance can't keep apart from him all the time. If Keith won't let him run, Lance will force him to leave him alone. He chokes back the panic, the sucking chasm of darkness in his chest; he boxes up the grief and the sadness. He stops. He turns. He transfers everything he has into anger.

He can't have Keith chasing after him like this all the time. He can't be tempted to give in to him. He doesn't deserve to be in love with Keith.

"Lance!" Keith shouts, chasing after him. As soon as Lance notices Keith following him, he breaks into a sprint. "Stop, damnit! You can't run from me forever!"

The change in Lance is so quick that Keith feels like his head is spinning. He stops on a dime and whips around and there is so much fury in his gaze that Keith can feel himself shrinking back from it.

"Stop fucking chasing me!" Lance shouts at him. Keith's eyes widen, but after his initial shock he stands his ground. Lance stalks closer, his shoulders tense and heaving, fists clenched at his sides. "Can't you just let me have some goddamned space already? I can't stand you looking at me with your stupid fucking sad eyes, like I kicked your puppy or something! Stop looking at me, stop trying to talk to me, just stop!"

Keith can feel his own temper flare up to match Lance's, can feel the heat rise in his gut like a wave intent on sweeping him overboard. "You're the one who fucking told me you loved me and then turned tail and ran!" he shouts back, stepping into Lance's space and meeting the challenge head on. "I'm trying to make sure you're ok, so don't treat me like I'm just a stranger!"

Lance is breathing hard. He looks like he might throw up, his face gone pale as his blue eyes search Keith's face. "I'm fine," he snaps, but he's quiet now. "Forget that I ever told you that, ok? Just forget it."

Cold overtakes the heat of Keith's anger as what Lance said registers. "What?" he whispers. "You want me to forget what?"

Lance turns away from him, hands pressing hard into his thighs. His head hangs low, and Keith desperately wishes he could see his face. "All that, all that love stuff." He says, his voice carefully blank. "Just forget I ever said it. It didn't mean anything."

"Lance," he starts, but his voice stutters to a stop.

Lance doesn't wait for him to continue. Before Keith realizes it, he turns a corner and disappears.

Lance makes it to his room before he breaks. Guilt swallows him whole. He let the Wolkian die. It's his fault. He doesn't deserve to be here, doesn't deserve Blue, doesn't deserve the support of his friends. He doesn't deserve to be in love with Keith. He doesn't even know if he deserves to be alive anymore.

He succumbs to the panic attack. His breathing is heavy and it feels like he is trying to suck in water instead of air. Tears stream down his face but he doesn't feel them. He punches a wall, once, twice, three times. His knuckles are bleeding. Everything hurts.

He let someone die. If he can't even protect a civilian, how can he hope to protect his team? To protect Keith?

He's not sure if he can do this anymore.

"I can't believe him, Shiro!" Keith is pacing, shouting. He's keyed up and anxious and confused as hell, and the feeling of being powerless makes him want to punch so many things. He's in Shiro's room and has been for the past half-hour, raving like fire as he wears a line in the floor from walking back and forth.

Shiro sits placidly on his bed, watching him. Keith knows that as soon as his rant spirals down, Shiro will have some mature, adult advice to give him about how he should handle the situation, but for now all Keith wants to do is scream.

If he's yelling, he isn't crying, and he will avoid shedding a single tear over this situation because fuck Lance toying with him like this, fuck the stupid sad emotions trying to snare him like a trap, fuck.

"If he's trying to trick me into feeling sorry for him, it's not gonna work!" he huffs out, about facing sharply to walk back the other way. "He can't just manipulate me like this, I'm not gonna…"

"All right, enough."

Shiro's voice is a crack in the air and Keith jumps, whirling to face him in surprise. Despite the harsh tone in his voice, Shiro is giving him a kind, sympathetic look as he pats the space next to him. Keith sits down without protest, exhausted.

"I'm going to explain something to you and then I want you to go back to your room and think about it for a while," Shiro says calmly.

"I'm not a child," Keith whines, but Shiro ignores him.

"Allura talked to the Wolkians after we got Lance back." Shiro starts, watching his face carefully. "When Pidge and their leader separated from Lance in the tunnels, Lance was carrying one of their injured on his back. We still don't know for sure what happened because of the com failure, but no one came back with Lance on Blue. The Wolkian ships had already taken off by the time Lance reached Blue and they didn't go back to pick anyone up. Are you following me?"

There's a sick lurch in Keith's gut. He doesn't like where this was going, but he nods.

"Lance was having severe nightmares while he was in the pod." When Keith opens his mouth to say something, Shiro shakes his head. "We can't stop the process once someone is in a pod; it could completely ruin or make worse the pieces that it's trying to heal. While Lance was in there Coran did some poking around to see if he could piece together more of what happened."

"That's an invasion of Lance's privacy!" Keith cuts in before Shiro can stop him. "You had no right to-"

"That's not important right now." Shiro says, using his command voice. "Regardless of whether it was right or wrong, that's between Coran and Lance. What matters is what Coran saw. From what he could piece together, Lance lost the Wolkian as they were hanging off a cliff over a river of lava. He was holding onto it with both hands, but the Wolkian just let go of him. It sacrificed itself so that Lance could crawl to where it was safe."

Shiro takes a breath, then continues. "Coran went ahead and ran a data pull for what Lance was seeing in his dreams, too. Keith, Lance was

seeing us instead of the Wolkian. His brain was conjuring up images of us that he couldn't save, that he saw fall into lava." Keith doesn't want to look at him, doesn't want to meet his eyes. Shiro gently touches his chin, lifting his face so that he can look into Shiro's dark, serious gaze. "We accused him of letting it happen, over and over again. You told him that if he really loved you, he never would have let you die."

Shiro pauses, letting the horror of the idea sink in. "What I want you to think about isn't that Lance is shoving you away. I want you to ask yourself why he's shoving you away, why he's suddenly so afraid of being close to you. When you figure that out and can keep a handle on your temper," Keith flushes with shame, "you should go talk to Lance. Instead of throwing his confession back into his face, you should see if he wants to talk about what happened and see if you can be a good friend to him."

Keith shakes his head, overwhelmed and sad and scared. "What if he doesn't want to talk to me?" he asks miserably. "I already fucked it up so much."

Shiro lets out an amused chuckle. "Lance is in love with you, dimwit, but he's struggling right now. Someone died on his watch and he's blaming himself. Instead of focussing on what you need and what you want and how you feel, you should be focussing on what Lance needs to feel better, to start recovering."

Keith nods, at a loss for words. He's so selfish. He should have known better.

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Shiro says, patting his shoulder. "Just do better now that you know."

Keith goes to seek Lance out that night. He takes the day to think, really think, in his own bedroom. He doesn't know if he's really prepared to talk to Lance, but he wants to try. He wants to try to be there for Lance and he knows that if he lets the shouting match they had simmer he might never get his best friend back.

He starts with the training room, but he knows he won't find Lance there. He checks the skydeck and the room they used to watch movies in for good measure, but he's just trying to stall.

When he knocks on Lance's door, he doesn't get an answer right away. He knocks again, trying not to feel frustrated. Keeping his voice gentle he calls, "Lance? I know you're in there. Please let me in."

There is a longer pause and Keith is getting ready to go look someplace else when the door slides open. Lance stands there. Bags are heavy under his eyes that Keith hadn't noticed before. His looks tired and worn and his hair is a mess.

"I, ah, didn't wake you up, did I?" Keith asks, kicking himself mentally because he was doing the only-thinking-about-himself-again thing. Of course Lance had been sleeping, it was the middle of the night.

"Trying to," Lance replies. "Did you need something?"

"I wanted—" Keith starts, then stops. He takes a breath, meets Lance's eyes, then stops again. He is awkward and off balance, but he needs to do this. "I guess I wanted to apologize. For earlier." He drops his gaze down to Lance's bare feet, shame tangling in his stomach. "I shouldn't have yelled at you. I should have backed off. So I'm sorry."

There's a pause, then Keith hears Lance chuckle low in his throat. Looking up through his eyelashes, he can see the small smile on Lance's lips. "An apology from Keith Kogane himself. I'm honored."

The attempt at humor is there, but the joke falls flat. They stand there in silence as Keith tries to conjure up what he wants to say next. He has so many thoughts inside of him, so many beginnings to sentences that he just didn't know the end to.

"I love you," Keith blurts out, right as Lance asks "Did you need something else?"

They stare at each other for a long time. Finally, Keith says, "I didn't mean to say it quite like that," nervously scratching at the back of his neck. "I wanted to say that you're my best friend and I'm worried about you. We've never not talked for this long before and I'm afraid that something happened and you don't want to talk to me anymore. I don't really know what h-happened down there, but I guess I wanted to tell you that I'm here if you want to talk to about it."

There is another long silence, longer than the first. Keith can feel a bubble of manic anxiety in his chest, and he wants to move, but he can't. He's pinned by the ocean blue of Lance's eyes, the solemn tilt of his lips. In his head, he imagines Lance pulling him into a hug. He imagines them talking it out. He imagines things going back to normal.

Instead, Lance nods and whispers, "Thanks, Keith. I appreciate it," before closing the door in Keith's face.