Archive of Our Own ^beta

Before he joined the garrison, one of the big lies Lance fell for was that there’s no sound in space. It had to be true, Marco had promised him, it was in all the movies. Whenever he and Marco had watched the classics –  years ago, at a time when Lance was still gathering stickers of his space heroes in a collector’s album, with shooting star Takashi Shirogane in pride of place – Marco would put on his deep, trailerman voice, curl his fingers like claws, and grate The One Quote:

In space, no-one can hear you scream.

That had always prompted Lance to screech like a fire alarm and flail at the alien with a throw cushion, until Marco called out for him to stop or picked up his own cushion to retaliate.

It was a given, then. When you’re up there in space, you can’t hear the aliens drawing up on you in their vessels. Not when you’re doing a spacewalk along the outside of your giant mechanical lion, looking to shift the debris blocking its mouth laser and leaving you a weapon down. All you can hear is the voices of your buddies on the radio, then the proximity alarm from your own ship.

When you finally turn toward the aliens, after they’ve fired a shot across your back and put a hairline crack in your armour, you scrabble to get back in your lion and you fight them. But because you’re not the best pilot of the bunch (and you know it), you have a weapon down and there are a ton of them coveting your ass, they put your already damaged lion out of commission. A hum, followed by a crack of electricity, does something awful to your brain and something worse to your lion’s controls, and when you can breathe again through the agony in your chest and the rawness of your throat, you realise they’ve knocked out your life support systems.

They drift past you, leaving you to freeze to death or suffocate in the big black.

You’re so busy trying to make contact with the others using a dead radio you forget that you’re part of a team, that you’re in trouble but you also had orders, and they were to get back to base. You forget that your beached whale of a space cat has its back to the Castle, so the first sign of trouble at home is the light of the explosion, a hundred Earth miles behind you – exactly where the Castle was.

The sudden light leaves you snow blind, stricken, and screaming in the cockpit of your lion.

Hours pass, and still all you can do is hope the others are okay. You’re trapped in the cockpit of your lion; an Altean safety mechanism that means if you lose power you’re being kept in the most viable part of the vessel. But you don’t care about that, not at first.

Being trapped in the cockpit doesn’t become important until you grasp how badly it limits your air supply, all two hundred cubic feet of it.

You pray your space family is okay, that they’re alive and that they’re going to come and save you, and only later do you realise that if they’re not, and if they don’t, you’re going to die up here too, in the hollow of space, in the head of a ready-made, cat-shaped coffin.

If they’re not –

The thought is unthinkable. So Lance stops thinking it.

How was it Hunk had explained space-silence to him? They’d been sitting in the mess hall, cramming for their year two exams. The serving lady had been wiping down the tables around them, ignoring them and the other last-minute crammers, all tired, all greying from a long night of caffeine consumption.

Hunk had sucked down a mouthful of Pink Parakeet, before slamming his palm down on the table top. Lance startled at the crack of it, taking a second before settling back down in his seat with his hand on his coffee cup.

Before Lance could question him, Hunk asked,

Hear that?

Yeah, you made me jump out of my skin! Lance took a mouthful of coffee, letting it reassure him. Coffee never made sudden noises or tried to give him heart failure.

You hear it because the table is made up of molecules. My hand is made up of molecules. Hunk waved it for emphasis. The air between my hand and the table, and the table and your ears, has molecules. Molecules are literally at the core of everything.

Hunk was on to something, but thinking seemed like a spectator’s sport after nine straight hours of study.

…Okay?

Hunk let his head drop back, gazing at the stars behind Lance’s head. Sometimes, Hunk was inscrutable. But that move? It had fml written all over it.

After a breath, he’d said, So what does space not have a lot of?

I don’t know. Lance had sagged onto the table, feeling whatever energy he had left ooze out into the wood. I’m too tired for cryptids. I mean craptasms. Crypticisms. Ugh, please, just tell me.

Lance’s tablet clicked when Hunk pressed the ‘awake’ key. The light of the screen made Lance squint, but it was good to see the smile return to Hunk’s face, lit gold from beneath.

Molecules, Lance. If there’s nothing to vibrate, then there’s no sound. Sound is all about good vibrations.

In the near-black of Blue’s cockpit, Lance smiles. His teeth are aching from being gritted so long, and he can barely lift his head from the seat back anymore, but a smile? He can manage that at the memory of the two of them jamming air guitars in the mess hall to a rendition of ‘Good Vibrations’ only they could hear.

There’s not much air left in the cockpit to carry vibrations. But even in Lance’s isolation, there is sound. The life support warning lights flicker on and off, on and off. The pattern makes it seem more like a fault than an honest indicator; clicka-click, tick-ticka. Klickt. Blue has a habit of creaking a little when she’s drifting, too; Hunk said he’d take a look at her but now he won’t have the chance.

Lance grits his teeth harder, until he can hear them crack. Nobody ever said anything about tears taking up oxygen, so he should be fine.

Beyond the cracking and the creaking, the tick-ticka of the light, it’s just the dull scratch of his own breathing and the occasional tap of his fingers as they move involuntarily against Blue’s controls.

Even though Blue went dark with the jolt of electricity, and her energy signature has been an inverted hum for the last few hours, Lance still has the sense that she’s trying to protect him. He tries to imagine how she must look from the outside, curled around him, still reflecting light out from that black notch of space. He doesn’t think he ’ll ever see her from outside again, or feel her spirit connect to his.

He takes a stuttered, deep breath; part grief, part exhaustion. He’s not going to be able to take many more, so he relishes it before slowly letting it go.

He could scream out his lungs. He could break down, sob his heart out, gasp for air. He could bring on the end a little sooner just by hyperventilating. He knows his time window for taking action has passed; his arms are leaden, and he feels like he’s buried in concrete to his hips. His lips are numb, and the tips of his fingers and his nose are as cold as Moms’ coffee-cream heatwave popsicles.

He’s wheezing, and beneath the ring of it he can hear the bubble of mucus in his airways.

Despite knowing that his space family is probably dead – that Allura, and Hunk, and Keith, and Pidge, and Shiro, and Coran, are all dead – and despite knowing he won’t see another sunrise over Varadero Beach – he can’t bring himself to rush to the finish line. What would Moms say? Shiro? Keith, even?

There’s a strange euphoria to his condition. It’s a kind of hope he can’t let go of, or maybe it’s just the rush of chemicals his dying body gives off to make it easier for him. The gasp of air he lets out is hot, and feels like losing too much too quickly, so he holds on to the next one.

Speaking out loud drains the oxygen faster, but thinking doesn’t make any difference. He closes his mouth, swallowing down the mucus that rests at his airway and trying to take the smallest possible breaths. I’m not ready. It’s not time.

He might not be good for battle. He doubts he can even find his bayard, never mind lift it. But he owes his space family this one last fight on the off-chance, on the slightest, narrowest hope, that he might be found, that these might not be the very last hours of his life – because who will bring about justice for them if not him?

At the very least, he needs to know for sure what happened to the Castle. He hasn’t seen any remnants of it, and Blue hasn’t been hit by any debris. When she went dark, her viewscreens stayed on, so he’s been able to see out into the blackness. Fixed to the Fuzzy-felt board of space is the odd flicker of white light, and a distant planet to brighten the view. Dzjelaabi? Was that its name? Hadn’t he been on the way there, when-

                klickt, says the flicker of the life support light, loudly interjecting.

                           Oh, quiz-

                                   clicka click click

                                            nak-

                                                click klicka

                                                                to you-

                                                                ticka ticka tick click

                                                                                ticka ticka tick click

                                                                                                …too?

Lance feels his frown develop slowly; everything about him is slow now, from his breathing to his listening skills to his concentration.

There’s a pattern. He didn’t make the connection earlier, but the last two sets of clicks were definitely the same as each other, and definitely different to the ones that came before. They were definitely-

                click ticka tick tick

                                klickt

-trying to tell him something.

Something shifts and falls over in Lance’s memory, leaving an old space history class exposed. At the front of the class he can see a display board with a series of black dots and dashes all over it, each with a letter besides. Modern communication is far from infallible, the tutor had said, so if your comms are out you should take any opportunity to communicate, via any possible conduit. Morse code has been saving stranded pilots for hundreds of years.

Lance grits his teeth and grasps the last of his hope like a plush toy, thrilled by the endorphins trying to cradle him into his final sleep. Focusing on those meek little clicks, he tries to find the patterns and match them to the cipher, as much as he can remember of the board that day.

R A R O Z Q D E F K R A Z Z L E O N D P I Q G A R H

P A L G O Q E B M F P D A Z Z L E T E P G A H K D J

T G L H M K A E T D A P Q B L U E P A L S X Q U O I

L A D O S Z C O Y P E A P L Q W E L A W Q X G K W

M D Q O P T S U W C A L E R S G S E E V D C M A G

A K D V M G W O X P Q Z D P I O S Y O U H D T X C

When he unlocks the pattern, emotion rushes up inside him. It clogs his throat, making it had to control his breathing or the sobs that follow. He was right - there is a message, and he’s the only one it could be meant for.

RAZZLE DAZZLE BLUE WE SEE YOU

Somebody else made it out. At least one other paladin is alive up here.

Suddenly the euphoria is gone, one last gasp of air tipping Lance from euphoria to panic. He can’t move, can hardly breathe, can’t tilt his head without the entire world banking to one side. He can’t communicate, his lion is out for the count, his comms, his bayard – how is he supposed to return contact before he suffocates?

He tries to stop panicking; panicking won’t help, all it will do is fill his throat with foam as the mucus in his lungs comes up to drown him.

An electrical hum starts up, and static electricity makes Lance’s hair stand on end. His mind is filled with pictures of flying, and Blue emotes the sense of soaring, of trying to come back online. Lance rises with her; please, please girl, help me, the glow of blue lights flickering throughout the cockpit.

A second or so later, the hum dies out and Lance loses his connection with Blue again. His devastation complete, he stops trying to manage his oxygen or control his breathing, and puts his head against the rest. If I close my eyes, it will all be over. I’m not done.

Even with his hope ebbing away, he tries one last time to make connection with Blue.

Crackle.

“Lance! Can you hear me, buddy?”

At first, Lance isn’t sure he does. Hunk’s voice comes in pulses through the mental mire; sound is all about good vibrations.

“Lance, come in.” Shiro’s voice this time. “The Castle of Lions is safe, Allura, Coran and the other paladins are safe. We need to know if you are.”

They’re real voices. Lance can’t turn to find out if they’re here or not, in his cockpit, but he assumes not. Beneath their human tones, he hears Blue on a sub-atomic level; the swell of her energy, the urgency to save her paladin pushing through like a river bursting its banks.

Even if Lance speaks, he can’t know if his radio will work, but if Blue can power just that little element and get him some help –

His mouth is dry, and it’s all he can do to find the energy to speak. His eyeballs feel bloated, and what little energy he has seems to have rushed to the very tip of his head and he can’t get it back down to his mouth.

“I don’t – I can’t tell, he’s not responding – Lance, come in, Lance! Come on, don’t give up now!” Hunk sounds heartbreakingly desperate.

Lance takes two small breaths. Three.

“Not. Dead.”

It’s just two little words, and they’re all he can manage, but they cause uproar at the other end of the line. Hunk cheers, and Lance hears Shiro calling out an instruction:

“Pidge. Status update.”

And Pidge’s urgent response, “His life support systems are still out – I’m doing my best but I can’t clear the virus!”

“Oh man. Unless we can get his life support up and running, this’ll go real bad, real fast.” Hunk’s voice has gone from worried best friend to engineer mode, and Lance can imagine him there at the console, tapping away and scanning reports from diagnostics software.

All this fuss comforts Lance. At least when he dies, he won’t be alone. They’re there, they somehow survived the attack. That matters to him. It matters.

“Pidge, how much longer?” Keith’s voice this time, sharp with impatience. Lance feels his chest get heavier.

“I don’t know, Keith, I’m trying-“

When Keith speaks again his voice is distant, like he’s speaking from halfway between the ambient communication of the Castle and the helmet of his armour. “I’m not waiting.”

There’s discourse between Shiro and Keith then – not much, just a little. An instruction, or a recommendation, Lance isn’t sure.

“You have to hold out, Lance.” Shiro says when he comes back to comms. “Keith’s coming to pick you up.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for doubt. It pings a dormant feeling in Lance’s chest, something usually saved for the farmhouse back in Cuba. His memory presents an image of his father, his hands on Lance’s tiny, childish waist, lifting him to pluck an orange from a tree in the grove.

Those tones aren’t the ones Shiro usually uses with Lance. Rather, it’s the voice he keeps for Keith, for Pidge – for everybody but him. Lance tries to open his mouth, to offer some throwaway humour in response, and then Shiro tells him:

“We can’t do without our sharpshooter.”

And any thought of answering disappears as Lance’s throat swells with grief, panic rising in fellowship alongside.

It was easier to stay calm when there was only hubristic belief in rescue. Now, with every strangulated breath, Lance feels cells popping out of existence. He’s dying. There’s a cost to that now that he didn’t recognise before – no pilot for Blue means no more rescues, no more interplanetary heroics, no more Voltron. It matters. He matters.

Lance knows his team are trying to get him out of this mess, and his knuckles have whitened on Blue’s controls. The whoop of his panic is the only sound the air carries. Past that, he occasionally hears Shiro on comms, co-ordinating actions, followed by confirmations from Pidge, from Hunk – but there’s nothing at all from Keith.

As his suffocating brain casts images of his past up at him like he’s a juggler in a circus act, Lance sees still frame after still frame of he and the other paladins. Going back further, he can see clearly that he was the only one cramming for the garrison’s exams. Hunk was never going to need to cram; he was too good, which meant he was helping a buddy out. He was good at it, too – Lance wouldn’t have made it past year three without Hunk calmly explaining orbital mechanics over energy drinks at 3am.

Anguish engulfs Lance at the thought he’ll never get to thank his best friend for everything he’s been able to achieve because of it.

Blue swells again beneath him. He feels her energy trying to close around him, heartfelt, to hold him safe, all as she tries to come back online. He urges her, emoting images of Pidge, of the antivirus he knows she’s creating; hold on, they’re coming for you, too. Save your energy. You can find another paladin but there’s no other Blue.

Her response in his head is unmistakeable; an image of starlight at warp speed and a roar that shakes him to his feet. I HAVE ONE PALADIN.

The reverberation of the cockpit’s doors being slammed hard fills Lance’s fractured consciousness.

Bang.

“Lance!”

It takes a moment or two to realise Keith’s voice is timed alongside the thuds. Close? He’s close? Is he inside Blue somewhere?

Bang.

“Lance! Can you hear me? It’s Keith!”

Lance can hear him, but he can’t respond. His mouth is jammed open, half-full of foam and mucus, his lungs occluded. Blue’s stunted rage continues around him, lights in shades of blue and green flickering all across her dash. On the radio he can just make out Pidge’s euphoria:

Blue should be clean in five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One…!

This time the lights across Blue’s dash come on and stay on. Her roar rattles through Lance’s head, before she turns and sprints without his control towards the Castle. From behind Lance feels the swish of the cockpit doors opening wide and the cold immediately rushing in, clinging to Keith’s armour.

Keith has his visor fully in place; the atmosphere’s not safe to breathe yet. Through the spots blackening his vision, Lance sees a familiar expression behind the visor. It’s a kind of worried anger. Keith’s never used that on him before, though. Only on Shiro.

Lance might have been jealous once, of Keith and Shiros’ bond up here – the bond that seals Lance’s uselessness. All the others have a thing. Pidge is the genius, Hunk is the engineer, Shiro the captain, Keith the do-er of deeds. He wants to joke, to tell Keith, redshirt down, now you can have the quarters closest to Shiro, but it won’t come out.

He no longer has breath for humour, and even if he did his own emotions seem far away and insignificant. His brain is short-circuiting. He loosely understands that this must be obvious, because Keith grabs the edge of his helmet and tosses it off with a clatter, planting something else over his mouth and nose. It might be an oxygen mask, but it doesn’t work because his throat and chest are in spasms, filled with foam.

Keith hisses, throwing the mask down and tearing off his gloves. He doesn’t pause, doesn’t have time to think twice before he sweeps the inside of Lance’s mouth with his fingers, clearing it of bloody mucus.

“Cough, Lance. Cough!” he barks, yanking him forward by the collar and striking him in the ribs.

The pain and momentary rage make Lance suck in a breath, and cough he does. Keith doesn’t waste the opportunity, using his fingers to clear the mucus as it comes. Blue’s air purifiers are back online and bringing oxygen back to the cockpit, and what Lance tastes is breathable, cold, and beautiful. It’s so cold it makes him cough again, and Keith doesn’t wait to plant the oxygen mask back over his face.

Once oxygen saturation is near the safe zone, Keith tears off his own helmet. “Breathe,” he says. “Just keep breathing, okay? I’ve got you.”

Keith looks shaken. That can’t be right, Lance thinks. Keith doesn’t even like him. But the oxygen is so pure, and so good, it’s all Lance can concentrate on, so the thought passes. As it does, and as his limbs start to tremble and unlock, Lance rests his head against the pilots’ chair. It’s the most solid thing in the universe and sturdy as granite as his body shudders against it.

Keith taps the radio microphone in his armour. “Shiro. I’ve got him. He’s alive, but he’ll need a healing pod when we get back.”

“That’s good to hear,” Shiro says, and Lance is sure he detects momentary fragility in his words. That can’t be right, either. Shiro’s not soft on him the way he is the others.

Nonetheless, when Shiro says, “Give him a minute or two to stabilise, Keith, and then bring him home.” there isn’t a modicum of frustration in his voice. Keith responds, but Lance isn’t listening anymore. He doesn’t hear anything until Keith puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s keep you masked up until we can get you out of Blue’s bay and into a healing pod. Okay?”

Keith still looks worried. It doesn’t make sense.

Push him away, something in Lance’s subconscious says, he’s getting too close, he’s too close to you, you don’t deserve a hero.

“I don’t need a crash course-“ gasp “-in breathing-“ gasp “-from you.” Lance’s hand flops just short of Keith.

Keith doesn’t bite back his frustration as he grabs both of Lance’s wrists. “Lance, I don’t know what your problem is, but I am going to walk you to a healing pod whether you want it or not. Can you just accept my help? I’m not going to withhold it, so the sooner you shut up and accept that, the sooner I can get you fixed up.”

To prove his point, Keith undoes Lance’s belt clip and pulls him forward, against his chest. His armour is cold and hard against Lance’s cheek as he grasps him, lifting him up out of the pilot’s chair. There’s a gap at his neck, though, where the armoured lining gives way. There, his flesh is warm, where it leads up to his jaw and his cheek. It’s here Lance finds purchase; first with his temple, then his own cheek, the strap of the oxygen mask still separating the swell of it in two.

Lance stumbles as Keith pulls him away from the controls. It doesn’t matter than his knees were so weak they couldn’t hold him up without Keith grabbing him under the arms. He just doesn’t want to take his face from the warmth of that jaw, or the confident line of it. He can just reach high enough to pull off the oxygen mask momentarily, pressing the line of their cheeks together.

“No, don’t take that off. What are you doing?” Keith reaches to reapply the oxygen mask with a scowl, but Lance grasps his hand on the way up. He’s so close here, so warm. Only minutes before, warmth had seemed like something Lance would never experience again. His forehead does something that must give him away, as Keith looks perplexed and moves his mouth to form words.

Lance doesn’t have the courage to kiss Keith on the mouth – that’s forbidden, a pipe dream for a redshirt – but his cheek, warm and lit from beneath with health and the richness of oxygen…

That, he has the courage for.

Keith’s cheek is just as hot against Lance’s still-frozen lips as he’d imagined it would be, and the moment seems to last much longer than he feared it might. Keith doesn’t pull away, either – not at first, not until the moment seems to sink in for him, and even then the most that happens is he tugs his face just out of reach and stares straight at him. He still looks perplexed, although differently so.

“What was that for?” Keith asks, and Lance wishes he could tell him, wishes he could say something profound like, thanks for saving my life, or, thanks for not giving up on me.

With the texture and heat of Keith’s cheek still on his lips, Lance slurs, “I don’t know, I’m delirious,” and puts the oxygen mask back over his face.

---

The kiss doesn’t come back to Lance in the healing pod. That’s a place of blissful nothingness. It doesn’t come back to him two days after his rescue, when he steps out, fully healed, into the Castle of Lions. It doesn’t come back to him at dinner that day, where Hunk gives him two helpings of dessert, or in the evening, when he’s getting ready for bed.

It comes back to him in the early hours of the following morning, while he’s staring at the ceiling above his bed, peppered with glow in the dark stars, wondering what he’s forgotten and why he can’t sleep. It comes when Keith quietly opens the door of Lance’s room and enters, his jacket hung over his shoulders.

Keith is barely visible in the emergency lights emanating from deep lines in Lance’s floor. From what Lance can see he looks tired, nonsensically so, seeing as they haven’t been called out to fight since Lance half-suffocated in Blue’s cockpit. Keith’s the kind to live on a rigid schedule; bed no later than ten, up again at five. This is too early in the morning, even for him.

Keith doesn’t turn on the light. “Lance? You okay?”

Lance clears his throat, not moving in the bed other than to wave an arm dismissively. “Well, I was trying to get to sleep, but. Yeah.” And then, voicing the afterthought, “You?”

“Yeah.”

They remain as they are, Lance horizontal in the bed and Keith vertical against the wall beside the doorway.

“So. What do you need?” Lance asks, thinking that sleep would be great - oh, and if only Keith could go before he notices the blush that’s so hot it’s drying his eyeballs out.

The Castle clicks and broods in the silence between them. Enough time passes that Lance adjusts to the rhythmic constant of Keith’s breathing.

“We had a bonding moment before, when we were in Blue’s cockpit,” Keith says, just as Lance’s blush finishes its fade. “Do you remember?”

He does. He remembers the slight roughness to Keith’s cheek as he’d pressed his lips there, the heat that chased away the Kelvin-esque chill of deep space on his lips. More than that, he remembers the way it made his heart jump, how it made the hairs behind his ears stand to attention.

There’s nobody in the room but Keith. It’s always been easier to talk to him when they’re alone.

The truth is out of Lance’s mouth before a lie can be coaxed out instead. “Yeah. I do remember.”

Keith shifts in the darkness. Lance can’t see enough to know what his face is doing, but his voice is hesitant when he says, “Do you want to have another one?”

Lance almost says no. It would be easier. It would keep things uncomplicated, they could go back to their antagonism, Keith could keep on being better than him at everything except shooting through the eye of a needle. He could keep on watching Keith smile from the side and pretend he wasn’t, and nobody else would ever need to know what his heart yelled at him every time Keith went off-comms for too long.

“What kind of bonding moment did you have in mind? We could –“And Lance stops himself, because when he can’t cope with something he has to turn it into a joke. Something at gut level, where all his best decisions are made, doesn’t want that. Not this time.

Before Lance can recover himself and offer an appropriate comeback, his bedsheets rustle and Keith is sitting beside him, lit by the green strings of nightlight around Lance’s headboard.

Lance scrabbles upright, because this is not what he expected, and yet it’s not bad, not bad at all, in fact it’s kind of –

Tingly.

“I was thinking. Maybe. More kissing?” Keith’s hand finds his chin in the darkness – one single thumbprint of contact before his fingers touch lightly beneath his jaw. “Would that be... okay?”

Lance swallows, tries to clear the sudden dryness of his throat. Tries to say, yeah, that’d be nice, but when he can’t, when all that fails, he just closes his eyes and finds the courage that was missing before.

The courage he’d eschewed as impossible when he languished in Keith’s arms, living on canned oxygen, the courage that was the pipe dream of a redshirt, yet the glowing achievement of the captain’s commander.

In lieu of an verbal answer, Lance leans in and kisses Keith on the lips. And with that, air becomes a secondary concern.