Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

August 17th 23XX. AMERICA’S DAILY MAIL

GARRISON’S BEST PILOT MISSING IN ACTION

In light of recent news provided by the American Garrison’s leading battle ship, the IGF–Atlas; fighter pilot, and leader of Voltron, Keith Kogane, is reported M.I.A. 

On a mission in the outer edge of the Milky Way, the IGF–Atlas and Voltron–a ship formed by merging five smaller ships, and their pilots–were tasked with driving out the last of Earth’s enemy forces; aliens known as ‘Galra’. 

According to the mission report sent in from the IGF–Atlas, it is stated that Kogane broke away from the group, and did not return, even after the mission was completed. Both he, and his ship, the ‘Black Lion’, disappeared. 

Now five days after the leader of Voltron’s disappearance, his whereabouts are still unknown. Any information on his location would be…

August 25th 23XX. AMERICA’S DAILY MAIL. 

LEADER OF VOLTRON, FOUND DEAD IN HIS SHIP

Keith Kogane, the leader of Voltron, thirteen days after his disappearance, has been found. Early this morning, civilians reported a large meteor crashing through Earth’s atmosphere, landing somewhere in the Northeastern Nebraskan Sand Hills. 

Upon further investigation, Kogane’s ship, the ‘Black Lion’, was found half-buried in the Sand Hills, only a few miles away from the Galaxy Garrison. 

Once pulled out of the sand, the Kogane’s ship refused to open. According to previous interviews conducted with the Paladins of Voltron, it was revealed that these ‘Lions’, are semi-sentient, and will only open to a select few. 

Captain of the IGF-Altlas, and previous Paladin of Voltron, Captain Takashi Shirogane was the individual able to get inside the Black Lion’s cockpit. When he came out, he was holding Kogane’s body. 

Medics were on the scene, but it has been reported that Kogane had been dead for roughly ten days marking his date of death August 15th, 23XX.

The Black Lion is now available for viewing…

Lance shuts his phone off, clenching it tight in his hand. It vibrates with messages still, from news reports, bearing headline after headline, unable to have their fill on this ‘new scoop.’ From family, having just heard the news, undoubtedly asking if he’s okay. Friends, co-workers, acquaintances, everyone. 

He hurls his phone at the wall. Lets it shatter, smashing into a billion pieces. Littering the floor with glass. 

How can people be so uncaring? 

It’s been ten days since Keith died, and less than two minutes that Lance has known this as fact. He’d suspected it the moment Keith went missing, of course he did, but it wasn’t so much of a fear as a slight nag in the back of his mind. 

He’d been on the search missions. Of course he had. Keith was his friend, Lance was his right hand man. Lap after lap of the sky Lance had done, dipping and swirling around planets, searching fruitfully for a signal he never saw. 

He was stuck now. The Garrison had offered all of them–he, the Alteans, the rest of the Paladins–a temporary lodging in their facilities, at least while the war was still an active threat looming over their heads. 

But fifteen days after his final battle, Lance is still here. Standing in the middle of his stupid, tiny room, in the Paladin’s quarters, angry tears brimming in his eyes as hate builds up within him. 

The Garrison want to hold a public funeral. Parade Keith’s dead body through the masses, protected from them only by a thin box of wood. 

Lance doesn’t want to go. None of the Paladins do, that much he can guess, if the shouts of indignation from the living area are any evidence. 

It had been a message, sent out before the papers were, that the Leader of Voltron had passed. Just to the Paladins. The Garrison hadn’t considered the two Alteans who had known Keith throughout the whole war. Hadn’t considered Keith’s mother. 

Why would they? All the Garrison wanted was for the Paladins to stay within the facility for a few more days, so they could prepare the ‘funeral’, and have them all say some stupid little speech. How heroic the war was. How Keith died in battle. How perfectly fucking fine everything was. 

There’s not a knock at his door but Lance turns, hearing the hinges creak. 

Two figures stand there, and Lance is brought into warm arms before he can speak. When standing becomes too much for the three of them, Lance lets himself sink to the floor, feeling sick. A rancid taste in his mouth. 

Lance is pretty sure Pidge is crying, but he honestly couldn’t be sure because the world goes fuzzy, like static. 

A long while and another warm body sinks down beside them. Whispering something Lance doesn’t understand. Not hugging him, just sitting. A steady presence. 

The day Lance learns of Keith’s death, he doesn’t cry. His eyes won’t let him. He dry heaves and feels like he’s going to vomit, but nothing comes up. His vision fuzzes, now baring a permanent grey static around the edges. His room grows smaller. 

Lance feels sick. 

--

“The amount of information in your brian is–well–it’s less than what I have!” 

“Ooh, nice one Lance!”

Lance McClain is not a fan of the Garrison’s apparent ‘best pilot’. He’s a dropout, for one, and he’s got a freaking mullet. Seriously, who the hell permitted that in a military base?! Not only does it look stupid, but Keith was constantly pushing it out of his eyes back at school. It’s even longer now, after he was missing for a year. 

Not missing, like, lost person (Lance is pretty sure Keith just went back to living his sad little mullet life, with his family, in whatever state he’s from.) but missing from class. 

Lance didn’t care, obviously. He was moved up to fighter class, thank you very much. And if there was a slight prick of doubt in his mind that he didn’t belong there, then, well, he just shoved it down. 

But after nearly a year, he still hadn’t been able to beat Keith’s scores. Despite no longer being enrolled–for ‘anger issues’, Lance was told–the kid still had the best scores. Fuck, even a few of them were better than Taskashi Shirogane’s, the best pilot at the Garrison. 

Of course, now Lance is in space, despite never passing a single simulator. Not only that, but he’s in space with his best friend, his slightly-insane comms officer (who, also happens to be his other best friend), his idol (okay, maybe calling Shiro that sounds a little weird now that he knows the guy), and aliens. Like actual, real-life people from another planet. 

Lance can hardly believe it. 

He’d think it was a dream, he honestly would, had Keith not been there. 

Because who the hell would dream about Keith?

It kinda sucks honestly. Not that he hates Keith or anything, it's just, the dude pretended to not recognise him! They’d been in the same class for four years! They had a rivalry. You don’t just forget your rival. 

And Keith is all stoic and broody, never talking to anyone if their name wasn’t Shiro. Even then, he still looks like he’s chewing on a wasp. 

After their first couple weeks in space, Lance has nailed the act of pestering Keith. 

Who wouldn’t? It’s just too tempting, and Keith is the perfect person. He always takes the bait, every single time, and Lance doesn’t even have to say much!

Despite not seeing a wink of that mullet for almost a year, Lance falls back into their rivalry pretty easily. Keith is constantly in the training room, swinging his sword about, ignoring everyone. Except Shiro. 

And maybe–as much as he doesn't wanna admit it–Lance wants Keith’s attention. 

You can’t have a rivalry if your rival doesn’t know they’re your rival. 

“Nope, no, nonono, no you don’t, I’m saving Shiro.”

“Who are you?”

“Who am I? Uh, the names Lance? …We were in the same class at the Garrison?"

“Really? Are you an engineer?”

“No I’m a pilot! We were like rivals, y’know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck.”

“Oh, wait, I remember you. You’re a cargo pilot.”

“Not anymore. I’m fighter class now, thanks to you washing out.”

“Well…congratulations.”  

Like honestly, how the cheese did Keith not know! Lance thought it was obvious, the way he always volunteered to fly the fighter-class planes when someone was ill, just so he could prove that he could beat Keith’s score. (He never did.)

And the way he and Keith talked, like, all the time! Sure, it was mostly about how terrible Lance thought Keith’s hair was, but Keith would always offer him an eyeroll or some sarcastic comment back, small smirk playing at his lips. 

That was like, the whole essence of a rivalry wasn’t it? Wanting to be better than the other. Keith was the better pilot (but not for long), and Lance was the–uh–he had more friends! 

So yeah, suck that Keith. 

All in all, Lance didn’t hate Keith. The boy was just irritating. And very much a loner. And he apparently had suffered memory loss after leaving the Garrison, because who wouldn’t remember their rival?

--

Lance walks slowly down the aisle. Head held low, helmet shoved over his face, visor up, avoiding looking at the cameras and hundreds of sweaty people pressing in around him. 

Hunk walks in front of him, his armour glinting in the sun. Keith never really liked the summer. It’s the last day of, the 31st, and Lance thinks that’s kind of ironic really. 

He laughs, a deranged sound coming out of his mouth. Makes the mistake of looking up and sees about ten different people staring at him in confusion. 

Lance sinks in on himself and keeps walking, marching through the path that carves through the mass of people, Garrison officers and cadets, members of the public, the press. Everyone is here, and Lance is sure Keith actually only knew about ten of them. 

As hard as they had all tried, the Garrison refused to cancel the public funeral. Except now, they’ve rebranded it as a ‘memorial.’ Where Lance will be made to go up there and take off his helmet, face the people as they gawk at the wooden box, holding one of Lance’s only friends. 

It makes his stomach churn. 

Inevitably, the Paladins make it to the platform, raised above the ground. Do all these people really know Keith? Or have they just attended because he was a hero? Do they know what Keith, what every one of the Paladins sacrificed for them, just so they could hoard themselves together and pretend to mourn someone they’ve never seen breathing. 

Lance’s legs shake as he stands in line with the others. Allura on his left and Hunk to his right. Allura has her hair cut just above her shoulders, Lance notes. It suits her. Makes her look tougher, like she’s been through a war and survived , and not like Lance, who still hasn’t taken off his helmet. 

Coward. 

The crowd roars, cheering. Why are they cheering?

Lance turns back to looking at Allura. It’s easier to look at her than the people. She’s furthest away from the coffin. Her marks glow pink, bright neon against her dark skin. She once told him they glow when her emotions are heightened.

Lance wishes he had Altean marks like that. Then he could tell if he was feeling something strongly, and he wouldn’t be stuck in this limbo of questioning if he was feeling something. All Lance has experienced so far is vomit. Acid burning through his insides. 

The crowd cheers again and Lance’s head snaps away from Allura. A lady wearing a form-fitting black suit walks past him, tapping her head. 

Lance stares blankly ahead. A nudge on his shoulder and warm brown hands gently pull the helmet from his head. Lance is sure his hair must be a mess. 

Hunk smiles at him softly, tears already dripping down his best friend's face. He hands back the helmet, and Lance’s stomach curdles when he sees the harsh red paint. 

“You need to have your helmet off for the ceremony, buddy,” Hunk says softly. 

Lance takes Keith’s helmet with trembling hands. “Oh,” he nods. 

He turns away, willing himself not to rip the armour from his body. 

 Keith’s armour. 

The Garrison couldn’t understand why the Paladin’s colours didn’t match their lions, and therefore everyone’s who didn't co-ordinate was switched. 

Allura was wearing his soft blue, and Shiro was permitted to wear black, even though he hasn’t piloted the Black Lion in a long time. Which Lance found really stupid. 

But the Garrison would do anything for their precious golden pilot. Make Shiro the face of all their campaigns, just because he was a good-looking guy (objectively of course.), and a great pilot. 

So Shiro wore black, and Lance was given red. 

It’d be better if the Castle of Lions were still here. Then he wouldn’t have to stand here, feeling so violently ill , because the only copy of red Paladin armour had been on Keith’s dead body. 

It was washed, cleaned of all dents and dirt. Lance wears it and it looks brand-new and it makes him want to scream. 

He thinks he might. 

He doesn’t. 

It’s swallowed by a screech, as someone taps on the microphone. 

“I, on behalf of everyone on stage here today, would like to thank you all for your attendance in this period of loss,” Iverson begins, voice calm and unreactive. 

Bullshit. 

Lance isn’t thankful for the writhing mass of people in front of him. He knows that makes him un grateful, but he really, really doesn’t care. Maybe if Keith were here, Lance would actually want to look them all in the eye. Smile as they cheer. 

“...it is a very sad loss, and I am sure it has hit so many of you hard. I know I was quite devastated when I heard the news…” Iverson blathers on more bullshit. 

“Have you ever wondered where Iverson’s eye went?” Lance asks. 

It was hours after landing on Earth for the first time in what felt like decades. Lance had felt bad Keith had no one to greet him when he landed, and if he pushed the burning feeling aside he could stomach walking with Keith around the halls of the base. 

Keith huffs, halfway between a laugh and a snort. “I know what happened.”

“Dude, really?”

“Knocked it out the day I was expelled from the Garrison. Might have chucked my knife at him,” Keith shrugs nonchalantly. 

Lance’s eyes widen, and he’s grabbing Keith by the arm, shaking him from disbelief. “No. No way it was you.”

Keith brushes Lance’s hand off, Lance’s skin searing at the contact. Shit. He’d let himself slip again. 

“Ask Iverson. I was a pretty angry kid,” Keith’s mouth curls into a tiny smirk. 

Lance clutches Keith’s helmet tighter. Iverson is still droning on. The world is starting to get fuzzier around the edges again, even more so than normal. 

People blur into a blob, cameras flashing, no doubt preparing for this to be on the following day's front page. 

“...I’d like to bring forth now, Voltron’s old leader, and current Captain of the Galaxy Garrisons number one fighter ship, the IGF–Atlas…Takashi Shirogane.”

The crowd screams their approval, clearly loving the fact that they get to see the Garrison’s poster boy, after he was gone for so many years. If Lance is correct, the Garrison reused old photographs of Shiro in their enlistment propaganda still, spending more money on blow-up billboards in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere than actually searching for the lost Kerboros crew, and the four children that dropped off the face of the Earth. (Literally.)

This feels more like a press tour than a memorial. 

“Uh, hi,” Shiro’s voice cracks, and Lance finally cranes his head over to the lectern Shiro is speaking behind. 

Shiro had taken Keith’s death hard. He’d lost two people he’s loved to the war now. Less than some, but still devastating. First his fiance, and now his brother. 

Lance had found him in Keith’s room a couple days prior, silent tears streaming down his face as he sat on his knees. Lance hadn’t known what to say, so he had left the room without saying anything at all, only to come back with pillows so that Shiro’s knees wouldn’t get sore from the concrete floor. 

Shiro had also been the first on sight when they had found the Black Lion, face-planted in the middle of the desert. Shiro had been the only Paladin told that Keith’s Lion had crash-landed, and had been the one to get Black to open, gently lowering her head as Shiro had walked out cradling his brother in his arms. 

The news reports and headlines had been sent out the following day. A big blown-up photo of Shiro and Keith. Lance had only been able to look at it for a split second. 

“I’d uhm–I’d like to talk about my brother,” Shiro says, his voice a mere whisper in the wind, gently gracing across the tops of the people who couldn’t give less of a shit. 

Shiro’s hands shake as he reaches to readjust the microphone. He hadn’t wanted to give a speech. Said it was too personal. 

The Garrison said they didn’t care. 

Bile rises in Lance’s throat. 

“Keith was…a really great person. He was determined. Didn’t give up. Despite not wanting to lead…I think he did a great job of piloting Black. I–”

“And what is ‘Black’?” the woman in the fitted black suit interrupts, like this is some kind of goddamned interview. 

Shiro audibly swallows, looking up with tired eyes. “Pardon?” his voice is harder now, slight edge to it. 

“What is ‘Black’?” the lady repeats, blinking owlishly at Shiro. 

Shiro’s face drops, muscles going slack before tensing again, shooting the woman a tense glare, his jaw grinding. Anger licks up in Lance, a sudden spark to his cold indifference. 

Shiro sighs, a tiny exhale of air. “The Black Lion. The head of Voltron. The very same lion that is behind us right now,” he manages to struggle out, words tense and aimed like bullets into the lady’s head. 

The Black Lion looms behind the platform, diminished to nothing more than a public spectacle, something for the people to froth over. The Garrison had planned to chain her down, but Black roared a final threat before powering down. There’s red rope drawing a circle around her, and a concession stand, selling food and drinks, like the war means nothing, not when the people can have a picture of what won them their freedom. 

The lady nods and flashes a very big smile. She has lipstick on her teeth. Lance laughs at that, forgetting that his body doesn’t let him laugh anymore, and once again he sounds like he’s choking on air. 

He closes his mouth as quickly as he can, but he’s still shaking. Shiro is talking again, and this time it's Lance’s hearing that goes to whack as well, and he finds himself immobilised on the stage. Everything a dull fuzz.

Lance is dragged along by Allura, her grip firm around his wrist. Lead through the crowds of leering people, Keith held aloft in his box, paraded through the crowd. 

He’s sick for the first time that night. On his knees in front of the toilet, hurling. Over and over and over. He’s coughing up spit by the end. His hatred for the Garrison burns , and the thought of Keith’s farewell being as public as that curdles his insides. 

He hates the Garrison. Hates. 

Hates.

Hates. 

It buds up between his grief-induced walls of numbing ice, smoothing over any feelings. Burns inside of him, brighter and hotter than Lance has felt before. 

He sticks his head over the toilet, string of saliva dripping from his lips.

--

The morning is quiet, a slow start to a peaceful day. Lance hasn’t been in space for long, but it’s awesome. Well, if you forget about the intergalactic space war. 

He steps back into the elevator, running a hand through his hair with a soft sigh. 

The truth is, he misses home. He may not have been in space for long, but the school year was almost coming to a close, so Lance hasn’t seen his family in, well, ages. He’d probably be in the holidays by now, he reckons. Lounging about his house, mucking about in the clear waters of Varadero beach–

So when it was revealed that the Castle of Lions had a freaking pool, Lance had jumped at the opportunity. 

As the doors to the elevator slide slowly shut, the shudder, stopping, before opening up again. 

A hand curls around the edge. Keith. 

Of fucking course. Because it’s just his luck that Keith, of all people, is here. Standing just outside the elevator, wearing matching swim trunks to Lance, but in a garishly bright red. Ick. Lance is so glad he never has to wear red.

A towel is draped over his head, for which Lance is grateful, as it hides his terrible haircut. (Although who the hell wears a towel like that?)

“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” Lance questions, keeping his tone flat, uninterested, so maybe Keith can take the hint and leave, because this is supposed to be private Lance-time, baby. 

Keith doesn’t get the hint, because why would he, and he slides into the elevator beside Lance. 

“Allura said there’s a pool. I’m gonna go check it out,” in the most nonchalant tone ever. 

Lance feels his skin prickle from where Keith stands, inches away from him. Shorts hanging low on his narrow waist. 

 Shut the hell up, stupid brain. Get a grip. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” again Keith speaks in that same unbothered tone. 

Is it not obvious? Is Keith really this slow or is he just looking for something to say?

“Same thing,” and Lance thinks he sounds pretty macho, thank you very much. 

The doors close, and the elevator juts to life, slowly creeping up. 

Lance clenches his hands around the ends of his towel, (as he wears it around his neck like a normal person, thank you very much.) realising that he’s actually going to have to go to the pool. With Keith. Half-naked. In the same body of water. 

It’s not gay. He denies, because objectively, it’s not. Just two… friends(??), companions(??), rivals, chilling. Separately. 

“Look. You stay on one side of the pool, and I’ll stay on the other,” Keith says, effectively managing to word Lance’s thoughts. Good. Now he doesn’t have to say it aloud and sound weird. “...and we’ll be far, far away from each other. Very…far…away.”

Lance shoots Keith a side glance, nodding. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Yep. No problem,” he says, voice straining. 

His heart is pounding, from both the relief that Keith seems to understand, and the fact that he is very much still in this small enclosed space. With a half-naked Keith. 

Lance bats those thoughts away as hard as he can, smacking them out of existence. His skin crawls, bugs running under the surface, biting into his veins and burrowing deep down. 

There’s a muffled bang, before everything goes dark. A pretty unceremonious way to go to Hell, Lance thinks. 

“Hm?” a muffled sound of surprise from his left and no, this isn’t Hell, Lance isn’t going to burn to death. (Not today, anyway.) 

“Uh?” Lance responds just as eloquently, looking around him, and yep, everything is definitely dark. 

Lance glances over in the vague direction of Keith. Squints at him through the darkness, just making out a fuzzy outline of his body. 

He’s crawling up the elevator shaft. Back pressed into Keith, arms locked, toes touching the cold wall in front of him. Regretting everything. He doesn’t know how they got here, just that this started off as a stupid suggestion, meant as a joke, and now it’s, well, reality. 

Keith pushes back against him, grunting, the back of his head hitting Lance’s.

“ Ow. Watch the fuck out dude,” Lance mutters. 

Keith doesn’t dignify him with a response, continuing their slow shuffle up the wall. 

Lance tries not to think about all the skin-on-skin contact. It means nothing. Really, it doesn’t. Again, they are just two rivals, who happen to be going to the pool. 

Nothing is wrong. 

But Lance can’t stop the irradiation under his skin, spreading like a rash. He’s always teetering on the edge of the cliff, and just when he managed to step back, Keith had pushed him. Now he hangs from the edge, fingers gripping exposed rock as he curls his legs up, refusing to let the monsters in the water below consume him. 

Keith’s back flattens against his own, and Lance has to sharply inhale, heart jumpstarting, racing a billion miles per hour. 

“It’s right, then left, you’re off!” Keith snaps. 

“You’re off! And shoving too hard!”

“You’re not shoving hard enough!” 

Lance pushes back against Keith, both boys squabbling for power. Lance stops suddenly, feeling Keith’s arms tighten around his.

He slumps forward, “I should be at the pool right now,” he tries to play off his obvious pulling away from Keith as boredom. 

“Oh would you stop whining?” and Lance can feel the glare Keith shoots him over his shoulder. 

Lance huffs. Keith yanks him forward a bit, moving them a little further up the wall. Lance’s back flushed against Keith’s. 

This is fine. Completely fine. I’m fine. 

Keith isn’t like that. He just wants to get out of here, same as me. 

I’m being stupid. 

The violent bashing of these thoughts into his skull don’t seem to dull the thumping of his heart, the heat he feels in his back where Keith touches him. 

Lance can’t satiate the worry in his gut. The slow moving fear, sliding through his insides like honey. 

He feels ill.

Chapter Text

Vergüenza [shame]
noun.
Turbación del ánimo ocasionada por la conciencia de alguna falta cometida, o por alguna acción deshonrosa y humillante.

Disturbance of the soul caused by the awareness of some fault committed, or by some dishonourable and humiliating action.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

A light touch to his forehead, down to his chest, across his shoulders. Crossing himself.

Amen.

The word rings through the room, the young boy repeating it a second after the others, his feet stretching up off of the floor as he tries to get a better look at the altar.

His mother pushes him down, hand warm on his back.

The boy stands properly again, eyes wandering over the stained glass of the windows. Light refracting pretty colours off of the floor of the church.

The room is quite big, larger than his house, the boy thinks. Old, cracking stone under his feet, yet the wooden pews shine, wood gleaming.

His family standing on both sides, he sandwiched in the middle, his button up shirt a little too big, collar scratchy around his neck. It was his older brothers, before being passed down to him.

His small hands run along the hem of his shirt, tugging at it lightly.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

--

Lance is four years old, when he first starts attending mass. It’s not a regular thing, but more often than not his mamá will dress him in the mornings, and Lance will find himself in Marco’s itchy shirt, hanging loosely off of his frame.

Mass isn’t bad. Lance finds himself enjoying the pretty colours the stained glass bounces onto the floor and the walls. Likes listening to the soft thrum of people singing in unison.

He doesn’t know most of the words, but his sister tells him that she doesn’t either, and that they can learn together.

As time goes on, and Lance (inevitably, as all children do) begins to grow up, and attending mass becomes less frequent. Not from a loss of faith, but much rather because he has four siblings, and the McClain’s lives grow busy with sporting commitments, school, homework, hanging out with friends, extracurriculars, and jobs.

Catholicism still holds a heavy presence in his home, paintings and crosses hung throughout his house. It’s not forced onto him, just ingrained into Lance from such a young age that he’s never known any different.

He doesn’t mind. Most of his friends and neighbourhood are religious, and Lance knows his beliefs. His religion isn’t something to be ashamed of, nor is it held over him like a knife, threatening to fall if he makes one wrong move.

Lance is eleven when he sees two girls kissing. Walking home from school alone, the only kid in his family still left in Primary School. He passes the park, a scruffy square of grass a good ten minutes from his house, the rusty yellow slide no one uses anymore, paint flaking off.

The girls look to be Marco’s age, maybe a year older. One of them is on the swing, the girl behind here leaning over to kiss her cheek, and then her mouth.

Lance quickly turns his head away, feeling he probably shouldn’t be watching that. Verónica tells him it’s rude to pry on other people.

Even if they are kissing in public.

It’s only five minutes later that it resonates in Lance’s brain that they were girls. Kissing each other.

Is that an option? Lance had seen his parents kiss before, sure, it was gross. He’d seen his eldest brother kiss his girlfriend before. Both Lisa and his mamá are girls but they were kissing boys.

He’s never known that there was another option. That people didn’t have to kiss another gender.

He’s thirteen when he finds out what that means for the first time. Homosexual, is the right word, he thinks. There are other words too, shouted by bigger, meaner kids across the playground. He doesn’t think those are as nice.

He knows that people can like whoever they want. Alongside girls kissing girls, boys can like boys too. He knows that people don’t like that.

He hears words yelled in the hallways at his school, whispered behind closed doors, people talked about and some bullied. In church, when he still goes to mass, everyone seems to be against it.

His mamá, looking a little shocked when he had asked her about it. If it was okay.

You can love anyone you want, mijo.

Lance’s mamá had never lied to him, but those words felt like the first time. Everyone was against it, somehow repulsed by the feelings of others.

Lance finds himself repulsed too. He never makes jokes or pokes fun, but his friends do. They sometimes laugh and taunt people. Lance remains a bystander, filtering into the background, a coward, afraid they’ll turn on him if he says something ‘gay’.

Being gay is not a good thing, he learns. As okay as it may be, the taunting and rejection from others is just not worth it.

Lance is glad he’s not gay.

Lance is fifteen when he realises he wants to kiss Keith Kogane.

They’ve been at the Garrison for less than a year, and people’s aversion to queerness (a new term Lance has learnt–mostly used as another word to taunt people) has not changed. Nor has Lance’s faith.

Perhaps it was only one of those things, or perhaps it was both, or maybe it was something else entirely–but on the day Keith finally laughed at one of his stupid jokes, and Lance’s insides warmed, heart desperate to just lean in–that made Lance’s brain recoil, insides flooding with dread.

Just a fleeting feeling, something so quick and simple, but now Lance was walking on eggshells.

Sure, he was okay with queer people. Why wouldn’t he be? It’s just…that’s not him.

Every time Keith enters the same room as Lance, or passes him in the hallway, something churns up all the butterflies in Lance’s stomach, curdling them until they become rotten. The rot seeps through his insides, shaking him to the core.

Lance vomits, just so he can force feed himself the rot, burning as swallowed words sit in the back of his throat. Thoughts never to be uttered aloud.

You can love anyone you want, mijo.

Lance lives with that lie imprinted on his heart, the password to the box he beats all his feelings into. He gets louder, more immature, appeasing the crowd so they will laugh in his favour, instead of mocking and bullying him like he knows they will.

Keith leaves. Lance nearly cries from relief.

The feelings don’t go away.

The night after Keith’s expulsion, Lance prays. Knelt on the concrete floor of his dormitory, eyes shut. Begs for his sins to be forgiven, for his nasty thoughts to leave with Keith, never to rush through him again.

--

Keith is buried in the same graveyard as his father.

Although ‘buried’ technically isn’t the right word.

Keith had been cremated, body burnt down by the very element he represents. Lance doesn’t know who made the decision, or even if it was something Keith wanted, but he feels it’s nicer than letting Keith’s body sit underground, trapped eternal underneath dirt and roots, people stepping over him.

It also means that all of Keith is sitting right in front of him, a smooth, silver urn, resting on a table in the tiny apartment Krolia was given. She didn’t want to stay at the Garrison campus and wasn’t asked.

All the Paladins are here. Allura, Coran, Romelle. Pidge’s family, who had known Keith since before the Kerboros mission. Kosmo whines in the corner of the room, like he can sense Keith’s disappearance. Lance hasn’t seen the space-wolf teleport in days. They stand, crammed around the table, just…staring.

The ashes had been sent to Shiro, the last noted guardian of Keith before he went to space. The plan was that they would scatter them in space, covering as much area as they could. Shiro had told them all quietly that Keith would like that. That space was always his home.

It’s quite ironic, Lance thinks, that the place Keith will rest forever is the battlefield of the war he died fighting to win. While the ground may not be bloody, stained with the last struggles of soldiers passed, each soul taken is held in the hearts of the stars, tucked snug in the fabric of the universe.

The circle around the table feels tense, no one finding the words to say.

“Should we leave now, then?” surprisingly, it’s Krolia who speaks, her expression determined as she meets the eyes of the others. “Better we get it done now, yes?”

Everyone spurs into action then, nodding and mumbling approval. They’re all already suited up in their armour–Lance back in his comfortable blue, and Shiro wearing his Garrison get-up, which only makes Lance a little sick–and so leaving the apartment and driving to the hangar in which all the Lions are kept is fairly quick.

Black is still unresponsive, much to the joy of the Garrison. Four ships between the twelve of them (counting Kosmo) means Lance knows he’s going to have someone flying with him.

“Lance,” his name, spoken softly, a slight lilt to the accent.

Krolia.

Lance keeps his eyes set dead ahead of him, stomach churning. He hadn’t really seen Krolia in a while. They’d never talked much when Keith brought her back as well, sharing the occasional greeting.

“Hey,” he mutters awkwardly, shoving his helmet on as he approaches Red.

Krolia follows him, her dark eyes tracking him. Lance can feel them through the back of his skull.

“You don’t mind if I sit in the Red Lion with you, do you? I’ve wanted to know what my son’s previous Lion was like,” she says, walking up past Lance and reaching out to touch red lightly on the nose.

And Lance can’t quite deny that, can he? He knows it’s selfish of him, to not want to be here, but he can’t help but think about it. Lance…he doesn’t deserve Keith. Feelings, hot and heavy and hard, like lead, mash around in his intestines, weighing him down.

Lance offers Krolia a small smile. “Not at all.”

Krolia is a lot like her son.

She stands quietly beside Lance, her gaze fixed on the stars ahead. Lance admits that it’s a little off-putting, having someone be so…still.

Keith. Brooding in the corner of the living area, like always.

Lance and the others were laughing over something stupid, something Lance had said in a small attempt to get Keith to laugh, finally join in on the conversation he’d been insisting he miss out on.

But Keith doesn’t laugh, gaze fixed on the stars floating past outside of the window, body still as a rock. Arms crossed tight over his chest. Like he’s pulled all of his secrets close and intends to keep them locked away in his heart, unseen and unheard by anyone.

Lance feels that sickening tug in his gut again. He wants to pull Keith’s arms back, get the boy to lay himself bare.

Lance snaps back, swerving Red to only just avoid a small cluster of rocks. Holy crow, he needs to focus.

He narrows his eyes, tuning out Krolia and her intimidating presence.

Lance gets so tuned out he has to swerve again.

And again.

And again.

Constant little collisions, only narrowly missed.

“Are you alright?” Krolia says sharply, or perhaps it’s just the concern in her tone.

Lance doesn’t respond, too embarrassed to admit he can’t fly straight because of Keith Kogane, her own fucking son, and the fact that he’s dead–

Red takes a sharp nosedive to miss slamming into the Yellow Lion, without Lance’s help.

“Lance.”

Definitely a sharper tone this time. Hands on the controls, prying his fingers away.

“Lance, you can’t control your Lion. She can fly herself. Breathe,” Krolia informs him, letting go of Lance’s hands.

His vision goes fuzzy, everything blurring. Buzzing in his ears growing louder and louder, everything bubbling down to one singular moment in time, nothing meaning everything and everything crashing down to nothing more than Lance, breathing heavily in his chair.

The pilot chair spins with Lance in it, turning to face Krolia. Lance squeezes his eyes shut, breaths coming ragged and hard, sucking in all the air around him.

What the hell.

Stop being a fucking baby.

Lance’s hand shake, and this is stupid, this is all so stupid.

Bile rises in his throat and he can’t hold it back, hurling onto the floor, sick splattering up onto his boots.

--

Keith’s half-Garla.

It’s not…completely unexplainable.

Apparently, he must be the only one who thinks that.

Allura hasn’t said a word to Keith since Keith came back from the Blade of Marmora trials, and the air between everyone feels tense. No one daring to say anything that could possibly provoke another.

Keith seems to be fine with ignoring Allura too, as all the boy does now is work his ass off on the training deck. Lance can hear the dull thuds emanating out from through the closed door.

“What the hell–” Keith mutters as Lance strolls into the training room, close to the middle of the Castle’s night cycle.

Keith stands, slightly hunched over, in the middle of the floor, panting heavily.

“End training sequence,” he snaps, hauling himself and his knife around to face Lance, angry scowl on his face.

Lance strolls forward, hands shoved in his pockets. He and Keith…it’s complicated, okay? They weren’t friends, not exactly, but Lance definitely didn’t hate the guy. Keith was just difficult. Not because he was ‘a part of some mass-murdering alien species, but simply because he just…was.

Hence why Lance is here, in the asscrack of night, trying to talk to Keith.

“Hey Keithy. Just wanted to do some midnight training, you know how it is.”

Keith fumes. “You never train at night. What the hell are you doing here?”

Lance puts his hands up, a surrendering gesture. “Woah, let's calm down, okay? Put your knife away, mullet, and let a guy train in peace.”

It’s easier talking to Keith now too, because the uh, certain feelings Lance did not have for him have eased off. The more Lance actually gets to know Keith, the more obvious it becomes that Keith is an utter and complete asshole, casually better in everything they do. God, it’s infuriating. How can Keith just do things so effortlessly?

“I heard your knife can turn into a sword,” Lance says, shrugging off his jacket and throwing it behind him.

“Who the hell told you that?”

“Uh, you did? Literally a few hours ago? When you marched past me in the hallway muttering about ‘needing to train’, and ‘having to unlock your sword.’ Wait. Have you been in here this whole time?”

Lance moves closer, shoving the sleeves of his shirt up. Keith twists his knife in his hands.

“Yes. No. I dunno.”

“Love the confidence.”

Keith shoots him a nasty look. “Will you shut up?”

Lance flashes him a grin. “Will you actually admit that Allura is pissing you off?”

The metaphorical daggers Keith’s eyes shoot at Lance’s head stab through his skull. Okay. Maybe that was too far.

A swirl in Lance’s gut, a whirlpool of shame, like he always feels when he says something wrong. He desperately wants to blurt that he knows he said the wrong thing but the silence goes on for too long and he can’t, the opportunity missed.

“Do you wanna spar?” he offers instead.

Keith is launching himself at Lance before he can say yes.

They’ve never communicated well with words anyway, Lance thinks.

The spar isn’t hard, or brutal. Keith is tired, and his movements have less power to them. Lance holds a strong defence, blocking all of Keith’s jabs. Somewhere along the way, Keith had decided that using his knife was a perfectly reasonable move, and so now Lance is dodging that too.

Keith lunges forward, knife inches away from Lance’s chest. A pause when Lance doesn’t move, and the knife is shifting, and holy fuck, Keith’s holding a goddamn sword.

In a split second, Lance stumbles away, Keith yanking the sword back, staring at Lance with wide eyes.

Lance chuckles weakly. “Was that not–supposed to happen?”

”No,” Keith shakes his head. “I–I’ve been trying to do that since I got back. It–it’s only supposed to change if I’m, like, trusting myself. Following my instincts.”

He looks up at Lance, like he’s had some kind of revelation, his expression more open than Lance has ever seen. It quickly shuts off, but Keith’s eyes remain sparkling.

The silence passes for a second too long, and all Lance can see are Keith’s eyes, irises coloured like galaxies, patterns of soft indigo and purple, grey’s flicking in around the edges.

Lance realises he’s not as far away from Keith as he had thought. A foot away he stands, Keith’s sword the only thing between them, lowering as Keith shoves it into the back of his armour.

Lance is fifteen again, passing Keith in the Garrison hallways, his attention captured and kept, never once leaving the boy with dark hair and full lips, so kissable as he spews teasing insults towards Lance.

Oh God.

No.

A tidal wave of emotion crashes into Lance. He’s not over his feelings for Keith. They didn’t dissipate the more Lance got to know him.

They’re still here.

Lance forces more distance between himself and Keith again, ripping his sights away from pits of swirling indigo.

You can love anyone you want, mijo.

Whispered conversations. At church, held behind hands. Talking about the new teacher at Lance’s school, how he shouldn’t be left alone with their children in the classrooms, shouldn’t be allowed in their neighbourhood at all, because why was he promoting his sinful lifestyle to young people?

He was at Lance's school for six weeks.

Yelling, harsher words, filled with more hatred than Lance had heard. Something to tease you for if you were different, because what else could you possibly be? Queerness isn’t a good thing, so repress it. Don’t even think about it. Nod and smile, push through.

Lance is seventeen, and he still wants to kiss Keith.

It’s a horrible, nauseating feeling. Slapped into him with spite and jealousy biting at its heels.

The training deck is tipping, sliding sideways. Lance is losing it again. No. No. Not now.

“I’ve gotta go,” Lance is fairly confident he says aloud, staggering up the hill that the training deck has now become, desperately running for the doors.

They slide open, and Lance is half a step into the hallway before Keith interrupts the silence.

“Allura is pissing me off.”

What?

And maybe it’s just a way to get Lance to stay, or maybe Keith feels bad for making Lance leave, or maybe it’s another thing entirely.

Lance turns, butterflies in his stomach crawling out of their cocoons as fat, underdeveloped worms, flopping about uselessly around his insides.

“Oh, so you’re finally gonna admit that?” Lance can’t get his smirk quite right as he turns around.

Keith notices, or maybe he doesn’t (why is everything in maybe’s nowaday?), but either way, he doesn’t say anything, walking closer to Lance with his eyes set.

He stops a few feet from Lance, and there they both stand, orbiting each other.

Keith half-shrugs, looking off to the side. “I mean, it’s not the greatest thing to have a literal alien ignore you for being well, another alien.”

“Half.”

As much as talking to Keith gives him the biggest sense of whiplash, Lance, like a dog to a bone, can’t seem to stay away. He’s hungry for Keith’s words, starving for the taunting and teasing, even if it leaves him with hives, itchy and irritated, an allergy with no ailment.

“What?”

“Well, you’re only half-Galra, right? You’re still human. Even if you weren’t, it wouldn’t make a difference, would it? You are who you are. You can’t change that. If Allura wants to ignore you, let her do her own thing, man. Keep being who you are and don’t change. Don’t be an asshole either. Like, the others are a bit prickly, sure, but you just need to actually show your face a little more. Training isn’t gonna do anything. You said yourself that you’ve been in here for hours and that stupid sword never manifested. Only when I came in it did.”

Maybe, in hindsight, Lance should’ve taken his own advice.

He didn’t.

When he leaves the room a semi-stunned Keith stands in his wake, emotions flicking through his face faster than frames in a stop-motion.

--

Krolia drives them to the section of space Lance wanted to take Keith’s ashes. The Red Lion, temperamental as she is, had allowed another pilot in favour of her Paladin, knowing Lance’s form, hunched over on the floor, could do nothing.

Worthless.

By the time they arrive, Lance has sobered himself up enough to stand, clipping his helmet in place again and strapping his bayard to his waist. Going through the movements. Krolia doesn’t speak as she sets Red stationary in the sky, retrieving the small, cremated pot of Keith’s ashes.

They had split them, each person getting their own part of Keith to scatter around. Lance remembers Pidge saying something about space dust once, about how they were all made up of the same stuff, everything in the universe, reused and reformed over and over again, since the beginning of time and until the end.

As he floats in front of the swirling nebula, Lance wonders what he was before. The hues of purple and grey swirl in front and all around him, illuminating the dark sky. Krolia hadn’t left Red with him, Lance supposing she thought he wanted some space.

The ashes. Right.

Pulling the small pot out of his belt, cradling it with more care than he’d handled Keith with when he was alive, Lance opens the lid, dipping in his fingers to scoop out the greying ashes, flecks of black and white scattered throughout.

Piling on his palm, Keith doesn’t stay for long, the weak gravity of the nebula pulling him up and away from Lance’s hand.

Lance watches Keith float away, lump rising in the back of his throat.

Desperately, Lance feels fear shotting through him. This is it. The last of Keith. Floating just out of his grasp.

No.

A strangled scream may have escaped his throat, but Lance can’t hear it. There is no sound in space.

Only Lance, desperately closing his fists around the remains of Keith. His eye, leg, face, whatever part was handing to him in that gaddamned pot, Lance reaches for, fists closing around tiny amounts, shoving it into the pot, holding the lid closed tight, refusing to let Keith go.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

Lance feels his chest constrict, and he’s still flailing around, trying to catch Keith but falling behind, like always. Keith has always been better than him. Better scores, a better pilot, better Paladin. Natural leader, strong, stupid hair, stupid eyes, better at fighting, stupid face with eyes that are actually quite pretty, swirling purple and grey, the same colours that surround Lance now.

That miserable, gut-wrenching feeling clenches around his insides once more, and fucking hell is it ever going to go away?

Holding Keith to his chest, Lance can do nothing but float there, watching as the Keith scatters, slowly moving towards the nebula, pulled in by the luminescent lights.

In that moment, Lance thinks he would still like to kiss Keith.

At the next, a hand is sliding around his waist, body pressing against him from behind. Another hand on his hip and Lance flips around, a clump of ashes forming in front of him. They build, stacking and shifting atop of each other.

Lance knows who it is. He did the second Keith’s hand wrapped around him.

He knows Keith isn’t here. The boy in front of him now is simply some manifestation of Keith from the deep recesses of Lance’s mind. Skin dull and chalky, like the ash that floats around him.

Keith looks the same as he always has. Achingly familiar, and entirely different. His hair falls longer, past his shoulders, Galra mark on his face prominent. But his clothes are that of the day they went to space. Stupid leather jacket holding more colour and solidity than Keith’s body.

Lance doesn’t know what the hell this is, but Keith reaches for him, and Lance doesn’t care. Keith runs his hands across Lance’s face, holding his cheeks gently, thumbs brushing under his eyes. Just like he did when–

No.

Lance pulls back, furiously blinking. Spinning around, whipping his head this way and that. Colours swirling around him.

Keith is still there.

Particles drift away from him, and Keith gives Lance a weak little smile. The tips of his canines showing through his lips.

When Keith reaches for Lance again, Lance lets it happen. Doesn’t fight. Doesn’t try to stop anything when Keith’s hands hold his face again.

They float there, time meaningless. Lance fears he may be in Hell, finally punished for his sins. Keith is a fallen angel, sent down here too soon, brought to Lance only so Lance can suffer for eternity, made to bear witness to his guilty fantasies playing out in front of him.

His shame, manifesting as a physical entity. Holding him tight in the light of a nebula, light years upon light years away from Earth.

Keith’s pale, ashen lips part, leaning in to graze over Lance’s cheek. His breath is not there, but Lance feels hot air blow over his cheek anyway.

Horrid shame grabs Lance, sinking its cold claws into his palpable flesh. Feasting on his guilt.

Keith remains unaware, smile playing at his lips as his eyes flit over Lance.

He isn’t quite sure how he makes it back into the Red Lion.

All he knows is that Keith, somehow, followed him. Lance grips the handles of Red so tight his knuckles grow white, paler than the boy standing with a pleasant smile in the corner of his Lion.

Krolia doesn’t ask any questions. She can’t see Keith, and Lance is sure he’s losing his mind. The ride back to Earth is tense. When Red pulls to a stop, Krolia leaving into whatever part of the galaxy she wished her son to reside in, Lance keeps his eyes frozen on the stars in front of him. Never letting himself glance behind him.

Krolia comes back, and Lance speeds off, hoping the faster he drives, the faster Keith will leave him alone.

The pot of the last few pinches of Keith’s ashes lies heavy in his belt, weighing down his heart. It rattles with every turn Lance takes, alongside Lance’s heart.

Beating terribly fast in his chest, adrenaline forming more as cold-blooded fear, Lance squeezing his eyes shut.

For the first time in what feels like weeks, he prays.

Please, God. Anyone out there. Stop this. Please. I know I’m bad, I know. I’m so sorry for my sins. Give me every mountain on Earth and I’ll climb it barefoot.

Just let Keith rest. Leave him out of this. He’s gone, and I’m still here, give me a chance. Please. I’ll stop. I’ll stop, I promise.

Let me not feel this way. I beg of you, please.

Amen.

Chapter Text

Everything is shaky when Lance gets back to Earth. He’s sure Krolia made the attempt of talking to him on the ride back, but Lance can’t focus, or recall the answers he gave.

He’s invited to visit Keith’s grave, stare down at the cold stone with no body resting underneath. Just dirt, wet and dark.

He declines, stumbling back into the Garrison base, collapsing on the small bed in his room, lights off, tripping over the piles of clothes and miscellaneous shit scattered over the floor.

His eyes won’t shut and Lance is stuck, staring at the boy in the corner. Hair as smooth as it only is in Lance’s mind. Parts of the boy cut out and stuck together. Old clothes with new haircuts and scars earned somewhere in the middle of it all.

Keith had followed Lance back here, and he flickers in the corner, a candle threatening to extinguish. But never quite going out. Kept alive by the intensity of Lance’s gaze.

Lance doesn’t sleep that night. Or the next.

--

September 18th 30XX AMERICA’S DAILY MAIL

Voltron Disbanded, Pilot’s Said to save Resumed ‘Normal Lives’

In recent reports from insiders at the Garrison, famous Voltron pilots (or ‘Paladins’, as they call themselves), have been said to have retired, albeit temporarily, from saving the universe.

While we owe them great commemorations, (for more about Voltron’s accomplishments, see page 13) the real question asked now is; why?

Why have such international symbols decided to leave the military force?

Many people speculate that the death of Keith Kogane, late leader of Voltron, has had a heavy impact on the Paladins, his closest comrades and teammates. Kogane’s passing shook the world, and his ship (the Black Lion) still rests in front of the Galaxy Garrison as a mark of commemoration.

It has been a hard death on the world, and undoubtedly a harder death on those who knew Kogane best. The team of Voltron Paladin’s were reported to have been up in space, no more than two weeks ago, scattering Kogane’s ashes through space. Kogane was given a grave in an unspecified graveyard, a physical token to mourn.

However, in light of recent information, the Voltron Paladins have announced their retirement from the fighter pilot force. Katie Holt–at only fifteen years of age–has moved back in with her family, although she has been seen around the Garrison, working in the chemistry and biological labs with her parents–Sam and Colleen Holt.

Taumua Garret, aged eighteen, has also moved back with his family, and is living in one of the many makeshift towns built up around Nebraska after the main battles of the war where his family home was destroyed. He has not yet been seen on Garrison premises after his departure.

Leandro McClain, aged eighteen, was not seen leaving the Garrison premises, but through information provided by his sister, Verónica McClain, it has been reported that McClain is at his family home in Cuba. He has not been seen on the Garrison premises since.

Captain Takashi Shirogane, of the IGF-Atlas, aged twenty-six, has not returned to live with his family. Rather, he has been offered a semi-perminent home in the Galaxy Garrison’s off-site apartments, just an hour away in the closest town to the Garrison itself. While his retirement has been reported and given, Shirogane is still around the Galaxy Garrison’s base, sometimes sighted with the Holt family, but more commonly taking part in meetings hosting the Garrison’s next step forward. Any offers for interviews and press media have so far been declined by Shirogane. It is to be noted that Shirogane was Keith Kogane’s guardian before he left for the Kerboros mission. It is assumed that the two were close, and that Kogane’s death has affected Shirogane deeply, hence the lack of public involvement with the Galaxy Garrison.

While sources are still unsure as to why the Paladins would drop the fighter force (after everything they have done for the planet), it is understandable enough that they need some time to recover and grieve their teammate and friend. Any sightings or further reports of the Paladins will be recorded and made public.

--

Thirty-four days after Keith’s death, Lance finds himself at home.

He’d left the Garrison as quickly as he was able. Too frazzled in his own mind, Verónica had managed to book him the first flight home to Cuba. Shoving Lance on the plane and kissing him goodbye, wishing him his best and telling him how sorry she is.

Lance hadn’t told any of the others he was leaving, just packed his stuff and ran out of the Garrison, trying his hardest to leave Keith behind too.

His family had been ecstatic to see him, having moved back to Cuba shortly before Keith’s passing, as they had really only come up to America to welcome Lance back to Earth. Their greetings and hugs mixed with guilt and empathy, long glances when they think Lance isn’t looking and piling him with endless jobs and distractions.

It’s overbearing, and Lance feels like he’s glass, brittle, close to snapping with every word uttered, every hug or arm around his shoulders. Every smile. He knows his family means well.

So despite his mind's protests, Lance forces himself to settle into a routine. He’s not been with his family for more than a fortnight, and hasn’t set foot on Cuban soil for almost three years. But work on his family's farm comes to him easy, muscles honed from months of fighting, mind sharpened and in desperate need of some sort of distraction. Tough, manual labour in return for having the relief of his thoughts cleared out, filtered. Tucked away while he works.

His family slowly starts to ease off when they realise Lance prefers to be left alone. His brother takes Sylvio and Nadia back home, his niece and nephew rushing to give him a hug before they leave. Lance found it quite sweet, actually.

Although, he’s grateful for the space.

The only people who linger in the house now are his parents, and Rachel. At nineteen, she still lives in the family home, studying forensics at the nearby university. She begins to hang around her school more, crashing in her friends' dorms.

Lance kind of…floats. Grounded only by his work on the farm. Conversations fly through his brain, hardly sticking. Maybe coming back home was a mistake. But anywhere is better than the Garrison. Lance genuinely thinks he’d rather sleep on a park bench than spend another night in the hellhole. They’re still pushing out pointless propaganda, getting more and more people to enlist. Still writing article after article about them, subtly shaming them for not coming back to the base. Still keeping the Lions locked up in the hangar. (Okay, so the Lions could get out if they really tried, but they’re not, just sitting there, imobile.)

Messages from the others drift in. Hunk, Pidge, Shiro. Allura and Coran, whose texts are sent in all caps, for reasons Lance can’t quite pinpoint. Both Hunk and Pidge’s families have been sending him messages too, though Lance doesn’t open these ones. A pit of guilt growing in his stomach as he leaves them to sit in his notifications box.

Lance doesn’t think he’s coping with Keith’s death very well. Objectively, he knows it’s not the healthiest to go from surrounding yourself with people to pushing them all away. Putting all your energy into watering the flowers his papá grows on the window sill. Getting angry whenever someone tries to talk to him, even if to only offer condolences and kind, well-meaning words.

Lance doesn’t want well-meaning words. He wants harsh phrases, praises hidden behind insults, inside jokes that require too many shared experiences. That certain type of competitiveness, the type that only flares up when your competitor isn’t really the opposition, but rather someone you know just a little too well. Enough to know how to really get under their skin.

Lance goes from feeling everything to nothing at all, and it’s the worst sense of whiplash. Spending his days with nothing to give and nothing to receive in return.

Of course, it’s just his luck that when he thought he could live with this forever, Keith comes back. Maybe it’s a way of coping, or just the universe’s way of tormenting him, Lance doesn’t know.

He’s out in the flower field, just beyond his farm. Not technically owned by his family but it might as well have been.

He’s resting on his knees, idly yanking out weeds from where they sprout up around the pretty flowers, blocking the colours and consuming them whole.

There’s some animal scuttering past him, scuffling through the grass. Lance lifts his head, raising his hand to block out the sun.

Right there, sitting cross-legged in front of him, is Keith Kogane. Loose, white cotton shirt hanging from his frame. Same spliced up features as before, chopped up and stuck together. Lance squints, completely doubting his vision.

Small flakes of something drift off of Keith, looking a lot like ash. They float away slowly in the breeze.

Keith adjusts the sunhat on his head (when the hell did he get that?)

“Hey.”

The first words, spoken by a dead man. Blinking at Lance.

“Uh, Lance? Hello?” Keith moves forward onto his knees, leaning in to wave a hand in front of Lance’s face. His stupid straw sunhat flops forward, covering his eyes. Lance instinctively reaches out to push it up.

They both stop then, Keith on his hands and knees, crawling towards Lance, Lance sitting frozen. Pieces of ashy dust filter through the sunlight. Lance yanks his hand away. He thought he'd come to Cuba to escape this. That somehow, a change in scenery and lifestyle would trick his brain into getting rid of Keith.

Fat fucking luck he’s been having.

Keith pulls back, standing up and brushing himself off. More ash falling from him as he does so. Keith seems not to notice. Lance clears his throat loudly, choking back the lump that builds.

Lance stands on shaking legs. Keith just…stares, like he had back in the nebula, and the Garrison.

And like both of those times, Lance runs. Turning around and crossing the farm in quick steps until he reaches the house. Never once looking behind him, too afraid of what he’ll see.

He thunders up the steps of the porch, swinging open the door and slamming it shut behind him, panting heavily as he leans back against it, more from fear and the adrenaline pumping through him.

Running a hand over his face, Lance feels the world spin for a moment, the wooden floor underneath him swirling in dizzying circles.

He opens his eyes again. Through the soft light pouring through the window at the end of the short hallway, Keith stands, illuminated by the light. The sunhat now disappeared, it frames his hair, a halo of light.

Like an angel, Keith stands. Eyes bright, holding the secrets of all the galaxies, full lips parted slightly, face looking softer.

Like a sinner, Lance ignores his presence, turning away from the holy light to race up the stairs, lock himself in his darkened room, praying the darkness will keep Keith away.

Lance has one hand on the banister when his mother comes in from the kitchen, the big archway giving her a view of the hall, and, consequently, Lance.

“Mijo! You back from the garden already, hmm?” she comes over, wiping her hand on a tea towel, smiling at him.

Lance manages to smile weakly, nodding. “Yeah.”

The word comes out as an undignified croak, and his mamá tuts softly at him, those sympathising brown eyes on him. She walks back into the kitchen, clearly expecting Lance to follow. Lance does, not going to be one to disobey his mamá.

Their relationship has been a little thrown off these past couple weeks. His mamá has told him he can talk to her whenever, and Lance knows this, he just, can’t bring himself to tell her. She knows only as much as the newspapers and headlines tell her. Which, admittedly, is not the full story. Let alone the honest one.

Regardless, his mamá has been impossibly patient and kind, more than Lance could ask for. It’s another layer to add to his guilt. These secrets, the ones he holds now, from both before space and during, sit heavy over his heart. Guarding him from emotional damage. But stopping him from the closure of confession.

“-how does that sound, hm?”

Lance is brought back into reality, his mother clearly halfway through a one-sided conversation with him. Once again, he’s let it slip.

“Uhm, sure?” he attempts to make his response sound less like a question, failing miserably.

His mother beams, clapping her hands together and walking over to him, lightly shoving him out of the kitchen, and up the stairs. Lance sends a slightly confused look her way and she sighs softly, a loving kind of disappointment behind her eyes. The type where you don’t really blame the person for making a mistake.

“Lance. You need to wear nice clothes, yes? You will not be attending mass wearing your dirty pants.”

Oh. Fuck. He’d agreed to go to mass. Which he hasn’t gone to since the Christmas he was sixteen.

It’ll be fine, he tells himself.

--

Everything is not fine.

Lance is sitting in the back of his fathers rusty car, some small, cheap thing from before he left for space.

His parents sit in the front, snaking glances back at him through the rear-view mirror. Lance can tell that they’re secretly pleased with him agreeing to come along. His mother had huffed about ‘unconventional funerals’ when she’d read about Keith’s memorial. At least he has something in common with her there. The Garrison’s way of commemorating Keith was dogshit.

Lance is wearing a green button up, too small for him, tight around the shoulders and arms. Just a little too short to reach his jeans, the only clean pair he could find, crumpled at the bottom of his closet. Clothes he hasn’t worn in years, finally getting used once more.

The car is quiet, save for the steady thumb of the radio, soft spanish crooning through the speakers.

Keith shifts uncomfortably beside him, fiddling with the collar of his red shirt–matching Lances–smoothing down his black dress pants. For once, his mullet is put pack, pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck with a hair tie that changes colour every time Lance looks across.

Lance doesn’t know where his mind has conjured the outfit from. Or why the fuck Keith is still here. Acting like he usually would. Particles of ash drifting around the car, his parents unknowingly breathing it in. Breathing in Keith.

Lance wants to yell at them to stop, to pull over, to quit breathing, to get out of the car,
anything.

He doesn’t.

Suffering in silence as no one speaks, three people in the car and the fourth an unwanted hallucination. Or a hyperrealistic waking nightmare. Lance pointedly keeps his eyes set on the window, not taking in a single aspect of the scenery.

In the church, everything remains the same as Lance remembers it. They had come to the evening mass, and the sun is just starting to dip below the horizon as they arrive, Lance stepping out of the car to see it staining the sky a bloody orange.

Man, you can be a real hard guy to find when you wanna be.

Hey Lance…woah! What…are you wearing?!

Coran made it for me for my date with Allura.

A…date with Allura? Wow. Well done Lance.

Thanks but…it could be our last. I can’t keep all these Altean customs straight.

Listen. If she’s going out with you, it’s because she likes you. The annoying, stupid, Earth version of you.

...

You watching the sunset?

Yeah. Might be a while before we get to see it again.

Yeah, I’m really gonna miss this place.

That’s why we’ve gotta end this war. And we’re going to do it with the Lance that’s the Paladin of the Red Lion. The Lance that’s always got my back. And the Lance who knows exactly who he is, and what he’s got to offer.

Stepping into the church, Lance is thrown back by two small children running at him, wrapping their arms around his waist, chanting his name loudly.

“Uncle Lance! Uncle Lance,” Nadia yells, followed immediately by a;

“Tió!” from Sylvio.

Luis looks mortified, eyes going wide as his children practically knock his younger brother over.

Lisa just chuckles softly, pulling Lance in for a hug around the shoulders, kissing him on each cheek. She pulls her kids away gently, keeping them by her side.

“How are you?” she asks, smiling, and it feels more like a casual question. Something one would ask their friend on a hangout. Starkly different from the sympathetic, pitying tones Lance has been receiving recently.

He finds it quite refreshing. He nods back at her. “I’m–not bad,” is all he manages. Not wanting to lie but also knowing this isn’t the place to divulge into much information about his current state of mental health (which must be quickly declining, because Keith still hasn’t disappeared, still standing in the corner of the room, tucked behind some pews, his shirt now a violent pink.)

“I didn’t realise you were going to be here,” he says softly, as they begin to walk down the rows of pews, children chatting with his parents, Luis hovering nervously at his wife’s shoulder.

Lisa shrugs. “To be honest, we don’t usually come. The kids have only really been here for Christmas, Easter, my friend’s kid’s christening. But after the war, well, a lot of people have been coming more recently.”

Lance nods, and they find their seats, just close enough to the back so that they can leave in a hurry if the kids get restless. Lance is just glad he has people to hide behind.

What Lisa said is right–there seems to be considerably more people in the church than Lance ever remembers seeing, the pews all nearly full, and more people still walking through the doors.

They settle down, Sylvio and Nadia both demanding to sit either side of Lance, yabbering away at him in a steady stream of Spanish, recounting what they had been doing at school that day.

Lance nods and follows along, feeling considerably lighter. His niece and nephew don’t push him on anything, happy to have the attention of their ‘cool, space uncle.’

Maybe being cooped up in his farm for two weeks wasn’t the best thing Lance could’ve done. But it’s too late to regret actions now.

Mass starts, and everyone quiets down, the room falling to a silent hush.

Keith’s shirt is a putrid green.

The priest and servers walk slowly towards the altar, everyone standing. A forgotten song springing from their lips, Lance embarrassed to admit he’s forgotten many of the words.

Hands that have killed many, have had blood pour from them, have held dead men and women alike, hands that have committed mortal sin, now in a place of worship. Reverence.

Lance crosses himself with these hands, feeling the slightest bit like a fraud. His hand shakes when he sits down again.

“As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s love, let us acknowledge our failures and ask the Lord for pardon and strength.”

A few people around him shift, recalling their sins, their wrong-doings and faults.

Battles won. Battles lost. Fighting tooth and nail for the lives of everyone in the universe. For the lives of his team.

Shedding blood. Both his own and others. Eye set behind the scope of his gun, narrowing down on the target.

His finger, squeezing the trigger. Taking life, just as easily as he had been given it.

This divine gift. His life, his body, created to contribute to this planet. To the universe.

And Lance has caused hurt. He is bound to his sins, to this suffering. It will resonate within him for eternity. Stinging nettles threading themselves through his heart. Painfully stitching up the holes of which Lance has caused. His faults.

But the guilt of fighting in a war isn’t what sits heavy on Lance’s chest. At the end of it all, he saved more than he sacrificed, and that’s enough. It has to be. Trillions of families, reunited.

Pulling his head up from his lap, Lance’s eyes meet Keith’s. The hallucination of the boy glows at the front of the room, standing unaware. Smile curving onto his features when he sees Lance.

Lance doesn’t want to start wondering why the fuck his brain had conjured up Keith. Is it some kind of coping mechanism?

Or a way to process the…thoughts Lance has been having.

And that, is what is currently making Lance shit his pants.

Here he is, sitting in mass, yearning for a boy who once lived. Wanting to invade Keith’s personal space and consume him, lips pushing against each other, slotting together perfectly.

You can love whoever you want, mijo.

Whispers in church. Behind closed doors. Name calling. Yelling.

Kids spewing nasty words to teenagers getting into physical fights. Defending themselves against ‘the gay’ like it’s some kind of disease. That maybe if they fight back hard enough, if they hate just the right amount, their fears and victims will disappear.

Lance knows he wants to kiss Keith.

He can’t, obviously. Keith’s dead, for one.

And two, he’s not a homosexual.

He’s not.

Keith’s eyes widen with some sudden clarity. His purple irises shining bright, clearly visible, even from the back of the room.

Lance can’t pull his gaze away, locked in a staring contest with a dead man.

Keith’s shirt fades to a vivid blue, colour as bright as the midday sky. His hair floats around his shoulders, an angelic form.

Lance’s stomach churns, turning itself inside out. He feels vomit rise up in the back of his throat, his skin prickle. Everyone, all around him, asking for forgiveness, and here Lance is, staring down the body of a man who could set this whole building on fire.

The priest picks up the mass again, words spoken, but Lance can’t hear. Waves rushing through his brain, blocking out all sound. His heart hammers and he feels sick.

Keith is walking between the pews, getting closer. Each step sents another jolt of horror through Lance. He can’t stop this.

He doesn’t want it to.

He wants Keith to come to him. Wants Keith to take and take, and Lance to give him. Everything. Anything.

He’s not a homosexual.

--

It’s late.

The lights in the Castle have been dimmed, a faded teal as Lance walks through the halls, his Lion slippers shuffling along the floor. Once again, he can’t sleep. Kept up by recurring nightmares and nonsensical thoughts. Even with his sleepmask on and headphones in he can’t seem to nod off.

He follows the familiar route to the observatory, the smaller one. Secluded in the upper back corner of the Castle, something he had stumbled upon on one of his previous late-night endeavors.

He steps into the room, sinking down onto one of the soft pillows that are as large as couches, taking up the majority of the floor. A telescope sits on the left of the room, a fancy, Altean thing that looks nothing like a human telescope, all wired and compact. A holoscreen tablet comes up from the floor in the middle of the room, a few feet away from the large window, covering the entire wall, the best view of space. When turned on, it lights up images of any chosen planet or system. Letting Lance scroll through it.

This time though, Lance just sits, sinking back into the pillow. He reckons he should probably just steal one to keep in his room, honestly. Idly, he watches as stars go past, just beginning to let the first bit of drowsiness tug at him.

The door automatically whirrs open. Lance is up with a jolt, sitting upright and turning around.

Keith pads in, still in his civilian clothes (and now that he mentions it, Lance has never seen him in pajamas), plopping down beside Lance without a word.

They’ve grown closer now, Lance would say. Friends…in a loose sense of the word. They get along much easier, banter still flowing easily, sharp words becoming softened teasing. They spar, and have honed their skills enough to fight efficiently as a team.

Lance finds that he doesn’t hate the guy. With friendship, some of the jealousy he held towards Keith has dissipated. Especially when he came to the conclusion that Keith is really fucking stupid sometimes, and it just happens that he manages to come out of danger unscathed. Purely by sheer luck.

Keith settles into the large pillow. A foot or so away from Lance.

“Hey.”

“Were you following me?” is the first question out of Lance’s mouth, eyes narrowed at Keith. “I have literally never seen you in here. This is my mancave, dude.”

Keith pulls a disgusted face at him. “Please never use that word again. And I did not follow you. It’s not my fault your footsteps are so freaking loud.”

“And it’s not my fault you’re nosy as hell and wanted to know what I was up to!”

Keith rolls his eyes. “It’s not that deep, calm down.”

“Rich of you to say.”

Keith doesn’t dignify him with a response, instead punching Lance in the arm. Both of them fade into a silence, watching the stars pass by through the window.

It’s quiet for long enough that Lance lets himself slip off again, eyelids heavy and beginning to pull shut. His muscles relax and Lance can hear a shaky exhale from his left, pulling him back into consciousness again. Damn.

He doesn’t move, but he cracks open his eyes, shooting a side glance at Keith, raising an eyebrow, a silent; what?

Keith shakes his head, brushing Lance off. A small bubble of concern rises in Lance’s chest, and fuck, this is a new thing too. These…feelings for Keith. The caring ones. Lance finds he doesn’t exactly hate them.

Lance shifts closer, poking Keith in the shoulder with his finger. Another silent question.

Are you okay?

For as much as he and Keith are friends now–at least, Lance thinks so–they’res still not a lot of verbal communication between them. All glances and occasional touches. Sparring and grunts on the battlefield.

Although, if they understand the other, does anything really need to be said?

Keith huffs, not pulling away from Lance or physically shutting himself off, which Lance takes as a win. It also means one of two things, either Keith is too out of it thinking about something else to care, or he’s got something he wants to tell Lance. He had to have followed him for a reason, after all.

Lance lets his hand linger over Keith’s shoulder, and then registers what he’s doing and pulls it away, flopping limply onto the pillow, in the space between them.

A bubbly feeling rises from Lance’s stomach and he shoots it down, pulling the trigger on his rifle before the bubbles can even begin to consider to form.

Keith huffs again, like he means to say something. Lance gives him his attention, allowing the silence to open up for Keith to talk.

Keith licks his lips, tongue swiping out over the soft plush pink. A glint of his teeth. “I was following you. You went past the training deck. I saw you.”

The words sound heavy, like Keith is really pushing to force them out. Something strange to hear coming from Keith’s mouth indeed. When his words are usually so sharp and biting. Quick unforgivables.

Lance knows better than to ask why Keith was training so late. He just lets the boy continue.

Keith huffs again, now firmly looking out of the window.

“I’ve. Been meaning to tell you something, I guess. I think you’ll think it’s pretty stupid, now that I’ve made such a big deal about it. But,” Keith pauses, “I guess I wanted you to know. ‘Cause like, apparently it’s something you tell people.”

Lance can only stare at Keith in mild confusion. what on Earth is he on about?

“Yeah?” he asks tentatively. “What is it?”

Keith glances at Lance for a second, and then goes back to death-staring the window. He runs the pad of his thumb over his knuckles.

“I just…” he trails off, thought unfinished. “I think–no, I know. Uhm. That I like men. Like, I’m gay.”

Lance’s entire world implodes.

“It’s not really a big deal. But uh–I know people aren’t cool with it, so…I wanted to tell you ‘cause if you’re not then, you should probably–”

Oh no. Keith is pushing him away. As indirect (or direct) as it may seem, Lance knows Keith fears he’s getting too close to Lance. That this is his way of getting Lance to leave. So Lance doesn't end up ruining Keith’s life or whatever.

It’s a fat load of shit.

Lance’s stomach curdles. The guy he’s envied, been jealous of (and wanted to kiss since he was fifteen) is gay?

For a fleeting moment, trumpets play, angels coming down from the heavens to sing harmonies, uniting Lance and Keith in this moment of Lance’s realisation.

But angels don’t sing for sinners.

“No, I–it’s cool man. Totally cool. Honestly,” Lance says, keeping his tone even, kind. Managing to reach out a hand to brush Keith’s shoulder, something reminiscent of comfort.

Keith’s whole body visibly relaxes. Tension loosening.

Lance finds there one a foot-apart bodies considerably closer, and his arms are around Keith, and Keith’s warm hands on his back, surprisingly gentle. Like Lance is something worth keeping safe.

“Oh. Thanks,” Keith mumbles, sounding severely underwhelmed. Lance just shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it.”

And Lance hugs Keith, sick rotting his insides. Withering him away into nothing but waste.

He doesn’t hate, or loathe, or even dislike Keith for admitting who he is. For accepting that.

He hates himself. For not being able to do the same.

But I don’t need to do the same, he reminds himself. That’s not me.

--

Lord, we have sinned against you.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, show us your mercy and love.

And grant us your salvation.

People look up as the priest begins to speak again, and Lance chokes, bile rising into his mouth, resting on his tongue. It burns. A sharp, acidic taste.

“Lance? Are you okay?” Nadia asks, her hand tapping Lance’s shoulder, word hushed. Lisa hears her daughter, and glances over in concern as well. Both women waiting for his answer.

Lance swallows back the vomit. “I’m fine.”

Lisa shoots him a look that says she does not believe him at all. Lance settles his eyes on the stained glass windows, counting the coloured shards of glass. The night is dark, no light coming through into the church, but Lance counts the colours anyway.

Rather than soothing him, the task hurts his brain, adding another unpleasurable sensation to the shallow breaths in his chest, the sick churning in his stomach. His skin prickles, burning.

Keith would set the church on fire.

But he could admit his sins. Was strong enough to face them.

Lance can’t. He’s not a coward, because how can he be when he has nothing to admit to?

Lance’s skin burns.

He thinks he too might set this church on fire.

Like they are hot coals under his feet, Lance leaps up from the pew, sprinting down the short way to the back doors of the church, bursting through them, sucking in cold lungfuls of the night air, stumbling down the steps and veering off to the right, collapsing on the grass.

Lance pushes himself up immediately, scrambling across the lawn as far as he can get before his burning skin becomes too much to bear, and he scratches uselessly at it, tumbling back down once more.

Keith pops up in front of him, shirt a dark black, blending in with the sky that he walks out of, steadily towards Lance.

“Stay away from me!” Lance yells, not caring if he sounds crazy. “I don’t–go away!”

Keith doesn’t listen. Dropping to the ground in front of Lance. Arms outstretched, and Lance crawls uselessly back, because Keith wraps his arms around him, pulling him closer.

It’s a weird sensation, since Lance knows it isn’t truly happening, but he can still…feel Keith. In a way. Ash blows into his face and Lance gasps in Keith’s arms, struggling for air.

His skin is on fire, more than just the usual prickle he feels whenever he questions…his feelings.

Fuck, he can’t even say it. How pathetic his he?

“Lance. Lance. You’re okay. It’s alright. I promise,” Keith mumbles into his neck. Lance clutches at Keith’s shirt.

Keith walking past him in the hallways at the Garrison. Insults spilling from behind his unnaturally sharp canines.

Keith, on the Castle Ship, growing closer with Lance. Teasing easing off. Something shifting between them.

Keith coming out to him. Lance swallowing his guilt and resentment. He’s happy for Keith. He really is.

After all this time, Lance finds he still wants to kiss Keith.

He leans to the side, vomiting onto the grass. Spit dripping from his lips as he tries to clear the rank taste from his mouth.

“I–I think I’m–”

The words, spiraling, swirling. Choking him

Lance can’t get them out.

God, why does his skin burn?

What’s wrong with him?

Chapter Text

Lance’s family find him kneeling in a puddle of his own vomit on the grass. Apparently sprinting out of the church like that wasn’t very subtle.

Somehow, he gets away with it. Blames it on having some sort of stomach bug. Said he had felt too poorly and had to leave. The sympathising looks he receives make him feel ill, but Lance ignores it, letting his papá bring him back to the car.

When they get back home, his mamá fusses over him, giving him medicine and rattling off about how Lance needs to take care of himself better and it was no wonder he had gotten ill, will how long he spent outside all day, hardly taking a break.

So Lance is given forced bedrest, under the illusion that he’s terribly sick.

His conversation with Keith, his screamed words, repeat on loop in his head. He tosses and turns under his bedsheets, face scrunching as he wills himself to forget. It’s stupid. It’s all so stupid.

Lance doesn’t know how long its been before his mamá comes bustling back in, waving about his phone. Great.

“Mijo, your friends have been calling you? What’s this, huh? You ignore them?” she demands, looking frustrated.

Lance sits up, not having the patience for this anymore. “No, mamá. I–I haven’t really been using my phone.”

“Well you need to, yes? These people care about you. Invite them over. It will be good for you to see them again. And I want to meet them all. I haven’t seen them since you first got back to Earth, hm?”

No. Anything but this, please.

“Sí, mamá. I’ll let them know. I think everyone is busy though. Lots of things to do.”

His mother gives him a look, raising her eyebrow. “And you would know that they are busy because you have been talking to them?”

Lance withers under his mother’s gaze.

--

And so that’s how he finds himself, a week and a half later, sitting on a chair in his backyard, surrounded by his family, the other Paladin’s families, three Alteans, and a space wolf.

Reluctantly, he had ended up sending a message out to the others, his mother’s watchful eye behind him. Everyone had rescinded near-instantly, despite the time differences.

Lance hadn’t realised how much the others had wanted to meet up again, because they all had brought along what felt like every person they knew on the first flight over to Cuba. It was overwhelming, to say the least, to see them all standing on his doorstep, arms open and ready to embrace him. Maybe they had all needed this.

It wasn’t a party as such, but his papá had set out the nice deck chairs, and Marco was acting like he knew how to work a barbeque, standing beside Coran, who was interjecting with unnecessary comments every few seconds.

Everyone else was mingling, still tired and jet-lagged from the flight, but smiling.

Lance just felt exhausted.

It’s not that he didn’t want to see the others, because he really did, but–

It was too much.

“How are you?”

A voice, cutting through his thoughts. Lance looks up, only to find Shiro smiling down at him, offering out a cup of something to him. Lance takes it, just to have something to do with his hands. Orange juice.

Shiro sits next to him, pulling up a chair.

“I’m good,” Lance says, twirling the cup in his hands.

Shiro nods. “How are you settling in? To being back home?”

Lance shrugs. “It’s okay. Not really how I remember but…still the same, if you get what I mean?”

Shiro laughs at that, and Lance doesn’t get what’s so funny. “I suppose being in space for a year can do that, yeah.”

Lance nods dully and the conversation reaches a standstill, Shiro sipping from his own cup. Lance watches as his niblings run around, chasing after Kosmo, squealing in delight when the wolf disappears, only to teleport to the other side of the garden.

Shiro, walking away from the rest of the group only to come back an hour or so later, looking devastated. Keith getting up off of the couch in the Paladin’s room to touch his arm, asking in hushed tones what was wrong.

Shiro’s fiance had died in the war. A suicide mission of sorts, Keith had told Lance later, in the quiet darkness of the halls of the Garrison, of which by then they had both taken to walking around.

Adam Wasan, was his name. Lance vaguely remembers him back when he was a cadet. He was one of the teachers. Lance had thought he was quite funny. Keith had said he was an asshole.

Later that same night, they had gone to the memorial wall, where it offered each person nothing more than a name plaque. Lance had politely pretended not to notice when a tear fell down Keith’s face.

Lance hadn’t known Shiro was in a relationship with a man. Well, not that it mattered, but–it bugged him even more that so many people around him could admit to themselves that they were something Lance was so very afraid of.

“I’m sorry about your fiance,” the words are past Lance’s lips before he can think twice. “I don’t–I didn’t know. You had uh, never mentioned him before.”

He glances at Shiro, only to find the man’s eyes wide, prosthetic gripping tight onto his knee. Crap, had he said the wrong thing?

Shiro doesn’t seem to know what to say, mouth moving but no sound coming out.

“Ah–sorry, I–” Lance quickly rushes in to apologise, because this is the first time he’s spoken to Shiro in months dammit, and he’s already fucking it up.

Shiro manages to get a hold of himself a little. “You knew?” he asks, eyes searching Lance’s.

Was he not supposed to? Lance can’t recall Shiro ever telling him (or any of the Paladins) about Adam, but he hadn’t realised it was some secret.

“Was I not supposed to have known? I–Keith told me,” he admits.

Somehow, it seems easier to ignore the fact that Keith’s gone, to press on with the conversation like Keith is standing at the other end of the garden.

“No it’s–it’s fine. But uh–thank you.”

Lance nods. “He was my flight nav teacher, and he wasn’t half-bad actually. Much more preferable to Iverson,” he shudders at the mention of the name, desperately hoping that Shiro isn’t going to get upset over the fact that he’s still dragging this conversation.

Shiro half-laughs at that, and Lance lets some of the tension loosen from his shoulders.

“He was an asshole.”

“Keith said the same thing,” Lance snorts, yearning to slip back into a comfortable conversation, despite the topic being anything but.

And, okay, so maybe he’s missed talking to everyone. Finally seeing them again. Emotions, dark and stabbing still fight in his gut, but he can push them aside for now. Let himself relax.

“He was,’ Shiro groans, rubbing a hand over his face, but all the same, he wears a fond smile.

“Yo! Lance, you wanna help me with the food or not?” A yell from across the garden, and Hunk is grinning at him, trays of food on the table beside him.

It all feels so familiar that Lance feels as if he could cry. Glancing over at Shiro, and seeing the older man offer him a small smile is all it takes for Lance to stand up and out of his seat, meandering over to Hunk, who immediately starts giving him instructions on where each food item must be placed on the table.

Most of it goes over his head, but by the time everything is squished onto the four picnic tables Luis had dragged out from the shed, everyone is seated, cramped around, sitting on whatever was available.

Lance ends up at the end of the table, which he finds he doesn’t mind. Hunk is at his right, Matt Holt across from him.

Dinner is a loud affair, just as Lance thought it would be. Everyone is laughing and yelling. The atmosphere alive and bright. A comment and joke from Hunk, and Lance finds himself swept away in it all, smiling and joking too.

It’s so nice, to finally be able to let go. Why the fuck Lance didn’t start responding to everyone’s messages sooner, he doesn’t fucking know. His problems are still there, but now he’s got a healthy distraction and a shit-ton more serotonin.

At some point between Lance shoving three garlic knots in his mouth at once, and laughing at Pidge for getting yelled at by her mum for shoving four garlic knots in hers, Lance’s mamá catches his eye, winking softly at him, smile playing across her mouth.

Lance huffs a little, aggressively chewing his food for a solid half a minute before swallowing it in a big chunk. Eurgh.

He coughs, Hunk slamming his hand against his back.

Thank you, he mouths at his mamá, who rolls her eyes at his disgusting behaviour. He grins a little, turning back to tease Pidge, who has now resulted to sulking under the watchful eyes of her mother.

As the food disappears, so do the people. They drift away, scattering themselves around in smaller groups now, breaking out of Lance’s garden and onto the grassy path that leads down to the beach, one after the other following until everyone has sand between their toes, drinks still clutched tightly in their hands.

Lance is one of the last people to come down, and whilst he makes brief eye contact with Allura–that is a whole other can of worms he doesn’t wanna unpack right now–no one actually talks to him, so Lance hovers. Baiting a good couple minutes before slipping off into the night, moon bright above him, glittering across the water in small, rippling waves.

He follows the shoreline down a good hundred meters or so, flip-flops dangling from his hand, water lapping up around his ankles.

When he stops, he steps out of the ocean, dropping his shoes and letting himself collapse back onto the sand, starfishing his body out.

Stars glimmer above him, but they don’t feel as far away as they used too. Not now that Lance has been close enough to touch them.

It’s a funny feeling when he remembers Keith is out there. Just…pieces of him, drifting about. A wiggling ache in his chest. Further amplified by the fact that some part of Keith is still here, on Earth, tucked away in Lance’s room, moved around again and again, but now currently under the loose panel on his floor.

Sand puffs up beside him with a dull thud, and oh God, not again.

“Lance.”

Lance startles.

It is not the hallucination of Keith laying beside him, but rather, the very real (and alive) Allura of Altea, her hair braided back into two short little plaits, sticking out of either side of her head.

Her clothes are covered in sand, a garish pink shirt with a slogan in a language Lance doesn’t recognize and a flowy, ankle length white skirt, little flowers stitched into it.

A lump forms in the back of Lance’s throat. If he’s being honest, he was low-key avoiding Allura all night. Not that they haven’t talked since Keith’s crash (calling it that seems so much easier than his death, Lance reasons), but, well—

Lance is freaking out a little, okay?

“Hey Allura,” he manages, smile on his face as he turns to look at her.

“How are you?” she asks, and fuck, if that isn’t a loaded question. “I was going to send you an electronic message, but I wasn’t sure how to do that.”

Okay. That he can work with.

Lance pinches his brows in slight confusion. “Do you have my number?” he asks, “Because if you’re going to send a text message you need to like, actually send it to someone.”

“Oh, I don’t have a device,” Allura laughs, eyes sparkling as she looks at him.

“Ah. Uhm, did the Garrison not issue you with one?”

She shakes her head. “Not that I know of.”

Lance turns his head back up to the stars, frowning. Fucking Garrsion. Probably didn’t give Krolia one either, thinking that the aliens were just some sort of lifeless being.

“What were you uh–what were you gonna send me a message about?” Lance asks, to distract himself from his very angry thoughts, and then mentally kicks himself, because this conversation could very much go into territory he does not want to cross.

--

Lance clambers down from the Black Lion, feeling a stark sense of disappointment. Over what, he doesn’t know. But it settles in his chest, nestled between his ribs, just a little too big to properly fit.

He takes the pans and pots off before he gets home, not ready to be laughed at by his siblings. His mamá is gushing over him, asking question after question. Lance answers them through laughter, an excited feeling bubbling up in his chest.

This is his first date. Like, officially.

To be honest, as much as he did flirt with Allura in the beginning, he never imagined he would be presented with an opportunity like this.

He thinks back to near the end of the war, where he and Allura had gotten closer. She was funny, hilariously so, and was kind of brash at times, tending to say things she thinks, without filter. Especially if they’re not around the presence of someone she needs to go all ‘Princess mode’ for.

He remembers doing her hair, pulling the thick locks back as they watched shitty romcom after shitty romcom, all of them in languages they both couldn’t understand.

Lance stands in front of the mirror in his bedroom now, fingers nervously adjusting his collar. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. It’s Allura. One of his closest friends.

Well, girlfriend now, he supposes.

His stomach flips at that, twisting like he’s going to throw up. It’s probably the nerves.

As he’s walking down the stairs, his mamá is opening the door, Allura standing behind it, he dress a pale pink, sleeves ending just past her elbows. She looks nice, Lance thinks, walking into the entryway to greet her.

Dinner, as he expected, is an awkward affair. His family push him with even stupider, more ridiculous questions and comments, directing some at Allura too, Sylvio loudly declaring “I’ve never seen an alien before!”, and Nadia asking her why she doesn’t have green skin.

To which Allura promptly shifted her skin tone to a dark, molten green, making the younger kids laugh, and Marco’s eyes to blow wide.

Lance kinda gets the vibes that Allura is a little uncomfortable (which, is fair, his family is a lot), as she’s putting on that tone of voice she uses for official meetings. Lance manages to finish his food pretty quickly, and when Allura does too, he leaps to his feet, loudly declaring that they’re going for a walk. He relaxes when Allura looks relieved, and takes her hand as they walk out of the door, because it’s a nice thing to do.

(And, if they’re dating now, he should probably start doing it more. Couples casually touch, right?)

Swallowing down his lack of experience, Lance leads them down the steps of his porch, walking down a small, winding path through what everyone refers to as ‘the forest’, but is more like trees clustered together.

Fireflies buzz around them, and the atmosphere feels very romantic.

“You’re family are very nice,” Allura says, and it sounds genuine, like she really means it, rather than it being a polite pleasantry. “I can see why you’ve told me so much about them. They’re lovely people.”

Lance flushes at this, looking down at the ground. “Awh, uh, thanks. Sorry about them pestering you with all those questions though. I promise they really weren’t trying to be rude, they're just curious,” he sighs.

Allura laughs softly. “I didn’t mind it. It was quite…refreshing.”

Lance snorts at that, and they break off into peals of laughter. Letting go of her hand as they stumble down the path.

Conversation flows easier after that. Back and forth they analyse Lance’s family, not in an unkind way, but just things they’ve observed. Lance fills her all in on the lore behind each member, adding in stories from his childhood.

Lance feels bad when they reach a big oak tree in the middle of the forest, fireflies crowding the area. He’d almost forgotten the whole reason he was here in the first place; the fact that he’s on a date.

He frowns slightly, grabbing Allura’s hand again, because dammit, why did he even let go? He’s just been casually chatting with her all night, but this is a date. He needs to impress her, to hold her close and be a gentleman because he

, not because he wants to chat.

Allura lets out a note of surprise, but doesn’t question him or pull away, letting lance bring them to a stop in front of the tree, turning around so he can face her.

“Lance?” she says softly, cocking her head to the side slightly, the vowels in his name held for slightly too long.

Lance? Woah–what are you wearing?

And we’re going to do it with the Lance that’s the Paladin of the Red Lion. The Lance that’s always got my back. And the Lance who knows exactly who he is, and what he’s got to offer.

Hey Lance!

Lance.

Lance leans forward, shoving his mind out of his Keith-infused spiral, because why the fuck is he thinking about him when he’s kissing Allura?

Holy shit, he’s kissing Allura.

Lance lets himself sink into it for a second before pulling away. Staring at her with wide eyes.

They were no fireworks. Or explosions. Or even really tiny butterflies.

Fucking hell, he’d forgotten half of the kiss all because he was imagining how Keith said his name.

Get a fucking grip Lance.

He mentally shakes himself, leaning back in when Allura doesn’t pull away to kiss her again, this time feeling his insides squirm a little, giddy with newfound excitement.

--

Allura hums softly, her next words coming out steady and practiced, like she’d repeated them many times so she could get them just right.

“I was going to ask if we could talk. Both because we haven’t in ages, and I quite like talking to you. And because I think it’s best we sort out this whole mess of us dating, yes? I don’t want to move around each other forever.”

Lance keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the blanket of space overhead.

“Ah, I–yeah. I guess we should,” he says, very undignified. Feeling a little at loss for where to start, or how to approach this.

This whole mess of us dating.

Was that really how Allura viewed their one date? A mess?

Yeah, sure, it might have been Lance’s first actual date with a girl (the only other time was once back when he was fourteen, and he showed up at his then ‘girlfriends’ dorm room, only to have the door opened by all her friends and be laughed at, because she had asked him out as a joke. (because who the hell would want to go out with the guy from Cuba, who was too overeager and willing, excited beyond belief to finally have the acknowledgement of someone.)) but he didn’t think it was a mess.

Allura sighs, sitting up and brushing the sand off of her lap. Lance, taking the hint, follows suit and sits up next to her, brushing the imaginary sand from his shorts. Fingers picking at the hem of his shirt, eyes firmly locked on Allura’s shoulder.

Allura clears her throat. “Lance. I–I don’t really have much experience with these sort of things,” she admits, sounding a little downcast.

“With dating, you mean? Me neither, if I’m being honest,” Lance says. Trying to loosen the tension he can feel steadily building.

“Yes. I suppose being in a medal induced coma for ten-thousand years may have been my cause for that, but,” Allura chuckles softly. “I believe that I’m only a few years older than you, and I know that I can tell my feelings for people apart.”

Lance stays quiet, knowing Allura likes to get said what she needs to say without being interrupted, but also because he knows whatever he says, the inevitability of the outcome is going to stay the same. Perhaps because a part of him doesn’t want it to change.

Lance draws his eyes to the ocean in front of him, seeing that Allura is too staring out at the waves. The water shifts, seeming to rise and then fall cascading down–

Keith. No.

Of course.

Keith sits in the shallows of the ocean, legs crossed, water swirling around him, staring peacefully at Lance and Allura.

Allura doesn’t make a comment. Lance is still the only one who can see him then.

Lance’s body wants to fucking explode.

“I wanted to talk to you today because, Lance, I know we said that we would put our relationship to the side while we focus on the war. And I’ve thought about it,” Allura continues on, and Lance listens, but his eyes are full of Keith.

“My feelings towards you are still the same. Which, I thought was strange, as we hadn’t acted like romantic partners towards each other. I thought maybe it was because I’ve been in love with you the whole time but Lance I–I don’t think that I have. And I–Lance, do you get what I’m trying to say?” Allura asks, her voice the tiniest bit desperate. Because she too doesn’t entirely know how to communicate these feelings, and she wants Lance to understand.

Lance drags his eyes away from Keith, pulls his mind out of the hot garbage that’s currently churning away in his stomach. He looks at Allura again, one of her plaits falling out, her expression pinched and worried. Like she imagines Lance is going to bite her, or something.

“I think I do,” Lance starts slowly. “I—I do like you a lot. Like, I really do. But I can see where you’re coming from. We’ve been friends for so long that it, okay it didn’t feel weird on the date, and I enjoyed it, but–”

Fuck, okay, he’s making no sense now, stumbling over his words, because Keith is staring him down and he can’t lose Allura by saying something stupid but he also can’t stay in a romantic relationship with her because–

“It would be better if we were friends again?” Allura butts into his thoughts. Voicing what Lance could not.

Lance visibly relaxes. “Yes. That. Please. If it’s–okay?”

Allura laughs. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I did not want it. But yes. I do want to be friends with you, Lance.”

Lance smiles at her, a genuine one this time, because it finally feels like he’s gotten somewhere he’s happy with in at least one of his relationships. Yeah, not everything is perfect between them, they’ll probably still need to talk this out, but for now? Lance can be happy with this.

Glancing back to the ocean, Keith is still sitting there, legs now stretched out in front of him. Water running over his toes. Something nasty threatens to fall out of Lance’s mouth in a pile of vomit, and Lance shifts, moving to sit behind Allura, tugging on her loose plait. She doesn't question, and lets him undo the other one too, running his fingers through her short hair. He needs something to do with his hands, or else he might start clawing at his throat, ripping his heart out and doing something stupid like tossing it at Keith.

“I like you too, Lance,” Allura says. “But as–as a friend. And I think I owe you an apology, too.”

Lance’s brow pinches in confusion. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m not, uh, upset or anything.”

“Yes, but–” Allura sighs, trying to word her thoughts, and Lance strokes his fingers through her hair, pulling out the couple of pins she had in it, twisting the strands around his fingers.

“I was in love with Lotor,” she begins. Lance feels his breath hitch. He’s forgotten about that fucking idiot. His heart does a weird plummet-flip, but he lets her talk.

“I think I was so wrapped up in that love, that when he–betrayed us all,” –her voice turns unnaturally bitter here–”I was so angry, and disappointed. I wanted to continue to fell that love, and so I–I said yes to going on a date with you. I though that because I also liked you, my feelings would shift and I could feel for you what I felt for him. I know it was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done it, and I should’ve told you how I was feeling.”

She finishes with her head turned down, clearly meaning her words.

Lance finds he doesn’t know what to say. It hurts, having the girl he thought he was helplessly in love with, tell him that he was a rebound, a hopeful attempt at recreating the feelings she felt for another man. A man who murdered hundreds.

He can’t blame her for her feelings but–

Lance’s eyes meet Keith’s again and he’s thrust back into a limbo of sick, acid-churning hatred. How can he blame Allura, or get angry at her, when he too was using her as a vessel to pour his feelings for another out into?

He loves Allura. He really does. But the idea of her in his head is the one he was in love with. And right now, that idea looks suspiciously like the man in the ocean, water flowing over his lap.

Lance lets his hands fall away from her hair, shuffling around so he’s sitting beside her once more.

“Yeah. You should’ve told me,” he mumbles, keeping his tone light. He can’t be mad at Allura. He isn’t. More angry at himself, if anything. “But I get why you didn’t. It’s–hard. Having feelings for someone else and not being able to express them.”

Allura nods, her eyes looking hopeful. “Yes. Especially when it feels as if everyone will turn against you if you do. Like loving them is the worst option, even if he really was a good person. At least, I’d like to hope, that maybe in another lifetime, he could’ve been.”

Lance hums in agreement. Letting the silence blanket them.

“You can be mad at me. I know what I did was wrong. It was not very kind of me at all, especially since I still consider you one of my closest companions,” Allura says, clearly reading Lance’s silence as veiled annoyance.

Lance shrugs. “I’m not mad at you. I guess I’m–a little upset. But I want this too. I also think that being friends is the best choice for us, okay? So don’t go beating yourself up over things you can’t change.”

There’s a yell from further down the beach, where the others are all still standing.

“We should probably get back,” Allura says, standing up and brushing sand off of herself. Offering a hand out to Lance. Lance takes it, but doesn’t move to walk back.

“I think I’m just–gonna stay here for a moment.”

Allura bites her lip. “Okay.”

He leans in then, reaching around Lance for a hug. It’s nice. Lance hugs her back, hand stroking through her thick hair. Trying to convey through his body language that he genuinely wants the best for her and that he too, does truly think they should be friends, even if it means he has to live with the knowledge that he was the rebound.

When Allura pulls back, she looks over him for a second. “Take care of yourself, Lance. And please try to respond to the team's messages. They care about you too.”

With a final nod in her direction, Allura seems to deem him okay and turns, walking down the beach, hair catching the moonlight.

Lance sighs, turning back to the ocean. He doesn’t even question before he heads down to the water, cold over his feet.

He drops down in the shallows, shorts soaked, but he doesn’t care. Keith leans back, resting on his hands as he snorts.

“You’re a hypocrite.”

“Shut the hell up,” Lance snaps back, but he knows it’s true. “Couldn’t you see that I was trying to have a private conversation?”

Maybe questioning Keith’s actions and thoughts would trigger some sort of existential crisis, have Keith remember the fact that he’s dead, and disappear.

“You wanted me here. So surprise. Here I am. Did you know I’ve never seen the ocean before? Like, on Earth, I mean.”

“Why the fuck are you giving me fun facts?”

Keith shrugs, not giving Lance an answer as he flicks water up at Lance’s face, cold drops stinging his skin.

“Besides. Allura couldn’t see me. So it was technically still a private conversation,” Keith reasons, hopping back to the original topic.

“Yeah but. You can’t just–keep popping up! Why the hell are you here anyway? I–you’re dead Keith. I can’t keep up with the fact that you’re still here. Not when–you just follow me around, and–and fuck up my feelings like this.”

It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to actually admitting that he feels something towards Keith, and probably the closest he ever will.

Keith sighs, and then flops back into the water, submerging himself. His hair fans out around him, and he’s beautiful. Lance’s hands grip into the sand to stop himself from reaching out to touch.

Keith raises his head back up. “I’m here because you wanted me to be,” he says half-cryptically, and Lance supposes he’s never gonna know.

“What, so is this like some unfinished business shit? You need to do something with me for you to move on?” he knows his words sound harsh but Lance just wants the ache in his chest gone.

“Sort of.”

Lance groans at the non-answer, and this time he’s the one flicking water at Keith.

Keith barely flinches, giving him a bemused stare.

If Lance wants Keith gone, he’s going to have to actually talk to the guy. The dead, ghost body of one of his friends. That he may or may not still want to kiss.

Lance sits in the ocean alone, staring longingly at the water beside him, so many complicated feelings pulsing through him.

But he needs Keith gone. He can’t live in this limbo anymore.

He was happy earlier today, surrounded by his friends and loved ones. He can live without Keith. It’s just, like a dog to a bone, Keith keeps yanking him back. Again and again Lance is reminded of parts of himself he would rather ignore.

Hypocrite.

Lance flops back into the ocean, letting salty water cover him. Stares up at the stars for as long as he can before the water starts to sting his eyes and he’s forced to close them.

Keith takes non-breaths beside him, never once needing to blink underwater.

Chapter Text

Delusion
noun
A false belief or judgement about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions.

Lance wanders back to his house sopping wet, taking the long route–behind the flower patch and through the back door–so as not to be seen by any lingering family members. He can’t quite say how long he’s been in the water for, but his shirt’s gone see-through, and the sky is properly dark now, stars poking through the black folds.

He grabs a towel from the laundry as he heads upstairs, hastily wiping his bare legs and arms, bursting into the bathroom and shucking all his damp clothes off, and he’s in the shower before he can even think about the other people sleeping in his house, and how much noise he’s probably making right now.

(To be honest, Lance finds that he doesn’t really care. All their guests booked to stay in the nearby hotels, and his family have had enough shared experience of living in the same house as many others that they can deal.)

The room is steaming up and Lance has lathered shampoo in his hair before he remembers Keith. Okay, well he’s been thinking about Keith the whole time (partly because at some point in time when Lance was submerged in the icy waves, Keith had disappeared.), but he’s especially awake of the boy now, as Keith is sitting on the bathroom counter, like this is completely normal, and he regularly watches Lance shower.

Lance is given no consolidation when he also remembers that Keith isn’t real. Matter of fact, that makes it worse, because why the hell is he hallucinating Keith watching him shower?

Lance opens the shower door, scowling at Keith.

“¿Qué carajo? What are you doing in here?” he snaps, more confused than anything.

Keith’s eyes meet his, smirk resting on his face. He swings his legs off of the counter, not having a care in the world. The steamy room not having any affect on his perfect, smooth hair.

“Am I not allowed to be here?”

“Uh, I fucking think not!” Lance replies, baffled, before quickly shutting the shower door, jumping back under the spray. Because he is not having his naked body out in the open like that. In front of Keith.

Who he has also decided to start properly talking to. One, because this might be some weird ghost shit and for Keith to move on and get the fuck out of his life (and his bathroom), he needs to actually communicate with the boy. And two, Lance misses him. A lot. He knows that this Keith isn’t the real one. That the last remains of Keith lie tucked under his floorboards in a tiny pot. But it’s all he has.

So Lance opens the shower door again, just a crack, flipping Keith off. He can hear the boy snort, and a thud as Keith hops down from the counter. Finally.

Lance hears the door creak open with what must be Keith stepping out, and he sighs, trying not to thing about the implications of it too much. He scrubs the shampoo from his hair, humming softly to himself.

So, plan of action. Unsurprisingly, Lance had a good time tonight. Minus the whole ‘you were a rebound for my true love’ confession from Allura, Lance enjoyed seeing everyone again, even if it meant reminiscing slightly. He’s also come to the conclusion that he has kinda been an asshole, what with ignoring everyone and cutting them out. So, make regular contact with the others. (Or, at least try to.)

Second, talk to Keith. About anything. This one’s easy. He can slip back into the easy-going friendship he had with Keith before, like nothing has happened.

Third, is, uh. Maybe properly think. About his feelings. Towards others.

But that’s the third step, and also the last, so it can probably wait until later. Much, much later.

Lance’s humming turns into him singing a soft tune as he applies his body scrub. The shower acoustics are banging tonight, because he swears he can hear the perfect little harmony rebounding off of the walls. And nope, wait, hold on–

That’s Keith. It’s Keith singing.

Because, for some fucking reason, he’s still in the bathroom.

Lance shrieks and the signing cuts off.

“What?” comes Keith’s dry voice.

Lance wipes a square of the condensation on the glass, making a window to see Keith through. Keith is in a towel, hair dripping wet, and wearing nothing. Oh.

“Why the hell are you still in here! Give me some fucking privacy man, I thought you’d left!” Lance exclaims, voice rising in pitch.

Keith gives a noncommittal shrug, sitting himself back up on the countertop. “I dunno. Dunno how I’m anywhere, really.”

Maybe it’s best not to question Keith’s mortality then.

“That’s great dude. Truly. But maybe you would like–turn around?”

To his absolute fucking relief, Keith turns, and Lance can ease out a sigh, decisively not looking at Keith’s back in favour for getting this stupid shower over and done with.

When he finally steps out, Keith is standing in the corner, facing the wall. Lance huffs and drys off as fast as humanly possible and wraps the towel around himself, marching out of the bathroom and the few steps down the hall to his childhood bedroom, which he guesses is just his room now, with him having no where else to go and no where to dub as his ‘other bedroom.’

When inside his room, Lance all but jumps into bed, yanking on a pair of sweatpants and tucking himself up under the covers. His mind is still whirring, and he needs to shut it off as fast as possible before he spirals out of control over the fact that Keith was watching him shower.

It’s the first time in a long time that he completely overlooks his skincare/nighttime routine.

--

Being someone’s rebound is not the best thing you can be.

But seeing hallucinations of the man you’ve wanted to kiss since you were a teenager (okay, Lance still technically is a teenager) is undoubtedly worse.

The whole ‘talking with Keith,’ thing is going quite well. For the most part.

Keith follows him around everywhere, which is very unsettling, and Lance finds that if he grows too distracted with other people Keith’ll just sorta…fade away. He always appears when Lance wants him the least or in random corners of the room. For the other part, Keith is predominantly the same. Everything Lance remembers about him, is there. Keith talks the same, walks the same, is the same.

--

Lance is out in the garden, pulling weeds. With his siblings all moved out, and his mamá getting too old to properly do labour for long hours any more, the vegetable patch around the side of the house has become half-ignored.

Lance chucks another weed in the steadily-growing pile, reaching up to stretch, back cracking loudly.

A wolf-whistle, and then a smirk, curving up the side of his face, dimples deep in the both of his cheeks. A reminiscent of Keith’s once softer features. “Gettin’ old without me, hm?”

Lance pointedly does not think about that statement, meeting Keith’s eye.

“Shut the hell up. You’re like, three years older than me,” he bends down again, fingers digging deep into the dirt.

Keith snorts, adjusting that stupid sunhat on his head. “Two,” he argues.

“Uh, no, three. You were a year older than me before you left for that giant space whale life.”

“Was not,” Keith definitely crosses his arms. Lance can’t help but huff.

Fuck, he’s missed this.

“Was too. We’ve discussed this like, fifteen times. Everyone was always freaking out about time and ages and shit back on the Castle Ship. You’re three years older than me. End of.”

Keith crouches down beside him, fingers wrapping around the stem of a particularly leafy carrot. “Not for much longer.”

He tugs the plant, eyes widening in surprise when he realises that he did not, in fact, pull up a weed.

Lance gapes at him.

“You fucking–what?” his last word comes out more strangled than he’d like, almost desperate.

He blinks to clear his vision, as if that will somehow give him some sudden clarity. When he opens them again, Keith is gone. Of fucking course.

The loss echoes in his chest, hollow.

--

Lance is playing hide and seek with Sylvio and Nadia, crouched in the corner of his old treehouse (which he now supposes is Nadia and Sylvio’s), trying to keep quiet.

An increasingly familiar floppy sunhat flaps past the window, before Keith is crouching through the doorway, and busting into the small space.

His sunhat must be getting bigger every time Lance sees him, because it’s blocking the entire door now.

“Hey, can you move?” he hisses, “I need to see out of the door to know when the niblings are coming.”

He bats his hand in Keith’s direction, mimicking shooing him away.

Keith only half-complies, taking off his hat to reveal some of the worst hat-hair Lance has ever seen. (Seriously, how can this guy have such perfect helmet-hair, but it look so bad after hats?) He chucks it at Lance, who catches it with no hesitation.

And then it sort of…fades away in Lance’s hands, the ash falling off of it increasing until it’s gone completely. Huh?

A snort and the door is blocked again, the sunhat somehow back on Keith’s head.

Lance groans. “You asshole. You knew that was going to happen.”

Keith plays innocent. “What do you mean? Nothing happened. Here, take the hat if it's bothering you so much.”

Lance knows Keith is a cheeky little shit–but he also recognizes the fact that Keith is a complete hallucination. This could genuinely be Keith malfunctioning.

Lance takes the hat.

Yet again, it disappears, appearing back on Keith’s head. Motherfucker.

Lance rolls his eyes, sitting back and pretending to be annoyed. Keith grins, one of those rare things that lights up his entire face, one sharp canine poking out from underneath his top lip.

--

Lance walks into the living room, plopping down on the couch, only to jump up with a shriek.

Keith grins at him, sprawling out across the cushions.

“What the cheese?” Lance hisses. “Keith what are you doing? And is that–why the hell are you wearing my Abuela’s dressing gown?”

Keith looks down at his pale blue sparky attire, as if he’s surprised. “Oh. I thought it was yours.”

Lance splutters, completely at a loss for what to say. He glances through the doorway into his kitchen, which thankfully, is empty.

“Yeah, well just because Abuela sleeps in my room when she comes over and has all her shit in my closet, doesn’t mean it’s mine!” he protests. And then–

“Why on Earth were you in my closet, anyway?”

“I lost my jacket,” Keith says, with the most nonchalant expression. “And you always wore that stupid night gown on the Castleship, I thought you had this one at your house or something.”

Lance scoffs, pushing Keith over so he can sit down, running a hand through his hair. “How can you lose your jacket? You don’t–”

You don’t exist, his mind supplies.

“You always manage to find that stupid sunhat,” is what he says instead, changing tack.

Keith laughs, (fucking laughs, dimples digging into his cheeks, almost silent in its sound, entire body throwing itself into it.) and shoves his legs out, sprawling them across Lance’s lap.

“Why do you not like my hat?” he asks, faking a pout.

Lance huffs. “It’s stupid.”

“So are you.”

“Shut up.”

“Not stupid-stupid. Funny stupid. You’re quite intelligent.”

“I know what you meant.”

But there’s still a tiny bubble of warmth in his chest, steadily growing over the fact that Keith had felt the need to clarify.

”The dumb one, Lance!”

Laughter echoes around him, the audience jeering.

”Awh, c’mon you big dumb–dumb!”

Keith hums, stretching out. The dressing gown fans out around him, and it’s all so ridiculous. Keith makes a point of shaking out his hair, folding his hands across his chest.

“Anyway, I still don’t believe that this isn’t yours.”

“What? The dressing gown?” Lance raises an eyebrow.

Keith nods. “Uh-huh. It’s blue as well, which is like, your colour, yeah? And it’s all sparkly an’ frilly an’ shit.”

“My favourite colour is teal, actually.”

It’s Keith’s turn to raise and eyebrow now. “Teal is a shade of blue.”

“An’ who the fuck’s favourite colour is teal? What the hell, Lance?”

“Hey, don’t diss me!”

--

Lance knows it’s not his Keith. God, he knows.

He doesn’t let that stop him from taking Keith out to the Juniberry field, one late afternoon. He had been given the seeds from Allura and Coran ages ago, back when they had just landed on Earth. Apparently they grow super fast because already, the field is blooming. Pinks and yellows beautiful in the sunlight.

Lance leans against the thick oak tree, Keith pressed up beside him.

The contact is another thing he’s noticed–Keith can’t seem to stay away. Their contact was limited when he was alive, touching when they needed to, on missions and such. Sparring, or a casual pat on the back. That one time Keith cradled him in his arms.

It’s different now. Keith’s not-warm, not-cold body slotted in perfectly beside Lance’s own. Lance finds he doesn’t mind if, if he doesn’t think about it too hard. A small, selfish, hungry part of him relishes in the touch. (Not that he’d ever admit it out loud.)

The sun is just beginning to set, dipping below the horizon, leaving warm air in it’s wake. Lance tips his head back, sighing as he breathes it in.

“Why’d you start growing the flowers?” Keith asks, motioning to the Juniberries in front of them.

It’s how most of their conversations go. Keith asking little questions, Lance happy to go on long rambling rants.

“The Altean’s gave me the seeds when we got back to Earth. Apparently they had found some in the back recesses of the Castle and Coran had saved them, knowing how much Allura likes them. She gave some to me when she realised that I had a farm. The flowers grow quite quick, and they spread their own seeds when flowering, hence the field.”

Keith hums in acknowledgement, adjusting the sunhat on his head. It’s stupid, and lance can’t understand why he keeps appearing with it.

“Why the hell are you wearing this, anyway?” Lance flips the tables, asking the question this time.

Keith shrugs. Touching the hat gingerly. “Dunno. I had one when I was very little. Used to be my mothers, I think. Dad had got it for her for the desert sun. I reckon he was afraid she’d get burnt.”

It’s more information than Lance had expected Keith would give, considering how reserved he usually is about his past, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“Did he always do things like that?”

“Like what?”

“Little acts of kindness.”

Keith makes a questioning noise, pressing himself just a little closer to Lance, ash blowing across his vision. “He was caring, I guess. Always wanted everyone to be safe and protected and happy. That’s why he loved working as a firefighter so much. Cause it let him–what was it? Do ‘little acts of kindness.’”

Lance snorts slightly at that, kicking his legs out so he can slouch further against the tree. “You’re a lot like that.”

Keith gives him a startled look, head turning around. “I am?”

“Yeah. You care a lot about people. You notice something about someone and you do things to accommodate, and to keep them safe. Even if they don’t reciprocate,” Lance nods, holding Keith’s gaze.

Keith looks so confused his lips parted, eyes squinting just slightly. Like he can’t comprehend the fact that he is one of the most considerate, kind-hearted people Lance has ever met.

A warm bubble of affection bursts in his chest, overshadowing the grief. He leans closer, because God, Keith’s eyes are captivating. All dark and mysterious until you get close enough and then they pop with energy and life. Hues of indigo and purple, swirling together like the nebula in which he resides. Lance thinks that if he could liquify Keith’s eyes, shoot them into veins like a drug, high on the secrets he holds, he would.

A soft hand–much softer than Lance thinks it should be–runnign up his arm, his skin sparking. Volts of electricity jumping off.

It should ground Lance but it only pushes him further off the edge. Falling into the starry depths of Keith. With Keith, because they’re better together, they always have been.

We are a good team.

For a fleeting moment, Lance’s worries are gone. The thoughts, usually trapped in the back of his mind, no longer exist and it’s just Keith. The boy sitting in front of him, something impossible, an anomaly. Yet, he is still here.

Lance’s hands go out to curl around Keith’s waist, the thin fabric of his shirt warm under his fingers. The holes in the sunhats stitching filter through the waning sunlight, casting shadows across Keith’s face.

“Mijo!” a shout from the distance.

Lance jerks his head up, and Keith is gone. Just his mother, standing there, waving him into the house like he’s some sort of child.

Lance takes whatever that just was and boxes it, shoving it into the back of his mind. Standing up on slightly shaky legs he ambles back over to the house, slipping off his shoes at the door and inhaling the wooden scent of the walls. Something familial, but not as entirely comforting as it had been before he had departed for the Garrison.

His mother appears in the entryway, shoving him along. “C’mon, come on, set the table for everyone, sí?”

It’s just him and his parents today, all gathered around the large table. Keith is back, slowly slinking in when Lance hadn’t noticed, taking a seat at the head of the table like he fucking owns the place, smirking when he catches Lance’s eye. Asshole.

“You’re friends have been calling again,” his papa starts, pouring himself a glass of water.

Lance nods. “Ya. I’ll get back to them later. I think Allura mentioned something about wanting to hang out. You know. All of us. We haven’t in a while.”

“You could head to the Garrison for a week or so. We wouldn’t mind you going down there to catch up with everyone,” his father begins to offer, before his mother cuts him off.

“Allura is the girl you brought over, yes? She is very nice, hm?” she leans forward slightly, eyebrow raised a pinch. Suggesting and lightly teasing.

Lance glances over at Keith, who is calmly assembling his vaca frita around his heaped-up mountain of rice. “Yes. I–we–we’re not dating anymore,” Lance confirms, watching his mothers face drop slightly.

“It’s okay,” he assures her, praying that this is just his mother being upset for him. “It was mutual. With all the war that was happening and then–Kei–you know. We are better off as friends and–”

“It’s okay mijo. You will bring home your future girl someday,” his mother assures, clearly thinking that Lance is rambling on rapidly due to the fact that he’s not currently in a relationship.

It’s not.

It’s the fact that Lance can’t be in the relationship he wants, because–beacause–

He wants Keith.

The man who is currently lining his beans up on his plate, sticking them into his rice mountain like stepping stones.

And–his mother–

You will bring home your future girl someday.

Why is it assumed that he must only like girls? Why can’t he–

God, he needs to just fucking admit it. All this beating around the bush and he knows his true feelings. He has for ages, simply too afraid to label them, as if placing a name on them will suddenly drag Lance straight downwards to Hell, even though that’s not what he’s afraid of.

It’s the rejection. The new perceptions people will have of him. They may not show it, but Lance knows they’ll be judging him through whispered words, sharp stares. Pointed fingers when his back is turned.

Besides, the man he wants to be with is dead.

His feelings should be dead, too.

Lance grabs his glass, chugging water at an alarming rate.

“Yeah. Someday,” he says, averting his gaze back to his plate.

His mother must seem to get the hint about something, because she doen’t mention it for the rest of dinner.

--

Pidgeon 01:32

can you come over to the garrison asap?? somethings up w the lions and we need all the paladins here.

don’t ignore me, i know you told allura you’d hangout w us

i havent seen you properly in ages, please? ill pay

LanceyLance 03:21

ok. i can be there in five days?

also why are you up so early? i dont care whats wrong with the lions, you need to sleep pidge.

okay wait i do care about the lions, whats wrong with them? have they moved?????

Pidgeon 03:24

awesome!! ill see u soon dude ;P

LanceyLance 03:25

dont just ignore all of my questions pidge

LanceyLance 03:28

PIDGE

Message read at 03:28

Hunkalicious 08:37

hey dude!!!! pidge said you were coming back to the garrison

dont worry too much abt the lions. tbh, idk much abt them either. something messing with the lights flashing i think??

anyway cant wait to see you, youll have to stop by for a while, okay? i havent seen you in ages.

LanceyLance 08:55

of course man!!

ill be over for a few days anyway, so we’ll have heaps of time to chill.

Shirito 10:33

Just wanted to say if you need a place to stay while you’re over here, I’ve got a spare room in my apartment, no pressure if you’ve got somewhere else or you’d rather stay on site tho.

LanceyLance 10:40

as long as you don’t mind, that’d be great actually, thanks

Shirito 10:42

No worries. Just let me know when you get to Nebraska.

LanceyLance 10:47

aye aye captain

--

Lance is freaking out.

More than he should be, anyway.

He’d managed to make it through the airport and onto the plane, then from the Nebraskan airport onto the direct shuttle to the Galaxy Garrison.

Which now looms before him, same as it always has been, but starkly different at the same time. Lance forces himself to not be a baby, shouldering his bag of stuff (and by ‘stuff’ he means the bare essentials–he does not plan on staying for long, even if he did agree to come back here) and stepping out of the small station.

He’d managed to respond to his friend’s messages fine, somehow keeping up conversation until he had managed to actually get over here.

When he checks in through the front reception of the Garrison, giving his name (and instantly receiving a key card that will get him in pretty much everywhere) and walks through the doors, he’s swept up instantaneously into a hug, warm arms embracing him.

“It’s good to see you again,” Hunk smiles, Lance nodding, leaning into his chest.

Smaller arms grasp around his middle, nothing but a messy mop of hair visible.

“Hey Pidge,” he chuckles, to which the girl growls and unintelligible response.

When Lance is finally released from the group hug, he hardly has time to catch his breath back before his arm is grabbed, and he’s being yanked through the hallways at break-neck speeds. Uninspiring greys and oranges, ceilings illuminated by fluorescent strip lights.

He’s walking (well, being dragged) for a good few minutes, and when Pidge lets go of him, he’s in the Lion’s hanger, four of them staring down at him. (He realises with a sharp disappointment that Black must still be on display.) There’s a small group of people that come over to them. Both Pidge’s parents, her brother, Allura, and Shiro.

Lance is brought into more hugs, and words of welcome and hope you traveled safe. Once everyone’s said their hello’s, Matt grabs his holopad, and Lance straightens up a little, because he’s here for the Lions, dammit. Besides, he’s already let everyone wait long enough.

Matt clears his throat, Pidge scrambles to stand next to him. Colleen and Sam move back, letting their kids take the spotlight.

“So, as you all don’t know,” Matt begins, and Shiro scoffs. “The Lions pump out a near-undetectable aura of quintessence at all times. Recently, the Lion’s quintessence has been fluctuating. We’ve been running some test on them, you see, to try and understand why they haven’t been moving or responding to any stimuli.”

“At certain points in time, to anywhere from a minute to a few hours, the quintessence levels have been nearly off the charts, and the purity has increased,” Pidge cuts in, snatching the holopad from her brother, who pokes her in the side in retaliation. “The Lions are excreting raw, unfiltered, invisible quintessence multiple times a day, and we don’t know why. Hence, why you’re all here. We need to try and form a connection into our Lion’s mindspace, and possibly get them to move around again, and find the reason for this phenomenon.”

Lance nods at this. Objectively, it makes sense. But there’s a look of fleeting worry in Pidge’s eye and she glances off to the side. Allura looks equality as sorry as she moves to stand beside her, clearing her throat.

“Of course, each Paladin will only be able to access the Lions mindspace that they share the quintessence of. It’s why Shiro was trapped in the Black Lion’s astral plane. He, at his core, has the quintessence aligning with the Black Lions.”

Oh.

“And, Pidge and Hunk, you will be fine, seeing as you never switched Lions, but–” Allura’s talking faster now, almost rambling, “Lance, I’m afraid you won’t be able to connect with the Red Lion because–”

Oh no.

“I’ve got Blue quintessence,” Lance finishes for her.

Allura nods.

“Wait–so you mean we can’t–does this mean we won’t be able to get into all of the Lion’s mind-planes?” Hunk asks, his words quieter as the truth settles over them.

Matt cuts in, clearly trying to bring them all out of their sudden memories. “But. All the Lions are releasing the same levels of quintessence, even when they fluctuate. So, we should just be able to find out what’s happening with one of them, and then the reason should be the same for the others.”

There’s a silence around the group, and for how long, Lance can’t tell, because there’s a hand grazing past his, and Keith is standing in front of him, smirking.

“Guess you’ll finally get to fly Blue now, huh? I know you miss her,” he pokes Lance in the chest. Lance lowers his eyebrows ever so slightly, indirectly flashing his annoyance at Keith.

Keith just laughs, that giggling, near-silent sound. It makes Lance’s ribs contract and heart flutter.

“Don’t give me that look. C’mon stop sulking. Get in the Lion. You’ve not flown in, what? Three months? Two?”

Lance doesn’t know why Keith is pushing him, leading him on. He levels Keith with another deadpan stare.

Keith rolls his eyes at this one. “Lance,” his voice is softer now. “Don’t tell me the reason you came back here was to see everyone. Okay, well I know it was, but, you wanted a chance to fly again.”

“Going into the Lions mindspace doesn’t mean I’ll get to fly again,” Lance hisses, ever so quietly, praying no one’s heard him.

‘But you want it, don’t you? You seem so bared when you’re on that stupid farm.”

“The farm’s not stupid.”

Keith huffs, making a relenting face. He tones back the snarky abrasiveness a bit, picking up on the fact it’s probably not the best way to go about all of this.

Somewhere in the midst of this, the others have started talking again, and Lance’s shoulder is touched by a warm mechanical hand.

“Lance?” Shiro asks, and it’s enough for Lance to pull his vision away from Keith and onto the boy’s brother. “Lance, can you hear me?”

Lance nods. “Yeah. Yeah, just zoned out a bit, sorry.”

Shiro offers him a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. We’re heading into our Lions now, alright? The quintessence has started to rise again, and the sensors are going off.”

Ah. So that explains the distant ringing Lance can hear.

He nods his compliance, and ambles over to Blue without much other question. Decidedly not thinking about Keith’s insistence that he desperately wants to fly again.

Blue looms over him, an all-imposing figure, and Lance is still, after all these years, a little awestruck at her power. The calming gentleness of it all. She opens her maw and Lance steps inside, for the first time in a long time feeling that press in the back of his mind. Familiar and unusual all at once.

She’s greeting him, welcoming him back after all this time. Lance nudges a hello back through the bond, unearthed warm feelings flowing with it.

Settling into the pilot seat, Lance’s hands find the controls again, muscle memory causing everything to flood back to him.

Down on the ground, much further below, Keith is standing, and then walking as he slowly moves over to Red, arm outstretched to touch her paw. As his hand makes contact, Lance feels a pulsing thrum emulate through him. He’s felt quintessence before, but not like that.

That felt…powerful. Dangerous.

Keith brings his hand to rest back at his side, and the quintessence peels back, no longer as consuming.

Chapter Text

The quintessence rushes back, seeping from his body, drawing out of his lungs and veins, stripping him bare. It leaves Lance gasping in his cockpit, like he was just severely winded.

It’s not more than a few seconds before Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk’s face’s are all popping up on his screen, appearing in a similar state.

”Are you guys feeling this too?” Hunk says over the comms. His face flinching slightly as he sits back in his seat, hand rubbing over his chest. ”Like something knocked you over?”

There’s a slight murmured agreement and Shiro’s brow furrows, the same way Keith’s does when he’s worried, or stressed. ”Was that…quintessence?

Pidge adjusts her askew glasses. ”Yes. At least, it was some form of quintessence. The readings–they must’ve been off of the charts.”

Lance is left pondering in his seat as the feeling fades away. His eyes flicker past his friend’s faces on the screen, looking down at the floor below. He can’t see Keith, the boy apparently gone again. Lance huffs a little. God, even in death Keith is still confusing. Lance doesn’t think he’ll ever understand. There’s so much to Keith. Dig below the surface once and you strike a gold mine, but you’re unable to consume, no matter how greedy you are. The soil keeps turning over as the seasons change and reburying things you once thought were so easy to access.

Pidge says something about reconvening, and Lance climbs out of his lion, trainers making little noise against the concrete floor.

Shiro comes in from the side door, confirming Lance’s suspicions that the Black Lion is still on display outside. They form a huddle around Allura and the Holts, Lance sticking his head into the small group to peer at the tablet in Matt’s hands, full of complex looking graphs and numbers Lance doesn’t want to understand.

“It looks like the readings got higher, starting from earlier today, and then dropped off completely. Only raising once more when you all arrived,” Matt says, pointing to the spikey graph. Ah, yes, Lance can kind of see what he’s talking about. “But when you all got into the Lion’s, it went off the charts.”

“The quintessence levels were higher than they’ve ever been with the Lions in the state,” Allura cuts in. Her knowledge of the quintessence and the Lions themselves coming through. “The only time I’ve ever seen this much is in the rift Lotor opened. This–this is pure quintessence. In its most natural, unfiltered form.”

The words sit heavily in the middle of the huddle, reaching out and surrounding them. Lance gets an uneasy feeling in his gut, the steady building of anxiety and fear, one he grew so accustomed to during the war. He hates that it’s come back.

“Could it be because we were all in the Lions?” Shiro asks, and Lance thinks he should start questioning things too. It’s the only way you’ll get answers, after all.

“I don’t think so. Only four of the five Lions had Paladins in them, so it might’ve just been a coincidence,” Lance finally opens his mouth to reason.

“Funny coincidence though,” Hunk comments, looking worried. “Is–are the Galra back? Is that why the Lions are acting up?”

And that’s the question everyone wanted to ask. The circle falls silent again, and Allura physically steadies herself.

“If the Galra are coming back, they will be our allies. Zarkon and Honerva are no longer here to rally troops and wreak chaos across the universe. They are gone. The Lions are releasing their quintessence because of something, and we must figure it out fast, before they deplete themselves completely.”

The mention of no attacking forces raining down on Earth seems to settle the group, people visibly relaxing. Lance is concerned about a whole lot of other things in that statement, though.

“The Lions could lose their quintessence?” his question sounds so small, unconfident, despite Lance feeling completely neutral.

He remembers the long months of flying back to Earth in the Lions, going at a snails fucking pace, because the Lions quintessence had been sapped, considerably less than what they usually have. Red had felt so weak in his mind. Still there, but, less, like she was constantly tired. Sluggish.

Lance doesn’t want to think too hard about what it would mean for the Lions to lose all of their quintessence.

Apparently, neither does anyone else, because there's even more fucking silence. Seriously, how the hell they get anything done is beyond Lance.

Distantly, as if it weren’t his thought at all, but rather someone placed it there, Lance thinks that now would be the time he cracks some stupid joke, or makes a dumb comment that makes no sense whatsoever, just so he can snap everyone back into focus through his own idiocy.

Now, Lance keeps his mouth shut. There’s not a whole lot of points in contributing, anyway.

The tense quiet is finally snapped by Pidge, suggesting they run more tests, both in and out of their Lions. Everyone, liking the only idea presented, nods along, and Lance finds himself travelling back and forth from Blue, looking at charts that make no sense, standing in group conversations and debates at to what the heck’s happening.

At one point, Lance is in the Yellow Lion. And then the Green. And even Black. No one goes in the Red Lion. No one even mentions it, skirting around her in conversation.

When the results show absolutely fucking nothing (Lance only knows this because Pidge exclaims it loudly, only to be told off by her parents for her language), everyone’s spirits dampen. Not that they had been that high to begin with. Despite toying around with different shit, including flying the Lions in formation (which Lance thinks was stupid, because what's the point when they can’t form Voltron with four Lions.), to running to the other end of the campus, trying to see if distance affects the quintessence (It didn’t.), nothing in the readings changed. Only that major spike at the start. Then flatline.

After a good couple hours, Sam and Colleen step in, shooing them out of the hangar and convincing their children to drop the experimenting for one moment and go have something to eat.

Lance scuffs his feet on the floor as they walk down to the mess hall, hands in his pockets. Flying Blue again was supposed to be exciting. Instead, it had felt a little more like a chore. Something had been…off, and it unsettled Lance. It still did, a writhing pit of snakes in his stomach.

The food is just as shitty as he remembered–watered down and slightly too hot–but he shovels in his mouth anyway, hardly remembering his hurried breakfast early this morning.

“How long are you staying at the Garrison for?”

Lance raises his head to see Colleen looking at him, having joined them. He scrambles for the answer–even though he knows.

“Uh–only three days. I’ve gotta get back to the farm, you know,” he offers an excuse, despite not needing one.

Colleen nods, “Your family lives on the farm with you?”

She’s clearly trying to make small-talk, and Lance is actually kind of grateful–it gives him something to focus on.

“Just my parents and I at the moment,” he says. “Everyone else has moved out–or away fro school. My older sister works here actually. Verónica McClain?”

Colleen hums in recognition. “I’ve seen her around. Are you staying with her?”

And Lance…honestly hadn’t even thought about that. Objectively, it would’ve been easier just to stay with his sibling but, he really hadn’t wanted to stay on campus.

“No. She’s–she’s living on-campus, and the rooms aren’t that great so…” he gives a half-hearted shrug, for some reason explaining himself again. “I’m staying with Shiro. He’s letting me crash in his apartment,” Lance laughs a little, because staying with a friend is completely normal, if a little embarrassing.

Not if you’re hallucinating that same friend’s dead younger brother.

Colleen gasps a smile at that, about to launch into saying something else, when the world flickers behind her, air shifting and moving on its own. Warping, Keith stands, arms crossed, scowl set firmly on his face.

Pidge and Matt both jump up at the same time, yelling incomprehensible words. Keith and Lance don’t flinch at this, both looking up at each other, maintaining eye contact as Pidge gets ahold of herself and yells;

“The quintessence! It’s rising again!”

And Keith fucking smirks, shimmering out of existence, world warping back around him.

Lance narrows his eyes. What the hell?

“Wait–what–no–why is it??” Pidge mumbles, voice quieter now, tapping away at her tablet. Lance breaks eye contact with the air to look over.

Flatline. The graph has dropped again, quintessence flow clearly stopping. Lance shifts closer to Allura to try and see better, before there’s more shrieking. (Namely from the youngest members of the Holt family.)

“What?” Hunk asks, grabbing the tablet off of Pidge, everyone else intrigued, crowding around.

The graph is rising again. Lance presumes the quintessence is flowing out.

Keith coughs, not five metres from the table. Lance looks up, meeting his indigo eyes with his own startled, wide blue ones.

Pieces shift and click in his head, a jigsaw falling into place.

“How–what do the stats for yesterday look like?” Lance asks, cutting across everyone’s supposed frenzy over this new development.

Matt gives him a slightly confused look. “Why?”

“Just wanted to see if the Lions were producing more or less. If their quintessence release is getting weaker. Because, you know, they’re doing it more often,” he shrugs, struggling to think of an excuse when the gears in his mind are whirring so fast.

Matt pulls his own tablet out of his pocket, scrolling through something before handing it to Lance.

“There. Uh–the production is the same. Not irregular, like today. The quintessence peaked for the longest around midday,” Matt offers him the information to explain the still-confusing stats.

Lance nods, handing the tablet back. “Sorry. I–uhm. Gotta go bathroom,” he mutters, trying to keep his walking pace even as he leaves the mess hall, turning through the familiar corridors to the toilets, hands gripping the edge of the sink as he walks inside.

Keith had been there at midday yesterday. Lance remembers because he was in the kitchen, helping his mamá prep for lunch and Keith was laughing at him, teasing him over the stupid apron and headband he had been made to wear.

When Lance had turned his back, Keith was wearing a matching apron, frilly bow in his thick hair, keeping it back. Keith had then hovered over him while he was actually cooking the food, and lingered when he was eating it as well.

Lance prays it’s just a coincidence.

It’s not. He knows that.

It can’t be.

Somehow, Keith has something to do with the Lion’s quintessence.

The pros? Lance is not hallucinating, or delusional. Keith really is there (unless Lance is so deep in his insanity, he completely has no idea what’s going on.), weird celestial boy or not.

The cons? Lance is still the only person who can see/interact with Keith. Meaning the likelihood of another person believing him is…low. Keith is also (potentially) causing the Lions to lose all of their quintessence. Which is not what he wants to happen.

Is Keith the Lions doing? Is he Red’s? Or has Keith somehow managed to drop from heaven and secure himself in the mindspace of the Lions, coming out whenever he pleases?

The last one feels a bit unlikely, but hey, so is this whole fucking situation.

Lance splashes cold water on his face because he needs to get a grip, McClain.

“So, staying at my brother's house, huh?”

Lance digs his fingers harder in the sink edge. “Go away,” his tone is cold, not what he wants it to be.

Or maybe he does. Maybe he wants Keith to feel an ounce of guilt for putting Lance in this situation, whether he had much of a say in it or not.

Keith tuts, walking forward to jump onto the countertops ledge, legs swinging idly. “What the hell’s up with you? One day you’re all your annoying self, and know you don’t want to know me?”

It’s taunting, and reminiscent of their first few months on the Castleship together, where all comments were made to get a rise out of the other, pushing each other closer and closer to the edge of snapping.

Lance does not appreciate it. “Becuase you don’t exist Keith.”

Keith falters, as he usually does when he’s reminded of his not-existence, and ash seems to fall from him faster.

“Tell yourself that.”

Lance groans, pulling his hand over his face again. His temper is rising to the surface more and more these days, and it’s a fight to wrangle it back under his walls.

--

Lance wasn’t the best kid. Sure, he was full of smiles and laughter, always kind and ready to yell and run about with the other children.

But Lance McClain was also the youngest of five, and brought up with a whole lot of love and very few major problems.

Lance was also very, very jealous.

Perhaps it stemmed from his frightful ability to be completely average, in almost anything he did. Always ‘good’, but never good enough, his role models and idols all seeming so far out of reach, even when so many of them lived in his home.

Anyhow, Lance McClain had a temper. A quick ability to lash out at others, to kick and cry and scream, throw up a right tantrum if he was ever on the brink of not being good enough.

He never got into many physical fights, not really, because Lance was fast with his words, keeping them cold and angry, letting his brain get so worked up that he couldn’t function anymore. Could dwell over one thing for days, complaining and yelling and shouting about it.

Give me attention, he screamed.

Notice me, I’m good enough, please

And maybe Lance was just a child. Incapable of processing and looking through his emotions on an intellectual level, failing to try to understand why he was so jealous that Marco could kick every goal in football. Why Rachel could surf the perfect wave long before he even picked up a board.

Perhaps he was selfish. Many of his earlier teachers labeled him as such.

Lance, such a pleasure to have in class, if only he allowed himself to share with the other kids. To not get so angry when they can complete tasks before he can.

Lance is so capable. He just needs to accept that it may take time for him to achieve things. Instead of letting his perceptions of others cloud the way he sees himself.

Lance McClain had a temper, bright and cold. A polar vortex, harsh winds whipping around the people he surrounded himself with, his words like frostbite.

As he got older, his parents tried to tamper this. His mamá sitting him down. Going through breathing exercises, techniques to calm his racing heart and ways to filter the word he spewed from his mouth.

His temper sat, a thick, heavy winter blanket laid over it, where it rested under layers upon layers of ice sheets, walls put into place to keep it from whipping out again.

--

Lance feels a cold, familiar fire in his stomach. God, Keith just needs to get back to wherever the fuck he came from.

He knows he’s being irrational. That he was enjoying Keith’s presence. That he will probably decide he still does, a couple days, (if not hours) down the line.

“Just–go back into the Lions. Or wherever the crap you spawned from,” Lance mutters as he marches past Keith and out of the bathroom, not thinking as he shoves open the door.

He runs straight into Shiro, who levels him with a noise of surprise and a slightly confused expression.

Shiro quickly shifts his features into a smile, rightening Lance, and offering him a smile. “You okay?”

Lance nods, scrambled thoughts rushing into each other, blending together to try and make sense.

“Yep. Just–needed the bathroom.”

“In…the girls toilet?” Shiro quirks an eyebrow, and Lance turns to see ‘WOMENS’ written on the door behind him. Ah.

“Couldn’t hold it in?” he tries, and Shiro just shakes his head. Concerned, but Lance knows he won’t push. He never does. Not like Keith did, anyway.

Shiro sighs softly. “We’re leaving now. Colleen is forcing all the Holts to actually go home to take a break, and so the experimenting is pretty much done for today.”

Lance nods.

Shiro takes his silence for acceptance and hauls the bags up from the floor, chucking them at Lance.

“Carry your own shit. Let's go.”

And with a hand on his shoulder for a moment, Shiro turns and starts walking. Leaving Lance to grab his beaten-up duffel bag of stuff and follow after him. Shiro starts talking about how crap his rental car is, and Lance is grateful to be able to just listen, for once.

They make it to said rental car, and Lance chucks his bag in the back, sliding into the passenger seat as Shiro starts up the car.

There’s no radio, but Shiro cranks down the windows, letting the cool air blow in, whipping past Lance’s ears. He stares out at the rolling sand hills, dirt road crunching underneath the tires.

It’s not long before they get to the apartment building. Crap, Lance had forgotten Shiro lived in a place loaned to him by the Garrison. He knows it makes sense, with Shiro still working at the Garrison (although, he can’t quite say he’s sure what it is exactly that Shiro is doing) but he can’t help the twisting of his insides as he walks up the stairs to Shiro’s apartment, on the third floor.

He has a short entranceway, leading out into an open-plan living room. Kitchen, dining table, and couch all in one space, separated only by wooden floorboards. It’s nice, if a bit underdecorated. Everything falling into some colour scheme of brown or grey. Still, Lance doesn’t comment as he walks inside, Shiro showing him down a hallway, multiple doors leading off of it. The one at the end, a bathroom. Shiro’s room on the far left, an office beside that, and his spare room on the right.

He leaves Lance alone then, wandering back into the living area.

Lance steps into the small space. A bed in the corner, pushed up against the wall. Small window, empty desk, a door leading into the closet. Walls painted a deep blue. It’s basic, but more than Lance was expecting.

Not wanting to make a mess of Shiro’s space (he still feels kinda bad for crashing here, even if it only is for a couple nights.) Lance takes out only a couple things he needs from his duffel bag, reluctantly placing them in the drawers on the beside table and shoving his bag under the bed.

He sits on the edge of the bed, mind whirring.

Keith.

The cause for the Lion’s acting up.

And okay, nope, Lance does not want to think about this.

He shoots up, heading back into the kitchen. Shiro is pondering over a box in his hands, eyes squinting as he reads the box.

“You sure you don’t need glasses, man?” Lance lightly teases as he pulls out one of the stools at the breakfast bar, sitting down and laying his forearms on the countertop.

Shiro hums in annoyance. “No. I can see just fine. Geez, I’m not some old man.”

“Didn’t say you were,” Lance snorts. “But you are also reading the brownie box upside down.”

Shiro glares at Lance. Not breaking eye contact, he sets the brownie mix box on the counter, reaching into a drawer to the right of him. Pulling out a pair of thick, black framed glasses, he slides them onto his face. Then, he flips the box the correct way and goes back to reading he instructions.

Lance nearly chokes on his laughter.

“When on earth did you get them?”

“About two weeks after we landed on Earth.”

Shiro is moving about the small kitchen now, grabbing bowls and spoons. Pulling a carton of eggs from the fridge.

“You wanna help me with this?”

“With what? Baking brownies?”

“Uh–huh,” Shiro hums, ripping open the box.

Sighing, Lance rolls his sleeves up, coming round to stand beside Shiro behind the countertop, grabbing his own bowl.

“So, from wat I’ve seen and heard–and like, no offence dude–but you’re pretty shit at cooking.”

Shiro elbows him in the side with his prosthetic. “Uh. I just revealed my deteriorating eyesight to you, and the first thing you do is shun me for my cooking skills?”

“I can’t shun you for what doesn’t exist.”

Shiro huffs an offended noise and elbows him again. Lance just laughs, tipping half the packet into his bowl. Shiro copies, only for it to go flying across the countertop.

Half an hour and a very messy kitchen later (Lance does not know how Shiro managed to make this much of a mess), the brownies are in the oven.

Lance leans back against the counter. Maybe…staying with Shiro wasn’t as awkward as he thought it’d be. Honestly, he’s not quite sure why he was majorly doubting it at all. Sure, they haven’t talked properly very often, but fighting in a war does bring people closer together.

And when they’re eating the brownies on Shiro’s couch, watching some trashy show they found (Lance has long since discovered his and Shiro’s shared love for shitty TV), Lance almost doesn’t notice the shadow of Keith lurking out of the corner of his eye. Lingering near the back of the room.

Almost.

Chapter Text

I never meant to hurt you,

But somehow, I knew I would.

Will it be like this forever?

I’d reach into your body, and fix you if I could.

Will I feel like this forever?

October 18th 30XX AMERICA’S DAILY MAIL

’Voltron Paladin’s Sighted Flying in Formation–Is Voltron Coming Back?’

In recent reports given by anonymous tippers, it has been stated that the remaining Voltron Paladins, have all been frequenting the Galaxy Garrison for these past two weeks. It is unconfirmed what they are here for, but four of their ships (referred to as ‘Lions’, have been spotted flying in formation above the base.

It is the first time the Red Paladin, Leandro McClain, has been in public since Keith Kogane’s tragic passing. It has been speculated that he and Takashi Shirogane are staying in the same accommodation, as when walking into the base, they have always been together.

Galaxy officials have asked for interviews with the Paladins, but no response was received. All we can do is wait with hope to find out what it is that the Paladins are planning on doing now that they have rebanded. Will this be the beginning of a new era? Will we be seeing the Lion’s fly once more?

Some speculations have been made on whether Voltron is planning on coming back. In answer to that–only time will tell. However, we currently have strong belief that the Galaxy Garrison are partnering with the Paladins to come back even stronger after the war.

This, we can only hope for. However, we should keep that hope held close as other sources have shown that…

The next few days blur together slightly. Lance is in and out of Shiro’s apartment, leaving early in the morning, and not coming back until late at night, the sun long since set.

It’s not…bad.

It’s nice being in Blue again. Feeling her come to life under his control. Dipping through the clouds, putting her in full throttle just to see how fast he can truly go. Of course, when he lands, Lance wipes the pure joy and exhilaration off of his face, feeling a little bad that they’re making no progress but yet, here he is, semi-knowing the answer to their problems and genuinely living for the thrill of flying again.

Knowing why the Lions are acting weird is something Lance is trying not to think about.

Keith of course, is not helping.

If anything, he seems to be appearing more and more often recently, popping up by Lance’s side almost all day.

Which sends Pidge into absolute chaos, the stats on her charts increasing and decreasing like mad. Everytime they enter the hanger, Keith always makes a point of touching Red, and Lance feels that jolt of quintessence spur through him.

Lance would tell Keith to stop, to calm down and let the results settle so he can go home, but he’s dead-set on ignoring the boy. Partly because he’s pissed off about the whole Lion debarcle, partly because he’s trying to actually figure out what the fuck is going on with the whole Lion debarcle, and partly because Keith won’t stop fucking touching him, and it’s getting worse as the days go by. Casual touches, a hand on his shoulder, fingers wrapping around his wrist as he walks, sitting beside him on the car rides to and from the Garrison.

It’s not even that big of a deal. Not at all.

Lance is in Shiro’s spare room, firmly keeping his eyes glued to his tablet. That dark-haired boy sitting on the chair in the corner? Don’t know him.

“That report interesting?” Keith asks, kicking his feet up onto the desk.

Lance grunts in response, eyes on the screen.

“‘Ooh, yeah Keith, this is absolutely riveting. It’s got me so engaged, you wouldn't believe,’” Keith’s voice is high-pitched, a slight Spanish little to it as he talks, clearly a mocking imitation of Lance.

“Wow. That’s great Lance. You know, maybe you could tell me more about it. Might make me want to read it too. Y’know, since it just seems so interesting.

“‘Oh, well it’s actually about–’”

“Will you stop,” Lance finally snaps, tossing his tablet onto the bedside table.

Keith quirks an eyebrow. “Stop what?”

Lance sighs. A deep, calming one. Just like his mamá taught him. Reigning in his lashing anger.

“You would never ask me to tell you about a report that I’m reading.”

“Oh, really? Because you just know me so well–”

“Yeah, I do,” Lance huffs, standing up from the bed. “Did.”

He falters.

Keith hesitates too, ash falling from his skin just a little faster.

The room is overflowing with tense silence, brewing thicker, so heavy that even Shiro feels it, his form appearing in the doorway. He gives Lance a questioning look, and Lance shrugs it off, looking away from the other man’s gaze.

“I made food,” Shiro says simply, still hovering.

“Cool.”

Keith sends a sympathetic stare Lance’s way.

“Shiro can’t cook for shit,” he snorts, laughing at Lance’s apparent misfortune as Lance gets up to head into the kitchen.

Lance rolls his eyes. He’s aware. All of the Paladins are. Shiro couldn’t cook in the Castle, and he sure as hell can’t cook on Earth, if the takeaways and burnt food Lance has been having over the past few weeks proves anything.

Dinner is just as bad as expected, and they end up throwing away Shiro’s shitty attempt at spaghetti bolognese, Lance managing to salvage the leftover pasta and chucking some cheese on it. It’s still pretty ass, but at the very least it’s edible.

“How the hell did you manage to survive for this long without knowing how to cook?” Lance huffs, stabbing his pasta with his fork.

Shiro shrugs, seemingly uncaring about his inability. “Dunno. Adam cooked, not me.”

“What, did he not like, teach you?” Lance teases, hoping it’s the right thing to say.

“Nah. Well, okay he tried too, but I think he liked holding that fact over me. And I didn’t really care that much to learn. Between he and Keith, eh, it worked out fine,” Shiro waves his hand and they both stubbornly ignore the unsaid implications of what that means for Shiro now.

Shiro toys with the thin chain around his neck, golden ring looped onto the end of it.

Oh God, he still has their fucking engagement ring. The thought hits Lance like a freight train, setting all his nerves alight.

Shiro didn’t deserve this. Lance knows they fought a war. That people were bound to be lost but–you don’t suppose it will happen to you until it does. And you’re left standing, ring hanging around your neck.

Shiro tucks it back under his shirt, and they go back to eating their dinner. Lance has to stare down at his bowl and will the tears away. He doesn’t know why he’s so upset. It’s so stupid.

How can–how can people think this is wrong? That Shiro doesn’t get to mourn, because the person he loved was a man. The scant interviews Lance has watched have all brushed over the topic, mentioning Shiro’s engagement but never revealing who he was engaged to, even before Voltron happened, when Lance was still a kid dreaming of the stars.

He never expected himself to be so angry about it.

--
There at some alien party, hosted by the Emperor of the planet they had managed to save from the Galra. Apparently Allura deems the planet good enough for forming an alliance with, and so here they are, both to mingle and have a good time.

At least, Lance is.

The party is hosted outdoors, the warm night air breezing past his face, ruffling his hair. He’s still in his Paladin armour, which is a bit of a disappointment, but apparently they are here on ‘professional’ standards, and need to keep up appearances.

Lance has been dancing for the past hour or so, jumping around with the crowd to some techno-like beat. A couple people have asked him to dance with them specifically, and Lance had agreed, hands on each other (above the waist, Lance is not getting freaky with some stranger) as they jump to the beat.

He’s tired now, moving back from the crowd, wandering over to the drinks table, tall, guessing fountains of some neon coloured liquid that allegedly (or, according to Pidge) tastes just like strawberries. Lance takes a sip.

Yuck. Oh, God, that is the moldiest, nastiest thing Lance has ever put in his mouth. Fucking shit. He’s gonna kill Pidge for managing to gaslight him into thinking it was good.

A snort from the other side of the table gets Lance looking up, and Keith is there, laughing into his drink.

“Ay, stop laughing!” Lance scowls and Keith gives him a smirk as he downs the same neon drink in one go, not even reacting.

He licks his lips. “Tastes just like strawberries,” he grins.

“What?!” Lance sets his cup down on the table. Crossing his arms. Glaring at Keith incredulously.

Keith laughs again, moving around to stand nearer to Lance, still a fair bit of distance between them.

“Did Pidge not tell you?” Keith blinks at him innocently. “The drink tastes like strawberries. You really should try it.”

Lance squints at him.

Somehow, despite knowing Keith’s fucking with him, Lance takes another sip, keeping eye contact with Keith the whole time.

And instantly spits it out, drink splattering all over the white of Keith’s armour.

“You asshole!!”

“Hm? Oh, wait sorry. It only tastes like that to Galra, Alteans, and the native species of this planet,” Keith says. “I thought you knew.”

Lance turns away from him, pouting. “Well, aren’t you only half-Galra?”

Keith just laughs.

It’s good to see him so relaxed, Lance thinks. His laugh makes his face look so much softer. Kinder. And then immediately eradicates the second half of that thought from existence. Instead, he turns his eyes to the main huddle of the what’s been dubbed as the ‘dancefloor’, watching as Shiro gets pulled aside by some alien, long, dark blue hair flowing down their back, pink skin shifting different shades under the moonlight. He holds out his hand (according to Coran, the men on this planet all have skin tones some shade of pink, and the women yellow, although Lance has seen a few people walking about with purple skin) and Lance watches as Shiro flushes slightly, accepting the offer and immediately being dragged out onto the dance floor proper, spun around while his partner moves erratically to the beat.

Keith hums, leaning back on the table, and when the hell did he get so close? He’s only a few inches away from Lance now, eyes trained on his brother.

“Never thought I’d see the day Shiro lets himself actually live a little,” Lance teases, and Keith only takes another sip from his drink.

“He actually doesn’t mind these parties. Just, y’know, is not the best at letting himself fucking dance with other people.”

“Other people>” Lance asks, note of question in his voice.

Keith turns to face Lance then, giving him a quizzical look back. “Cause of Adam? I dunno, he won’t tell me but I think that he thinks that he’s cheating or something, even though technically they broke up.”

Lance’s mind spins a million miles per minute, brain trying to compute this and come up with a reasonable thought.

“Wait, what? Who’s Adam?”

Keith gives him a narrowed stare, and then his eyes widen. “Oh. Oh, shit sorry, I hadn’t realised Shiro hadn't told everyone. Adam was his fiance, back on Earth. They broke up before he left for Kerboros. It was…a whole thing,” he sighs, and Lance wants to press but feels he probably shouldn’t, too much shit in those words.

“Ah, I–I didn’t know. I hadn’t realised Shiro uh, liked men,” he ends up saying awkwardly.

The alien and Shiro are dancing together now, the techno music growing louder, pumping through Lance’s veins.

Keith takes a measured sip from his cup. “Yeah. He doesn’t really hide it.”

Probably not the best thing to say on Lance’s part then.

“Sorry. I just assumed he wasn't in a relationship or anything.”

“Yeah. The Garrison didn’t really let it out. Definitely homophobic, but nothing was ever said outright.”

Lance hums in agreement. Not really knowing what to say. Wondering instead what Keith would think if he ever found out about Lance’s family, and what they would say if they knew about Adam.

The music fades into a new song, quieter but more jumpy and erratic. Shiro pulls away from his partner, saying something as he turns, swallowed up by the other dancers on the floor.

“What was Adam like?” Lance asks, because Keith’s been silent for too long now and Lance won’t let him leave without at least trying to salvage this conversation.

Keith gives a short, barking laugh. “He’s an asshole.”

Oh. Maybe not the best thing to say?

“He always had to be right, had to have the last say. No argument could be lost if he was a part of it,” Keith continues, rolling his eyes. But there’s a fondness behind his words. Something slightly teasing. “But he was kind. Cared too much about the wellbeing of other people. He always took Shiro to his checkups when his chronic illness was bad. Cooked dinner almost every night, because Shiro can’t do shit in a kitchen. And he was a good teacher. Much better than Shiro. Actually explained shit rather than giving you some winded, philosophical answer. And he always offered to beat kids up for me,” Keith smirks, and Lance realises that quite like Shiro, Keith really seems to care about Adam, even if it’s disguised through a jousting dislike.

Lance stands there for a moment, taking them words in. Like Keith, he doesn’t hate Shiro for liking men. He’s not disgusted, or annoyed, or holding any sort of dislike.

But the bubbling hatred for himself grows and ebbs within him, rising and threatening to spill over the edge.

--

The anger is still brewing in Lance at the dining table, more and more annoyed at the thought that people can’t seem to accept others who have done nothing but love.

It feels hypocritical. Massively so.

Because surely if he accepts others, he can accept himself?

That thought rattles through him. An almost-admission. So close, yet falling before his fingers can latch onto the handholds, and keep him suspended over the ever-growing pit of denial he’s trying desperately to ignore.

Nothing’s happened to Shiro, he reasons. Shiro isn’t a bad person, or going to end up burning in Hell. How can he when he’s saved so many lives? Risked his own, day after day, for the benefits of others. Shiro is not a bad person. He was Lance’s first idol, for fucks sake. He still is, if Lance wants to admit to that.

And Keith. As painful as he is to think about, Keith was never a bad person. Shitty things happened to him, so many shitty things, but Keith kept fighting. Never gave up.

Being queer never stopped them from being good people.

A reasonable part of Lance’s mind is comforted by this. Because he too, can be a good person. He is.

Black tar fills his mind and those reasonable thoughts are washed away.

Chairs scrape against the wooden floor, and Lance absently registers that dinner is over, his bowl empty.

He takes it to the sink and offers to wash up, Shiro thanking him and clearing the rest of the table.

Lance still has no idea where any of the dishes go, and so he spends a good ten minutes in the kitchen, rooting through Shiro’s seemingly millions of cupboards, trying to find the cutlery and glasses. God, Shiro arranges his shit strangely.

It’s enough for Lance to clear the thoughts from his mind. Or, well, it would be enough if not for Keith standing in his doorway as he walks back to the spare room. Fuck yeah.

Lance doesn’t even say anything to him, shoving past and falling face-first onto the bed, not even caring that he’s still in his clothes. This is all so fucking shit.

“You were pretty obvious back there. You know, mooning over that ring.”

Lance feels his mattress dip beside him, Keith cold, bare toes poking his leg. Lance flinches and moves away. For once, Keith doesn't try to move back.

“What do you mean?” Lance asks, giving in, voice muffled from speaking into his pillow.

“You know. Freaking out because of a ring. C’mon Lance.”

Lance instantly grows defensive. “I was not freaking out over anything. Shut the fuck up, Keith,” his words are cold, and Lance can’t be fucked to censor them.

He feels the iceberg rising inside of him, pushing further and further up into his throat. If he’s not careful, it’s going to fall out of his mouth, everyone around him tensing up, freeing from frostbite. Lance left sitting in a room of stiff bodies, drowning in the aftermath of his own words.

The mattress shifts again, and Keith is lying next to him now, his hair splayed out on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. When he speaks again, his voice is softer, more like the Keith Lance knew when he was alive.

“It’s okay. You do know that, right? Nothing will change Lance.”

It’s cryptic, but Lance knows. He knows what Keith is implying.

And he aches.

Tremors in his chest causing his heart to stutter, heart pumping slower, blood draining from his head.

“Still don’t know what you’re on about. Maybe being dead has made you lose all of your braincells.”

“Maybe being in denial is driving you insane. And now you go into crazy spirals just from looking at my brothers goddamn engagement ring for a man–”

Lance sits up, scrambling back from the bed, long limbs just managing to catch him and keep him upright as icicles stab through his body. Kneeling him over.

“Keith. Stop.”

Keith sits upright, cross-legged on the bed. “Why Lance? Have you got something to hide?”

“No!” Lance snaps. He prays the walls are thick enough to muffle the sound.

“You have no idea what you are talking about Keith. Okay? I don’t–I don’t know what you think you’re doing. I don’t even know why you’re here. But if you're planning on sticking around, at least keep your mouth shut! You’re
dead Keith. Messing with me, poking fun at me, is not gonna change things. Just–stop fucking tormenting me! I don’t want you here!”

Keith sits there. For a moment, he looks slightly stunned. Taken aback like he’d never thought Lance would say those things about him.

Lance takes a deep breath. Calming himself down but it only makes him more anxious, thoughts whirring a thousand times faster. Heart hammering harder.

He sighs again. Shaky. “I like girls, Keith. That’s it. I’m–it makes me angry, and upset that others don't support people like you.”

People like you. Like Lance isn’t a part of that group.

“But I–I don’t think of–of boys like that. No way.”

Lance steps closer to the bed, meeting Keith’s eyes. Diving into pools of indigo and grey. Letting himself drown, like he’s been doing since he was fifteen.

“And I certainly don’t like you. You’re not Keith, are you? You’re just some stupid, fucked-up, ghost version of him. Brought to me from Hell or the Lion’s mindscapes or wherever the fuck.”

“Did you…like me then? When I was–alive?”

The question is soft, and the shattering of Lance’s heart is softer. His legs have gone all wobbly, threatening to give out from underneath him. Lance catches himself on the edge of the bed, and he’s kneeling on the bedsheets. Dropping to his hands and crawling forward until he can grab Keith’s shirt, pulling the fabric between his hands, clenching it in a fist. Pushes Keith back and Keith falls with barely any pressure, back hitting the mattress. Blinking up with him with those gorgeous fucking eyes.

Lance is over top of him. Hand twisting to let go of his shirt and press flat against his chest. Feeling the rise and fall of it, despite this Keith not needing to breathe. Strangely, Lance feels like he can’t breathe either. Like the room is too small, closing in on him as his lungs regress, only able to hold a tiny gulp of air, seizing.

Lance pulls himself away, crawling backwards and his back against the headboard, drawing his knees up into his chest. Shaking his head firmly.

“No. No. I like girls,” comes from his mouth hoarsely, words crooked and blending clicking together unnaturally.

Keith sits up, hair ruffled and Lance yearns for nothing more than to run his hands through it. Wishes he had when Keith was alive.

The hole in his chest swells bigger.

“You can like both,” Keith says simply. Like this shouldn’t even be a problem.

Lance can’t talk for a full minute, his vision blacking out, only able to see directly in front of him, ears beginning to ring.

“Both?” he wheezes, because it feels like a ten-story building has fallen, and he was the one person on the bottom floor. Emergency services not showing up because the only person close enough to hear him scream is fuckiung dead–

“Mm. Both girls and boys. You can like both.”

Lance shakes his head firmly. But he’s wanted to kiss Keith since he was fifteen, and no matter how hard he tries these feelings are not going to go away.

Keith crawls up next to him on the bed, and for once he keeps his distance. Lance notices a concerningly large pile of ash on the bed where Keith had just been.

“What are you shaking your head for? That’s not going to change anything, Lance. It’s not going to change how you feel.”

Lance feels like he’s going to cry, tears heating up the back of his eyelids as he chokes on his words.

“When d-did you get so ph–philosophical?” he jokes, setting his hands in his lap so they’ll stop trembling, long, lithe fingers digging into the denim of his shorts.

Keith snorts. “I didn’t. You know this isn’t really me.”

“So then l-leave me the–the hell alone”

Keith hums, and Lance watches him stretch his legs out in front of him from the corner of his eye, blurry from the tears. Keith lets the silence sit around them, because of course he’d been content with it, stupid brooding loner.

Lance misses him. Misses him so much his body shakes with it, his from not able to hold him up any longer, collapsing in on himself. Tears slide down his face, everything growing too warm in an unpleasant way.

“In your garden,” Keith starts slowly, measuring his words. “Back in Cuba, do you remember?”

Keith, sitting under the tree beside him, stupid sunhat flopping in front of his eyes.

Faces too close and never close enough, Lance’s eyes raking all over Keith’s skin. Smooth and unscarred by the claws of death. Not his Keith, never his Keith, but a replica close enough.

Lance would kiss Keith in any form. Any universe, any galaxy, anywhere.

Lance doesn’t do anything to respond and so Keith continues, words just as small as before, carefully spoken. Never a character trait Lance thought he’d associate with Keith. All sharp and biting. Ready to pounce.

“Under that tree. You were–you were gonna kiss me.”

It’s not a question. Keith lays it out as plainly as it is, a thin, piercing spear through Lance’s heart. Lance tucks his head into his knees, hands running through his hair, tugging at the roots.

A warm hand on his back, Keith coming in closer.

“Lance,” a name, whispered so gently. Beautifully falling from beautiful lips belonging to a beautiful man, carved by God himself. “Don’t do that. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

The hand slides up his back, wrapping around his own and pulling them one at a time from his hair. Keeping Lance’s right hand in his left, thumb smoothing gently over his knuckles. It trails back up his arm, rubbing over his back, coaxing Lance into sitting upright.

Lance slowly, slowly, complies. Easing up with tears still falling down his face, hand hastily wiping them away. He doesn’t respond to Keith’s statement and he doesn’t need to. They both know it to be true.

Keith smiles at him, and his eyes gleam. God, how Lance misses them. What he would give to see them again, just one more time. In all their glory. Alive and bright.

“I would’ve kissed you back, you know.”

Lance stubbornly shakes his head again.

“No. D-don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

Oh, how badly Lance needed to have been born a girl. Keith is perfect, perfect as he is. Lance is–broken. Something slightly off, never quite right, no matter how many times he attempted to fix it. Ignore it. If only. If only he could love Keith from a distance, knowing that all that stood in his way was the possibility of Keith not liking him back.

You can like both. Boys and girls.

Lance knows. He knows.

But there’s whispers in his church, in his house. Words yelled louder by his friends. Spoken so casually by his family, even if those comments didn’t make him feel as physically sick.

There’s whispers in Lance’s heart. A knife held over his head. Something small and nasty settling into his brain, screaming that this is all wrong.

Lance is torn, ripping between both sides.

He can’t admit it to himself. Not fully. Not now, with Keith staring at him with that stupid face of his.

But this isn’t Lance’s space. Simply a borrowed one, only for use for a short time.

Could he–have one night?

Lance can repent one night. He can.

It’s not real, he tells himself. Keith isn’t real, whatever he’s about to do won’t last, and therefore it’s not going to be real tomorrow so why the shit is he freaking out so much–

A hand goes out to Keith’s shoulder. His hand. Moving back, so it’s sitting around his shoulder blades. He’s as close to Keith as he was back on that day in the garden, sunlight filtering through Keith’s sunhat. Keith doesn't say anything. Doesn’t move.

Lance drops his head a little, nose bumping Keith’s. He changes the angle slightly, foreheads touching. Lets himself breathe.

Keith isn’t real.

The barely-there brush of his lips against Keith’s sends Lance spiralling. His head spins, and all of his thoughts are vacuumed out, nothing but the way Keith pulls away, only to hold his hands around Lance’s ribs, mouth chasing Lance’s.

They meet again, with more certainty this time. It’s not the only kiss Lance has had, but it feels like the first, the sheer overwhelming experience he gets from it.

He kisses Keith like he’s wanted to since he was fifteen, nothing more than a kid. He kisses Keith with that same innocence, except now he’s faking it, because Lance knows how wrong this all is, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, because Keith’s tipping backwards, and Lance is following, and he’s hovering over Keith again, and then he’s not, because they’re kissing once more.

It’s not hot, or heavy. Not sexual, deep and romantic.

Its waves lapping up to meet the shore, sea glittering in the light of the sunset. Toes digging into the warm sand, stretching out and settling down. Coming into a home at the end of a long day and falling onto the couch. Fire, flickering softly, contained in a sweet-smelling candle, dimming the room. AN old rotating fan on a hot summer day, blowing a dull breeze into his face.

Lance’s mind shuts down and for that he’s grateful. It allows him to pull away from Keith. For them to readjust themselves around each other, pulling up the duvet and Keith nestling his head in Lance’s chest.

Lance shuts his eyes, leaning down to shakily press a kiss to Keith’s head through his hair, head lingering there.

They don’t speak, for actions like these require no words.

Just them, Lance loosely holding Keith, the other using Lance as a pillow, sprawling out on top of him.

The room is dim and Lance watches as it gets darker, falling deeper and deeper into the night. Only when darkness shrouds them, does Lance dare to whisper;

“I wish you weren’t dead.”

He tightens his arms around where Keith should be, but Keith is no longer there. Disappearing like he does now, because he’s dead.

So Lance instead hugs himself, curling up as small as he can, tears refusing to fall as he mourns the loss of a love that never was.

The ugly voice in the back of his head whispers nastier words.

Lance thinks he might like both.

The ugly voice screams.

To be known the way you should is to put yourself through hell.

Still I waited and tried,

Til’ it killed me.

’Cause you’re right, I can wait if I want.

But it’ll never be good enough like I want to believe it is.

Chapter Text

Lance wakes up alone. For a moment, all is forgotten, that thick, half-asleep state slowly easing him into the waking world. The duvet is rumpled around his feet, kicks off at some point in the night. Lance is cold. Everything is slightly too bright. Had he forgotten his sleeping mask?

He opens his eyes and shuts them immediately, hit with the morning light shooting through the window. Despite this, he’s still cold. He shifts, stretching out and back pooping loudly. Burries his head in the pillow. Uses his feet to bring the duvet up to his hands, draping it over himself.

He reaches around his bed pointlessly for his eyemask, fingers curling around nothing but empty sheets. Has it fallen on the floor? Lance doesn’t dare stick his arm out to find it, fear of the cold air outweighing his need for the dark to cover his eyes.

Eyes that he barely gets to close before an overwhelming feeling hits his chest, strong as the Yellow Lion. It has him jolting upright.

His mouth on Keith’s, warm and lovely. Keith is beautiful like this, he thinks. Eyes shining as his hands gently hold onto Lance, grounding him. For a man that loved space, he’s the one thing that keeps Lance grounded.

Soft hands raking through even softer hair, and Lance wonders how he ever could’ve disillusioned himself into believing he hated this.

Body, so much smaller than it really is, curled up into him. Arms too weak to hold up anything more than his own ego, now tasked with the job of protecting this boy from Lance’s own feelings, because they’re messy, and unfiltered–

Lance had kissed Keith.

After breaking down into tears. And practically admitting his feelings for him.

And then Keith had left. Just disappeared, off into the universe again. Lance doesn’t know if Keith makes the conscious decision to come and go, but regardless, Lance finds he doesn’t care.

He just wants Keith back. In whatever sense of the word that may be. Because with him, Lance can pretend. That whatever they are, whatever they have going on, is completely fine.

Without him, Lance is stuck with the cold reality.

His usual tactic of pushing it down and praying it away doesn’t work. Lance knows it won’t before he even tries. Because there are things his system was just not equipped to handle, and this is one of them. Something so unaccounted for, so off the charts that there's nothing left for Lance to do but constantly think about it. Overanalise and rationalise every second. Considering all the ‘what-if’s’, in agonising detail. Let the self-hatred bubble up and over, mixed with the pleasant feelings from in the moment, making him dizzyingly sick.

Lance is unaware of how much time passes before Shiro knocks gently on his door. A somber look on his face when Lance doesn't verbally respond for him to walk in and Shiro opens the door anyway.

“You okay?” is the first thing he asks, and Lance quickly fixes his face, for if Shiro asked him that quickly, there must be something terrible written across his features.

Lance nods, standing up. “Yeah. Just tired still. We heading into the Garrison?”

“Mmh,” Shiro doesn’t believe him. “They’re all throwing some sort of celebration, I think.”

Lance frowns at that. Has he missed something? Not wanting to seem like a fool and ask why the heck their celebrating, he just accepts it as the truth.

“Cool. I’ll be ready in fifteen.”

“Alright. I would tell you you’ve got time, but it’s nearly ten as it is, and I said we’d be there at half-past,” Shiro checks his wrist, the skin bare of a watch. Lance remembers when Keith used to laugh at him for that. He wonders why Shiro still keeps up the bit, even if his brother is no longer here.

Lance knows why.

The rest of the morning in Shiro’s apartment feels awkward. There’s something sitting between them, and Lance gets the feeling that it’s not directly either of their faults. He almost wants to apologise for it, but he’s too lost in his head. Mind replaying over and over the memories of Keith.

I think I like both.

Lance visibly twists his head at that, jerking to the side in front of the mirror. Grips his moisturizer just a little tighter. Then releases, forcing his mind to calm.

When he settles, the admission doesn’t feel as heavy as the thought did. When he would skirt around it, there was always something staggering going at his heart. Thinking it properly eases that, smoothing the edges of the knife into a baseball bat, still enough to bruise.

The more worrying part is the fact that he actually acted upon those feelings. With a being made from the rawest power in the universe.

By the time they get out of the apartment, Shiro looks nervous, which is never really an expression Lance has seen on him before. They get into the car, and he seems to reset himself a little, face evening out.

“You okay?” it’s Lance who asks the question now.

Shiro taps his right arm on his leg. Metal fingers sliding across the fabric.

“Fine. Just–wierd, I suppose, isn’t it?”

Lance nods helplessly. What is he talking about?

“He’d be twenty-one today.”

Huh?

--

October 23rd 30XX AMERICA’S DAILY MAIL

Kogane’s 21st Birthday, A Day Spent Alone

On this day, the pilot and Voltron Paladin, Keith Kogane, turns 21. Celebrations have been held from early this morning, with a new merchandise rollout in stores all across America, primarily centered around Kogane, and his role in Voltron. Toy figures, ornaments, keychains, and clothing are all available.

On-site reporters managed to catch three of the four remaining Paladins, asking them for statements regarding Kogane’s death, and what his birthday will mean to them.

Taumua Garret stated that; ’We’re focusing on the good things about this day. Like having the time to ourselves, to commemorate in peace, with the people that loved him. We want to keep things private, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to get going.’

An uplifting statement showcasing how much the Paladin’s care about their deceased member. Wanting the time alone to remember Kogane in peace. The next interviewee, Katie Holt, who informed the interviewer they go by ‘Pidge’, gave a heartwarming speech. Claiming Kogane was like family to her.

’I’ve known Keith since he was eight. I don’t think he ever really celebrated his birthday. I don’t see why we’re all starting now. [INTERVIEWER: And why do you say that?] ’Keith is family to me. I’ve known him for a lot longer than you have, so trust me when I say he would not want this. It’s stupid, and unnecessary, and you don’t even really care–’

The third interviewee is one of the aliens brought back with Voltron. It has been revealed that she understands English, and was enthusiastic to give a statement regarding Kogane.

’Keith is a strong fighter, especially in situations he does not wish to be in. He had a real talent for avoiding those he did not wish to speak to, particularly those interviewing him on the numerous planets we have visited, even when they spoke English. However, he is terribly polite, and will work his way through difficult conversations because it is the right thing to do, even if he does not agree with the terms the conversation are for.’

A slightly cryptic, but nonetheless exciting interview.

Takashi Shirogane refused an interview, claiming he needed the time to grieve in peace, a statement we are all sure to understand.

Lance McClain ignored reporters when asked to interview, walking away with passion. People are speculating tension between McClain and Kogane, claiming the reason for McClain’s lack of interviews and interactions regarding Kogane’s death is due to a lingering dislike for the man.

--

Lance hadn’t known it was Keith’s birthday. He doesn’t know why. He knows everyone else's (hell, he even knows Coran and Allura’s, and they don’t even use an Earth calendar), but he supposes he spent too long pretending to hate Keith to actually get around to talking to him about that sort of stuff.

He wonders vaguely if Keith knew his.

He’d been confused the whole car ride. Who was 21 today? To be honest, it checked out, now that Lance knows.

He had only found out this morning, when he and Shiro had gotten out of the car at the Garrison, instantly spotting the reporters. Lance had been too embarrassed to ask Shiro in the car, seeing as the older man was still in some state of melancholy. They had made it all the way to the front entrance before someone actually stopped them. He’d noticed how Shiro had put on a strained smile, clenching his fists, because unlike Lance at the time, he knew what this was about.

“Captain Shirogane. Lance McClain. Would you care to give a statement regarding Kogane’s birthday?”

His what?

Lance had stood stock still, because there was no way it was Keith’s birthday today. He–he would’ve known, right? Shiro had tensed up beside him, shaking his head quickly at the interviewer.

“No. No, thank you. I’d like the time to mourn in peace please,” was all Lance had managed to hear before he was off, rushing through the doors and tearing off down the hallway, not knowing where he’s going other than away-

He runs directly into Krolia, not even five seconds into his pathetic sprint-away. He stumbles back, blinking in surprise at her. He doesn't think he’s ever seen her in the Garrison base, at least not recently.

Oh God, does she know that it’s her son’s birthday?

An overwhelming sense of guilt rides up in Lance. Krolia got so little time with her own kid, and now he’s gone forever. Lance swallows hard, not uttering a word, still under her searching gaze.

“Hello,” she greets rather formally, although Lance supposes she never was the person to really be all at up-to-date with human social interactions. (Like mother, like son, he thinks.)

“Hi,” Lance croaks. “On the run from reporters.”

She raises an eyebrow, slight angry sheen coming across her eyes, jaw ticking with the way she slightly clenches it.

“They’re for Keith’s…birthaday?” she asks.

Lance nods. A brief moment of understanding passes between them. The fact that they’re only hear to make the money off of Keith’s passing. Krolia reaches an arm out, placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder, the way her son had done once, months before.

Before Lance had ever been stupid enough to love him so much he’d kiss any version of him.

Shut up, brain.

How can two people be so similar, after not having really known each other at all? Krolia takes her hand away after a while, stepping back to give Lance space. He awkwardly remembers the last time he was alone with her, back in the Lion, scattering Keith’s ashes through the nebula.

“They didn’t talk to me,” Krolia says hurriedly, like she had been meaning to tell someone, but just, wasn’t sure how.

Lance’s brows come together in slight confusion. “Sorry?” he questions politely.

“I came with Pidge’s family. Their house is near my apartment and—the reporters questioned her but did not speak to me.”

She sounds disappointed. Rightfully so, Lance thinks. Yes, the reporters are not here to sympathise about Keith’s passing, but, to not be acknowledged or thought about at all, especially over something regarding your son, must feel pretty bad.

“Oh,” and to think that he had just marched away from the reporters without a word. “I’m really sorry. The Garrison are assholes, and the media even more so. Would you–uhm–want to speak to me about him?” the words are out of Lance’s mouth before he can second guess them.

If Krolia’s just as shocked as Lance is about those words coming out, she doesn’t show it. Just stares at him stoically for a couple of seconds, before giving a small nod.

“I suppose I could while we walk to meet with the others?” she offers, and Lance can see that it’s an olive branch, extended out to him. He grasps it with two hands, because someone had offered him a branch once, and Lance had been stupid enough to let it break before it could come to fruition.

He swallows around the rotten fruit in his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

They start down the hallway, both walking in silence. Lance is unsure how to start the conversation, so for once, he stays quiet, letting Krolia talk. He doesn’t dare look over to at her, not wanting to see how much she's undoubtedly struggling with saying this.

“His name was not going to be Keith,” is how Krolia starts, voice a little quieter but no less unsure. “I wanted to name him Yorak. His father disagreed. Apparently it was not a very popular name, by Earth standards. And then he suggested Phil,” Krolia wrinkles her nose at this.

“So, he didn’t have a name until after he was born. Keith was the name of his great-grandfather. I still think Yorak would’ve suited him more.”

“Well, Keith means wood. Or like, forest. But it can also mean ‘from the battleground,’ which I suppose is a little dark, but, also accurate? Considering the whole Voltron thing,” Lance shrugs, not questioning what aspects of Keith Krolia is talking about.

Krolia hums. “I do not know the meaning of Yorak. It was the name of a fallen friend, far back. Do all humans know meanings of names?”

Lance laughs. “No, most don’t. My older brother has a couple children, and he went on a whole tangent trying to pick out names for them. Researching the meanings and spellings. I know way more than I want to.”

“I think if I could’ve, I would’ve had more children,” Krolia says, and the already damp mood saturates. “But I always knew I would be out in space. Fighting the countless battles. It’s always been what I’ve wanted to do. I just happened to find someone to love, through a series of messed-up coincidences. I don’t regret loving. Or Keith. I just–I suppose I wanted to have been there for him. For the both of them.”

Keith was so young, and I had hardly been on Earth for two of your orbits. I missed the battle so much I was willing to sacrifice my son to keep him safe. And I–I am glad Keith was chosen to become a Paladin. It lead me to finding him again. I am grateful I got that. The time with him. I never made up for the time we’ve lost, but. In a way, I knew my son. I got to see the person he was growing up to be.”

Her words grow softer, a motherly sort of fondness surrounding them. It makes Lance’s chest ache, and he feels so guilty for knowing her son for so long, and filling so many of them years with dislike and feigned hatred. He wants to reach out to her, but he’s not sure as to where they stand. If it’d be the right thing to do.

They turn the corner, passing a couple of commanders walking through the halls. Their eyes linger for a fraction too long on the both of them. An alien and Paladin. Lance glances at Krolia again.

“He was a great person,” Lance says thickly. “He really was. I think many people thought he was standoffish, and rude, but he–he cared a lot more than he let on. And he–he never made you feel like anything less than exactly what you were. He was really shit at giving motivational speeches, but you could tell he cared through how much care he would put into every move on the battle. He’s constantly be putting the bigger picture over himself. He was a really great person, Krolia. In every aspect of his life. I’m sorry I didn’t treat him better sooner.”

His voice breaks a little at the end, unintentionally. Lance clenches his fits by his sides, stubbornly keeping his eyes trained in front of him. How close he had been to spilling everything. To dropping his darkest thoughts of Keith. How he really felt about the boy.

Lance looks around the corridor. He knows Keith won’t be there. That’s more than half a day since Lance has seen him now. Not concerning if he were alive but, Keith has almost constantly been around him since he first appeared. Lance knows it has to do with the kiss.

“I am glad. I did not doubt that he would be a good person, but, thank you,” Krolia says, and snap out of it Lance, he tells himself.

“When we were in the Quantum Abyss, Keith told me a little about that. He said that you were under the impression that the two of you were…rivals? when you were training to be pilots.”

Lance laughs nervously now, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Uh–kind of? I mean, I pretty much guessed that it was one-sided. Keith was a really great pilot, and he had heaps of attention from the teachers—well, partly because of Shiro, you know him, had taken Keith in at that point—but anyway, I was not the best. And so I was annoyed with Keith, because he was always trying to one up me. I guess that rivalry held even when we started flying Voltron together.”

“You were…companions, though?” Krolia questions carefully, like she knows this is a sensitive topic.

Guess that’s one way to put it. How the hell do you tell a mother that you practically made-out with her dead son’s quintessence?

Lance half-shrugs. He can see the entrance to the hangar, and Shiro’s figure standing in the doorway. When had he gotten there? Lance swears Shiro had been behind him when he’d ran off from the reporter.

“I think we were friends, yeah,” is all Lance can get out before his throat is closing up, and is he even dares to say one more word, he’s going to implode and the entire world will end and he’ll be stuck in the limbo between life and death, still unable to reach Keith.

Thank fuck that they’re at the hangar doors now. Krolia strolls in in front of him, and Lance follows suit. The others smile at them, Lance noting how it never really reaches any of their eyes.

It hits Lance then that this is probably a party for Keith. For his 21st birthday and all that. And of course, without Keith, everyone is remembering just how much they’re missing.

He looks around. There’s Shiro and Krolia, of course. Then the rest of the Paladins, plus Coran and Romelle. Pidge’s family is here too, and Kosmo whines softly in the corner. Moving further into the room, Lance meets the eyes of his sister, Verónica, standing with the other MFE pilots. Lance turns his head quickly when James Griffin's head shoots up. Beside them, the group of aliens he remembers from being apart of Lotor's group. Buff one, colourful hair, and baddass blue.

There’s only two people Lance doesn't recognise. A couple, a few years older than his parents, chatting gently to Colleen. Lance frowns. He knows he’s not very good with names, (unless your called Bi-Boh-Bi) especially with people that he’s not around often. He squints at them, because there’s definitely something about them that feels familiar.

Shiro walks into his peripheral, extending his arms to pull the shorter woman into a hug. Lance frowns. Should he have done that? The man pats Shiro on the back, before Shiro turns to hug him too. The whole interaction feels strangely intimate, and Lance doesn’t want to interrupt by asking the stupid question of who the hell are they?

Distantly, he wishes Keith were here. Maybe then, his quintessence form would laugh at Lance for being so stupid, and then point him in the right direction as to who they were. But of course, to Lance's ever growing disappointment and guilt, Keith is nowhere to be seen.

Small, thin arms wrap around his waist, and Lance looks down to find Pidge pushed into him, her frizzy mop of hair more askew than usual. Lance mumbles a ‘hello,’ dragging his eyes away from Shiro, hugging Pidge back. She sways lightly against him.

“How’re you doing?” he asks softly, because he can do this. He’s the supposed heart of Voltron. He can be there for other people, validate their emotions and offer comfort. It’s what he does.

Pidge sniffles softly before responding dryly. “Awesome. This is gonna be the best birthday party ever.”

“Damn right it is,” Lance says surely, ignoring Pidge’s tone.

He remembers how upset Pidge had been, at the very start of flying out for Voltron together. When her father and brother had been missing. She’d been nearly frantic, using every opportunity she got to search for them, never once giving up. How angered she had gotten when Keith insisted that the lives of her family weren't worth more than the lives of billions of others.

He knows that everyone in Voltron is a family now, all seven of them. Mismatched but superglued together, leaving open wounds when one was ripped apart from the rest.

He understands why Pidge has been so desperate in her research of the Lion’s quintessence. Lance distantly thinks that somehow, maybe she’s connected the quintessence to getting Keith back, even if she doesn’t know about Lance’s interactions with the boy.

A stronger set of arms wrap around the two of them.

“Can we make this a group hug?” Hunk says head dropping to rest against Lance’s.

It’s funny how they all sort of gravitate to each other. Not even a proper hello, and they’re all seeking the comfort of each other. That’s what a war does to you, Lance supposes. The rest of the party seems to be giving them some space, not wanting to interrupt.

Lance catches Allura’s eye, and not even ten seconds later, she’s a part of the hug too, her short hair still thick and all in Lance’s face. Not that he really minds.

“Shoulde we call Shiro over too?” Lance mumbles, feeling Hunk shake his head.

“Nah. He’s with his parents. He’s not seen them since the funeral.”

Ah yes, the shitty commemoration service Lance has shoved out of his mind and refuses to think about. And had everyone known who Shiro’s parents were? Was Lance just out of the loop, or had Hunk already been introduced?

Or maybe, his horrible mind supplies, you were just too stupid to make the connection. So much for being the teams sharpshooter, and noticing everything. You big dumb-dumb.

Lance shakes Bob’s voice out of his head, and the hug breaks, Paladins moving off to greet other groups of people. Lance does so mindlessly, receiving hugs and gentle smiles, stealing another glance at Shiro and his parents. He doesn’t know why it never occurred to him who Shiro’s family could be. He’d never really heard Shiro speak of them.

A jab in the side, and Lance’s face is full of Verónica’s grin, her hair pulled back into a pointless ponytail, everything falling out.

“You’re late,” she grumbles.

Lance rolls his eyes. “Sorry. Geez. I didn’t realise this was like, an actual party.”

“What, you saying that you thought I wouldn’t be here?” Verónica laughs. Lance scowls, unimpressed at her playful antics. He knows it’s probably just to try and pull him out of his own head, but still.

“Axca invited me. And I’m not sure who invited them. I think they were close to Keith at some point or another. Anyway, I’m here now and–” she shoves a massive looking chocolate mud cake in front of her. “I brought cake.”

“Keith doesn’t like mud cake. It’s too thick in his mouth,” Lance says, because he can be a little frostier with his sister. Indirectly take out his annoyance.

Verónica looks displeased. “I would’ve known that if you responded to my texts, Lance,” she fires back, eyebrow raised.

Ah, yeah. He probably should’ve done that. Lance thinks back to his phone, lying on the bedside table in Shiro’s room, left on do not disturb, and running on minimal battery. He cringes slightly.

“Sorry, Ronnie. I’ve been–busy?” he tries, and Verónica’s face softens, Lance wrapped up in another hug. Her hand pets his head, even though he’s taller than her now, but the nostalgic comfort is enough to soothe him, even a little. Even if he doesn’t know why exactly he’s being soothed in the first place.

“I’m sorry about Keith. I really am. I know I only spoke to him once or twice, but he was a very good person. I know you cared a lot about him. It must be hard, being back here. Flying without him,” she muses, pulling back from Lance, flattening his hair with her hands. It’s probably the most sympathetic thing she’s said to him.

But Lance’s traitorous mind can only focus on one thing. “I—I cared about him?” he splutters.

Verónica gives him a confused stare. “Did you not? I know you had that stupid rival thing going on, but c’mon Lance. I’ve seen how close you are to the other Paladins. They’re your second family.”

Lance forces his mind to calm down. Verónica knows nothing of his true feelings towards Keith, because he refuses to tell anyone. Everything is fine. Abort before she gets more suspicious.

He laughs awkwardly. “Oh! Yeah, uh—I thought you meant like, uhm—nevermind. But I did—I do care about him. Yeah.”

His sister gives him a slow nod, knowing something is off.

“You can talk to me, if you want.”

“I know.”

“Okay,” she smiles softly. “Come on, it’s time for food now. All the MFE’s spent about five years setting up the courtyard.”

She leads him over to the back hangar door, which leads out to the junior cadet courtyard, obviously cleared out for the day. Lance’s nose wrinkles when he thinks of Griffin wasting his time decorating something for Keith. It feels him with disgust, thick as tar.

Admittedly, the courtyard is nice. Not exactly how Lance imagines Keith would’ve liked it (and his heart aches again at the loss of quintessence Keith), but there’s fairy lights strung up from the oak tree in the centre to the tops of the squat buildings, colourful rugs laid out on the grass, plastic picnic table overflowing with food. Someone’s put a frame picture of Keith against the base of the tree, facing out against the rugs. It’s from when they all returned back to Earth for the first time, Keith cropped out of the group photo to stand alone in the frame, arm around the figure beside him (Shiro), and doing his weird half-scowl, half-smile thing he does when he knows a photo’s being taken.

Lance quickly averts his eyes, plopping down beside the group of half-Galra’s on the outskirts of the rugs. A sense of melancholy has settled in his chest, and Lance doesn’t know if he can handle another conversation with someone he knows well. He figures practical strangers are his next best bet. (Or the MFE’s, but Lance would honestly rather shoot himself right now than make polite conversation with the kid that took the piss out of him for hardly knowing English when he first moved to the States.)

Everyone settles, the three girls eyeing him almost suspiciously.

“Uh, I’m Lance,” Lance introduces himself, glancing over them. He goes to stick out a hand in greeting, but when no one reacts, he pulls it back, running it through his hair. “Paladin of the Red Lion?” he tries again, shrinking in on himself. God, he should’ve just manned up and sat with Hunk.

“We know who you are,” the blue one says, not unkindly, but in that same monotone Keith uses. Used to use. “Axca.”

“I’m Ezor!”

“Zethrid.”

It takes Lance a second to catch up with the fact that they’ve just introduced themselves. He matches their faces up. Blue, Axca. Ponytail, Ezor. Buff, Zethrid. Got it.

He plasters on a smile of confidence. “Nice to meet you all. Like, officially. I didn’t realise you were uh–living on Earth?”

Ponytail—Ezor shakes her head. “Nope! We were contacted by the Black Paladin to come down for Keith’s birthday about five quintants ago. We’ve only been here since yester-quintant.”

Lance nods, committing that information to memory. These people were Keith’s friends (at least, he assumes they must’ve been close, considering the fact they came across the galaxy to his shitty little home planet.)

“We missed the funeral. Felt it was only respectful to come to this,” Axca adds, tucking her short hair behind her ear.

“That’s nice. Well, uhm, not nice, the funeral was shit, but uhm–I’m glad you’re here now?”

Oh God, where did Lance’s ability to interact socially go? It normally works fine when he;s flirting but—he’s not. His heart is tied to another, and Lance has no interest in trying to pull anyone right now. Shit, could her really only talk to people when he was flirting? Surely not.

Ezor smiles at him, probably trying to make him feel better. It doesn’t help, but Lance appreciates it.

Lance swallows the thick lump in his throat, pushing on.

“Why’d you choose to sit with us?” it’s Zethrid who questions him next. “Don’t mean to day you can’t but–”

“Keith never really talked about you guys. I mean–he did. But not—personal stuff. I guess I wanted to know more about you. Uhm. I mean I assume you know Keith pretty well. He said you all were picked up with the Blades after–” he hesitates to say Lotor's name. Knowing it might be sore spot for them. “-you know. And he spent a lot of time there, so. You were friends?” he asks like a question, unsure of the true nature of the relationship Keith had with them.

“Nah. He was a guy we talked to once or twice, and we came here ‘cause we had nothing better to do.”

“Axca! Don’t say that,” Ezor chides.

“What? It’s the truth.”

“You know fine well it is not! It’s not funny to the Red Paladin, so cut it out!”

Zethrid sighs, like this is a recurring thing between the two.

“Keith was our friend. We worked out of the same base he came too. Went on missions with him as well. Likely didn’t know him as well as you Paladins, but yes. We were fairly close,” Zethrid says, turning to face him.

“Well I’m glad Keith has friends here,” Lance says genuinely, words not meaning to slip out, but his brian isn’t hasn't been working properly since the kiss. Half his mind still stuck in the moment, reliving it, over and over.

Lance tucks his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs as the conversation drifts on. The girls seem to be mostly chatting amongst themselves, recognising the fact that Lance came over here for the peace of mind. Occasionally, they’ll ask him a question, and Lance will give the least-awkward answer he can think of, trying not to sound like an ass. His obnoxiousness is the first impression he makes with most people, and he’s desperately trying for this not to be the same.

When someone finally sets up a speaker, and soft music begins to fill the courtyard, Ezor looks delighted, grabbing Zethrid's hands. The song is in a language Lance doesn’t know, but Ezor is singing softly, so Lance figures it must be some sort of Galran. When the two disappear to the open grassy area, standing close and swaying together, Axca grumbles.

“I need a drink.”

Lance finds he wholeheartedly agrees with the statement, pushing himself up off the ground and wandering over to the table. There’s a smaller table set up behind it, hosting paper cups and an ice dispenser. Beside that, are two esky’s. One labelled ‘ALCHOLIC’ and the other left blank. Lance just grabs the first bottle he can see, screwing off the lid and tipping it into a cup. He’s never really liked drinking from the bottle, and the taste of the beer runs cold down his throat. The taste syrupy, but not unpleasant.

He glances around for Acxa, but she’s gone, disappeared into the small crowd of people. Instead, he finds Pidge, frantically typing away at her tablet, stuffing what looks to be a peanut-butter cookie in her mouth.

“I thought parties were device-free zones?” he teases, reaching out and grabbing her tablet oof of her, waving it above his head. She protests immediately.

“Lance! Give that back! Somethings fucking up the Lion’s quintessence, I need to figure out what it is or we could lose them completely!” she says loudly.

Lance feels his heart drop to his toes. Gingerly, he hands the tablet back, eyeing it apprehensively.

“What do you mean?” he questions slowly. “What–what’s happened?”

Pidge taps away at her tablet for a few more seconds before looking back up at him.

“The quintessence has dropped. Completely. It’s been at a low since yesterday evening. It’s not increasing, and something’s wrong.”

Lance’s racing fears are confirmed. He wants to blurt everything out then, but he holds himself back, biting his tongue.

“That–that’s not good,” is all he can push out. Something slimy crawling up his insides. Pidge, thank fuck, just nods, distracted again by her tablet.

Maybe if Lance had told them sooner, the Lions wouldn’t be depleting. He should’ve been honest about Keith from the start. Instead, he’s been a coward.

He is a coward. Even after all this shit of admitting that, yeah, maybe he likes both. Maybe he’s been in love with Keith since he was fifteen and that all he wants is a second chance. Too see him again, in any form, and lifetime. To hold him close and never let him run of again.

Lance chugs his drink, needing something to settle his mind. The party around him isn’t loud or jovial, not the thing you would expect from a twenty-one year olds birthday. Everyone quietly chatting to one another, meandering around the courtyard.

Lance flits between people. Morning stretches into afternoon quickly, and Lance watches as people begin to get up, the alcohol loosening the inhibitions enough for them to sway around on the grass, both in and out of time with the music.

He doesn't really talk. It’s kinda ironic really. How much he feels like Keith. Brooding in the corner, people-watching. He has a couple more drinks and relaxes as the pleasant buzz consumes him, chasing away all the icky tar lining his stomach. He leans against the big oak tree, on the opposite side to the Keith picture.

At some point, Griffin comes up to stand beside him. Before he can even get a word out, Lance is telling him to fuck off, pushing bodily past him, his pleanant mindstate disrupted. Griffin is shocked, but holds his tongue, stalking away from Lance with a bitter look on his face. Fucking asshole. Lance wonders who the hell even invited him here.

Slowly, as another hour trickles by, people begin to leave. The party is shorter than most, but all are heavy with a sense of remembrance and melancholy, and there's only so lang a person can sit with that before they crumble.

The MFE’s leave first, and Verónica follows soon after, giving Lance a goodbye and apology that she can’t stay longer. The Holt family are next, only Pidge hanging behind, and Zethrid, Ezor, and Axca follow quickly after them.

Krolia lingers. Looking torn. Like she wants to stay. Her eyes are stuck on the photo of Keith and before Lance knows it he’s coming up to her. Unsure about physical constant, he goes to wave a goodbye, but Krolia wraps her arms around him lightly, giving him a squeeze before letting go.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “For being there for my son when I couldn’t.”

Lance has to blink back tears. Kosmo jumps up, licking at his face and Lance pats him on the head.

“It’s okay. I’m glad he got to know you in the end,” Lance replies softly.

Krolia nods a final time, pulling her eyes away from the image of her son. She starts to head off, Coran offering to go with her for the company. Lance figures she needs it.

Then, it’s just him and the other Paladins. Hunk and Pidge are clearing off the tables, Allura taking down the fairly lights. Shiro is chatting in low tones with his parents again, looking on the brink of tears. To give them space, Lance starts rolling up the rugs, piling them all in the crates stacked up in the corner of the grass.

When he’s done, Lance’s head feels light. Now that he has nothing to think about, the alcohol has gripped his system and he feels a little fuzzy. He flops back onto the grass. Joined a few seconds later by Hunk, on his left, and Allura on his right.

Pidge lands half on top of Shiro, who must’ve said goodbye to his parents. Lying horizontally above Lance’s head. Everyone is quiet for a while, Lance letting his brain drift, before the sound of typing ensues.

“Pidge. You’re not still worrying about the Lion’s, are you?” Hunk asks, glancing up to her.

She grumbles, reluctantly shoving the tablet in her pocket. “I want to know what’s happening with the Lions.”

“What’s wrong with the Lions?” Allura and Shiro ask at almost the same time.

Pidge sighs, explaining what she had to Lance earlier. Allura gasps, sounding horrified, and Shiro offers his reassurances that they’re probably just in a state of recharge.

“But the data doesn’t match up at all!” Pidge says, annoyed. “I can’t figure out what's wrong! We didn’t even know why the quintessence was fluctuating in the first place!”

Lance squeezes his eyes shut at the loud noise, word tumbling out before he has a chance to think them through. Alcohol dissolving his filter.

“It was ‘prolly Keith,” he mumbles. “Disappearing an’ shit.”

Silence.

“...what?” Pidge breathes softly.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink buddy. Keith isn’t–he isn’t here anymore.”

“Noo. Quintessence Keith. He disappeared on me.”

Lance’s brain catches up to his words and oh shit. Backtrack, now.

But it’s too late.

“Quintessence Keith?” Pidge questions slowly.

Fuck this. Wasn’t I regretting not telling them earlier? This is my chance. I don’t have to give them the details.

Lance takes a deep breath. He’s still sober enough to form thoughts, but he’s grateful for the alcohol calming his anxiety.

“I’ve been—seeing Keith. An’ I thought. He was like–a dream. Like I was hallucinating or something. But then the Lion’s went all whack and he–he’s real. The Lion’s are using their quintessence to create him. He talks to me.”

And maybe that wasn't as coherent or understandable as he would’ve liked, but it’s out there now.

“The Lions are creating Keith? So you can see him, and talk to him?” Pidge rushes to say, sitting upright.

Lance nods. “Uh–huh. He’s still an ass.”

Allura bites her lip. “That’s not…completely unheard of. The Lions quintessence is tied to all of you, even the Lions you don’t pilot. Theoretically, what Lance is saying could be true,” Aluura vouches for him, and Lance is glad. It makes him feel less insane.

“Everytime the quintessence fluctuates, Keith appears. He comes everyday, normally a couple times.”

“So why did the Lions stop? Did Keith–did he disappear?” Hunk questions, quick to jump to the conclusion.

“Yeah. Last night.”

“Why?” its Shiro who asks this now, voice soft, first time speaking up for the whole conversation.

Lance swallows. Doesn’t answer for a long while. He can’t believe the others are just–accepting this. With hardly any proof, or reasoning.

A weight is pressing down against his chest. Oil sinking into his skin. He’s wrong, wrong, so wrong. He’s deluded himself into thinking all this.

The tiny voice in the back of Lance’s mind. The one that dared to declare his need to love Keith. The one that decided that no, he liked both, speaks up.

“I kissed him.”