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“Okay,” Keith sighs out. “Check-in time. Everyone sound off, make sure to mention any injuries.”
“I’m a little sore from that big hit on Yellow, but the new shock system I added is pretty awesome — I’m not hurt!”
Keith smiles at the Yellow Paladin. “Good to hear, Hunk.”
“I’m injury-free! And pretty pumped!” Pidge calls next.
Keith nods at her, then turns his eyes to Allura when she speaks up next.
“I think I am actually feeling better after this mission!” she exclaims. “There’s something about crushing oppressors and avenging my people that does wonders for my complexion.”
Keith snorts, shaking his head. Allura has had an easier time joking around with the paladins since accepting her role as the Blue Paladin. Lance liked to joke that the defining role of the Blue Paladin was to be the funniest person on the team.
Speaking of Lance, Keith flicks his gaze to the little screen at the corner of his windshield, where his right hand is beaming at him.
“You good, Lance?”
He means to ask it normally. In the same voice he asked the rest of his teammates. But the softness he has reserved for Lance is positively leaking out of his voice, coating his words in a layer of love that’s simply impossible to miss. Lance certainly doesn’t, and his smile turns a little shy.
“Yeah, Keith. I’m good.”
The two hold each other’s gazes, just basking in their affections, until Keith is startled by three loud gagging noises from the rest of his team. He flushes slightly, suddenly remembering that he and Lance are very much not alone.
“If you two could stop sighing dreamily at each other so we can go the fuck home, that’d be great,” Pidge drawls.
Lance rolls his eyes, but Keith is pleased to notice his ears have gone a little pink. Call it what you will, but Keith loves to see that he can draw a reaction out of Lance. Makes his chest feel all fluttery.
This… thing, they have. It’s nothing concrete, nothing they’ve discussed or labelled, but they’ve finally done something about the tension between them. They rarely spend a night alone, now, sleeping over in Lance’s room (he claims his bed is more comfortable. It’s literally identical to Keith’s, although Keith must admit that ever since he started sharing with Lance, he’s had the best and longest sleeps of his life. That may have more to do with a certain sharpshooter than an allegedly fluffier mattress, however).
“Yeah, yeah, shuddup,” Lance says. “We good to head back to the castle, Fearless Leader?”
“Yeah, let’s go home.”
—
Everyone else has likely gone to freshen up, or wind down after the mission. Keith should be doing that, too.
Instead, he’s pacing anxiously in Black’s hangar.
He can hear her concern in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t have much to tell her. No one was hurt in this mission. They got the information they needed, destroyed a few fleets. In every conceivable way, this mission was a huge success.
And yet Keith can’t shake this horrible anxiety.
He feels like he’s fucking up. Like there’s only a matter of time before he leads this team right into a trap, and he loses someone else. Like, what if the Galra snuck onto the ship? What if Keith wasn’t paying enough attention, and there is a battalion of Empire soldiers hiding in the Castleship right now, waiting until everyone is asleep and vulnerable to attack? What if Keith wakes up tomorrow to find half the team dead or missing under his watch?
He should run a few laps around the Castle, make sure no one’s hidden. Yeah. He’ll open the doors, maybe run a scan —
“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor if you keep that up.”
Keith whips his head up, locking eyes with a smiling Lance. He stills immediately, a good portion of his anxiety evaporating. His shoulders relax, and his lips quirk up.
“I think the hangar will survive my pacing,” he teases back. Lance huffs a laugh, bumping his shoulder with Keith’s as soon as he gets close enough.
“What’s wrong, Samurai?” he asks quietly, tangling their hands together.
Keith strokes his thumb across Lance’s knuckles, allowing himself to feel grounded at the touch.
“Feeling really anxious,” he says eventually. “Feel like we got followed. Like everyone’s gonna get hurt tonight. Like I can’t protect everyone.”
Lance makes a humming noise, briefly squeezing Keith’s hand. “Yeah, I can imagine. Today’s mission was pretty good, all things considered, but Hunk and Yellow still took that hit for you. I imagine it’s got you out of sorts.”
Keith’s nods, closing his eyes and he exhales the rest of the tension he wasn’t fully aware he was holding in. There’s truly no other feeling like having someone who just… gets you, in every sense of the word. Lance always seems to know exactly what’s wrong, and he’s glad now that that energy is no longer focused on riling each other up.
Well. At least not for anger reasons.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “My heart is pounding, and I feel restless. I know the rest of you are winding down, but I don’t think I can. Not for a while, at least.”
Lance nods, screwing his face up contemplatively, and Keith knows the moment he finds the solution because his whole being lights up. The force of his beam is a little bit blinding, and Keith can literally feel his brain frantically pumping out as much dopamine as it can. He physically feels his heart rate slow from its jackrabbit pace, the tangle of anxiety in his chest loosens.
Holy shit. The effect this boy has on him.
“I have an idea,” Lance says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Keith huffs a laugh, waving a hand in Lance’s general area. “I can see that.”
Lance grins, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek before pulling him along to Red’s hangar.
“I know we just got in, but I have an idea for a quick fieldtrip that I think will make you feel better. You up for it?”
Keith doesn’t even put up a fight, fully allowing himself to be pulled along. He takes in Lance’s smile, his boyish excitement, the love Keith can feel radiating off of him. Lance cares so much. He wears his emotions out in the open with pride and cares with his whole heart. He is kind and wonderful and precious and loving, and Keith loves him so, so much.
And when this kind and wonderful and precious and loving boy turns behind him, smiling at Keith and tugging him along and asking Keith to follow him — well.
Why would he ever say no?
—
After twenty-odd minutes of Lance flying them in Red, holding Keith’s hand the whole time, they stop in front of a planet. It’s white, covered swirls and whorls and the entire surface of the planet looks like it’s shifting and moving around.
“Are those… clouds?” Keith asks, squinting.
“Yeah!” Lance responds, endlessly enthusiastic. “I was telling Coran about rain, and how much I missed it, and he told me they never had any on Altea — believe it or not, the only precipitation they had was flaming rocks, isn’t that wild? — but he said he knew of a planet that was in a perpetual state of rain! It’s called Pluie. It doesn’t have any intelligent life, most animals can’t really thrive in its environment. It does have land, though! Anyway, to the point — I read somewhere forever ago that rain reduces anxiety and induces feelings of serenity and even happiness, so I figured I’d bring you out here! Plus,” he wiggles his eyebrows, playfully suggestive, “I’ve always wanted to have a big ol’ romantic smooch in the rain. Whaddaya think?”
Keith can only gape, affection lighting him up, setting his blood on fire. He knows Lance is a thoughtful person. He can see it in the way that he rarely, if ever, makes a decision entirely for himself — he’s always considering other people. The bomb in their first few days in space, the way Lance notices and de-escalates any tense situation even at his own detriment, even his position as a sniper. Everything he does is built around his desire to care for others.
And Keith… he’s never really had someone who puts him first. He had his Pa, for a while, but he lost him so young — he’s spent most of his life being forced to care for himself. He’s been the afterthought in so many hundreds of situations that he’s forgotten what it feels like to be someone’s first choice. And Lance thinks of him first so often. Any time they’re on a planet for diplomatic purposes, Lance will come to him after with something he picked up that just reminded him of Keith. A book, a knife, a flower, even a cool rock — Lance looks at something, and thinks of Keith. Keith is at the forefront of someone’s mind! It’s an incredibly heady feeling.
For Lance to come from a mission, immediately make his way to see Keith before even taking off his armour, and then bring him to a rain planet to help assuage his anxieties — no force in the universe could have kept Keith from tearing up.
Lance looks panicked, immediately standing from the pilot’s seat to cradle Keith’s face in his hands.
“Shit, Keith, was this a bad choice? You wanna head back?”
Keith sobs, frantically shaking his head. He wants to say something, reassure Lance that he’s not mad or upset or anything, but he’s so overwhelmed with emotion that he can’t quite force the words out.
Luckily for Keith, Lance knows him. His face softens, and his arms encircle Keith in a tight hug.
“Let it out, amor,” he soothes, rubbing his hands up and down Keith’s back. “I love you. You’re okay. Let it out.”
Keith cries in Lance’s arms until he’s got no tears left. He cries for the times he was the afterthought, the nuisance, the problem child. He cries for every time he wasn’t allowed to cry, told he was too old for tears or faced with people who had no empathy for him. He cries for every person he’s lost, and that he wasn’t allowed to mourn.
Finally, he cries because he’s simply overwhelmed with all the love Lance has for him. It’s more than he’s ever felt in his life.
“I’m good now,” he sniffles after a few minutes. “Sorry for getting snot all over you.”
Lance laughs, kissing Keith’s temple and pulling away slightly, so he can look at Keith’s face.
“Even if I wasn’t wearing state-of-the-art Altean super armour, I wouldn’t be mad,” he assured. Keith smiles, wiping his face. He inclines his head towards Red’s exit hatch.
“You wanna go have that romantic kiss in the rain?”
Lance grins, tangling his hands with Keith’s and running out the door, dragging Keith with him. “Let’s go!”
The two of them run out of the lion, right into the pouring rain of the planet. The ground is wet and muddy beneath their boots, and the air smells like petrichor.
Lance throws back his head and laughs, waving his arms in the air. Keith’s hand is still clasped tightly in his, so his arms go up too.
Keith couldn’t stop himself from smiling if he tried. Lance, as always, is magnetic.
“This is great!” he yells over the deafening sound of rushing water and the roar of distant thunder. “I forgot how much I loved the rain!”
He turns to Keith, still grinning brightly, and pulls him closer. Keith goes stumbling into his hold, and Lance throws his free arm around Keith’s shoulder, pulling him closer still and pressing a kiss to his mouth. Well, he tries, but the two of them are giggling so much that he misses and hits Keith’s nose instead.
Lance laughs harder, and presses kisses all over Keith’s face. Keith’s shoulders shake with the force of his joy, and he can feel his face heating up despite the coolness of the air and water.
Their laughter slows, and Lance presses a final kiss to his upper lip, before pulling away and beaming at him. He doesn’t go far, heads still bent together and arms still encircled around each other.
“You feeling better?” he asks.
Keith looks at the love of his life, holding him tightly in the pouring rain, and smiles softly.
“I’m better than I’ve ever been.”
