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Lance ran down the halls of the giant spaceship. If someone had asked him three years ago where he would be right now, he would’ve said eating his mami’s dinner on a visit back from base, not trying to stop a group of aliens from taking over the world.
“Keith and I are going to the main room, you two give us cover,” Shiro said, running forward, Keith passed him not even sparing a glance at Lance. Normally Lance would be offended by that. They’d been dating for six months at this point and even in battle secretly flirted. But today was different. The ship they were on was filled with Galra. Too many. They’d had to fight their way all the way up here. Lance and Hunk were out of breath when they eventually stopped at the front of the door.
Pidge was on the other side of the spaceship, apparently collecting data about the prisoners the Galra had. They had attracted the majority of the soldiers so Pidge could finish the work they were doing.
“We ready for this?” Lance asked, giving a side eye at Hunk.
Hunk grinned, and raised his blaster, “hell yeah.”
The battle seemed to last forever, fighting Galra, and making sure none of them made it past the two doors they were protecting. Lance almost hadn’t noticed the distress call from Shiro.
“Keith down, Haggar shot him with some spell. I’m almost done with her, coming out soon,” Shiro said, into their helmets.
Lance froze mid battle. Keith was down? What the hell did that mean? Did Shiro need help? Would Keith be fine?
“Lance, pay attention,” Hunk shouted, knocking out the soldier in front of him. Lance shook out of the stupor he had been in. Now wasn’t the time. He would worry about Keith later.
The doors hissed open behind them and Lance glanced back to see Shiro carrying Keith in his arms. Keith was bloody and bruised, but other than that he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
“Let’s get out of here,” Shiro said, and Lance nodded. He began taking out soldiers one by one, making a path through them to the green lion. As soon as they were back on the lion Lance slumped into a chair, breathing heavily. The rest of the group followed suit, all of them exhausted from that battle. This had been one of the worse ones. Hunk thought he had a broken rib or two, and Pidge had a limp now. Shiro had several blaster burns on his body, and Lance was sporting quite a few cuts.
But none of that mattered in comparison to Keith’s condition. The whole way back he hadn’t so much as stirred. Lance sat next to him now, laying on a cot, and watched him. What had Haggar hit him with? Could Allura fix it? He had to hope she could, she was his only hope.
When they landed back into the castle, Lance went to take Keith in his arms, but Shiro pushed him out of the way, saying it would be better if he did it, in case Keith woke up. Lance scowled but didn’t say anything. No one on the team knew they were dating, they both thought it would be better to keep it a secret so there wouldn’t be any awkwardness on the team.
They all gathered in the main room of the castle and Shiro laid Keith on the couch while the others gathered around him.
Coran and Allura spoke quietly with Shiro, over on the other side of the room. Pidge was still nursing their ankle and Hunk was looking nervously between Keith and the group on the side. Lance’s eyes never left Keith, hoping that he would just wake up like nothing had happened.
No luck.
“It seems he was put under a sleeping spell,” Allura said, waving her hands over Keith. “It's not technically painful, just inconvenient. Coran and I are looking into cures, but we haven’t found anything yet. I think it would be better to just put him in a pod for the time being to let his injuries heal.”
“But, what if we need to form Voltron?” Lance asked, his voice cracking slightly. He didn’t want to see Keith in a pod, or under a sleep spell. Why couldn’t they just fix him right now?
“We’re hoping we can find a cure in the next few days,” Allura said, shaking her head.
“Unless you know someone he’s in love with,” Coran said, rolling his eyes.
“What?” Pidge and Hunk asked at the same time.
“It's an old myth,” Allura said, shaking her head. “But they used to say the cure to all spells is true loves kiss.”
“So it’ll work?” Lance asked, eyebrows raised.
“We don’t know for sure,” Allura said, shaking her head. “But we don’t have anyone to test it on anyways.”
“I’ll do it,” Lance said, moving towards Keith.
“Lance no!” Hunk shouted, taking Lance’s arm. “He hates you!”
“Yeah, Lance, I don't think you’ve managed to woo Keith in the past year,” Pidge said, shaking their head.
“Just let me do it,” Lance said, shaking his head. Hunk let go of him and the whole group watched as Lance leaned down and pecked Keith on the lips.
It was a sweet kiss, not long and honestly not the worse he’d done to Keith in the past week. But the others still acted like it was the most x rated thing they’d seen ever.
Lance leaned back and caught his breath. It hadn’t worked did it?
But then Keith’s eyes fluttered open and he looked up at Lance. “Hey, babe,” Keith said, smiling up at Lance.
“Oh, no they fucked him up more than we thought!” Hunk yelled.
Keith shot up, and groaned as he must’ve irritated his injuries. “Fuck, no I didn’t say that.”
Lance buried his head in his hands as Keith tried to explain. “I was just delirious. I don’t feel that way for Lance.”
“Then how come you woke up?” Pidge asked, arms crossed. “It was true loves kiss wasn’t it?”
“I’m ending it,” Keith said, standing up.
“Wait, babe I just brought you back!” Lance said, grabbing Keith's hand. He realized they were all staring at them and Lance looked down. “I knew it would work because we’re dating. Have been for six months.”
“WHAT?” Hunk and Pidge yelled.
“I think I need to go to the infirmary,” Keith said, holding his head.
Lance took Keith’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulder, without another look back he helped Keith to the infirmary leaving the group to stare at them bemused.