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First of all, it’s not completely his fault this time.
Nobody died, nobody lost any limbs and that’s a big progress from before they formed this team. (Granted, Shiro wasn’t on the mission. But he also didn’t lose another arm, so who’s the winner here?) And all of Lance’s own limbs and smaller appendages (not that much smaller though, he’s not tiny anywhere, let that be known) are still here too, so someone should actually thank him for not fucking up everything.
He told Pidge all of that through the audio connection between their lions on the way back to the castle, but Pidge still looks like Lance is soon going to lose either his head or something much more delicate by the power of skinny nerd arms. What adds to the bad prognosis is the fact that Pidge hasn’t said anything since they left the planet. No words while parking the lions and climbing out, not when Lance kept ranting about his damn flawless I-did-not-fuck-up logic on the way to the main hall, and definitely not after Allura got one look at their bodies covered by sweat, dirt and other disgusting fluids and had sent both of them right to the ionic showers.
After a solid ten minutes of standing under the faint whoosh of ions raining down on his head and slowly dissolving the grimy mess, Lance can’t stand the icy silence anymore.
“Pidge, I’m super sorry.” Not very true, it had been kind of fun after all. But sometimes a man has to stand up, puff out his chest and lie to his teammate so he doesn’t get beheaded for stupidity.
“I can’t believe this. Why is this my life. Why did I agree to join this odyssey on a ship full of people who can’t tell a space bar from a shift key!”
“Because you love us and we’ve become your family? Also, what do you mean space bar, are you even old enough to drink yet – “
“Lance.” Pidge whips around in the tiny space that the ionic shower provides and sends out a death glare that causes Lance to fondly think about all the times he almost died (times, it’s plural now, what even) because holy lion, that had been far less scary than this.
Lance has seen Pidge angry before, but this is a whole new level of pissed off. This is advanced annoyance. It’s like Pidge got a cool new armor, like the heroes do in those video games, winning a boss fight, loot drop, Armor of Absolute Fucking Fed-Upness With Your Shit, +1 in anger, +10 in kicking Lance’s ass, -20 patience. Yeah, maybe Lance really is playing too many video games, but that was his practice for becoming a pilot, so it did some good.
Pidge is still staring him down, so Lance puts his face against the translucent wall that sits between their shower cabins. “I said I’m sorry.”
“We’re not talking.”
“No?” Lance grins. “Are we not?”
“I’m still mad at you, and I plan to keep that up until you’re properly ashamed of yourself.”
“You do that, but for the record, it’s neither my total fault nor was it my intention to fuck up, okay, so you should definitely cut me some slack here. I have been deceived.”
“Deceived?!” And Pidge is right back at yelling at him, glasses askew and parts of a spider web flying through the air with every flail of skinny arms. Lance is kind of happy about the shower wall now. “Are you bloody fucking kidding me?”
“Language,” Shiro says. He’s passing by to put down a pile of towels before them, then turns around to quickly get out of the way while the ionic shower rips the webs off Pidge’s and Lance’s clothes and skin. “See you at dinner.”
“I will curse however I damn well please,” Pidge growls, but only after Shiro is out of hearing range. Smart, Lance thinks, and then rolls his eyes at himself because duh. Pidge’s an acknowledged genius. Not the kind of intelligence that Lance is into, though, he prefers more temper and battle-sharpened instincts, fingers that slam a handle forward to catapult a red lion into a perfect, lethal pounce from above –
“Where was I? Oh, right.” Pidge turns to him, jabbing a finger at the glass wall between them. “You weren’t deceived. That was your own fault, and you dragged me into this and now I’m covered in spider webs. We’re lucky we’re alive, this thing was huge!”
“But,” Lance says, picking a bit of web out of his mouth. He wants to make this very clear, you could say crystal-clear, hah. “I didn’t know that it was a spider’s leg. I poked it because I thought that was the tree you were searching for. I was trying to - “
“You’re the blindest person I know! It had hair, not bark!”
Help, he’d wanted to say. He’d just wanted to do something good for once.
Lance blinks at Pidge through the transparent wall that separates their showers. “Excuse you, I’m extremely perceptive and watchful. I wasn’t at the peak of my performance today, but at least I dragged you out of there before it could eat you.”
Pidge laughs so hard that Lance fears he may have to jump out of his shower any moment to prevent a painful toppling over accident. It hurts just a tiny bit when Pidge needs a minute to stop laughing, wiping tears from wide-grinned cheeks. “You’re a lot of things, Lance, but you’re not paying attention at all. Ever. Not to the important stuff.”
“Of course I am,” Lance insists. “Tell me one time I wasn’t.”
Pidge lifts a brow. “You were the only one who didn’t notice that I’m actually-“
“That’s one thing I didn’t notice, one thing!” Lance throws his hands up and groans. Is nobody ever going to let him forget that? “You were really good at hiding it!”
“You still have no idea that Shiro is bisexual,” Pidge says easily.
Lance’s jaw drops. “What? You’re kidding me. He - but - ohhh. Oh.” That explains so many things. “Wow. That’s weird. I mean, I’m not against it, oh god don’t get me wrong, I just didn’t think that – all the girls would be swooning over that biceps, I bet Allura is, you know what I mean? I swear I’m not an asshole about this.” It would be a stupid move to hate Shiro for something he can’t help, that’s natural like breathing, something that Lance himself is painfully familiar with. Girls are cute, guys are awesome, especially with black hair and a soft mouth that snarks back at him, long skilled fingers and skin dripping salt and sweat from a workout – fuck. Christ.
Pidge sighs, rubbing a finger across that tiny nose. “I should get a raise for this. Oh wait, I’m not even getting paid. Ugh, anyways.” Pidge snaps two fingers into Lance’s face and gives him a kind of evil-gentle smile (something that Lance didn’t know existed before he met this paladin). “While you’re at, do something about Keith.”
Lance frowns. “What do you mean? I’m not gonna stop making fun of his hair, I told you I wouldn’t. It’s too funny, there’s no way – “
Pidge’s shower beeps, and the door opens. The ionic rain abruptly stops. A few long, cat-like stretches and a loud yawn later, Pidge steps out of the shower, tapping the knuckles of two fingers against the glassy front wall of Lance’s cabin.
“I said do something about Keith and your gigantic crush on him.”
“Oh my god,” Lance whimpers. Abort, abort, all systems fired up, where is the escape, denial sequence activated. “I’m not. Look. This, uh.” He flails, arms slapping against the inside of his cabin, and ow okay, he’s gonna stop now because his body can only lose a fight against solid glass. The pain doesn’t keep a furious, embarrassing blush from crawling all over his face and down to his neck, and Lance hates that he always flushes with his whole body, can’t he be normal for once?
Pidge sighs, as if all of this is far below such a superior intellect. “Get to terms with your sexuality or whatever, and then drag your butt over to his room and let him know that he can stop his pining because this is more of a requited love story than whatever Coran has going on with the food goo. I’ve had enough. It’s probably gonna help the whole Voltron-bond thing as well. I’d even put up with kisses. Ugh, I have to rethink my life. See you later. Go have some banter as foreplay or whatever. He’d probably like it.”
It’s mortifying that Lance can’t keep a whimper from sliding past his lips at the word kiss. Pidge just snorts. “Speechless? That’s rare. Anyways, good talk. But really, do something. See you at dinner!”
Lance’s brain starts whirring again when Pidge is almost out of the room. A flare of electricity bursts through his veins, jolting him back to awareness, out of thoughts around Keith and a possible chance at something, anything. “Wait! How did you know?” Lance presses his forehead against the glass, now yelling over the increasing sound of the ionic shower that seems to struggle with a particularly thick web on his left thigh. He doesn’t care, he has to know, so he screams against the constant whoosh in the cabin and hopes that Pidge will hear. “Did you tell anyone?”
There’s a moment of silence before Pidge looks back and gives him the softest, most pitying look that Lance has ever seen. Then Pidge grins, something dark glinting behind round glasses, and Lance shivers without wanting to. “Oh, I implanted a little computer chip in everyone’s brain while you were asleep. I monitor your thoughts with what you think is my phone but actually gives me control over your darkest desires and reports all those lovesick glances you shoot at Keith right back to me.”
“Fuck, really?”
“No.” Pidge waves at him. “But I’m flattered that you think I could. Oh and by the way, you’re gonna tell Allura why we couldn’t find the sacred tree bark that she wants to gift the Azurians with. You better come up with a better present to win over their alliance. If you need help, I think Hunk has a new bolognese recipe figured out, and I heard Azurians worship food.”
Then Pidge is out of the hall. Lance stares at the vanishing mess of light brown hair, and when the door of his shower slides open and the rain of ions stops, he sits down on the ground.
“I hate this,” Lance complains. Nobody answers. He looks up at the glass ceiling of the castle for a bit, and thinks about a poem that his mother used to read him. It had told a story about stars and planets and how you would find an entire galaxy in the eyes of your beloved where others saw nothing but death and far-away fire.
Lance comes to dinner late. He doesn’t defend his actions to Allura, just tells the story and finishes his goo without another word. It feels like there’s a pair of eyes tracking his back when he leaves the table, but Lance doesn’t think about it until he’s in his room.
It takes him an hour of trying to read a book before he notices that he’s been staring at the same two sentences the entire time, and he still doesn’t know what they mean. Lance lies down on his bed and breathes.
Five minutes later, he’s in the bathroom, for a real shower this time.
Lance thought he was ready.
“You goddamn idiot!”
Lance is not ready.
“I didn’t mean to,” Lance says, barely keeping himself from yelling right back at Keith who’s still on the ground where the gladiator has tackled him after Lance charged into the room. Lance hadn’t even wanted to ruin his training! But he hadn’t expected Keith to take one look at him, eyes trailing over his kinda old sweatpants and two-years-too-tight-but-still-beloved shirt, sputter something under his breath and completely miss the next strike of the training robot.
“Shit! Dude, are you okay?” Lance stumbles towards him, pushing the gladiator aside carelessly. Keith is on his back, weapon gone, and Lance wonders briefly where it went before something clanks to the floor behind his back. He turns around to find the gladiator in the middle again, frozen back into rigidity. Keith’s training weapon is at its feet.
“What level did you – “ Lance doesn’t even get to finish his question before Keith grabs his shirt and throws him to the ground. Within a second, Lance finds himself on his back with a really cute mouth roaring into his face.
“Are you out of your mind?!”
“Wuh,” Lance says eloquently.
Keith climbs on top of him, one hand digging into his favourite shirt, glaring at him like Lance murdered his dog or something. “I was in the middle of training! You can’t just walk in here when I’m wielding a weapon at anything that moves. You’re so stupid, god, learn to use your brain sometime!”
Lance swallows. “You didn’t get hurt,” he says, and surprises himself by not screaming right into Keith’s face. Maybe Pidge’s advice actually did something to him. Maybe he’s too sick of himself being pathetically in love to yell at Keith instead of getting some courage together already. “I mean, I wouldn’t want you to. Get hurt, that is. You’re my – “ come on, that’s it, “my teammate, and we’re bonded.” Goddamn it.
There’s a beat of silence where Keith just stares at him. Lance blinks back, still not struggling against the grip just over his heart. Then, Keith lets go, almost pushing Lance into the ground. “You don’t get it,” he says, rising to his feet with a natural grace that Lance can (and does) only dream of. “I wasn’t worried about me getting hurt.”
Something small and warm bursts in Lance’s chest. He scrambles to his feet, heart pounding, but then Keith takes his shirt off to rub a hand over his ribs, searching for bruises, and oh.
“Dios mío.”
“Don’t you dare bitch at me in French,” Keith growls at him. “If you gotta insult me, do it in a language I understand, you – you coward!” His face is an angry dark red, hands in fists by his side. Lance catches Keith staring at his mouth then, and that’s strange, so he says it again: “Dios-“
Keith licks his lips. “Don’t,” he groans under his breath. There’s sweat dripping from his forehead, along his neck where Lance wants to try feeling his skin with careful fingertips, and Keith’s glare is burning all over him. “Don’t make fun of me because I fucked up in training, okay, I’m still better than you and I’m doing this to protect you guys, I’m doing this so your ass won’t get fried by lasers on the next mission. You have no idea – you were in my arms, fuck, you were hurt and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t protect you when… you could have died there.”
Oh my god, Lance thinks, and then somehow says, “oh my god, who allowed this, I want to hate you, I do hate you, could you stop – just – don’t be so fucking gorgeous, this is really distracting. Don’t do that. I’m trying to tell you something, asshole.”
“You think I’m gorgeous?” Keith says softly. There’s no anger in his voice anymore.
“What,” Lance says.
“You said that I was-“
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Nope. Definitely didn’t.”
“Lance.” It shouldn’t be legal for Keith to say his name like that. He’s leaning forward, like Lance is some kind of interesting little thing he wants to inspect, and the tilt of Keith’s head reminds Lance of a curious wolf that considers its prey before its teeth go to the neck, touching with a growl, lips pressing against skin -
Lance forces a grin onto his face. Talk, talk, that’s all he can do. “Hey buddy, it’s nice to fight with you and I really enjoy it, but I just remembered that I should be leaving now. There’s a thing I gotta do. Really important. Super secret, too. Important, uh, blue lion business. So could you just.” Coward, he’s a coward, but Keith is half naked and he knows he knows he can’t, no, no.
Lance motions at Keith’s chest, making a point of not looking down at it but at a spot above Keith’s left ear, because this guy is the textbook definition of hot damn, gimme some of that and also I’ll fly through the fire of a dying star for you if you smiled at me and Lance has embarrassed himself enough for today.
So when Keith doesn’t move an inch, his eyes darting over Lance’s body until they come back to his mouth, Lance pokes his shoulder a bit. “Do you mind?”
“Yes, actually.” Keith takes a step forward. The frown between his brows is dark. “You called me gorgeous,” he says, almost in awe, like it’s something he can’t quite believe. “And you said I’m distracting.”
Lance blinks. He opens his mouth. There are no words, nothing in his throat but a lump of thorns, wandering right down to his ribs and the inside of his racing heart a moment later. He stares back at Keith, Keith who isn’t scowling anymore, who’s taking another step forward and putting his hands next to Lance’s face, one on each side, and so close that Lance can feel his slow breath, that he can see that Keith’s lashes have golden tips, that he has faint freckles on his nose. And oh, Lance is gone for him.
“I hate this,” Lance mumbles, licking his lips, and the words just slip out. “You’re the worst person ever to have a crush on. Would not recommend it to anyone.”
Keith smiles. He fucking beams, like this is some war to win and he’s just gotten victory served on the tip of his sword, and then he strokes his thumb underneath Lance’s mouth, softly. His fingers are warm when they tap Lance’s cheek, careful against his jaw, something gentle in the way Keith looks at him breathing all the air out of Lance.
“Would you,” Keith starts. He shivers when Lance brings a hand up to curl it around his neck, both of them trembling here in the training room under the glass ceiling of the castle above.
“Ask me.” Lance squeezes his eyes shut, thinking that the wild storm that is his heart must be heard through the entire galaxy. “I’m gonna punch you if you're not gonna ask me right now so I can say yes.”
Keith’s laugh is a shudder against the arch of his lips. “Yeah. Of course you’re still gonna threaten me.”
“As if you don’t love that about me.” Oh. Did he say that out loud?
It doesn’t matter, Lance finds out then.
His fingers go tight and nervous in Keith’s hair when a forehead touches against his own.
Keith whispers something to him that could be “I do”, but Lance doesn’t listen anyways because Keith kisses him on the lips. It’s soft and chaste, it makes something flutter into colours behind Lance’s lids, lets his fingers push into Keith’s hair and pull him so close that they can swallow each other’s shivers of breaths.
The gladiator has long sunken back into the floor when Keith stops kissing him. Lance holds his hand when they walk to their rooms. Keith doesn’t say good night to him, and he also doesn’t call him an idiot again, which is kind of new and strange, but Lance thinks that he could get used to it. He still kisses Keith’s cheek once, though, and grins wide and stupid when Keith blushes to the tips of his ears.
He still dreams of his family that night, still wakes up too early and with wet cheeks, but he remembers a warm hand in his own during the nightmare. It’s something, Lance decides as he touches his lips in front of the mirror that’s on the inside of his door.
Pidge takes one look at him when he enters the main hall the next morning, and starts grinning.