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Everything is burning. It is in his dreams, and each morning the flames lingering a little longer. He can feel the heat raging beneath his skin. He doesn’t look any different, except for maybe the bags under his eyes. But he feels it, the fire is coming, it is devouring his body, heart, and soul.
The first time it happens, he is in his room, striped down to his underwear in an attempt to escape the heat. Whoever said space was cold, was a fucking liar. Laying on his bed, feeling like he is in the deepest pit of a fiery hell, it began. At first he thought it was his imagination, another side effect of this burning heat he can’t contain, until the light from the fire lit up his whole room. His sheets had burst into flame.
Luckily, there wasn’t much else in the room to burn, so he could put out the fire with relative ease. And most importantly, no one knew what happened. At dinner, no one questioned why he smelled like smoke, maybe they didn’t notice or maybe they’re just so used to weird smells, that it doesn’t turn any heads.
The second time it happens, he is on the training deck. He was sparing with the simulator, only his 15th rep that day, when he was disarmed. As his sword clattered to the floor, Keith grew frustrated. He attempted to punch the simulator in retaliation, but instead of a sharp pain in his knuckles from making contact with the droid, there was heat. Looking up, the simulator has been blown back across the room, scorch marks marring its chest.
What was happening to him?
Cold, that was Lance’s constant state of being these days. No matter how much he worked out or how many blankets he piled on, he just could not get warm. Lance has never been one to enjoy the cold. He had grown up in a tropical region and was not built for this. Why did space have to be so goddamn cold?
It didn’t help that stupid Keith, with his stupid mullet, was just waltzing around wearing barely anything. Lance was getting cold just looking at him. And no Pidge he is not enjoying the extra “view”. Although Keith’s arms did look mighty fine in that tank top, not that Lance would admit that to anyone.
At this point, Lance believes the castle is just out to get him. It is purposely making his room the temperature of a freezer when he is trying to sleep. Even Hunk and Pidge agree his room is colder than theirs in the mornings. And that incident last week in the shower really sealed the deal on this theory. There he was minding his own business, applying his conditioner (these silky locks don’t get this soft by themselves) when the water froze. Not like when the hot water runs out or like at home when someone flushes the toilet while he is in the shower. No, the water actually froze, to solid ice.
Lance didn’t tell anyone about that incident because he really didn’t want to explain how he had to return the heat and blood flow to some of his *ahem* extremities. It was an experience he would rather forget, and god forbid Keith got his hands on that embarrassing story. Lance would never live it down.
Lance finally got fed up with seeing Keith in barely anything more than his underwear. That boy lived in the desert, how the fuck is he not cold? At least the others were wearing long sleeves.
“Are you a mutant or something?” Nice going Lance, you sound like you are attacking him.
“Excuse me?” Keith said looking offended.
“Dude how are you not cold? It is freezing on this ship and you look life you’re ready to go to the beach.”
“What are you talking about it? It is way too hot on this ship, I can barely sleep at night because my room feels like it is 100 degrees.” Now Keith looked confused and Lance was soon joining him in confusion.
“Oh, are you serious?”
“Yeah! Why do you think I’ve been walking around in shorts all the time? Honestly, I knew you grew up in a warm climate but this is getting ridiculous. How are you not sweating?” Looking at Keith now, Lance could see the truth of this words. There were bags under Keith’s eyes and there was a layer of sweat at his brow. Keith really was suffering and not just putting on an act.
“So you’re not just wearing those clothes to provoke me or something.”
“Uh, no.” Keith deadpanned, did Lance seriously think he was dressing up just for him? Well he wasn’t 100% wrong but Keith wasn’t about to admit that to Lance.
Not wanting to end the conversation on that note, Lance did what he does best and opened his big mouth.
“Ok, well in that case, um, if you want, you could try sleeping in my room.” What little heat Lance had in his body was flooding to face now. Oh god, did he really just say that?
“What now?”
“I mean just in the same room, not like with me or anything, but like the castle hates me or something because my room is always cold. Even Pidge and Hunk agree, so if yours is too warm you can come to mine.” Ok now Lance’s face was starting to look as heated as Keith felt.
“Really?”
“Yeah, sure.” Lance said, pausing before continuing, “Just don’t tell the others, we’d never hear it down if Pidge found out we were sleeping together.”
…
Later that night, Keith decided to take Lance upon his offer. He was dead tired and was willing to try just about anything at this point in order to get a full night’s sleep. Lance had better have been serious with his offer to host Keith in his room, if he wasn’t, Keith was going to punch him.
Standing awkwardly at the door, a pillow clutched in his hand, Keith knocked, “Hey Lance can I come in?” waiting for a reply, Keith could hear some rustling from behind the door.
“Yeah come on in” Lance called back. Opening the door, Keith discovered the source of the sound, Lance was frantically running around his room trying to clean up. But what really caught his attention was the temperature. Waves of cold air were poring over him and for the first time in weeks he felt normal.
“Woah, you weren’t kidding when you said your room was colder than the others.”
“I know right? I don’t know why, but my room is cold all the time.” Lance paused his cleaning to look up at Keith, “So, I really didn’t think this through all the way. I realized I don’t really have a place you can stay in my room. I tried moving the bed but that doesn’t work so you can sleep on the floor or just, maybe, um…” Lance bowed his head before continuing in a soft whisper “we could share my bed.”
Sensing Lance’s discomfort, Keith just smiled and said “The floor is fine Lance, thanks for the offer though. Just being in this room makes it so much better.”
“Really?” letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding Lance looked up and flashed a smile, “I’m glad I can help.”
Finding a relatively clean patch of floor to curl up on, Keith put his pillow down and for the first time in weeks, drifted off to sleep immediately.
A few hours later Keith woke to the sound of teeth clattering, after a few seconds of reorienting himself, Keith discovered that the source of the noise was Lance. As his eyes adjusted limited light, he could see the outline of Lance buried in blankets and shivering. Puzzled, Keith stood up and went over to Lance to see if there was anything he could do to help.
Leaning over Lance, Keith looked down at Lance’s pained face and without realizing it, reached out his hand to brush Lance’s bangs aside. But instead of warm flesh Keith’s fingers met ice. What in the hell?
Keith was starting to get worried now, it cannot be good for Lance to have skin that cold. He acted before thinking, like he so often does, and, ripping off Lance’s blankets, Keith started to touch all of Lance’s exposed skin in search of warmth. But there was none, every inch of Lance was ice; if it wasn’t for the steady clatter of teeth and the rise and fall of Lance’s chest, Keith would have been afraid Lance had died in the night.
Lance was starting to waken now, after Keith’s frantic movements, but instead of yelling at Keith to get away from him, Lance leaned into Keith’s touch. Almost purring Lance muttered “so warm”.
Keith stood there frozen, he didn’t know what to do. On one hand staying there touching Lance made him want to run away and deal with his insanely hot room on his own, but on the other, Lance was so cool to the touch and it felt nice.
What was a little cuddling in the quest to mutually help a friend out? Deciding to fuck it, Keith just said “Lance move over.”
Without protest, Lance rolled to the far side of the bed allowing Keith to wiggle is way in. Draping an arm around Lance, Keith reveled in the icy temperatures that were cooling his overheated body. He could tell Lance appreciated the gesture when he tried to curl up closer to Keith.
Closing his eyes, Keith got the most restful sleep he’s had in weeks.
Life in the castle continued as normal for several weeks. Keith had taken to wearing a tank top and gym shorts, while Lance was bundled up in every jacket he could find. But other than that, if you asked either of them, everything was normal.
While Keith and Lance may have been too distracted trying to hide their strange predicaments, Pidge, Hunk and Shiro knew something was up. Allura and Coran were mostly clueless because they “they did no fully understand human anatomy”, but the others knew something was definitely up.
Every night, when he thought no one was watching, Keith would sneak into Lance’s room, and then in the morning before breakfast, he would sneak back to his own room. Now he thought he was being discrete but what Keith wasn’t counting on was Shiro being woken up by a nightmare to hear scuffling from the room next door. Curious, he had peeked out his door just as the latch on Lance’s door closed. Normally this wouldn’t have been suspicious, except that he thought he saw a flash of red before it closed.
Not wanting to put too much thought into it, Shiro pushed it to the back of his mind, until the others started asking him questions.
“Don’t Lance and Keith seem to be getting along better?” Allura casually said one day. And looking over Shiro could see Keith and Lance sitting side by side while watching some Altean movie Coran had found.
A week or so later Shiro walked in on Pidge and Hunk crouching over a screen, “Look at that Hunk, there he goes again. Right into Lance’s room and he doesn’t reappear until the morning. I’m telling you they are totally doing it.”
“I don’t know Pidge, they seem to fight a lot for two people who are, you know, doing the deed.”
“But what other explanation is there?”
Deciding it was time to alert them of his presence, Shiro piped in “Who’s fucking who now?”
The look of surprise on their faces was priceless, Shiro chuckles, he thinks that sometimes the others forget that he is only a few years older than them.
“Uh, we noticed Keith and Lance were acting strange so we hacked into the security cameras and found some interesting night time activities,” Pidge explained.
“Hmmmm, interesting, well as long as it doesn’t affect us forming Voltron, I say we leave them alone. They will come out to us when they are ready,” Shiro said. He really didn’t care what those two were up to at night, but he was a little let down that they didn’t trust him enough to tell him about it.
It turned out Shiro only had to wait a few days before his questions were answered.
It was supposed to be a routine mission, infiltrate the Galra headquarters on the planet, plant bombs and evacuate the area. The corridors were too small for their lions so the paladins had to infiltrate by foot. As the best fighters, Shiro, Keith, and Lance were sent inside the base while Pidge and Hunk caused a distraction on the outside in their lions.
Everything was going according to plan, until suddenly it wasn’t.
There were more Galra troops that they originally anticipated, almost as if they were waiting for them to show up. Shiro found himself surrounded by Galra soldiers and in the corner of his eye he could see Keith and Lance were in a similar situation. Still, he had faith in their skills, he wasn’t called the Champion for nothing and Keith really had been working hard in the training room.
Just as he took down his 20th opponent, he heard a shout. There was a mangled cry of pain followed by a distressed “Lance!” but before Shiro could turn around to see the commotion, a sudden blast of heat rushed through the room.
As soon as Lance went down, Keith saw red. The slow burn in the pit of his stomach exploded out of him, and he was on fire, literally. He became a fiery monster in the blink of an eye with only one thought on his mind, destroy.
He had never felt so free, the Galra soldiers were crumbling like dolls as Keith cut through them like butter. He help up a free hand and flames engulfed his enemies. He was the raging storm, a force of nature burning his enemies. It wasn’t until he saw the flames reflected in Shiro’s eyes that Keith began to falter. The fear and awe Shiro showed snapped him out of his rampage, forcing Keith to look around. The room was a blaze, with dozens of bodies of Galra soldiers sprawled on the floor, many of them charred black.
“Keith you need to calm down, we need to get Lance and get out of here” Shiro calmly approached him. Calm? How could he be calm? Lance was hurt, those things did that to him.
Shiro was solely focused on Keith at this point, trying his hardest to get the hot headed boy to shut down his flames so they could get out of there. He was so focused on Keith that Shiro didn’t notice one of the Galra behind them start to move. It turns out he didn’t need to because right before the Galra was going to shoot, he was frozen solid. Looking for a source of the ice, Shiro’s eyes danced around the room before falling on Lance with his arm outstretched.
What the hell was going on?
“Keith, I’m cold” Lance breathed out, it was barely a whisper, but it seemed to mean something to Keith, for as soon as he heard it, Keith was running to Lance. His flames had died down and when his skin touched Lance there was steam? Lance wasn’t looking to well, his lips were blue and this skin was far paler that could possibly be healthy.
“I’ve got you Lance, come on warm up buddy. I can’t lose my human popsicle.” At this point Keith was practically cradling Lance in his arms. Keith seemed to get an idea as he looked down at Lance’s bloody side. “I’ve got a plan Lance, it’s going to hurt like hell but it will stop the bleeding. Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
“Ok, here goes nothing.” And before Shiro could interrupt, Keith furrowed his brow and stared at his hand. Just as before it burst into flame except this time it was more controlled. Reaching down, Keith pressed the flames to Lance’s side and a sick smell of burning flesh filled the room. Lance’s screams soon followed but it was all over in a few seconds. “There, I cauterized the wound so we can get you back to the healing pods. Come on buddy we’re going home.” Keith smiled down at Lance with a tender expression that made Shiro start to feel awkward, like he was witnessing something private that was just meant for those two boys on the floor.
Back at the castle, with Lance safely in one of the healing pods, Shiro confronted Keith. “Keith, we need to talk about what happened back there.”
Looking down, Keith nodded, “It’s been happening for a few weeks now but it seems that I have fire powers and Lance has ice powers. We don’t know why but we do. They are hard to control but being together helps, they balance each other out.”
“Yes, I remember now. Some paladin’s form a strong enough bond with their Lions that they begin to acquire some of the Lion’s power. So in the case of the Red Lion it is fire and the Blue Lion is ice,” Coran suddenly piped in. “Truly remarkable it is, I’ve never seen a paladin with that strong of a bond before.”
Shiro sighed. It seems like one mystery was solved at last. Although that look in Keith’s eyes as he held Lance told Shiro that there would be more discussions in the future on the exact nature of Keith’s and Lance relationship.