Work Text:
It’s not as if Lance had woken up one morning and thought, ‘Oh. Damn, sound the alarm everyone! Keith is suddenly the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.”
Admittedly, he’d had that thought once or twice, but it wasn’t as if it had just occurred to him randomly one day. It was slightly more gradual of a realization than that.
It probably started that first time Keith made him laugh. And he means like, truly laugh. Clutching his stomach and wheezing a little, because face it, who would have thought this sulking mullet-headed kid would have a singular comical bone in his body?
If you ask Lance today what that joke was, he’d brush it off easily and tell you he couldn’t remember something like that from so long ago. What he wouldn’t tell you was that it wasn’t even the words that made him delight in it. It was simply the feeling of having someone in the moment to feel interconnected with. To finally feel like he was on the same plane as someone else on the team.
That was what mattered.
Even if it was just for a split second, he finally felt like he had a ‘buddy’. Not like before when he had to battle it out with Pidge and Hunk for a bit of undivided best pal bonding time. Like maybe he could have had someone to make secret eye contact with when Coran said something so incredibly wacky, but even he felt too bad for the guy to verbally make a joke at his expense. Even if that was a rare occasion.
Well so maybe, just maybe, he sort of had that “rom-com” esk moment where he realized his rival teammate, whom he had definitely not been secretly pining after, was (holy moly he’s like- like actually glistening right now. Like how can a person even shimmer when faced with these dull LED lights in the training room? God save the Queen if she were to ever see this masterpiece) um, attractive.
So maybe he was lying to himself a little bit because no way in hell did he realize Keith was so, how could he put this tamely? Jaw-droppingly, deliciously sculpted by the gods.
It honestly kind of annoyed Lance. Or, he would have been annoyed if his eyes weren’t cartoonishly popping out of his head and his lungs weren’t shriveling up to the size of raisins due to how harshly he was gasping for breaths.
It wasn’t even a big deal. But also, it was kind of maybe just a little bit earth-shattering since Lance had never thought of a real guy like this before. I mean to think Heath Ledger was cute was one thing. That guy was like, ancient. And definitely too dead for it to feel significant in Lance’s mind. So he was maybe 98% sure that having a crush on a guy from wayyyy before your time, who you have no chance with (unless he decided that now was a perfect time to take a little trip over to his good old pal Hades’ underworld and beg for a measle kiss from the dearly missed, curly-haired man of the hour) was not the same as being completely enamored by a guy you barely considered to be a top-five ranking teammate in the lineup at the present moment.
But Keith. Oh man, Keith was all real .
He was tender skin and matted-down hair, dripping with sweat. He was sharp cut abs on display for the first time, glistening after a long solo training session.
It was indescribable. Like the first time a real masterpiece is unveiled at a snooty museum and all the art collectors fawn over it in their sophisticated manner. We’re talking top hats and weird long cigarettes people, that’s how serious this was.
Except there was nothing sophisticated about this; nothing dignified even.
It was just a boy and his homoerotic crush on his way too stunning teammate. Which is nothing. Really!
He was super cool about it. Not awkward at all. Nope. No. Not even a little. That’s just not his style. See when you look at it his way, he was like so casual it-
“Lance, you’re not a doorstop. You can’t just plant yourself in front of random doors and call it productivity,” came a dull drawl from in front of him.
Oh, that’s not good, is it? When had he gotten all the way over here?
“What? Me? No, I’m not stopped, just passing through thanks.” Wait, what the hell did he just say? What was the question? Oh man, he has got to get ahold of himself.
The weirdest thing tho was he swore he saw Keith do this sort of half grimace half actual laugh thing after he said that. So maybe he did something right after all.
“Yeah alright, Lance. I’ll leave you to your wandering or whatever your big, ‘door’ stopping plans are.”
Keith brushed past him to leave, his front only slightly connecting with the other boy's arm, but Lance's mind immediately short-circuited. He felt like he had just gone for a lovely swim with a toaster tucked under his arm.
It was undeniably electric .
So be it if he makes a fool of himself, he suddenly thinks he might swim the entire length of the Mississippi River with electric eels chasing him if it meant the possibility of feeling that way again.
And don’t think too hard about the construct of that alright? No one needs to know how he’d get a bunch of eels into the Mississippi anyway. For all anyone knows he bought them at the very real, underground eel market. What are you guys, cops?
As he was left to his thoughts, and to man his post as whatever Keith had called him, (a door guard? Now that just sounds silly, Keith must have known he wasn’t trying to protect this door. Heck the door itself could probably take Lance in a fight with all its voodoo Altean magic) he completely failed to notice the other walking away.
For the first time in history folks, Lance was outdone by Keith Kogane. He had finally been stunned into silence; not even a whisper of a joke coming from the brunette. Surely it must mean the end of the world is coming or something of the sort. Or maybe the third coming of Christ. And seeing how things were going today, maybe it would turn out to be him with how that one touch made him ascend to whatever sort of space heaven even existed.
Little did Lance know at the time, that sort of was the precursor to the end of his word. Soon after that things started to change and not for the better. No, definitely, 100% for the worse.
Things got, well, tense when they found out Keith was part Galra. Not him! He didn’t have a problem with it. Though it did seem to sort of explain the pent up rage and angst, but really! He didn’t have any issue with it. If he's being honest it made him seem more, rugged (god I'm taking that to the grave. Even I want to make fun of me for saying that) or something, if anything.
He’d even given him a little nickname. He started referring to Keith as his, “fuzzy little friend” which Keith definitely did not appreciate, if his glares meant anything.
But oh man, Allura was not happy about it that’s for sure. The Galra stuff, not the nickname. Lance liked to think they all got a good chuckle out of that one. Besides the big (not so) purple teddy bear himself. But he’s positive that things could have been fine if Keith didn’t pull his goddamn disappearing act. Maybe if he wouldn’t have left to join the blades, they could have been fine.
Maybe Lance finally would’ve gotten the courage to talk to Keith, like really talk. Ok. Fine. Even Lance can admit that was a long shot, but maybe he would have started being nicer to the guy. Trying to be his, friend?
See, he could never really tell where they stood with one another for too long. Lance always seemed to piss Keith off and Keith, just by looking at Lance, fried his brain. So sue him if he acts especially stupid around him. He was love drunk. Practically. It was basically the equivalent of some wild animals doing a mating dance but failing miserably in the end. Somewhere in his pea brain he was trying to get Keith to like him alright. Cut the guy some slack, it's his very first gay awakening. In this lifetime at least.
But he never got the chance and maybe that was for the best because Keith couldn’t stand to have more than a ten minute conversation with him if he wasn’t making jokes at the other boy’s expense.
Which was fine! Lance was the jokester king so he gets it. He could pretty much call that his favorite form of flirting at this point. The issue was that he knew this wasn’t how Keith saw it. No, he was just picking on the pestering teammate he was forced to sit across from at meals.
So yeah, it was pretty shitty when they went from the bare minimum of tossing out battling insults to pure radio silence in such a short amount of time.
He didn’t think he’d feel so blindsided by something he had known was coming but it felt like one day he woke up and a part of him was missing.
It was like he was limping around with a broken toe or something small like a splinter. He had that same feeling of emptiness like when he first left for the garrison and he couldn’t talk to his family consistently for months. It was dreadful to realize that he wouldn’t be able to see them when he woke up in the mornings. There would be no opportunities to bump into them around the corner and ask them if they wanted to hang out late at night. He couldn’t see them at all, even now, he’d realized. He was once again alone.
So he put himself into their missions headfirst, his heart be damned. And he trained, albeit not that intensely. Not like how Keith would push himself, but enough. Enough that he had improved and the team seemed to recognize that. It felt good but if he was being truly honest with himself, it wasn’t the attention he wanted. It wasn’t the awkward eye contact and a muttered, “Yeah I guess you didn’t completely suck today.” It wasn’t one on one sparring with the shaggy haired boy who could take him down in seconds. It wasn’t Keith.
Nothing ever would be. And that was obvious but it was cruel too. Because Lance maybe missed him a little bit more than he thought he would. And so he trained a little bit harder after that.
Maybe the universe heard his calls or maybe some random deity was taking pity on a poor soul lost in the deep of space as some sort of charity work because Keith was finally back.
He looked good too. He was standing rather confidently at the helm of his fancy little spacecraft when Lance first saw him in person after all those months.
Though Lance noticed that he wore this serious expression on his face. It made him look older. Wait- why did he seem taller too? No that can’t be right. I mean, sure Lance immediately clocked that he looked bigger. But that was in a muscular sort of way. Which makes sense when you remember the rigorous training he went through with the blades and the high standard they’re all held to.
But now that he really thinks about it, there’s no way a person could get so buff in just a couple of months. Absolutely no way they could grow four inches overnight. (Don’t try to reason with him that boys tend to have growth spurts like that naturally. No, it's been decided that it was the universe's way to punish him one last time. It had to be some sort of cruel and unusual punishment, otherwise he would have to admit to himself that maybe he liked it. Just a little bit of course.)
Oh god, Lance was going to, like, burst into flames or something like that. Lance seems to have lost his sense of humor and is now plotting his own destruction because in no world can he live with Keith being taller than him. It’ll be a cold day in hell before Lance gives up looking down at him and poking fun at him for it. He’ll just have to start wearing platform boots. Nothing wrong with a man in heels ladies, just the fact that he truly believes he could wear them better.
It was just like Keith to be gone for two years and come back bearing gifts (the detrimental news of their imminent downfall).
Show-stopping as always, mullet.
Another thing that seemed to have stayed the same was his callous edge towards Lance. It started off with a super casual and not hurtful at all, “I don’t have time for this Lance.”
He knows he came off a little strong with his intro but jeeze that was a rough one for him if he’s being honest. The only silver lining is that at least he knows that not everything has changed.
So Lance does what he’s become accustomed to, he puts his head down and ignores his heart screaming Keith’s name. He focuses on the mission.
Which just so happens to be centered around taking down their not-so-heroic leader. Finding out he’d been living with a cheap knockoff of the man he idealized for years was… let’s just say not good for his self-esteem.
How had he not realized? Sure, he had seen him become more hardened at the edges but who didn’t change in the face of war?
He couldn’t blame himself. He knew that all too well, but he could let his mind wonder a bit. He thought about what would have happened if he had figured it out prior to Keith’s return. Who he would have told? Would any of them have believed him, being nicknamed the boy who cried wolf and all? He thought about Keith coming back in general. How he had essentially saved the entire team and the universe in the process. How had he turned out to be the most heroic of them all?
“You’re sulking,” came a voice not too far behind him.
Lance stiffened where he had previously been slumped over a chair in their shared dining area.
He had finally found a little pocket of serenity in the busy castle ship. Over the last few days, it’s been nothing but whispered planning and secret rendezvous just trying and figure out how to tackle this Shiro-shaped problem head on.
He hadn’t had a damn moment to himself to think about his shortcomings or his unrequited feelings bubbling to the top of his overworked brain. And how convenient that he seems to have summoned the man himself. Just great.
“And now you’re overthinking,” footsteps approached him quietly. Maybe Keith had taken some extra stealth missions because he truly didn’t see the man coming. Probably wouldn’t have now either had he not spoken to him.
“Trust me, the last thing I want to be doing right now is be thinking at all,” Lance grumbled, still not looking up.
He heard Keith sit down across from him. He could just barely see his fingers resting on the table In front of him.
Suddenly he was 17 again, stealing glances at the beautiful brooding kid sitting across from him. He was back to holding his breath so he wouldn’t say something stupid and aggravate him again that day.
But that’s not what this was. Not anymore.
Now he was a little older, staring across at a man who had ventured out on his own. Who found a new sense of self out in deep space where childish antics couldn’t touch him. So far gone now, that Lance was afraid he’d lost his understanding of a language previously known by only two.
A tap on the table and the question, “Hey, where do you keep going?” shocked him out of his hazy state.
“‘M right here,” he says lamely. He knew that wasn’t what he was asking.
Keith hums and Lance mourns the realization that even without the use of words he still sounds wonderful. At this point he thinks he would take any breadcrumbs Keith would give him. He just needs the familiarity of that tone he always seems to have or the furrow of his brow that might as well be cemented into his skin.
“Alright,” the half-Galra man speaks softly into the quiet kitchen air, “I’ll bite. What’s got you up so late?”
And Lance has to do his very best to hold back a little laugh at the irony. He wants to take a survey of every person in the world and ask if they have ever been confronted by the very thing they are consumed by. The thing that plagues his thoughts so often at night that it appears in front of him when he’s lucid now too. He wants to know if the thing they are infatuated with most becomes the stuff of nightmares for them as well. And he would ask them if they thought Keith’s question was maybe a little bit funny, in a self-deprecating sort of way.
“Wonderful of you to ask, Keith, buddy. I think maybe it has a little something to do with a certain crumbling team Voltron.” He finds himself playing with his hands as he speaks, picking at the dry skin around his nails. There hasn't been much time for luxuries like his highly coveted after, special recipe moisturizer as of late. It's been a long road of all work and no play.
He’s not sure why that was the lie he went with. Maybe because it was technically partially true, he was worried about where all of this would leave them, or maybe because he knew it would strike up a conversation and he longed to hear this man’s sultry voice do more than snap at him.
Either way, Kieth seemed to buy into it as he frowned over at Lance. “Lance that wasn’t-“ he looked around as if asking for help, but there was no one to tap in on this one. He didn’t remember becoming one of the older ones. One of the team members who could give sage advice. He didn’t quite feel qualified.
He tried again with a soft start, “Lance that isn’t your fault, alright? You couldn’t have known.”
He says it so kindly and yet with such certainty that Lance is almost inclined to believe him. Almost.
“How could I not have seen it? Any of us, really. It’s like I’ve just been so stuck in my own head that I forgot anyone around me could have been going through something too,” Lance looks up for the first time during their conversation to see Keith frowning over at him firsthand.
“How do you miss a change that big and still call yourself their friend?”
“Listen, Lance,” Keith sighs, “anything you say or even think, you have to see it from the other side too. Would you say the same thing about Pidge? Or even Hunk? Would you seriously sit there and tell me you’re disappointed in them because they didn’t take a wild guess and land exactly on what seems like, truly, the most outlandish possibility out there to explain a little change in behavior?”
“Honestly Keith, I’m a little disappointed in all of us. It’s not even that we didn’t realize he was a clone, alright. It’s that I couldn’t even see he was acting differently at all. I thought I had it all figured out for about two seconds and then you came back and just like always, it all came crashing down on me.” Lance slumped back in his chair after his little speech, feeling a bit like a kid on the opposite side of the principal’s desk in his too-big office.
Keith seems to mull it over for a minute, just staring at Lance as if that would help him get a read on the situation. Like maybe counting his freckles could help him curate the perfect response to convince his hurt friend that maybe, just maybe, not everything has to fall on his shoulders right now. That maybe there’s equal blame to place, if any.
What he says tho, is nothing like what he’s thinking. And Lance for one, is grateful to hear it.
“To be fair, you were never that observant anyway,” he jokes cracking a bit of a smile.
His unsuspecting jest has Lance choking out a little laugh, surprised but oh so pleased that Keith wasn’t taking this too seriously after all.
His response seemed to just slip out, so used to speaking his mind around Keith. “Please, I noticed your little transformation over a video screen. Turns out I’m not as dumb as I am pretty.”
Keith’s eyebrows raised as if in question, or maybe he was just surprised, but he seemed to gloss right over it with a small laugh. “You’re right, don’t sell yourself short there, pipsqueak, you’re just slightly more cunning than they give you credit for.”
“So kind coming from the king of angsty dramatics with a lack of common sense,” Lance retorts.
It gets quiet again, after that. The comfortable sort, but still a bit tense. Neither of them seemed to know just how to communicate with the other without the presence of a joke.
After a while, it was Keith, surprisingly, who spoke up.
“That’s not all, is it?”
That’s all I’m willing to tell you, Lance thought. “No, I’m fine. That was it, really. Thanks, man,” he stood up and patted him on the back as he passed by his chair. As he starts to walk toward the door he hears a sigh leave Keith’s mouth.
“ Lance.”
Oh.
He missed that. He missed his voice and his ability to read Lance like the back of his hand even when he tried so hard to be guarded. He barely even realized it happened most of the time, and yet it has very quickly become the thing he will crave the most after he’s gone again.
“I missed you, you know,” Keith whispered faintly. “I’m sorry I had to leave like that. I thought it would be for the best.”
Lance turned back around to look at him. He saw the spitting image of his maladaptive daydream sitting right there at his kitchen table. He heard all the words he longed to hear, and all he managed to do was shrug and say, “It’s not like it was personal. It’s fine man, I promise.”
Keith looked truly exasperated as he stood up and walked over to Lance.
“This is the part where you say you missed me too, idiot”
“Well I don’t know who told you that but they sold you a sack of lies, that’s for sure. Hope you didn’t pay too much for that intel, mullet man,” Lance scoffed.
Keith had gotten closer now, looming over Lance a bit. He had a smile on his face and if Lance wasn’t mistaken he looked almost fond of him and his antics at that moment.
His sweet smile turns into a sly smirk as he says, “Don’t worry pretty boy , no one sold you out for all that painfully obvious pining you were doing.”
Lance choked, like actually choked on nothing. On air or maybe his own spit, who could say, but either way, he was left spluttering and trying to come up with something to say to throw Keith off this path of torment.
“That's not- hey, I’m just-. Well, the funny thing is haha, um,” Lance is hitting himself on the head in his mind right now as he tries to come up with the perfect cover story for longing glances and lingering thoughts.
Keith just laughs, loudly this time, throwing his head back. Lance thinks this is glorious, this must be his natural state of being because he’s never seen a man look so effortlessly beautiful doing something so mundane. He looks down after a second and says, “Lance, I meant it when I said I missed you.”
Lance holds his breath for a moment before giving in and muttering, “I guess I may have missed you a little bit. But don’t let it inflate your ego, your head already looks too big with all that hair.”
And to Keith’s credit, he doesn’t roll his eyes or poke fun at Lance back. He instead takes an unforeseen route by bringing his hand up to Lance's head, slipping it into the shorter boy's hair, and resting it on the nape of his neck.
“So, what was this transformation of mine you mentioned before,” Keith asks in the solace provided by the castleship’s ‘night-mode’, courtesy of Pidge themself.
Oh God, Lance feels the blush creep up his neck. He thought he had evaded the awkwardness of that slip up. He should have known it was impossible with Keith around. And yet he couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed by it for that very same reason.
How could anyone truly be angry when their walking nightmare had just turned into a dream come true?