i want your heaven and your oceans too
mothpoem
"bring the floor up to my knees / let me fall into your gravity / then kiss me back to life to see / your body standing over me."
— adele, i miss you
• • •
Lance knows how this story goes, but still he sprints onward, pink sand crunching softly underfoot.
He’s always thought that if he had to bite it, if technology hadn’t made it far and fast enough by then, if death had finally figured out how to outrun him, he’d like to live out his last moments on a beach, preferably one buried in the marrow of Cuba. Maybe sprawled across the hot grain, no towel in sight, his fingers curled lovingly around the topmost layer of sand where it lived the loosest. His flesh memorizing, soaking up, devouring the seaside smells as the sun sank languidly below the water.
He thinks of his eldest sister Yves walking him down the shores of Varadero one smoldering summer when they’d fought their way free of the stale hotel their father worked bellhop in, the way she’d held tight to his tiny brown fingers and said, “Sand records history. ¿Sabías eso? Most things in nature remember. Trees, rocks—they can all recall their past. If you have the eyes for it, you can look at any of them and they’ll tell you their story.”
It burns on its way up his throat, the knowledge that the universe is granting him this one lone wish, if nothing else. It’s the most terrible pyrrhic victory he’ll never survive—to die on an alien beach parked a million light-years from his home country, a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, if Shakespeare had given brown kids and their misfortunes the time of day in his sonnets.
Lance thinks, if sand records history, then so does his flesh.
His body remembers in all the worst ways—picking out the ripest avocados from the marketplace stalls of Cardenas alongside his humming mother, her thick hair piled high in a bun, flyaways caught against her temples with sweat, the pedi-taxis pulled by unruly mares trying to lure in passersby and their coins, packs of barefooted brown children playing baseball in the streets, their crows of victory rising in the air like triumphant birdsong.
Cuban birdsong, he thinks, has always been the voices of a million dark-skinned children—some brown, some black, some brown-black and glowing golden at the seams.
“Hey, so, I’m in a bit of a pickle here,” Lance pants into his helmet. “The Galra are backing me into a corner. They’ll figure out how to flush me out pretty soon and I have refugees with me. Young ones.”
He sends the adolescent aliens wrapped around his long limbs a panicked look and pulls harder where they’re clinging to his gloved hands, yanking them down the shores of the pink-fleshed beach, like in a surrealist version of an old memory—dark beaches, doe-eyed children, the haunted beat of approaching footsteps in sand, still far-off but rapidly gaining on them—a moment he’s already lived distorted by the evils of his brain in unconsciousness. Except he’s wide awake right now.
He’s always wide awake for the worst of his nightmares.
The child curled around his back like an infant-monkey digs their pointy chin into his shoulder and says something in another language that his helmet ingests and spits back out in robotic English.
“Hurry, Blue One,” his helmet recites, emotionless, because for all the ways Altean tech seems flawless at first glance, the translators built into their helmets have never been able to replicate emotion. Some things, Lance supposes—things like a child’s abject terror—are universal, because his brain has no trouble interpreting the sounds of the alien’s fear. “The Galra are fast.”
“Hurrying,” Lance says, quickening his pace, but the silk of the sand seems to absorb the impact of his footsteps, swallowing and stunting his speed.
He wishes, suddenly and fiercely, for hard-packed earth, someplace coarse and rocky, far away from the deserted beaches of Etalutauqsa, where the most recent Galra incursion is taking place.
“Lance,” Shiro says. He says it like a curse and everyone knows Shiro never swears in front of children. His patience these days has been wearing thin, like rock washed wane-gray. Their fearsome leader is no longer the darling, lamb-eyed pilot of the Galaxy Garrison, always camera-ready and grinning, with hair dark as soot and pristine, scarless flesh. These days, he is all ridge and built to draw blood. “I thought I told you to stay in your lion.”
“Yeah, no can do, bossman,” says Lance. Some things never change; one of them is Lance’s proclivity for martyrdom. “Those soldiers were about to close in on these kids. Couldn’t leave them to die and there was no way Red was gonna be able to lay down any covering fire without risking the little guys’ lives too.”
“The Blade was on them,” says Shiro, barely-contained frustration thrumming through each word.
Shiro, despite the heroic front he puts up, knows what it means to jettison nonessential weight. Keith took after him that way, Lance thinks. Like brother, like brother. Like scarred flesh, like scarred flesh.
“Where’s the Blade now?” Lance grits out. “Seriously? Kolivan, can you send someone my way? I’ve got about three minutes before I—”
The shot rings out over the quiet of the beach without warning, traveling high above the gentle sounds of the water mouthing at the sand in tender lovemaking, and laserfire lands somewhere along Lance’s left calf. He feels himself collapsing before he can right himself and topples over in the sand, crying out, like a car with a blown tire skidding off the tracks.
For a moment, his vision whites out as red-hot pain lances up his leg, flaring along raw flesh.
“Lance! Are you okay?”
“Lance?”
“Lance!”
Small hands palm at his helmet, jostling his head. He blinks, bleary-eyed, and stares up at a child with baby, velvet-textured antlers sprouting from their rose-colored flesh. The sky above them is bloody and mottled with black, wisping smoke. “Blue One,” they say, now tugging insistently at his hand. “There’s a cave up ahead. We must go!”
Lance shakes himself, adrenaline rushing in and dulling the pain some, and staggers to his feet. In a flash, he’s snatching up each of the three children and loading them up under his arms by their tiny waists. The knee-jerk elegance of the maneuver tugs at an old memory in his head and he thinks idly about the way he used to pull this move with his nieces and nephews whenever they visited from Havana, giggling toddlers in hand, how they squealed joyously while he made airplane noises and swung them around the room, sometimes tossing them playfully into the air, saying, Engines on! Commencing countdown! Ten, nine, eight...
“M’fine,” he says into his helmet, words slurring one against the other, and pushes up and off of the sand.
He bolts for the yawning maw of a giant outcropping of rock set several yards down the beach, breath whistling through his teeth and legs pumping. His arms ache with the combined weight of all the squirming aliens and every step he takes with his left foot sends pain rocketing up his body. He feels his eyes watering and pushes himself farther, faster, better.
Victory or death, he reminds himself, as his fear spikes tenfold, is the Galra way.
“It seems one of our own is already on their way over, paladin,” Kolivan says, in a deep, put-upon monotone, from Lance’s helmet. “ETA five doboshes.”
“Lance,” says Allura. “Can you hold them off with your bayard until then?”
“Wish I...could, Princess,” Lance says, through each of his labored breaths. Sweat beads along his brow. “Forgot my...bayard...back in Red. Was too...distracted...trying to...get to the kids.”
“Quiznak,” Allura curses, and there is the sound of artillery fire from the comm-system, marred slightly by static, followed by a distant explosion and an angry grunt from Hunk. “We’re completely surrounded and taking heavy ion-fire up here. Lance, if I could, I’d—”
“Hey, hey...none of that, Allura. I know,” says Lance, drawing to a stop in front of the cave. He sets the children down and starts herding them deeper into the shelter of rock, away from the weakening light of the beach, where the planet’s second sun—named Ecanure, a watery red-blue color, something of an old dwarf standing on its last legs—is slowly dipping below the waterline. “Listen. If I don’t make it out—”
“Lance,” Pidge growls, presumably through her teeth. “No!”
“Listen,” says Lance, a note of pleading entering his voice. “If I don’t make it out, you’ve got Keith. He’s the rightful paladin of the Red Lion and we all know he’s got a wacky sense of duty, so. Just appeal to that and you should be fine. No matter what happens tonight, Voltron goes on.” He activates his wrist-flashlight and blinks hurriedly against the sudden threat of tears, adding: “Look, it...it might even be better this way. Keith—he’s—he’s always been the better pilot of the two of us.”
He figures it can’t hurt to admit it once and for all—that Keith’s the better version of Lance, always has been—not now that he’s staring down the grim reaper’s proverbial scythe.
“Lance,” Shiro says uneasily. “You are not dying tonight. I forbid it.”
“Help is on the way,” Allura adds. Her voice barely quavers with it. “Please don’t give up, Lance. If you can hold the Galra forces off for even a few doboshes, you should be f—”
“I may not have that long,” Lance admits.
“Lance,” says Hunk, strangled, his voice thick with unshed emotion. “C’mon, man, don’t talk like that.”
“Just thinking logistically, buddy,” Lance murmurs. He points the beam of his flashlight at a small alcove dug into the rock of the cave. “Here,” he says, after checking for spiders and brushing away long-abandoned webs of arachnid-silk, dusty with age. “Can you all squeeze in here for me?”
The children obediently make their way inside the alcove with wide eyes, their bodies going hunched, a mess of awkwardly splayed legs and arms.
“I’m hiding the little guys in a cave,” Lance whispers into the comm. “I’ll leave my shield in front of their hiding place for the Blade to find. I'm gonna try to stall for as long as I can. As long as someone can get to the kids before I’m dead, everything should be fine.”
“Roger that,” says Pidge stiffly. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears and trying to hide it, Lance realizes with a start. “Passing your message along.”
“Thanks, Pidge,” Lance says softly.
She hums her acknowledgment. “Just be careful out there, doofus.”
“Will do,” says Lance.
He drops to his knees before the children, touching each of their heads one-by-one, a gesture born of muscle memory, learned in childhood by rote. It’s something he’s been conditioned into doing from years of seeing his younger siblings off and checking them over once home from school, for scratches or mosquito bites or hidden tattoos.
“What’re your names?” murmurs Lance.
The one with antlers points to themselves. “Wara,” they say, then they point to smallest of the bunch, a little thing with frightened reptilian eyes, saying, “Ytsuf,” and then, finally, the somber-faced one with gill-like scars carved into their face: “Reviaq.”
Lance allows himself three seconds to commit each face to memory, eyes skimming from one to the other and then back again. He says, “Wara, Ytsuf, Reviaq. Thanks for being so brave with me today.”
“Blue One,” says Wara, with eyes round as twin moons. “What is your title?”
He smiles with half his mouth. “McClain,” he says. “Lance McClain.”
Wara says, “Will you be safe, McClain?”
“Hey, don’t be scared for me,” he says, a futile encouragement, he’s sure, and briefly touches a palm to their knee where they’d skinned it in the sand during his fall earlier. “Just listen carefully, okay? I’m gonna try to lead the Galra away from the cave and in about three or four minutes, someone will be here for you. No matter what you hear outside, you don’t leave this spot until that someone is here. They’ll be from a group called the Blade of Marmora—you can trust them. It’s their job to take you somewhere safe, got it?”
“Yes, thank you,” Wara says, with something foolishly ferocious, and in this moment, Lance knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, if these children are ever forced to go up against the Galra, they will not go down without a fight.
It inspires in Lance a kind of similar savagery.
“Don’t thank me till the empire is a legend of the past, kid,” murmurs Lance. Then he presses a mock-kiss to his fist and, with great care, holds his leathered knuckles against each of their chests, in a rough approximation of where their heart, or lifesource lies awake and beating. “Dios los bendiga hoy y siempre.”
Wara ducks their head and flattens their left palm against the visor of Lance’s helmet in turn. “Safe crossings, Lance McClain,” they say, and whether that passes for a parting between the living and the soon-to-be dead, or a simple good luck, he’ll never know. It doesn’t matter, either way.
Some oceans are merciful, and others swallow whole pilots at a time, and Lance has never been afraid of the water in all the years that he’s been alive. He tries to pretend he feels the same about this kind of swallow, imagines Amelia Earhart white-knuckling her Lockheed 10E Electra’s steering wheel across the Atlantic, making quick hairpin turns through the howling wind, right before the ocean ate her up for good. It works, at least for the moment.
Lance mutes his helmet’s incoming audio feed, levers himself to his feet with great effort, and summons his shield. He wedges it into the soft pink loam in front of the alcove’s opening, like a wooden cross anointing this land, silken though it may be, holy and untouchable. Then he’s turning and running headfirst towards the red light at the end of the cave to meet his maker, his grin brilliant and cocksure.
In the falling dusk, it has begun to mist lightly, though Lance’s flesh will never feel it through his paladin armor. The temperature readings displayed inside his helmet tell him the night is growing colder, the waves more insistent, but Lance’s flesh will never know it. It’s this upset that tugs, incessant, at the cage of his ribs, pulling him out towards the water. Maybe if he draws the soldiers into the sea, he can—
But he never makes it that far.
Another precision-shot rings out and hits his right leg, a matching exit wound for his left, and he goes down. Lance hits the sand hard, teeth clacking inside his helmet, and he watches, vision blurred, as the ocean-water drags slowly towards his face, teasing, inches from touching the thick of his gloved fingers, before receding again.
Impure liquid hydrogen and oxygen detected nearby, his helmet intones, and he thinks back: I know, I know, I know, like a dead boy’s mantra. So close, he thinks, his hand outstretched towards the sea, beseeching. The Amelia Earhart in him implores that he turn back and he informs her with some manner of calm that he has never been a land creature. The sea calls out to him, hissing, and he thinks he’d like to be swallowed by it.
He curls his hand into a fist and wills his tears away, his chest heaving shallowly. Then he begins the steady and agonizing process of dragging himself closer to the ocean, arm over arm, fingers digging into the wet sand between each of his harsh grunts.
If I have to die, he thinks—retroactively, too late—let it be near water, and then he pretends the universe has humored him, dropping him near a jewel-blue body of water in a mercy killing. The universe informing him, this water will be the last thing you see before they take your life. Cherish it.
But Lance has spent all his life staring down the ocean’s throat, he realizes, and this planet is no home of his.
Inside his head, as he waits for the killshot to take his life, he instead invokes images of his old life back on Earth. He thinks of his mustachioed father in black beret, posing in front of a beat-up, candy blue 1956 Ford Sunliner in the Cuban heat. He thinks of his mother’s favorite fruit-knife, the way she expertly peeled her mangoes and let the tough flesh ribbon to the floor in bright red-yellow-orange flutters. He thinks of his little brother Ernesto’s First Communion, his sensible white suit and sweaty hair and smiling mouth. The ornate rosary his sister Yves gifted Lance on his fifteenth birthday, forgotten back in his Garrison dorm.
Then he flickers through memories of his team, like a hastily thrown together View-Master reel, one face after the other, and because he’s on the brink of death and deserves it, he lets himself linger on memories of Keith—the frustrated furrow of his brow, the shock of his mouth unhinged on a toothy laugh, his fist curled around the hilt of the knife that held in its purpled alloy the story of his beginning and his awaited end.
He thinks about all the things he’s never said to Keith, all that he’ll never get to say, and squeezes his eyes shut, cursing his idiocy.
There’s no time left to mourn lost opportunities and mouths left unkissed though because that’s when a hand unceremoniously flips him onto his back and says, “You’ve put up quite the fight, but I think we can both agree that ends here.”
Lance squints up at the purple-faced commander looming above him who bears the startling Galra girth and cruel smirk considered customary among the empire. He’s hulking and a shiny scar travels the full length of his face, from forehead to chin, a diagonal slash of raised flesh that has ruined his right eye, watery and yellow-gold.
“Tell Lotor I’m more useful to him alive.” Lance taps an index finger to his head, finger-to-glass visor, and adds: “Highly-valuable trade secrets.”
“Oh, you sweet thing,” says the commander, smiling a little sadly. “We’re under Zarkon’s orders, not Lotor’s.”
Lance pales, his heart pounding a furious rhythm behind his breastbone. Duh, he thinks, and he could slap himself. Lotor, the crown drama queen, has been AWOL ever since Zarkon put a price on his head. It’s Zarkon and his cronies who have been sanctioning all the recent village slaughters.
“Tell you what,” says the commander, dropping into a crouch beside Lance. His silhouette obstructs the dying light of the beach and Lance is momentarily bathed in shadow. “If you beg hard enough, I may consider letting you live till we’re back on the cruiser. Maybe I’ll take your legs”—here, he traces up Lance’s armored shin with a single gnarled claw—“how does that sound? A few more shots about here and they’ll be permanently unusable.”
“Do whatever you want, dude,” says Lance, firming his jaw against the sudden panic sluicing through him. He’s lied through his teeth enough times that it comes out sounding half-convincing. “Few more minutes and you’ll all be dead anyway.”
The commander tsks his tongue. “Confident, are we?”
“The Blade and your empire are two sides of the same coin. Only difference is, one of you has been corrupted by power and the other hasn’t,” Lance says, seething. Quit while you’re ahead, something in him orders, but he doesn’t think he’s ever considered surrendering, not even when he was dead-last in line and second-choice to the best pilot of their generation. Fitting, to begin and end without renouncing even an inch, the true Lance McClain way. “Victory or death. That’s your sick little motto, right? Well, vrepit sa to you, asshole! I hope you enjoy choking on your own blood for your fascist cause.”
“I’d heard stories about the red paladin and his famed spite, but none spoke of you,” says the commander, cocking his head at Lance in something like scientific fascination. “Tell me. Do you pilot the blue lion?”
“No,” Lance mumbles, throat abruptly squeezing. He shuts his eyes and feels a traitorous tear roll down his cheek, disappearing beneath the collar of his undersuit. “I’m just a no one.”
“Pity,” the commander coos, sighing. “No one’s are never missed. They are not even footnotes to the universe’s infinite and glorious history. I suppose that makes clean-up a little easier, but I had hoped your death would incite a bit of resentment within your team’s ranks. Will nobody really think to avenge you, boy?”
Lance doesn’t answer. It hurts more than it should, the idea that he is neither red nor blue paladin to the empire. He is wholly expendable—will become little more than an ancillary piece of information printed at the bottom of Voltron’s eventual biography. Lance McClain: former blue paladin, stand-in for Keith Kogane during his temporary departure from the Red Lion. Briefly aided in the war efforts before dying a tragic death on an Etalutauqsa beach while attempting to free three (3) refugees at the ripe age of eighteen.
“Ah, I see. You’re the weakest link then, aren’t you? I weep for you, paladin, truly I do.” The commander’s smirk lengthens, pulling at his scar tissue, and he gestures with his other hand. Several droids snap to attention, blasters raised. “Start looking for the children. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. It would pain me immensely to spare their lives when we’ve the most sensitive paladin pinned.”
Lance sits bolt-upright, his own inner-angst suddenly forgotten, hands scrabbling at the sand as he tries uselessly to crawl past the commander with his injured legs, shouting, “No!”
The commander laughs uproariously. “Check every crevice and cranny! Lay waste to this place if you must!” he orders, voice booming, and grasps Lance by the throat, slamming him face-first into the damp sand.
Lance, never one to be outdone, begins to thrash under the commander’s vice-like grip, his legs screaming in protest. He throws all his weight against the hand at his nape, hollering like la llorona herself, in memory of the children she sent to drown down the riverbend. Just like in the Mexican folktale, his screaming is hair-raising at best, ineffectual at worst.
“If you’ve any sense of self-preservation left, you’ll stop squirming,” the commander says, hand squeezing. Lance feels the presence of the commander’s grin in the claws curled around his neck, their razor-sharp edges skimming his jugular, taunting. “And if not for yourself, for those poor children I’ll be torturing on your behalf.”
Lance stills at once, panting weakly into the sand, his voice cracking and then fading out like a dying animal’s keen.
“Atta boy. Mind your manners now,” says the commander. With his other hand, he presses the barrel of his blaster to the first notch in Lance’s spine. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll burn a hole through your spine now, maybe leave you permanently paralyzed, and send what’s left of you to your little gaggle of make-believe freedom fighters back home. How does the Altean princess feel about gifts?”
“Screw you. Those freedom fighters are worth a thousand—no, a million of you,” Lance spits.
“A waste of last words, but I suppose there’s no accounting for a human’s taste,” the commander says, sighing imperiously.
Lance turns his head at that, glowering up at the melting crimson of the sky, just in time to register a shrill whistling permeating the air, something disrupting and dislodging nearby oxygen molecules. The sound grows steadily louder, like an insect’s wings beating the air.
The commander must hear it too, because he looks up, eyes narrowing, right as a large blade spinning point-over-hilt sinks into the meat of his arm. He gives a short cry, probably more from shock than pain, and moves to his feet on clumsy legs. “What in the—” He glares down at his arm as it locks up, and from the wound the knife’s tongue has made in his flesh, a dark and foreboding foam begins to ooze.
Poison, thinks Lance.
Nerveless, the blaster falls from the commander’s paralyzed fingers and lands at Lance’s waist in the sand.
Lance, sensing an opening, scrambles onto his back like an upturned crab and seizes the gun, stumbling to his feet and nearly keeling over twice as his burning muscles race to respond. He aims six shots at the commander’s legs, three for each, and every single one lands without fail. The laserfire takes him out at the kneecaps, and Lance watches with vicious glee as the commander collapses in the sand with a dull thud and a crude groan.
Slowly, Lance approaches the commander’s prone form where he’s writhing in pain along the shoreline. “A few more about here,” he mocks, nudging the commander’s knee with the toe of his boot, “and they’ll be permanently unusable, don’t you think?”
The commander snarls, “You little—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” says Lance, mouth curling. He flashes the commander a single pearly-white canine in casual threat. “No back-talking the gunslinger, remember? I might not feel so kind in a few minutes.”
The commander starts to say something in fiendish reply, until his eyes light on someone over Lance’s shoulder and widen in sudden terror.
Lance turns at the waist and watches in confusion as a hooded, masked figure—the Blade of Marmora member Kolivan said was on their way over and the rightful owner of the blade now poisoning the Galra commander’s bloodstream—sprints at breakneck speed towards the water. They jam something cylindrical and silver-purple into the sand without breaking for breath and barrel onward, heading straight for Lance on their collision course.
Lance feels his mouth falling open in startled surprise. He holds his hands up like a criminal caught red-handed, palms out in the universal gesture for placating someone, and drops the purloined blaster. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hold your horses, I’m one of the good guys—”
They rip their blade from the commander’s arm without so much as a glance in his direction, sheathing it in their utility belt and ignoring his agonized bleat, then proceed to catch Lance around the hips with all the grace of a forty-ton football player, firm arms encircling, and charge for the ocean.
“Hey!” Lance shouts indignantly.
The Blade member bypasses Lance’s disbelief entirely and hoists him higher by the thighs, one hand clamping down around Lance’s lower back, the other winding beneath his thighs, straight-up ignoring him. They hit the water and begin splashing their heavy way through the tides, wading farther and farther still, fighting against the vicious currents all the while.
“You’re totally touching my butt, I hope you know that!” Lance yells over the sound of the crashing waves, affronted, and then, as a particularly powerful swell sloshes against him, he hastens to wrap both arms tightly around the soldier’s neck like some kind of spooked toddler. Pure animal instinct, he tells himself, then adds: “Does Kolivan keep you on a tight leash or something or are all of your brethren this touch-starved?”
The soldier does not deign this with an answer.
“Okay, I’m just gonna assume you’re really desperate to cop a feel then—not that I blame you. I’ve been told I have an incredible figure!” When no response makes itself known, Lance peers out across the sea behind him and earns himself a faceful of ocean-water for his efforts. He flinches, even despite the fact that his helmet is protecting him from the planet’s atmospheric conditions, saying, “Whoa, how deep are you planning on taking us? I hope you’re not trying to drown me, because if you are, you’ll be hearing from a very large, very angry mecha-robot. Seriously, I’ve been swimming since before I could walk, buddy, you’re gonna have to work a little harder than this!”
The soldier ignores this as well, one gloved hand sliding wetly up Lance’s back, past his neck, before forcing his head down against their shoulder.
“That is not as comforting as you seem to think it is,” says Lance, and watches over their shoulder as the silver cylinder sticking out of the sand emits a high-pitched wailing, almost like a tea kettle boiling over, its plum-colored light blinking in something like warning for several seconds.
“Ten,” a pleasant female voice chants from the shore in a thunderous volume. “Nine. Eight. Seven.”
“Wait. Holy shit! Is that a bomb?” Lance yells, as everything finally clicks into place.
The stubborn-as-shit Blade member does not pause to consider this question, just continues on as though unperturbed, now paddling through waters lapping at their glowing chest armor.
“Three.”
“This relationship is seriously lacking in healthy communication!” Lance shrieks.
“Two.”
“Oh my God, we’re gonna die!”
“One.”
The arms curled around Lance drop out from underneath him just as suddenly as they’d appeared and then they’re roughly wrenching him underwater, plunging him in burning blue. Right in the nick of time, it seems, because that’s when a deafening blast sounds from the shore, dulled somewhat by the water now surrounding Lance. The ocean turns a weak red-yellow color as the light from the bomb refracts off of the waves, bathing their bodies golden with far-flung fire.
Dangerous levels of nitro-methane and ammonium nitrate detected nearby, his helmet observes in calm colorlessness and Lance wants to shout, yeah, no shit!
Instead, he peers out of his sealed helmet and into the glowing eyes of his savior’s mask, which are colored a neon purple, where they’re hunched protectively over Lance’s body. Suddenly unnerved by their stillness, Lance digs a hand into their back and uses the other to repeatedly tap a finger to their mask, right where he assumes their mouth must lie, asking a wordless question. Can you breathe?
They watch him in silence a moment, then nod decisively.
He exhales in relief and clutches them tighter, some strange, post-adrenaline affection welling in him. He’s so happy to be alive, he realizes in a dazed wonder, that he could kiss them. As if in telepathetic answer, they wrap two arms around his waist and pull him closer, till even the water is struggling its way between their chestplates.
Lance counts off in his head and for fifteen more seconds, that’s where they remain, embracing underwater like inseparable sea creatures. Then, without delay, they’re both resurfacing—Lance, buoyed by the soldier where he’s still clinging to them, is jerked to the surface with them, along for the ride—and taking in the wreckage on the beach. Mangled droid-machinery is littered along the sand and small bouquets of flame, dyed chemical-purple at their tufts, lick at the dead robots. The Galra commander lies facedown and unmoving in the sand.
“Huh,” says Lance, eyes a little wide. “Well, that’s certainly one way to do things, I guess.”
The Blade member begins tugging Lance off in the direction of the coastline, but Lance stops them with a hand to their padded shoulder. They turn to send him a look that—despite the fact that he can’t see past the black Marmora mask—he thinks might be something close to incredulity.
“I just,” says Lance, suddenly hesitant. “I can probably get us ashore faster. If you hold onto me, I mean. I used to do swim, back on—my home planet, uh, Earth. My front crawl is pretty fast.”
They nod, like this is a perfectly logical assessment of their circumstances, and swim behind him, latching onto Lance around the neck.
“Wow, okay, that was easier than I expected,” says Lance, as he starts swimming for shore, alternating his strokes. The added weight slows him only slightly and he finds himself grinning around the arms looped over his throat. “Thought all you Marmorites were supposed to be super uncompromising and emo and stuff. Like, ‘I have my Pizza Hut order memorized. Challenge my large meat lover’s special and you die.’ Does Kolivan throw you guys celebratory pizza parties? Sometimes when we’re extra good, Shiro lets us stop off for space tacos. They’re nothing like the ones back home, but out here, you take what you can get.”
The Blade member knocks a fist against Lance’s helmet in a gentle but blatantly annoyed reprimand.
Lance laughs quietly, speeding up his stroke. “Okay, okay, I get it.” He pauses for effect. “You’d willing to split the bill with me? A little half-and-half action?”
They says nothing.
“Not,” says Lance, chuckling nervously, “that I’m coming onto you or anything. If I was, though, hypothetically speaking, do you...I mean, would you be interested? At all?”
Silence.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Lance sighs longsufferingly. “I don’t even know if you’re single, or into guys. Or how dating works with the Blade...if it’s like a save-yourself-till-marriage sort of deal, or something else entirely. Unless you guys are forced to swear off love? That’d make sense, I guess, considering dating can be a huge distraction, what with the whole intergalactic war going on and everything.
“I talked to Allura—she’s one of our leaders, but you probably already know that—about dating as a member of Team Voltron, because there was this guy I was thinking about asking out a while ago, and she gave me this whole lecture about how having a significant other opens up dangerous doors. Like, enemies might use them to get to you, that sort of thing. I still feel like it’d be worth the risk, if you liked someone enough. If...if they liked you back. I’m kind of a hopeless romantic, though, so I’m probably pretty biased.”
The Blade member starts to disentangle themselves from Lance and he looks up to find that they’re only a little ways off from the shore now.
“Oh, right,” he says, digging his heels into the sand and dragging himself to his feet, his paladin armor dripping where he’s pulled himself free of the waves.
Here, the water laps coolly at his knees and he remembers suddenly—right as the pain begins to set in again as though never postponed—that his legs are injured and probably require immediate medical attention.
When Lance ventures a look in their direction, he finds the Blade member frozen in the middle of the weak swells and watching Lance in strained silence.
Lance grins sheepishly and pulls his helmet off, slicking his sweaty bangs back with a damp glove. “Sorry for rambling. I know this isn’t what you signed up for when you came to help. I appreciate it, by the way. If there’s any way I can repay you for—for everything, just let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.”
They watch him for a few more seconds, then abruptly snatch his hand up and begin hauling him off towards the sand in a soldier’s march. Something about the way they’re yanking him ashore reads as affectionately exasperated and Lance hope he’s not just imagining that their body language has softened some since they both narrowly escaped death by bomb detonation.
Lance, allowing himself to be hauled, all loose limbs and pliant joints, grins stupidly at their backside. “Hey, you do like me, don’t you?”
They turn at the neck to send him a pointed look, then wheel around again, tugging him harder, their boots finally clearing the last of the ocean-water, leaving large wet footprints in the sand.
“No need to get feisty, hotshot, ‘cause I like you too,” Lance teases. “I may be slightly delirious with pain, but that whole thing you just pulled, with the bomb and the ocean? That was really badass. Color me impressed.”
The soldier clears a place in the sand by kicking any nearby debris away—one particularly powerful swing of the foot sends a disembodied droid-leg sailing into the ocean with a distant splash—and then they’re pushing Lance to the floor, belly-up, and feeling their way across his armor, no doubt checking him over for injuries.
“It’s...my legs, they got me on either one,” Lance directs, and gives a quiet whimper of pain when the soldier’s wandering hands press against the back of his leg greaves. They immediately set about removing his boots and leg armor. “Wait, wait, hold on.”
The Blade member pauses, hands hovering over his lower half uncertainly.
“It’s just—um, there are a few young refugees waiting for help. I stashed them in that cave over there before the Galra could get to them,” he says, nodding at the rock outcropping in question. “There’s a little cut-out in the rock, about ten yards in...I left my shield in front of it, for one of you guys to find. Is there any way you can—”
They’re already getting to their feet, and when Lance moves to follow, they quickly return to his side, crouch low over him, and hold their gloved palm to his chest, pushing forcefully at his chestplate and pressing him back into the sand. They hold it there, a command they seem to be daring him to challenge, and because Lance is a little shit, he snakes his own hand up his chest and covers theirs with his, two layers of warm leather, one on top of the other. He snickers as they lurch to their feet in flustered surprise and send him a long look of disapproval.
“Don’t worry about me,” says Lance, smiling up at them with all of his teeth. His dimples wink at them in the burning light of the encroaching evening and the far-off siren’s wail of the ocean seems to snap them out of a full-body daze. “I won’t move a muscle, I swear. Now go.”
They nod and then they’re turning and fleeing in the direction of the cave’s darkened gash-for-a-mouth, their sharp silhouette running rust-color, then black as they retreat further and further up the beach, the shadows of the rock eating them up. It’s a different kind of swallow, Lance thinks, than Amelia Earhart’s, but still just as scary.
It might even be better this way, if Lance makes off with some deviant rebel-soldier who maybe doesn’t know how to talk, or else sees no need to. Lance’s romantic undertakings thus far have been mostly abysmal. One alien-girl with a smart mouth insulting his earthen features upon first appraisal, another chaining him to a tree and robbing him for all that he’s worth.
One boy, he thinks, leaving him his lion like a last talisman and unintentionally taking off with Lance’s heart stashed in the leather-lined pocket of his crop-jacket.
Lance sighs and thinks to himself: these violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume…
It’s the only Shakespeare quote he knows verbatim and only because he’d highlighted it over and over in neon yellow during his ninth grade English class, thinking it was a pretty way to paint an anguished picture. First love is always too fast and incandescent at its edges, so easily combustible, gasoline-bright and ugly-hot. That’s the gist of it, anyway—a warning Lance’s mother had left him with the winter before he was to set off for the Galaxy Garrison Institute, back in Cardenas, Cuba.
He thinks if he ever returns to Earth, he’ll tell her how wrong she was, the way this thing in him has been eating him alive from the inside-out in a slow and awful scorch ever since he first caught sight of Keith’s scowl across the mess hall three years ago. First love is trapping yourself in a burning building and lying face-up on the floor, letting the smoke choke you, blacken your lungs, waiting for the ceiling to collapse and wanting it too.
Lance turns on his side and spends a few minutes watching the noisy ebb-and-flow of the ocean, its waters crashing against the shore, retreating, then soothing the wounds it’s inflicted, again and again.
He wishes one kind of want could cancel out another, but two species of longing know exactly how to blossom in the gardens of his body simultaneously. One for every way he wants Keith, and another for every way he wishes he didn’t.
He sighs and banishes the dark-haired boy from his mind.
It’s a couple more minutes after that until the Blade of Marmora soldier returns, and when they do—a sinewy monochromatic portrait made of hard brushstrokes and pointy joints, eyes gleaming owl-like in the dark—Lance sends them a significant look that they return with a solemn nod. He breathes out in relief, body relaxing, the last of his anxieties slowly seeping from his fissures.
The refugees are probably on their way to being safely stowed inside the Castleship now, where they’ll spend a few days recuperating and healing in the medbay until Allura finds a new family, or temporary safe house for them, hopefully protected from Zarkon’s reign for the rest of their lives.
They’ll do just fine, Lance thinks, and smiles to himself at the memory of Wara’s mulish brow. The strongest political convictions flower inside children who have survived war.
The Blade of Marmora soldier approaches Lance lithely in the falling gloom, light-footed in sand. They squat at his waist once they’re close enough to reach out and touch him, gingerly moving him onto his belly to treat his burns.
Lance rolls over, tucking his chin into his crossed arms, and watches in silence as they remove their utility belt and empty it of its contents. For several long moments, they simply pick their way through different flasks and phials, some Q-tips, bandages, until they procure a bottle of what looks to be water.
“Gonna wash it out?” he murmurs quietly.
They nod and remove each of his boots, setting them aside for the moment, before carefully rolling up the legs of his black undersuit in order to gauge the full extent of his injuries. They go still so suddenly that Lance senses a different kind of silence settling in the air right away.
He buries his face in his arms and curls his fists into the sand, wishing he’d thought to remove his gloves beforehand, if only to feel the cool satin of the sand against his skin. “That bad, huh?”
They don’t respond, which is answer enough.
Lance attempts to sit up, now burning with a terrible, alarmed curiosity, but they hold a hand to his lower back, forcing him back down into the sand. He folds over obediently, too exhausted to put up any real kind of a fight, though he juts his bottom lip out at them in a big-eyed pout.
“Y’know, you can be freakishly stubborn,” Lance sulks. “I can’t tell if this is just your usual, or if you’re trying to spare my innocent eyes.”
In answer, they flick him playfully on the forehead. He snaps his teeth at their hand and smiles goofily when they shake their head in mock-discontent. Almost absently, they remove a dripping curl that’s flopped into his eyes by tucking it behind his ear.
“Thanks,” Lance mumbles.
They nod and look away, picking up the bottle of water again.
“Just—be gentle,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and giving his consent, then bites into the meat of his arm as they wash the grit and sand from his injuries, sometimes hissing when the washcloth presses too deeply against a blister, other times squeezing fistfuls of sand into his gloves to prevent any real tears from falling.
After a few minutes of this, there’s a tap at his shoulder.
Lance cracks an eye open, unclenching his jaw in increments. “Done?”
They nod, then hold up a new vial, this one made from misshapen glass and topped off with a rubber stopper. They shake it and touch a gloved hand to his calf, giving him his one warning.
“Okay, okay,” he breathes. “Go slowly—”
All at once, they’re dumping the ale-gold liquid onto his burns.
“Or that,” he hisses, letting out a pained groan. He twitches minutely at the way it stings, then chills his inflamed flesh. Must be some kind of kicked-up, Blade-version of alcohol, he thinks. A disinfectant stronger than anything he’s ever felt.
They smooth a hand across his sweaty forehead in silent approval, then set the vial down again. Thank God, thinks Lance.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” Lance begins, grinding his teeth through another long stretch of stinging pain that makes his calf seize up for a few seconds. Finally, the last of the alcohol-induced burning seems to fade from his right leg. “Of—of ways I might be able to repay you.”
They don’t look up from their painstaking first-aid work, instead opting to unscrew a palm-sized jar of something vaguely herbal-scented that shines a creamy transparent color in the low light of evening. After disinfecting their gloves, they dunk two fingers into the jar and begin applying the balm to Lance’s burns like they’re finger-painting along his flesh.
“Ah,” he sighs contentedly, eyes fluttering shut of their own volition. He hums and smiles a little, head lolling in the sand like a dog’s. “That feels real good. More of that, please?”
They dutifully slather on another layer of the balm, then begin unspooling a roll of something like gauze—Lance hears the fabric rustling through his closed eyes.
“Like I was sayin’,” Lance slurs, feeling drowsy and serene all of a sudden. “I’ve been thinking of ways I might be able to repay you for saving my life. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, and by all means, tell me if I am, but if you wanted, I’d be happy to take you out sometime. S’no trouble at all. Maybe get some food together? Our schedules have to line up at some point, right? We’re always”—he yawns hugely, jaw cracking, and stretches out in the sand—“kicking ass at the same time—your guys and my guys—so.”
At the sudden silence that has descended like a brick wall, Lance forces himself to open both of his eyes. The Blade of Marmora soldier is sitting stock-still in the sand, looking down at Lance with something indecipherable.
“Uh,” Lance says, hastily backtracking, “I mean, you’re probably really busy, on the—the other hand, so I understand if you’re not interested in getting involved with someone. I’m also kind of a danger magnet, so I get it if you don’t want to be near someone like that, or if—if you’re just not into dudes, maybe? You’d probably have to ask Kolivan for permission first, too. Um, I can talk to him for you if you want. I think he likes me, or at least doesn’t want to kill me eighty percent of the time, which is basically the same thing with him. And maybe this is just the near-death experience talking, but you seem like a really cool person and we kind of hit it off, so I thought I’d ask. It also helps that I’m kind of trying to get over someone.”
At this, the soldier tilts their head at Lance.
“Not—not that you’d be my rebound! I mean, you’d be helping me take my mind off of this guy, but to be a rebound, I’d have to have dated him first, I think, and he doesn’t even know I like him, so. You wouldn’t be a rebound. At worst, we become badass partners-in-crime with a grudging respect for each other, at best, we’re soulmates for life and this is fate trying to help us find happiness. So. Um.” Lance swallows and looks up at the Blade of Marmora soldier through his lashes. “What say you?”
They look down at their hands for a moment, fingers twisting together in deep thought. Then they’re pulling their gloves off, revealing pale, half-bruised knuckles of the human variation, and their mask is dissolving, giving way to big blue-purple eyes and an achingly familiar jet-black cowlick. “Who,” says Keith Kogane, in that low-pitched rumble that makes Lance’s stomach roil in the good way—holy fuck—“is this guy you’re trying to get over?”
Lance lets out a soft, stunned noise that, if asked, he will deny ever having made.
But no, that’s Keith—really, truly—in the flesh, the terrible symmetry of him exactly as it had been the last time Lance saw him. Powerful brow, gently-sloping nose, still uneven from a poorly-healed break he’d suffered his first year at the Garrison during a brutal scuffle with some asshole-senior, those dark, unblinking eyes, always skimming the knife’s edge between melancholy and resentful. His hair, still recovering from their panicked swim out at sea, is drying in fluffy waves that fall across his eyes and the urge to run gentle fingers through it overtakes Lance for a long, excruciating moment that he fights his way through with gritted teeth.
“I,” Lance says faintly, dumbly, through every layer of his shock—of which there are many. He swallows at air and swings out wildly, internally, mentally, for something to say. “I mean, Kolivan—he said you were mostly doing reconnaissance work, looking for a new kind of quintessence or something, and we shouldn’t expect to see you on any liberation missions for a while.”
“Yeah, that’s where I’ve been for the last few weeks,” says Keith, kind of quietly. He averts his eyes for a moment, staring out at the water, his face a special kind of far-off. “I just got back today.”
“Oh my God,” says Lance, as the reality of the situation kicks in, with high levels of humiliation hot on its tail. He thinks his face might disintegrate under the collective heat of all the blood in his goddamn body suddenly rushing to his cheeks.
“Lance,” Keith says, cautious, turning to look back at him worriedly.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I just,” says Lance, clambering onto his back, his eyes widening in dawning horror. He scrambles away from Keith, limbs nearly buckling in his haste to get far, far away. “Oh, Christ! Holy God! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
“Lance,” Keith repeats, now getting to his knees. He holds his hands out like he means to calm a petrified horse before it can dropkick a village-child. “Please get back here. You’re injured.”
“You!” says Lance, jabbing an index finger at Keith accusingly. “Are not the boss of me and haven’t been since you ditched the Black Lion! Deceiver of man! You—you little conniving swindler!”
“I thought you’d recognize me,” Keith says guiltily, brow knitting as he picks idly at the leather of a matte-black kneepad. “And when you didn’t, I just...I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to go back to treating me like...like I’ve personally betrayed you or whatever. This is the first time in months it’s felt like we’re friends again and—and see, this is why I kept my mouth shut, you’re giving me that look again.” Here, his eyebrows lower over his eyes in irritation. “And you were throwing yourself at me literally thirty seconds ago, so I don’t know where you get off acting like—”
“Oh, wait, I get it,” says Lance, pausing in his escape as a thought occurs to him. “I died, didn’t I? Back there, with that Galra commander? He definitely burned a hole through my spine and my spirit has been slowly descending to the astral plane this whole time. This—this vision—whatever this is, it’s my last supper before I’m sentenced to an eternity in Hell. You’re just a desert mirage.”
“We’re on a beach,” says Keith.
“Semantics,” Lance says, waving a hand. “Hallucination, fantasy, illusion, what have you. Bottom line is, you’re not real.”
“Lance,” says Keith, “I promise you I’m not a hallucination.”
“That’s exactly the kind of thing a hallucination would say,” says Lance. He crosses his arms, examining Keith for any areas of vulnerability, a shimmer in the asphalt on a hot summer’s day, or a hole hidden under a rug. “Zombies don’t know they’re zombies, Hallucination Keith, but at the end of the day, they’ll still eat your brains.”
“Do you realize what you’re implying?” Keith asks, scowl sliding into place like it never left in the first place. “By assuming that a vision of me is your ‘last supper?’”
“That your face haunts my deepest nightmares? Oh, I’m aware, Hallucination Keith, because I’m the one who has them every night. Had them, past tense, since I’m now dead and have lost the ability to dream.”
“Stop calling me ‘Hallucination Keith!’”
“No can do, Hallucination Keith. Now, if you’ll just point me to Lucifer’s office, I’ll be on my merry way,” says Lance, making to stand up and then pausing when Keith lets out a disgruntled sigh.
“You’re doing that thing again where you make up absurd scenarios to avoid your problems,” Keith says matter-of-factly.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lance sniffs, giving Keith his chin. “Last I checked, you’re not my black paladin anymore, so. Scurry along, you little emo space ninja.”
“Shiro emails me updates about the team,” Keith says, arching a thick eyebrow at Lance. “You come up a lot.”
“Are you serious? That giant traitorous jerk!”
“Lance,” Keith groans, burying his face in his hands for an exasperated moment. His shoulders shake with a muted, hysterical kind of laughter, a sound so welcome, Lance finds himself smiling distractedly in response and has to clear his throat and purse his lips against the urge before Keith can see.
“Keith,” Lance offers in return, tamping down on his own joy at having the boy he’s more than a little wild for back and an arm’s length away.
When Keith lifts his head and Lance’s gaze snags on his open-mouthed smile, those bright, burning eyes shining fondly through damp bangs, he feels choked by a sudden and unmerciful warmth. Love, his brain supplies unhelpfully, to which he gives his brain the metaphorical finger and tells it to fuck off.
“You didn’t die—I saved your sorry ass before that could happen and I want to know who you’re trying to get over,” says Keith, smile still fixed firmly in place, as he begins to inch closer to Lance on all fours.
“Stay back, wraith!” Lance says. “I’m warning you! The power of Christ compels you!”
“You’re getting sand in your burns,” Keith observes, his mouth twitching. “Lance, I just finished disinfecting you and I will drag you back here if I have to.”
“Stop saying my name like that!”
“Like what?” Keith pauses, then says, slowly, dangerously, smooth as honey: “Lance.”
Lance’s face reddens and he flounders internally for several seconds before he’s able to find his words again. “Stop it!”
“Okay, I’m being serious now,” Keith says, rearranging his expression into something distinctly sober. “Will you get over here? I’ve worried about you enough for one day.”
“Right, sure!” Lance calls sarcastically. “And I bet I’m supposed to also believe you’ve been super homesick and missing me the entire time you’ve been away on missions with the Blade, right?”
At this, Keith pauses to sit back on his haunches. He throws his hands up and raises his eyebrows. “Yes!”
“Wha—you—you can’t just admit to stuff like that, Keith, what the fuck!” shouts Lance, flushing impossibly hotter, red up and down his whole body. “Give a guy some warning!”
“Did you miss me too?” Keith shouts back.
“Duh!” Lance yells, fisting a handful of pink sand and flinging it in the direction of the ocean in annoyance. The wind sends it back into his face and Lance ducks his head against it, spluttering furiously. “Why the hell do you think you’re appearing in my post-mortem fantasy! Not because I detest your freaking presence, buddy!”
Keith tackles Lance into the sand, involuntarily winding him, and wraps two arms around his waist. “Quit scaring me like that,” he whispers, burying his face in Lance’s shoulder.
Lance freezes, caught unawares by the quiet misery behind the words, then lifts a trembling hand and combs it through Keith’s hair like he’s wanted to ever since he ditched the Marmora mask. “You’re one to talk,” Lance whispers back, pushing Keith’s hood back and exposing his wild mane to the winds of the beach. “And anyway, I didn’t mean to. Flying Red has exposed me to all sorts of impulsive urges. It’s been a disaster without you.”
Keith laughs softly into Lance’s neck.
“Tickles,” murmurs Lance.
Keith lifts his head and peers down at Lance. “Are we still pretending you’re dead and I’m a hallucination?”
“Hmm, let’s see. When I say Vol…what do you say?” asks Lance, grinning up at Keith like a fool.
Keith levels Lance with a sullen look. “How many times do we have to go over this? Saying Voltron saves so much time, and it sounds way better, like an actual cohesive chant—”
Lance sighs happily and tugs Keith back down. “Yup, it’s the real you. Not even my wildest fantasies can capture this level of likeness.”
Keith clears his throat into Lance’s shoulder, keeping his head ducked low as he asks, “Will you tell me who you’re trying to get over now and why you were so ready to flirt with one of the Blades?”
Lance smirks up at the sky and pushes his fingers through the hair at Keith’s nape. “You really wanna know what guy I’m crushing on?”
Keith pulls back and frowns down at Lance. “I asked, didn’t I?”
“Fine, fine, let’s see,” says Lance, getting comfortable in his little nook in the sand. “Well, first of all, he’s kind of annoying. And sort of the most stubborn asshole I’ve ever met, honestly. Except he’s also real passionate, like you wouldn’t imagine—sometimes he gets this light in his eyes, when he discovers something new or tells a joke that lands really well, and it makes me feel like I’m staring into a whole new star system, like I could just sit there and look at him and name a hundred new colors. He’s also ambitious, and—and talented, and even though he gets under my skin more times than he doesn’t, he knows how to make me laugh too, and he challenges me, y’know, keeps me on my toes. And he’s brave, and wants to do right by the universe, and I think I trust him with my life.”
It’s silent a moment, as Keith attempts to absorb and dissect this. Then, when Lance finally works up the nerve to chance a look at him, he finds Keith scowling down at the sand. “He sounds like a jerk,” says Keith. “I don’t get why he doesn’t like you back.”
Lance drops his head into the sand and sighs through a smile. “Well, he doesn’t know I like him, so there’s that.”
Keith’s brow furrows, bewildered. “Then why didn’t you just tell him in the first place?”
“I’m trying,” says Lance. He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Keith blinks down at Lance and sits up fully. “Lance, I don’t understand, do you want to get over this guy or not?”
Lance throws an arm over his eyes and groans loudly, saying, “Oh my God, Keith, it’s you! You’re the one I was trying to get over by pulling the moves on one of your Blade buddies—or, I thought they were one of your buddies, anyway. In retrospect, I probably could have gone about this whole thing better.”
Silence.
Lance peeks out from under his arm and finds Keith having an intense stare-down with the sand, like he’s trying to work his way through a particularly difficult equation in his head. After several seconds of this, he looks up at Lance, cheeks pink and eyes narrowed, saying, “But you’re always trying to instigate fights with me.”
“Yeah, romantically!” says Lance. “Ask anyone! I swear, the whole Castleship knows I’ve been gone on you since forever.”
“And also,” Keith continues, plowing right through that, “your whole thing where you told me I’d make a terrible leader.”
“Unfair,” says Lance, poking Keith right on the button of his nose. “That was before the Black Lion chose you and I became your number one supporter, dude.”
Keith looks at Lance with something profoundly earnest and takes a breath to say, “Do you really think you’re the weakest link on the team? When I left, I kept thinking...training with the Blade, it had to help you with your insecurities, because I wouldn’t be around anymore and you wouldn’t have to keep looking at me like I’m your competition, but it seems like things have just gotten worse. Look, you know I’m not—not good with words, but I’ve always thought you were the most important part of Voltron. Not necessarily the strongest, but...something necessary. Vital, I think that’s the right word.
“I mean, it was you that brought us all together, right? I’d been looking for the Blue Lion for a year when you led us to her and then you were the one who flew us into another galaxy so we could find Allura and Coran. Without you, Lance, there wouldn’t be a Voltron. You’re not some footnote like that Galra soldier said, you’re the whole damn story. You don’t have to be the best to be important. Besides me, who else has piloted two lions? And—and I bet you could pilot three. Hell, I bet you could pilot any of the five lions if you really wanted to...if it came down to it...because that’s the kind of person you are. That saying...jack of all trades, master of none? That’s you. That doesn’t make you weak...it makes you strong.” Keith looks down at his hands and nods resolutely to himself. “I think you’re—”
“Oh my God,” says Lance, sitting up. He makes a helpless noise in the back of his throat and yanks Keith closer by the hood. “Kiss me. You’re so dumb and I like you so much, please kiss me now.”
Keith blinks and his eyes jerk down, hovering near Lance’s mouth. He wets his lips.
“I mean, if you want to,” says Lance, mouth now skimming the clench of Keith’s jaw. “Sorry, shoulda asked beforehand. Do you want to?”
Keith nods emphatically and turns his head to the side, searching out Lance’s mouth, his dark lashes casting spidery shadows along the apples of his cheeks.
“Wait, wait, before you do, I need to say something too,” says Lance.
Keith groans and presses his forehead to Lance’s shoulder, saying, “Lance.”
“Sorry, sorry, but I deserve a romantic monologue too,” says Lance, grinning. “I just...I think you know you’re an integral part of Voltron—were, I mean, before—and maybe the most talented pilot it’s ever seen. Obviously, there’s a new paladin somewhere in the universe for every old one, and yeah, we’ve figured out how to move on without you, but Keith, that’s not what—we don’t want you because you’re some aviation god, or because you have really good battle intuition. That stuff is great and all, sure, but that’s not really why we were so torn up about you leaving to train with the Blade. We want you because...because we love you. You’re more than just our teammate...you’re our friend...and if you think for even a second we’d just—”
Keith shoves Lance into the sand and says, low and made rasping, “Gonna kiss you now,” to which Lance nods vigorously and probably enthusiastically, and then Keith is tracing his thumb along the seam of Lance’s bottom lip, pinning him with a heavy, half-lidded look full of all kinds of belly-burning promises, and Lance is saying, “dude, what the hell, I’m getting old down here,” and that makes Keith laugh real quietly, rolling his eyes and shaking his head a little, so that when they finally meet mouth-to-mouth, it’s with the softest kind of Keith’s laughter pushing into Lance’s mouth alongside the warmth of his tongue.
It’s so unlike the vitriol he’s used to, that venomous push-and-pull they’ve spent ages folding over under, that Lance gives in right off the bat, muscles melting under the heat of Keith’s attention, his arms loosening where they’re curled around Keith’s neck, where they’ve ventured off of their own accord at some point, and his breath comes hard and fast between each press of Keith’s mouth.
Between the third and fourth, Lance says, apropos of nothing, panting heavily, “Go out with me?”
“Yes,” says Keith, and presses another kiss to Lance’s lips.
“No, like right now. Come home with me,” says Lance, and he uses the surprise this inspires in Keith to push him into the sand by the giant shoulderpads of his Marmora suit, climbing on top of him and trailing a line of open-mouthed kisses down the underside of his jaw, delighting in the way it makes him squirm and shudder a breath out between clenched teeth, till Lance is poised and grazing Keith’s ear with his mouth. “Pidge pirated the newest Star Wars movie last week and we’ve got leftover trail-mix and space cookies from our last haul. I can make us the coolest pillow fort in the universe.”
“The coolest?” Keith parrots, laughing shakily and baring his throat for Lance to lavish.
“Guaranteed,” Lance promises, and latches onto Keith’s neck with teeth and tongue.
Keith lets out a weak noise that Lance has already catalogued and filed away for further analysis at a later date and fists Lance’s hair, gasping out a winded: “Lance.”
“I know,” says Lance, smirking and resuming his hickey-administering.
“Lance,” Keith repeats.
“I know.”
“No, Lance.”
“Buddy,” says Lance, sitting up. “What?”
A throat that does not belong to either party is cleared.
Lance spins and meets four familiar pairs of eyes. He says, “Uh, I can explain.”
“I’d like to see you try,” says Shiro, arms crossed, but really, he’s smiling down at the two of them, so Lance figures they’re in the clear.
“We came as soon as we could,” Allura says, smirking into her fist. Hunk and Pidge disguise several giggles with poorly-faked coughs. “But it appears our presence is unneeded.”
“No,” says Keith, sitting up, “it’s fine—”
“So unneeded,” says Lance, cutting Keith off. “Do you guys mind? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, thanks.”
“Lance.” Keith sends him a playful scowl with no real heat behind it that Lance returns with a dopey smile and a wink. Keith shakes his head and covers Lance’s mouth with his palm, addressing the whole of the team with a: “We were just getting ready to regroup with you guys.”
“Looked like it,” Pidge says under her breath.
“Shut up! Aren’t you like nine or something!” Lance shouts through Keith’s palm.
“Out of ten, yes,” Pidge fires back, grinning.
“Ooh, good one, Pidge!” Hunk crows, high-fiving her.
Shiro groans into his hand, nodding his thanks when Allura pats his shoulder in sympathy.
Lance peels Keith’s hand from his mouth and says, “Keith’s coming home with us! Someone radio Kolivan and tell him to suck it ‘cause Keith likes us better!”
Pidge does exactly that—or so it seems—smirking when Lance curses and lunges for her, held back by both of Keith’s hands locked tight around his hips. “He said you’ll be hearing from his lawyer,” Pidge jokes.
“You are such a little gremlin,” Lance growls.
“Alright, alright, settle down everyone,” Shiro says, smiling fondly. “Let’s start heading back. Keith, I’m assuming you’ll be riding with Lance?”
Shiro realizes his error a second too late, because Lance has already sensed the opening, saying, “Oh, he’ll be riding with me, alright!”
The group gives a collective groan.
“Am I gonna have to put up with this kind of thing now?” says Pidge, turning and making for her lion with her head thrown back sulkily.
“Yup,” says Lance smugly, leaning into Keith, who has now hefted him into his arms bridal-style and is following after the group with a tender smile flickering in and out of view.
“Great,” says Pidge. “I’m making a dirty joke jar. Shiro, you’re enforcing this.”
“Gladly,” says Shiro.
“Personally, I’m really happy for you guys,” says Hunk. “If it means less bickering, we should all count this as a victory.”
“That’s the spirit, Hunk!” says Lance, fist-bumping his best friend.
“Yes, we’re all very pleased for you two,” Allura says. “Coran will be especially excited to hear the news.”
Pidge says, “Who knew all it took for Keith to come running back to Team Voltron was Lance in danger.”
“Remember when Kolivan was all, ‘it seems there’s already someone on their way over, paladin-McClain?’” says Hunk, deepening his voice to Kolivan-levels in something of an awful Galra impersonation. “It was in that moment that I knew…”
“...Keith Kogane was Naruto-running somewhere nearby,” finishes Pidge. “And soon, the original red and blue paladins would be wed in holy, intergalactic matrimony.”
Allura says, “What is Naruto-running?”
Hunk and Pidge share a delighted look that can only mean terrible, terrible things.
Shiro cuffs Keith on the back of his head, saying, “Good to have you back, kid.”
Keith, still watching Lance—who is now curled up against Keith’s chest and dozing, mouth open on a quiet snore—with something secretive and warmly satisfied, murmurs, “Good to be back.”