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autisticlancemcclain · 6 months

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“Neither of you are getting it.”

Twin sighs come from his laptop speakers. Lance lifts his head up from where he’s smushed it into his pillow to glare at his two best friends who apparently hate him, for some reason.

“I mean, there’s not much to get,” Pidge says. “You’re a big dumb gay loser and this predicament effects you emotionally.” She looks at Hunk as if to ask, right?, and Hunk, who is a traitor of the worst kind, shrugs in agreement.

“I don’t even get what you’re worried about, man. You have consistently been the one to get him the best gifts for years. None of us even try to beat you.”

“That’s the point!” Lance shrieks. “You’re not listening! I had ideas every other year, Hunk! This year I have nothing!” He taps his head aggressively. “There is not one thing in here! Nada!”

Pidge snickers. “Well, that’s not new.”

“Can it, Pidgeon.”

Hunk holds his hands up placatingly before the two of them can really start to go at it. “Alright, alright. Pidge, have mercy on him. He’s suffering. Lance —” he falters. “Dude, you walked into that one. Sorry.”

Lance will concede to that point. He kind of set his own trap. But still, he’s having a crisis, Pidge as his best friend should be going easy on him, so he sticks his tongue out at her.

“I just — ugh.” He takes a moment to fluff his pillows back up before falling backwards on them and throwing a hand over his face. This is a ridiculous thing to be so bothered by, and he knows it, but he is. Bothered by it, that is. He hasn’t been this lost since the first year they were in space.

“Lance,” Hunk says gently, startling him. “It’s August, dude. Keith’s birthday is two months away. You really, truly, do not need to be stressing about it.”

Lance’s eyes trace the long-faded glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling. His gazes unfocuses on the red-orange star that represents Pollux, which has always been his favourite.

“This will be the first time I’ve seen him in months,” Lance says quietly. “I want him —” he swallows. The dryness of his throat makes his voice scratchy. “I want to be perfect.”

It. He had meant to say, I want it to be perfect. Because that’s what he wants — he wants Keith to get here safely and actually be able to stay this time and nothing to go wrong and him to celebrate his birthday surrounded by his loved ones, his friends and family. And — Lance. Wants to be there. Also.

He swallows again. It’s harder this time.

“He’s going to love anything you give him,” Pidge says, uncharacteristically soft. “You know he’s just going to be glad to see you upright and in one piece.”

Lance winces and the strained quality of her voice, the sudden darkness in Hunk’s expression. He knows he’s the cause of it.

It was hard on the team, his death.

He knows it was. That’s why he never talks about it. (They were never supposed to even know about it. When Lance’s soul was yanked back into his body and Allura gasped in relief and hugged him to her chest and sobbed out, I thought I was too late, Lance clamped his mouth shut and kept it that way. When he had rare moments on their long trip home where the adrenaline began to fade and he felt his heart begin to slow, he picked fights. He ran sims. He made stupid decisions. He kept his body distracted and his mind wound so tightly around Red’s that there was no chance for it to slip, to remember what had happened to him, to fade back into that dark and silent place. He kept his mouth shut and kept his quintessence dragged up to the highest level he could bring it.

And when they defeated Sendak, and they had to sacrifice their lions or sacrifice their friend, Lance’s hands shook and he made the obvious choice. And he doesn’t know what happened, when the adrenaline finally faded and the one thing keeping him tethered to their plane disappeared, but he knows when his soul was yanked back into his body, permanently this time, his friends wouldn’t answer his questions or let him out of their sight and all of them had the same haunted look to their eyes. He has never had the strength to ask. But he has been careful with himself, since. He covers his Altean marks — a testament of how much Allura gave of herself to keep him alive — and keeps his feet planted on Earth and out of danger and knows that he owes it to them to keep himself safe.)

“Well, anything I could give him would be better than what you got him last year,” Lance says loudly, beating back the oppressive silence that has fallen over them. It works — Pidge scowls at him, remembering the plant she had got him that had turned out to be highly toxic to any Galra. Hunk snickers at the memory of the bright blue hives that had covered Keith’s skin for weeks.

“How was I to know?” Pidge cries. Hunk and Lance’s increasing laughter only seems to make her angrier “He — ugh! It doesn’t matter, anyway, because you handmade him a leather sheath for his knife so he wasn’t looking at what I was giving him anyway! Shut up! Ugh!”

“It’s true,” Hunk agrees, chuckling. “We should make you gift stuff last. It’s not fair and makes everyone else look bad. He couldn’t take his eyes off that sheath, last year. He still wears it every day.”

Pidge mutters something in her hand that sounds suspiciously like “he couldn’t take his eyes off of someone,” so Lance ignores her in favour of whining again.

“Yeah, well, there’s no point this year because I’ve got nothing. I started making that sheath in June. I started making his jacket from two years ago in March. But this year I didn’t have any ideas and now I don’t have the time, even if I do come up with something. ” He sighs, defeated. “It sucks. I’ve hardly seen him outside of a computer screen and I’m only going to see him less, and I can’t even give him something to remember me by.”

“You’re talking like you’re never going to see him again,” Pidge points out. “There would be way less pressure if you just — saw him more, dude.”

Lance scoffs. “Yeah, right. Lemme just pack up and run off to space with him. Boom, all problems solved.”

He blinks.

He sits up so fast he very nearly brains himself on his bed frame.

“Holy shit,” he whispers. He looks over at his friends, who are smiling widely. His heart pounds.

Holy shit.

“I gotta go,” he shouts, scrambling to grab his laptop.

“Goodbye, Lance,” Hunk says, rolling his eyes fondly.

Pidge makes a crude gesture at him because she’s the worst. “Bye, gay pining loser!”

He slams the laptop lid shut and holds it tightly to his chest. Everything, finally, starts to click into place — Lance smiles; small at first, but quickly his mouth spreads so wide his cheeks ache, and his eyes practically squish shut.

He knows what to do.

———

On the morning of October 23rd, he is stressing.

“You’re embarrassing,” calls Allura, from where she‘s been lazing on the couch and eating pineapples for the last three days.

“I regret asking for your help,” Lance grunts, struggling to lift a sack of flour. He side eyes her. “Especially because you’re supposed to be helping, Miss Superstrength.”

Allura snorts, shoving another chunk of pineapple in her mouth. “I am helping. If I wasn’t here you would have talked yourself out of this several times over. You’re welcome!”

“Ugh,” Lance says, because she’s right and he knows it. “I’m not letting you lick the spoon.”

“What? Hey!”

He does let her lick the spoon. Because he has no discipline. But to her eternal credit she does actually help, too, and in more ways than just picking him up and physically shaking him out of his many freak outs, and he has a lot of them.

He’s been planning this for weeks. There are so many aspects, so many moving parts, that it’s just — stressful. Trying to put together a party that balances all the people who want to come together and celebrate Keith’s 25th with every single time constraint and restoration effort and even Keith’s own discomfort with too much fanfare is…a lot. Plus all the actual stuff that goes into hosting people at a party — Lance absolutely would not be able to do any of this without Allura’s help. She is, after all, his best friend, even though she drives him crazy and always has, in more ways than one.

At eleven thirty, when all the (tasteful, despite what his siblings had insisted was too boring) decorations have been set up and most of the food has been prepared, Allura clasps her palms to his cheeks and says, “Lance, breathe.”

Lance looks at her with wide eyes and says, “I’m cancelling everything.”

“You’re not.”

“I am. I can’t do this. What was I thinking? This is — cringe. Ridiculous.” His chest shakes on an inhale. “What was I thinking, ‘Llura?”

She hums thoughtfully. Her thumbs trace his cheekbones, wiping away the makeup that covers his Altean marks, making Lance twitch but not move.

“You were thinking,” she says quietly, “about how long it has been since everyone has been on the same planet.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“And how much we have all missed each other.

His shaking hands come up to grip her wrists, breath shuddering as he exhales.

“Yes.”

“And. Maybe. How much you miss Keith.” She pulls her hands away from his face and wraps them around his hands. “How much you miss the stars, even.”

“I’m scared,” he admits.

She squeezes his hands. “When has that stopped you?”

———

It’s three thirty and there’s still no sign of Keith.

Shiro and the rest of the Atlas crew, including Hunk and Veronica, arrived arrived sometime around one. The Holts came in right on their heels. Kolivan, Krolia, and a few other Blades Keith has kept up with over the years showed up a few hours ago. Lance’s family has been here the whole time, and Coran and Romelle came with Allura. Everyone that Lance had invited to come is here.

Except the one person Lance actually wants to come.

“Lance,” Shiro greets, somehow sensing his anxiety like the guru goody goody he is and popping up next to him.

Lance smiles anyway. He’s missed him too much to do anything else — he hasn’t seen anyone on the Atlas since their last restock, ten weeks ago.

“Hey, Shiro.”

“You freaking out?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’d be shocked if you weren’t, you walking Xanax advertisement.”

That startles a laugh out of Lance, and he shoves him, grateful for the distraction. Shiro grins wide and throws an arm around him, guiding him away from the front door — where he’s been biting his nails and staring at the sky in anxious hope for the last twenty minutes — and back to the rest of the party, ducking under flailing limbs and the random football that someone has brought out for some reason (Marco, probably).

“He’s gonna come, you know. He’s been excited about it since you invited him. I have received no less than nine hundred and twenty-two texts about it. It’s all very sweet and embarrassing. He’s coming, Lance.”

Lance huffs. “Unless he’s dead or maimed somewhere. I did some quick stat evals and there’s at 37% chance he was attacked on the flight to Earth and is bleeding out as we speak.”

Shiro stops them. He blinks at Lance several times. He sighs.

“You actually need to see a psychiatrist. Genuinely.”

“Nah.”

Shiro flicks him on the forehead, but the fond smile stays affixed to his face. Soon Lance finds himself relaxing, tucked under Shiro’s arm. He’s probably right — he usually is. Keith is chronically late, just as a person. Lance even told him the party started at ten just to make it more likely that he’d show up before everyone left. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be places — he just struggles with the concept of time passing, and also gets distracted a lot. (There are a lot of people who need Keith’s help, after all, and he’s a bleeding heart if Lance has ever known one. All humans are wired to respond to calls for help, but Keith seems almost attuned to them. If Lance thinks about his crooked smile and kind eyes for too long he gets physically nauseous.)

As Lance’s watch ticks its way to four o’clock, a light streaks across the sky, and before Lance knows what he’s doing he ducks under Shiro’s arm and starts running. He flings open the back gate and slides down the sandy hills, barely managing not to trip on rocks and pits in the sand where children have dug little pools. He doesn’t bother to slow as the aircraft makes its fiery descent, confident the pilot will not hit him, and by the time he makes it across the beach his bare feet burn and he’s stepped on a sharp shell and lost his jacket somewhere near the house. But it doesn’t matter, because the craft lands and seconds later the door flings open and Keith comes sprinting out, still clad in armour, hair long and thick and braided back, and he runs at Lance at full speed and they collide at the top of a sand dune and Lance leaps into his arms and Keith loses his balance and they go tumbling down, laughing, Keith’s hand on his waist and Lance’s fingers clutching tightly at his shoulders.

“You made it!” Lance shouts, smile wider than he ever thought capable.

Keith laughs again, full-bodied and relieved, crooked incisors on full display and long neck pulled back as his head rests on the ground.

“I know! I’m late, I’m sorry, I lost track of time and —”

“You always lose track of time,” Lance says warmly. He traces a strand of hair that has loosened from Keith’s braid, brushing it off his forehead and tucking it behind his ear. He stays where he is, half-pinning Keith into the sand, knees on either side of him, re-memorizing the curve of his grin and the indigo of his eyes and the scars on his face and the softness of his gaze. Suddenly his chest aches, painful in the best possible way, and his stomach pits and swirls and butterflies flutter wildly in his abdomen. Heat zaps up his veins and sparks through his arteries. The slowly setting mid-autumn sun casts golden light on Keith’s face and Lance is reminded, again, how breathtaking things are outside of Earth.

“Happy birthday,” he breathes, choking on the words.

Keith’s eyes crinkle. His hand comes up to cup his cheek, thumb pressing gently on the gold Altean marks. They curve perfectly around the shape of his fingerprint.

“I missed you, Bluebell.”

Someone huffs. “Yeah, and he nearly killed us trying to get here. Some kind of leader you are, Captain.”

Keith flushes, gently pushing Lance up so he can get up and glare at Ezor properly. “We were fine!”

“We crossed nine hundred million lightyears in two days!”

“I took a shortcut!”

“Through weblum mating grounds!”

Lance punches his friend in the shoulder. Keith pouts at him, wounded.

“You flew through weblum mating grounds?!”

“It was fine!” Keith defends. “It wasn’t even an issue!”

Acxa scoffs incredulously. “We were chased by fourteen weblums at once, Kogane.”

“But did you die?”

All three of Keith’s crew roll their eyes. Keith crosses his arms smugly. Lance loves him so fiercely that it hurts.

“Keith!”

With what Lance can only call divine instinct, he has enough forethought to throw himself out of the way before a five foot nothing blur throws herself at Keith’s person and sends them both crashing to the ground, significantly more painfully that Keith and Lance’s whole thing. Keith groans loudly, but Pidge doesn’t even give him half a second to complain, dragging him back upright and hugging him properly. Keith, softie that he is, hugs her back immediately, smiling into her hair.

“Hey, Pidge.”

“Happy birthday, loser! Birthday beats!”

She, immediately, starts to let him have it, impervious to Keith’s yelps. He attempts to squirm away, but Zethrid, lover of violence and also loud supporter of Pidge in general, firmly clamps onto his shoulder to allow Pidge to assault him in peace.

“That was twenty-six!” he says in outrage when she finishes.

She smiles pleasantly. “You were late.”

Hunk, thankfully, chooses that moment to jog over, carrying an ice pack because he’s an angel and also a genius.

“Figured Pidge would come in fists swinging,” he jokes, leaning down to hug Keith tightly. “Happy birthday, man. It’s been too long.”

“It’s been two weeks,” Keith protests, but he looks like he agrees.

It doesn’t take long for the rest of the party to flock over, despite the fact that it would be much easier for everyone to just wait for Keith to walk over to them. Lance isn’t surprised — it’s not like he could wait, after all. When Keith is around, people gather. Such is the way of the world.

He smiles at the crowd of Keith’s loved ones, and especially at the bewilderment on his face. It’s been years, but Lance knows that he still gets surprised when he’s reminded how big his family has gotten. It’s nice to see that reminder written all over his face. He edges out of the smattering of people and starts to head back to the house, figuring he might as well start setting up the table to get dinner started now that Keith’s here. Most of it is already cooked and keeping warm in the oven, but he figured it would be best to wait until everyone was ready to —

“Hey, Lance, wait up.”

He startles when a hand wraps its way around his wrist, relaxing when he recognises the calloused fingers and leather-covered palm. Keith jogs over the rest of the way now that he has Lance stopped, falling into step next to him.

“What’re you doing?” Lance asks, looking at him urgently. “Go say hi to everyone!”

Keith shrugs. “I’ll get there.” He flashes another smile at Lance and it’s crooked and familiar and Lance is weak in the knees. “I started an argument about human versus Altean time measuring systems. Everyone is now picking sides. They won’t notice I’m gone for the next ten minutes at least. I’m all yours, Sharpshooter.”

Lance resists the urge to bury himself in the sand and die of mortification. There’s actually no physical reason for Keith to look the way that he does. It’s — too much. The smouldering eyes and sturdy shoulders are one thing, but with the whole — grin and hair and wide hands and fucking — everything else; it’s too much. It’s a lot. Keith should maybe — wear a mask, or something. Or a hood. Or be more of a klutz, just so he’s humbled slightly.

“Oh,” Lance croaks, trying desperately not to focus on the way Keith’s hand is still holding onto Lance. “That’s — cool.”

“Cool.”

Blue, Red, if your spirits are still kicking around somewhere, send help, he prays at the heavens.

Apparently they are, because the heavens do indeed provide.

The air in front of the sparks and warps, flashing blue so bright Lance had to squeeze his eyes shut. He hears a loud bark, and opens his eyes again just in time to catch the ball of fur and floof that throws himself into his arms.

“Kosmo!” he cries, pulling away from Keith in his haste to hug the space-wolf tightly. Kosmo yips in delight, covering Lance’s face in dog slobber as he wiggles around in excitement. “Oh, buddy, I was wondering where you were! Mwah! Mwah mwah mwah!”

“He saw the crowd on the descent and got nervous,” Keith explains, scratching Kosmo’s fur fondly. “He was hiding in the back, huh, buddy?”

“Like father like son,” Lance teases. He adjusts the big dog into his arms so he’s half on his shoulders, panting right next to his ear and giving him gross slobbery kisses every three seconds.

“I do not hide from crowds,” Keith huffs. “And he can walk, Lance. Don’t baby him. He’s always spoiled after he hangs out with you.”

“You do so. And of course I spoil the little baby!” Lance coos, scratching under his chin. Kosmo howls in excitement, tail thumping hard against Lance’s hip. “Who’s the bestest boy? Who is my favourite in the whole big universe? It’s you! Yes, Kosmo-baby, it’s you! Good boy!”

“He’s not your favourite,” Keith grumps.

“Yes he is! Oh, yes he is!”

He coos over Kosmo for the whole walk back to the house, only setting him down when they make their way to the kitchen. Keith grabs the dog gently under the ear when he finally stands on his own, bending down to look him straight in the eyes.

“Kosmo,” he says quietly, angling himself slightly away from Lance, “remember what we Talked About.” He stares at the wolf for several moments. “You know. About the — thing.”

Amazingly, the dog seems to bark in understand. Keith nods in satisfaction, patting him on the head. “Good. Go do.” With a poof Kosmo disappears again, leaving just the two of them in the kitchen.

Lance pouts. “Aw. I wanted to spend more time with him. I haven’t seen him in months.”

Keith looks affronted. “You haven’t seen me in months!”

Lance turns away to hide his smile, busying himself with the food. “Eh.” He waves an oven-mitt-clad hand dismissively. “I text you all the time.

“You’re a bully,” Keith pouts. “You’re being mean to me on my birthday.”

“At the party I put together for you, dweeb. Don’t you pout at me.”

In response, Keith inserts himself into Lance with the guise of helping him plate and pouts harder.

“Bully,” he emphasizes.

Lance flicks him on the nose. Keith catches his hand and holds it hostage between two of his, rubbing his thumb along the bump of Lance’s wrist. Lance considers screaming.

“Help or get out of my kitchen,” he manages instead.

Smirking, Keith does, loading garlic knots onto a plate and stealing several, thinking he’s slick. He’s not — Lance notices, but it’s Keith’s birthday and Lance also ate like six already, so he lets it slide.

They have everything ready to go in under five minutes, loading up as much as they can carry and heading outside to set it all out. Everyone else is back by the time they get there, and Hunk and Shiro scramble to come help set up. Very quickly the party is in full swing, people eating and laughing and wishing Keith a thousand happy birthdays. Keith has always claimed to hate attention and crowds, but he’s — glowing, really. His smile doesn’t leave his face. Maybe it’s that he’s older and maybe it’s that he knows everyone. But more likely it’s the easy confidence that’s grown in him over the years, sprouting from the knowledge that he is good and he is kind and he is loved, and trusting everyone who assures him this is true. Lance remembers when he hunched his shoulders and scowled at anyone who looked at him too long. Now he smiles when someone calls his name.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the party. Lance had attempted to plan it, but given up quickly — he knows his people. They’ll flutter around something until inspiration hits and they’ll flutter around something else. The only constant has been food and loading Kosmo up with affection.

As the sun begins its journey below the horizon, someone — Adam — forces Keith into a random lawnchair and says, “Open your gifts, gremlin.”

Immediately, everyone else clambers to grab their gifts and gather around, ignoring Keith’s protests of “I’m twenty-five goddamn years old, I don’t need gifts, you people waste your time and money —” and arguing over who goes first.

Adam goes first. Obviously.

Despite Keith’s grumbling, he’s very obviously touched. He gets a range of things, from a fancy knife from his mother (again) to a framed photo from Shiro, with he and Adam grinning widely at a camera as a young Keith snores in Shiro’s lap. Keith starts bawling some time around gift number three and never really stops. Lance tries to hand him tissues, but after he uses up an entire box decides to let him be a big emotional dork in piece.

“Is this a crystal from the first Balmera we ever visited,” Keith sobs.

Hunk smiles, amused. “It is.”

He makes his way over to Keith’s lawn chair and hugs him tightly for several minutes, muttering something and pressing dozens of kisses into his hair. Keith holds him tightly. Lance himself cries on several occasions, but he’s not alone.

“I just love everyone so much,” Keith blubbers.

“Here we go,” teases Allura, but she’s the one to shoo everyone out of his space to give him a break. “Take a few minutes, darling. Gather yourself. Let me know when you’re up for company again.”

Keith nods at her gratefully. Kosmo makes his way onto Keith’s lap and plants himself there, curling up and laying his head on Keith’s knees. Lance sits on the lawn chair next to Keith, offering him a glass of water that he accepts gratefully.

“I do this every year,” Keith laments, attempting to dry his eyes.

Lance pats him delicately on the hand. “Don’t worry. It’s charming.”

Keith sniffles. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Yes.”

Lance is the only one who hasn’t given Keith his present. Well, and Allura, technically, since she’s part of it. Part of him wants to do it now, get it over with. He even finds the words for it, but then Pidge hollers something about cake, and Keith, who has the biggest sweet tooth in the entire universe, brightens, looking at Lance hopefully, and Lance swallows it down.

“Go sit at the table,” Lance orders. “I’m doing candles and you’re blowing them out.”

“That’s babyish,” Keith protests stubbornly.

“No candles, no cake.”

“Ugh.”

Keith gets up and goes to sit at the table, Kosmo pattering after him.

Smiling to himself, cheeks redder than he would like, Lance ducks back into the kitchen, digging around the cupboards for the candles he bought the other day and carefully pulling the cake out of the fridge.

It’s chocolate-chocolate-chocolate-chocolate. Quadruple chocolate. It’s chocolate cake with chocolate custard and chocolate frosting covered in chocolate decorations. What it is is sugar on a platter, and Keith will devour it. Lance spent more hours than he’s willing to admit on making it. If anyone questions him even a little he is going to die on the spot.

He carefully sticks twenty six candles — one for wishing — on the top of the cake, lighting twenty-five of them. Everyone is already sat down by the time he walks back outside, and the second Coran sees them he starts singing loudly, and everyone else is quick to join in. As much as Keith tries to roll his eyes about the truly startling amount of flame on his cake, nothing he can do can hide the obvious excitement that lights up his face upon sight of the chocolate monstrosity. He takes a deep breath and blows out the candles when the song ends, extinguishing all but one. Immediatey, a ripple of teasing snickers and ooooooou’s fill the air.

“One candle left! You’re gonna get a boyfriend this year!” Pidge shouts, looking directly at Lance.

Both Keith and Lance flush up to their foreheads.

“Cut the cake!” Allura shouts, because she is a true ally and Lance loves her.

Grateful for the distraction, Lance does, nudging Keith out of the way when he tries.

“If you cut the cake then you can’t get the first slice, dorkbrain. Sit down. Let me.”

He does let Lance cut the cake, which makes Lance feel touched for some reason. God, Shiro is right. He needs a psychiatrist. He hates it when Shiro is right.

He’s very smug to receive dozens of compliments on his cake, highest of all from Keith, who scarfs down his first piece in literal seconds (thirty seven, to be exact). He has several more. There will be no leftovers.

But Lance knew that.

It doesn’t take long for people to start milling about again; finishing their dessert and picking at the various fruit trays and chatting and watching the last rays of sun disappear. Lance twitches nervously, stealing glances at Keith, until Allura walks up to him, pinches him on the shoulder, and says, “Get your quiznak together.”

And Lance grumbles, “Yeesh, woman. Alright,” and forces himself to walk over to Keith, who is spinning some hugely exaggerated story to Nadia and Sylvio.

“Children,” Lance says when Keith finally takes a breath, “Tío Lance has to talk to Keith about boring adult things. Go harass your Tío Marco, it will be fun.”

“Quieres tiempo a solas con tu nooooooovioooooo,” the twins singsong in unison, and then run away cackling. Lance flushes bright red and considers pelting strawberries at them like the little shits deserve.

“What was that?” Keith asks, bewildered.

“Probable cause,” Lance mutters darkly.

Keith snorts. “Please don’t murder your niblings.”

“That’ll be my gift to you. Not committing homicide on your birthday.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Well, not really.”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “You mean…” He gestures vaguely at everything. “This isn’t already my gift?”

Lance shrugs.

“Lance, come on! This is more than enough. It must have taken you weeks to prepare.” He shakes his head, looking at Lance with soft, kind eyes. “You always do so much for me.”

Lance shudders, weak under Keith’s gaze.

“I like to.” He pauses. “I miss you. Always. It — fills the time, to do things for you.”

Keith reaches up and brushes some sand from Lance’s hair. He lingers, after, tracing his fingers along the shell of his ear, resting his hand against Lance’s neck. Lance closes his eyes, leaning into it, letting himself have this affection he’s craved like nothing else for months.

“I miss you, too. Constantly. Sometimes you’re all I think about, up there.” He sighs, and Lance can hear the tired, enticing smile on his face. “Wish you were watching my back again, Sharpshooter. No one else does it quite like you.”

Lance forces his eyes open again, although he can’t bring himself to meet Keith’s eyes. He traces the crooked line of his nose, instead, the tilt of his thick brows.

“You going back tonight?”

“Nah, I’ll stay a couple days. I’ve got nothing pressing for another week.”

“Oh, thank God.”

Tell him. Tell him. Tell him, chants the Allura that lives in his head.

Give me a goddamn second, he snaps back at it.

“Uh, Allura and I have been. Working. On a project.”

Keith tilts his head. “Oh?”

“Yeah, she’s here a lot. Obviously.” He gestures to his Altean marks, which he has just remembered are uncovered. He’s fine — all systems are running and he is a-okay. But his situation was a little different than Shiro’s. A little more Frankenstein. Lance depends on quintessence heavier than anyone else — he’s probably fine to make his own and live his life, but…he’s always struggled with depression. And Allura worries. So she wormholes to Earth regularly to hang out and make sure he’s not too low.

They have a lot of time to scheme, the Blue Paladins of Voltron.

“Obviously,” Keith agrees. Unlike everyone else, he doesn’t avoid looking at his marks; doesn’t wince when he’s reminded of them. The only change in his eyes is a look of determination, a renewed intensity in which he watches Lance. It’s a little bit intoxicating.

“I love Earth,” Lance says quietly. “It will always be my home. I will always want to come back here. I want to die here.” He finally meets Keith’s eyes. “But.”

Keith’s eyes are wide. The hand still resting on the curve of Lance’s neck twitches, slightly.

“But?” he asks, breathless.

“I’ve been helping her organize plans for a castleship. A little smaller than the old one, but — you know. Similar. It’s something to do. I’ll feel better knowing you guys are together, up there, fighting as a team together. There’s the Atlas, but it’s not the same. It’s not Voltron.”

“Oh.” Some of the excitement dims from Keith’s expression, although he takes great care to keep the smile firmly on his face. “That’s great, Lance. I miss the castle too. It’ll be a little more stable, and missions will —”

“And I’m coming with you,” Lance blurts.

Keith freezes.

“To space. Permanently. Um, mostly. I still want to come back to Earth and see my mom and everybody but you know. I miss everybody. I’m lonely. And being a farmer is actually super duper boring. No offense to farmers, but I want to shoot shit again. I even miss training, which is crazy, because I hate training —”

“Lance,” Keith says, and Lance says “Yeah?” and then he’s being pulled forward and Keith’s other hand comes to rest on his hip and he is being kissed.

“Oh,” he breathes, eyes fluttering shut and words fading from his brain. His hands slide into Keith’s hair without his conscious thought, and he tilts his head and lets Keith devour him as the butterflies storm in his stomach and kisses Keith back like he will get all the breath he needs from Keith’s lungs. His head spins and his knees go weak and Keith smells like pine and sandalwood and his lips are chapped and his hands are calloused and it’s the most wonderfully strange mix of foreign and familiar, bexause Lance knows all these things, but he has never known them in this way.

“Finally!” someone shouts, and soon there are wolf whistles and catcalls and Keith’s smile is pressed against his and Lance can feel the press of his crooked incisors against his bottom lip and he could live off the sensation.

“Happy birthday,” he whispers, half-drowned out by the noise of their teasing friends.

“Exactly as I wished it to be,” Keith whispers back, and then kisses him again and again and again.