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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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A shrill beep breaks his focus, and for it he nearly gets sliced in the eye.

He just barely manages to dodge the Gladiator’s blade, ducking under its sword and rolling towards his jacket and boots, crumpled on the floor. He digs out his comm, as quickly as he can with the Gladiator hot on his tail, and glances at the new message. It’s from Lance.

sharpshooter:

keith where tf are u

sharpshooter:

please know if u miss yet another meeting i am going to kick ur ass

sharpshooter:

better yet i’m gonna have allura kick ur ass bc she actually can

sharpshooter:

know that it will be painful

Keith rolls his eyes, dropping his comm and feigning left just as the Gladiator stabs right through where his head was milliseconds prior. No longer worried that he’s missing something important, he throws himself back into the fight, matching his breathing to the clash of his sword against the Gladiator’s, the steady taps of their feet on the floor as they move, the rapid beat of his own heart. It’s easy to sink into the movement, the adrenaline; to stop thinking.

Thinking is dangerous. Thinking is painful. Thinking reminds him only of how much he’s lost, how much he’s falling short. None of that is helpful. The weight of his sword in his hand, the smell of sweat and metal, the harsh white lights of the training room — all that is helpful. All that is real.

“Kogane, you are the most irritating person in space. And that’s saying a lot, because I’m here, and I specialize in being irritating.”

The Gladiator freezes mid strike, then fades into pixels. The harsh lights dim.

Keith turns around with a scowl. Lance matches it, standing right beside the training room kill switch, arm crossed and jaw set defiantly.

“I’m trying to train, Lance.”

“No need. You’ve reached peak levels of infuriating. No more training necessary.”

Keith rolls his eyes so hard it hurts, jogging over to his water bottle and chugging half of it before dropping to the floor and doing push-ups. Whatever. Lance may have shut down the Gladiator, but Keith can train in other ways. He’ll just turn it back on when Lance leaves.

“Oh, you fucking —”

Before he can fully register what’s happening, a sharp wooshing noise gets louder, and he rolls out of the way seconds before a sword flies by his head and imbeds itself in the wall.

A very, very familiar sword, white with red accents.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Keith shouts, but Lance is already sprinting to grab his bayard, face impassive.

Keith scrambles to his feet, lunging for his own blade, barely managing to activate it and hold it in front of him to block Lance’s oncoming strike. The force of the blow is so powerful it sends a painful ripple down his arms.

Lance is just barely smirking.

“If it’s a fucking fight you want than you’ll get it,” Keith growls, spinning out of the way and putting some distance between them, adjusting his stance and tensing his shoulders.

“I don’t want a fight, douchebag. But obviously talking like grownups is too hard for your tiny little brain, so I’m going to explain this in a way you can understand.”

“You’re really shitty at one-liners,” Keith points out, aiming a thrust at Lance’s left hip, which he always leaves open.

To Keith’s delight, Lance’s smirk drops. “That’s because one-liners are stupid!” he says defensively, barely managing to swerve to the side in time to avoid serious damage. He retaliates by swinging his longsword like it’s a fucking bat, and Keith’s head is a baseball, because Lance is allergic to the real swordfighting techniques Keith has attempted to teach him. And also peanuts, but that’s not helpful right this second. “I only have one line to destroy you emotionally! Truly devastating burns are multi-layered, which is why you can never come up with them, you one-dimensional oreo thinnie!”

Keith grunts, sidestepping Lance’s attempt to stab his foot and clashing his sword at the base of Lance’s, right near the hilt, trying to disarm him. It works, but only because Lance anticipated the move, and as his sword is bent from his hand he does some sort of twisting manoeuvre with his wrist and manages to catch it, somehow. It’s infuriating.

“I stopped listening twelve percent into your sentence.”

“Well, you do that a lot, so colour me unsurprised.”

The unfiltered bitterness in Lance’s voice throws him for a loop, distracts him. He blinks, thrown-off, head out of the game.

“What?”

His distractedness costs him. Faster than he can fully track, Lance hooks his foot around Keith’s ankle, sweeping his legs out from under him, and then shoves him to the floor, pinning his wrists above his head, knee to Keith’s navel, sword to his throat. Keith tries to struggle, to either buck Lance off or angle his own sword, still clenched in his hand, back up to Lance, but he’s exhausted — he’s been training since he woke up this morning. Lance has him at a disadvantage.

“You are being a massive douchebag dumbass loser,” Lance says, panting. “I am fighting the urge to kill you for real.”

“Maybe don’t,” Keith suggests, suddenly very aware of the position they’re in and how easily Lance could drive his sword through Keith’s skull. He knows Lance won’t, or else he’d be struggling way more, but the way Lance is eyeing his own sword is certainly not helping.

Lance sighs. “We need to take a break, Keith.”

Keith frowns. “What?”

Lance sighs again, shifting off of Keith and standing, offering his hand. Keith takes it, pulling himself up, and then follows Lance over to the wall, sitting down next to him.

“What?” he repeats, when Lance doesn’t say anything for several minutes.

Lance shifts to face him, and for the first time Keith really notices the bags under his eyes, the sag of his shoulders. “We need to take a break,” he repeats. “All of us. The team. We need to do something that isn’t this —” he spreads his arm, gesturing to their swords and then between them — “all the time. We need a vacation.”

“No.” Keith barely lets him finish. He gets back to his feet, picking up his sword and heading back towards the system modulator, flipping through the different training modules. Lance follows him immediately.

“Keith —”

“No, Lance,” Keith repeats, fists clenching the edge of the computer. “This is a fucking war. There are no vacations. End of discussion.”

Lance mutters something in Spanish, too fast for Keith to pick up, but he clearly hears a few repeated instances of “cabrón”, and “comemierda”, and “tonto terco idiota que va a hacer que nos maten a todos”, none of which he can translate but he’s pretty sure he gets the general message.

“Keith.” Lance wraps an arm around Keith’s wrist, tugging him away from the training computer. “I cannot possibly understand the pain you are going through. Nothing I have ever gone through can possibly be the same as how it feels to lose a brother. For the second time, for fuck’s sake. I know that.”

Keith clenches his jaw, swallowing the lump in his throat at the mere mention of Shiro. He itches to yank his hand away, boot up the Gladiator again, and train and train and train until he can’t hear his thoughts anymore.

But he doesn’t.

“But you’re not alone in this, man,” Lance continues. Keith turns to glare at him — what a fucking crock of cliched bullshit — but Lance holds his gaze, steady and firm. “Pidge knows exactly what you’re going through. Allura, too. Hell, even Coran. That’s three separate people who understand every single thing you’re going through right now. Intimately.”

That brings Keith up short. “It’s not the same,” Keith insists anyway. “Plus it — it doesn’t matter. What good is talking out our feelings going to do? That’s not going to fuckin’ find him. I’m only going to find him if I keep working.”

“Really interesting that you say that,” Lance says flatly. “I had this exact conversation with Pidge last night, as I was attempting to force her to get some sleep.”

Keith feels something like guilt build up deep in his stomach.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And it’s one thing for me to mother hen the fifteen year old, but it’s a whole other, weirdly Freudian thing for me to mother hen you, the grownup leader who is supposed to be guiding the team and not a giant headass who is doing intensely stupid shit like ignoring team meetings and training to the point where he passes out.”

“In my defense, the daily team meetings are dumb,” Keith mutters, because apparently he wants Lance to kick him out the airlock.

Luckily, Lance only smiles wryly. “You’re lucky I’m endlessly benevolent and I’m going to let that slide. Come sit down, asshole. You missed today’s meeting because you were busy being emo, but we’ll have a small meeting now. A co-leaders meeting.”

Keith relents, sitting next to Lance on the floor, back to the wall as Lance sits criss-cross-applesauce in front of him.

“Okay. Vacation. Necessary.”

“Counterpoint. We all manage our schedules better and have some free time, and don’t waste our time spending who knows how long doing nothing.”

“Counter counter point. We do both of those things or I mutiny.”

Lance does not appear to be joking even a little. When it’s clear that Keith isn’t going to speak any further, he sighs.

“Look,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I know that the idea of not doing something for a day is kind of stressful. But…saving the world is a massive bummer, dude. Being on this lonely ass castle in the middle of empty space is a bummer. Chasing a walking purple L’Oreal commercial who is also a homicidal maniac is a bummer. Eating in silence during team dinners is a bummer. Trying to force Pidge and Hunk to step away from their tech for a few hours to sleep and eat and shower is a bummer. Dragging Allura away from the briefing room is a bummer. Making sure you don’t work yourself to death is a bummer. Being the red paladin, if I’m being a thousand percent honest, right now, is a bummer. I’m bummed, dude.”

Despite himself, Keith smiles slightly. Lance grins back, tired and a tad condescending but also fond.

“I got it, Lance.”

“Excellent. I even dumbed it down so it would not escape you.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“You know what would make me less of an asshole?”

“A vacation?” Keith guesses.

“Ding ding ding! Vacation is the answer.” Lance reaches forward, grabbing Keith’s water bottle straight from his hands and taking a swig. “And since you decided to ditch the daily briefing, you get to make it up to me today by convincing the rest of the team to agree and also agreeing to whatever vacation spot I choose.”

“I will agree to one of those things.”

Lance laughs, bright and happy, and it sends such a startling zap of energy and relief through Keith’s entire body that he’s kicking himself for making it so rare, as of late.

“Oh, Mullet, you are so naive.”

Lance gets to his feet, offering his hand to Keith again. This time, when Keith takes it, he holds on for a moment — he smiles at Lance, tired but genuine. Lance smiles back, knocking their shoulders together.

It’s nice to be back on the same page.

———

Keith thinks he reserves the right to complain, honestly.

Well, maybe not. He did work everyone pretty hard. And he is glad that Lance finally convinced him (if threatening to mutiny can be called convincing) to go on vacation, even though you couldn’t waterboard that out of him.

“If you complain even one more time I am going to draw a massive dick with the sunscreen where you can’t reach,” Lance says pleasantly, squirting what Keith would call a massive excess of Altean SPF 900 onto his hands (alien suns are a little more deadly. Who knew). He slaps it on Keith’s back, slathering it with absolutely zero care and an abundance of glee.

It doesn’t make Keith smile. It doesn’t.

“I’ll just wear a shirt until the sunburn fades. Complaining is worth it.”

Lance only hums, working in the cream. It starts to feel good, his cold fingers digging into the knots on Keith’s back. It feels so good, in fact, that Keith lets his guard down.

Rookie mistake if he’s ever made one.

One second he’s sat on the warm sand, tension melting from his shoulders, and the next he’s fucking airborne; Lance picking him up by the waist and throwing him over broad swimmers shoulders.

“Lance!” he screeches, pounding on the red paladin’s back, “fucking let me down! Dickhead!”

Lance is cackling loudly, picking up speed and jogging for the — icy cold! Keith knows! — waves. The rest of the team looks in their direction, but Keith loses any hope of their aid when they all burst out laughing.

“All of you are the worst!” Keith cries, but he can’t deny that it’s nice to hear their laughter again.

It’s been a while.

Still, though, Keith is not going down without a fight. As he and his captor get closer and closer to a watery doom (Keith has never been dramatic even a day in his life), Keith really starts to struggle. He throws his whole body weight to one side, making Lance stumble. He aims an elbow to the Cuban’s ear, but before his hit can land, he hears a voice shout: “Oh, no you don’t!”

Three things happen in quick succession.

One. Lance whoops in triumph.

Two. A curtain of white hair flashes towards him, and yet another arm grabs him around the waist.

Three. He drops, and water colder than the fucking glacial arctic seas envelops him entirely.

He comes back up sputtering, glaring a thousand daggers at Allura.

“You’ll pay for that,” he informs her.

“Ha!” She looks down at him smugly, hands on her hips and one eyebrow raised to her hairline. “Good luck with that.”

Keith doesn’t hesitate before tackling her into the waves.

It doesn’t take long after that for things to devolve into chaos. Hunk happily follows Allura and Lance’s examples, scooping up Pidge — to her rage — and Coran — to his delight — under one arm each, tossing them in the water like neither weighs particular more to him than perhaps a bunch of grapes.

(Dear Lord. If Keith were not so gone on Lance’s ass…)

As much as he tries to deny it, Keith has fun. Very quickly Lance organizes a game of chicken, climbing up Keith’s body like a particularly aggravating monkey (something Keith is happy to tell him) and settling on his shoulders, thighs bracketing his head and ankles crossed at his abdomen.

Keith goes so violently red that he’s genuinely kind of shocked that he can turn that colour.

“Squeeze any tighter, Lance, and Keefers over there is going to evaporate the entire ocean,” Pidge says drily.

Keith does not wait for her to get situated on Coran’s shoulders. He charges.

Despite his brain relaying a constant stream of Oh God Lance’s thighs are wrapped around your head holy shit he’s sitting on your shoulders and he’s barely dressed his fucking legs are so long why are they so long does he have to be this attractive is that even possible what the fuck is the deal with that, he manages to put his full attention into going absolutely ham. He charges, dodges, leaps and bounds, intent on being the winning team of this ridiculous but admittedly fun game.

Allura and Hunk dominate. Easily. It’s barely even a competition. They dunk everyone else so many times that they have to plead for mercy.

Still, Keith has a huge smile on his face by the time everyone peels off and cools down.

“There it is,” Lance says, poking him on the cheek.

Keith bats his hands away. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

But Lance is undeterred by his gruffness. He smiles, fondly, rolling his eyes, then bounds away with a random bucket to the shoreline, likely to look for cool seashells.

Keith is so endeared that it’s honestly a little sickening. Never in his life has he been so attached to the whims to another person.

He doesn’t hate it, somehow.

“If you keep building the habit of watching your red paladin so lovingly, you may be accused of favouritism in the near future,” Coran teases, taking a seat next to him on the sand.

Keith flushes. Your red paladin rings in his ears.

“I don’t watch him like that,” he denies loudly.

“You do so,” pipes up the peanut gallery, also known as Pidge Holt, without so much as glancing up from her, Hunk’s, and Allura’s massive sandcastle. Honestly, sandcastle might not be the right word for it. The magnificent undertaking is significantly larger and significantly prettier than his dingy shack from back home.

“You’re fired,” Keith shoots back. Pidge only rolls her eyes, reaching over and smashing one of the sand figures standing on the castle.

“I just killed sand Keith for your insolence. Beg for my forgiveness or I won’t rebuild you.”

The two of them continue to bicker until Allura throws clumps of sand at them to get them to shut up.

“Aw, the sand got stuck in my sunscreen,” Keith pouts. He tries to rub it off, but it only scrapes his skin off with it, so he gives up. “You’re the worst!”

“I’m going to put more sand in your hair,” Allura says mildly. She scoops up a handful. Keith holds a bucket of water up in front of him in defense.

Before an all out war can be restarted, Hunk stills, looking up from his intricate castle-building with a furrowed brow.

“Hey, speaking of sunscreen, where’s Lance? He can usually be relied upon to snootily inform anyone who will listen about UV rays and skin cancer every hour.”

“He went to go find seashells.”

Hunk’s brow furrows. “And he’s not back yet? It’s been a bit. Do you think he got lost?”

“Let’s go look for him,” Keith says, scrambling to his feet immediately. His heartbeat picks up slightly, ‘Lance’ and ‘lost’ ringing through his head like disjointed echoes. He’s already halfway down the sand by the time he registers the voices around him, hears the calling of his name, feels a steady hand on his shoulder.

“He’s not lost,” Coran says kindly. His green eyes are wrought with pain and empathy and understanding alike, reminding Keith of Lance’s earlier words. Reminding him that his family truly does understand his pain, truly does know him, get him. Coran’s hand squeezes once, and Keith takes a deep breath, smiling slightly back at him, covering his hand briefly with his own.

“Okay.”

Still, the six of them walk down the shoreline faster than they would normally, figuring safe is better than sorry.

“Hey, look.” Pidge points at a small purple critter scuttling across the sand. “Does that thing look like it’s in a hurry to you?”

“I think all crabs kind of look like they’re in a hurry,” Hunk reasons.

Allura smiles slightly, snapping his hands. “It’s the snappiness to their movements.”

Just as they speak, however, another crab scurries along, and then another. Soon dozens of them are visible, digging themselves out of the sand or hopping out of the water, then hurrying down the shoreline like whatever their chasing is about to run out. Eventually the crowd of crabs get so thick that it’s almost impossible to walk without gently sweeping several of them aside to make room for their feet.

“Oh, hey, guys!”

A few yards in front of them, sat cross cross applesauce on the sand, surrounded by hundreds of little crabs, is Lance. In front of him is the bucket he had left with and a sponge-like chunk of seaweed. He grins sunnily at them, so widely that the brown of his eyes is hidden, they crinkle so much, and returns his attention to the bucket. He holds his hand out to one of the many crabs chittering around them, waiting for it to crawl on, then gently lowers it into the bucket, using the spongey seaweed to scrub its shell.

“I’m giving the crabs baths!” The little crab in the bucket seems to wiggle, almost, in some kind of glee, waiting for Lance to finish, pat it on the head, and set it down on the sand before scuttling away.

“You’re bathing,” says Pidge incredulously, “aquatic sand bugs.”

“Some of them have a lot of barnacle buildup,” Lance says primly.

“We thought you went missing,” Keith blurts. He can’t quite keep the fear out of his voice, that built up as soon as he’d realized that Lance was gone, fear that comes out as anger. He regrets it as soon as it comes out, bracing himself for the set to Lance’s jaw and and the defensiveness in his jaw. But to his surprise Lance only softens, holding a crab out to Keith. He takes it on reflex, blinking at it in confusion. The crab blinks back.

“I did not,” Lance promises. “But I was looking for shells, and then I saw Jorge flipped upside down, so I helped him, and then we were chilling, and then I noticed he was walking funny because of a barnacle buildup on his leg, so I asked him if he wanted me to get it off, and he didn’t answer but he was cool to hop in the bucket so I cleaned him off. And then Carmen showed up so I polished her up, and then Amelia, then Hunk Two —”

“You named a crab after me?” Hunk interrupts, visibly touched.”

Lance nods matter-of-factly. “Strong and sunset coloured. All of you have crab buddies. Look.” He scoops up six crabs from his lap, showing the Hunk-crab first, then showing three other crabs in order: a teeny-tiny dark green one with black marks around its eyes, a bright pink one that sparkles when it moves, and an orange one with markings around its mouth. “Pidge-crab, Allura-crab, Coran-crab.” Finally he holds out his hand to the crab that has been sitting protectively on his head, burrowed in his curls. It takes a moment, but eventually the little thing begrudgingly steps from the safety of Lance’s hair and into his cupped hand. He brings it carefully down, giving it an exaggerated smooch on the head.

“This one is Keith-crab,” he says. “Because it is all emo coloured and likes me best.” Lance looks up at him and grins. “I am your absolute favourite all the time, right, Mullet?”

Keith knows Lance is teasing. Obviously. Evident in the way the rest of the team is snickering to themselves, no doubt remembering the years of arguing they’ve witnessed.

But still. Keith feels lightheaded.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, bright red. There’s a beat of silence that stretches out for twelve years, then Pidge guffaws, Hunk bites his lip, and Allura straight up loses it. Even Coran hides a smile in his hand.

“What the fuck, Keith,” Lance says, strangled. His face glows worse than Keith’s does. “You’re not supposed to admit it.”

“Would it be so bad?“ Keith erupts, voice cracking. “So what you’re my favourite? There’s no way you didn’t know! I let you get away with everything! You threatened to shove a sword through my skull yesterday and I didn’t even put you in a chokehold about it!”

Lance makes a long, anguished noise, setting the crab down with great care before burying his face in his hands. “You’re so embarrassing,” he moans. “You don’t have an ounce of rizz in your body. None.”

Keith sputters. “What does that even mean!”

“It means he liiiiiiikes yooooouuuu,” Pidge crows. Allura makes kissy faces.

And, well. Pidge cannot be trusted. She has openly and gleefully informed him that lying for fun is one of her favourite hobbies, especially when Keith is at the other end of her clowning.

But Lance is still trying to shrink back into himself, embarrassed. And he always finds an excuse to have his hands on Keith, somehow. And Keith hangs out with him more than anyone else, honestly.

Keith turns to Lance, hopeful. “You do?”

Lance points at him, glaring. “This does not count. You hear me?”

Keith grins, rocking back on his heels. “I’m not sure.” Lance scowls. Keith genuinely feels like he might be floating, so long as he ignores his asshole friends. “You might have to spell it out for me.”

“You talk to me properly,” Lance lists. “When we are alone. Play it up and wax poetic and — I dunno, flowers or something. You figure it out. I refuse to have this be how I find out you have feelings for me.”

“I mean, I was never really hiding it.”

“I’ll divorce you, Keith, I swear to God.”

Humming, Keith leans close, careful of the crabs, and presses a kiss to Lance’s cheek. At the last second Lance turns his head, catching his lips and kissing him properly. His smile is wide and shy.

“Sure, Sharpshooter.”

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