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Over his 17 years of life, there has been a lot Keith hasn’t understood.
As a kid, he didn’t understand anything, like why he couldn’t eat sand, or why he sometimes wasn’t allowed to go outside when winds were high. He didn’t understand why his dad would come home dirty and smelling like the time they forgot the pizza in the oven. He didn’t understand when he stopped coming home, and Keith was sent away to live with strangers.
As he grew, he learned the answers to these questions and more. He learned he was supposed to have a mother. He learned most kids didn’t have a constant anger burning in their chest, and he learned most adults didn’t know how to deal with one who did. But there were still things he didn’t understand.
He didn’t understand how Shiro could be so nice to him, how he could have such unending patience for a no-good troublemaker like him. No matter what Keith did–stealing Shiro’s car, getting into fights at the Garrison–no matter how many times Keith was certain that it would finally be the last straw, and Shiro would finally see Keith was a hopeless cause like every other adult in his life for the past 7 years, all Shiro ever showed Keith was kindness and a desire to understand.
Still, even that Keith was able to make sense of, eventually. Shiro has a heart of gold, and short of being an alien dictator intent on destroying the universe, there’s nothing he can’t empathize with. Shiro loves unconditionally, in a way most people are incapable of.
There is one thing, however, that Keith will never understand. And that thing–person–is Lance McClain.
Everytime Keith thinks he has Lance figured out, he immediately does something to prove him wrong. It’s infuriating.
When they met at the Garrison, Keith didn’t know what to think of the pipsqueak with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen glaring at him constantly like Keith had personally murdered this kid’s goldfish. So Keith ignored him, focused on his studies and the only things that mattered to him: flying and proving himself to Shiro.
Then one day, after a particularly nasty fight with Griffin, the blue-eyed boy approached him and Keith saw those eyes do something other than glare, looking at him with genuine concern as the boy asked if Keith was alright. Keith definitely didn’t know what to think of that so he stormed off without saying anything.
Fast forward a few years and those eyes show up again when Keith least expects it, right as he’s about to haul Shiro’s ass out of the Garrison quarantine facility. This time, the guy’s antagonistic and talking like they know each other, claims they were rivals (a category Keith isn’t sure fits in friend or foe), and seems genuinely upset that Keith didn’t remember his name.
In Keith’s experience, first impressions are usually right and the way people act toward him is either consistently bad (most of the time) or consistently good (very rarely). Lance, however, is a complete enigma. He’s insulting, then he’s encouraging. He’s patting Keith on the back, then he’s shoving him in an argument. He’s trying to include Keith, then he’s dismissing him as a loner.
He is the most confusing person Keith has ever encountered!
And now, trapped outside the castle’s particle barrier with Allura as chaos erupts inside, Keith doesn’t understand how he’s feeling at all.
This day has not gone according to plan.
******
Earlier
******
Pidge wanted to leave.
Keith thought that by now he was used to people leaving. Thought it wouldn't phase him.
"You can't leave."
In his defense, when they all left Earth in a flying robot lion and went through a mysterious wormhole, he thought for sure he'd be stuck with these four people for the rest of his life.
"If you leave, we can't form Voltron."
Turns out it took less than a week for them to fall apart.
“You’re not the only one with a family, everyone in the universe has families!”
Maybe a part of Keith thought he had finally found one, ragtag as they were.
“You’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy.”
“Keith,” as always, Shiro’s firm tone cuts straight through the haze in Keith’s brain, “that’s not how a team works. People have to want to be a part of it.”
Right. They weren’t a family. They were just a handful of people who happened to get stuck together. Of course Pidge wants to get back to her real family.
Then an explosion.
Lance, battered and motionless on the floor.
A crisis at the Arusian village.
Fire. The entire village was on fire. The smell took Keith right back to when he was a kid. Before his dad stopped coming home. He wouldn’t let anyone else share that fate.
“I’ll go in for a closer look, you stay here with them.”
Allura’s shout of protest faded in the distance as Keith jumped straight into the flames.
The heat was almost unbearable, but he told himself it’s no hotter than a cloudless desert afternoon. Keith was born in the heat, on a record breaking day when mirages danced on the sand and sweat evaporated as soon as it formed, if his dad was to be believed. Any time Keith complained it was hot, his dad would say “no kid, you’ve been through worse. You’ll survive it.”
That’s one thing Keith had plenty of experience with. Surviving.
When Keith saw the battered droids standing motionless at the center of the destruction, his blood ran cold.
Just before he called back to Allura to tell her they’ve been tricked, a voice in the back of his mind whispered Lance.
Lance, who was unconscious, unable to receive medical treatment, and in the castle which was currently under attack by an unknown number of Galran soldiers.
Keith and Allura sprinted all the way back to the castle, but they didn’t make it in time.
“No!”
“They have control of the castle,” Allura said, stricken, “they’re taking Voltron.”
They’re taking Shiro. Lance.
“Can we break through the barrier?” Keith asked, sword already drawn, ready to act.
They couldn’t. They were stuck out here, and there’s nothing they can do.
As Allura talked Pidge through how to take down the particle barrier, Keith tried to stop the panic rising inside him. He just found Shiro, just started getting used to having this new purpose, just started letting his guard down around the team. It’s all about to be taken from him, and there’s nothing he can do.
In order to distract himself, he turns to his most effective diversion: Lance.
Earlier at the party, they’d been almost getting along. Sure, Keith still didn’t understand how Lance’s ridiculous cheer worked, or why it was wrong for him to say ‘Voltron’ when that was the point of the cheer, but Lance had been interacting with him without insults or challenges. Without Allura’s ridiculous bonding exercises forcing them to work together. And after he’d fallen over from drinking that nunvil stuff, he’d smiled sheepishly at Keith when he reached out a hand to pull him back up.
When Keith first saw Lance’s prone form among the rubble from the explosion, his first instinct had been to reach out his hand, like Lance could take it and get up, because he was ok, he had to be ok. Someone as full of life as Lance shouldn’t be that still. And Keith still hadn’t figured him out, still hadn’t made sense from Lance’s shifting attitudes, how he could be so smart and yet say the dumbest shit, how he claimed to hate Keith but always reached out to him, and how for some reason, Keith could never say no to him.
So Lance had to be ok, because Keith needed to understand.
When the particle barrier finally dissolved in front of them, relief coursed through Keith like a drug.
He and Allura ran through the castle, and when they found Pidge raised in Sendak’s clutches, Keith was ready to finally, finally, do something.
He extended his sword, ready to charge, when suddenly Sendak was blasted from behind.
Lance, eyes barely open, held his blaster in front of him for a moment longer before falling back into unconsciousness.
This fight was ending now. Keith charged.
It must have been less than a minute before Keith kicked Sendak back with all his might and Allura trapped him behind the barrier, Keith and Pidge working together to disarm Sendak and keep him distracted.
As soon as they were safe, Keith ran to Lance’s side, hand extending out to him once more.
“Lance, are you ok?”
Lance’s grip was weak in Keith’s, but Keith held tight enough for both of them, crouching down to his level and helping him into a seated position.
And Keith doesn’t know what he expected. A brush off, or a cheesy line about being a hero. A sarcastic comment that he’s never been better. But he absolutely did not expect a hushed voice, full to the brim with pride and trust, all directed at Keith.
“We did it. We are a good team,” Lance said and then smiled the most fragile, beautiful smile Keith had ever seen.
Oh.
Keith’s heart thumped in his chest as he smiled slowly back. Lance’s hand still gripped in his.
And as Lance’s strength waned again, Keith wrapped his arm around his shoulder, his other arm naturally going under Lance’s knees to lift him gently from the ground.
He thought he heard a murmured “thanks mullet,” but he couldn’t be sure.
Lance tucked his head into the juncture of Keith’s shoulder, and Keith focused on the feeling of his breaths as he carried him toward the med bay.
Hunk and Coran better be back soon.
A murmur from Lance pulled Keith back from his thoughts as they made their way through the seemingly endless hallways of the castle.
“What was that?” Keith asked.
“Finally caught up to you,” Lance murmured a little louder, “always ahead of me but now we’re a team.” The fingers of Lance’s hand cradled against Keith’s chest tightened slightly, like he was trying to hold on to something.
“Yeah,” Keith said, voice catching slightly, “we’re a team.”
“Always wanted to be on a team… with you… finally was,” Lance trailed back off into indistinguishable murmurs, but Keith’s mind was spinning too fast to listen anyway.
Shiro said people had to want to be a part of a team. They had to choose it. And Lance was choosing Keith.
A warmth bloomed in Keith’s chest as he held Lance tighter. A different kind of warmth than the anger that burned there for so long. The pieces were finally starting to come together. All Lance’s inconsistencies, the confusing ways he treated Keith, they were all ways of trying to reach him. When so many others left Keith, by choice or otherwise, Lance was always trying to get closer to him.
Oh.
Keith finally understood.
******
Later
******
The shade of blue enveloping Lance in the healing pod was all wrong.
“I can’t tell if he looks healthy or not,” Hunk observed, and Keith agreed.
The sickly blue glow was a pale comparison to the deep cerulean of Lance’s eyes, eyes Keith would give anything to see open again, to see shining with that hint of something, something Keith thought he was finally figuring out.
“I think he’s breathing funny,” Pidge said.
“Oh, come on!” Keith was tired of waiting. He tapped the barrier like that would bring Lance back to him faster.
“Not yet! A few more ticks,” Allura said.
“How much better do you think he’s gonna get in a few more ticks?” Keith crossed his arms and glared across the room. If it was better for Lance then he could be patient. He could. But he didn’t have to like it.
Next thing Keith knew everyone had drifted away from the healing pod, all huddled around two devices in rapt attention. Keith lingered a moment longer before joining them. A distraction would make the waiting go by faster.
“Yes, I think we’re winning!”
“Winning what, the intergalactic time measuring competition?”
“You guys having a clock party?”
Lance.
Keith looked up as Hunk hugged Lance so tight Keith wondered if he’d need to go right back in the pod. His eyes were still bleary, but they were open.
Keith waited, anticipation building, for the moment Lance would look to him, for the moment their eyes would connect and Keith could tell him I get it now. I choose you, too. You don’t have to chase me anymore.
But then…
“Talking, eating? Are you asking me out on a date?”
Lance still hadn’t looked at him. He’d only looked at Allura.
Keith told himself his heart wasn’t breaking. That he didn’t feel betrayed, like someone had left him again. Lance was right here. And he was acting in ways that Keith didn’t understand.
So really, what was new?
“Classic.”
Keith wrapped his arms across his chest, striving to look normal, and not like he was holding himself tight. Not like he was thinking back to the other night when Lance had been right there, in his arms, when Keith thought something finally made sense. When Keith thought he’d been chosen.