Chapter Text
The training room is Keith's safe space.
A place he can get away from his thoughts, while simultaneously improving as a paladin of Voltron.
When he's moving through an exercise, he knows his goal, his reason, his place in the universe. Everything is simple, straightforward. Defeat the bots, hit the targets, block the lasers.
And typically, he doesn't mind team training. It's way more interesting to train against a person than a bot. Engages Keith's brain even more.
And no one on the team engages Keith quite the way Lance does. Sure, Allura is an intimidating sparring partner–a deadly combination of powerful and efficient–and Shiro's reputation is more than earned–Keith's never fought anyone with as perfect technique as Shiro–but Lance always keeps Keith on his toes. Lance is adaptable, tenacious, and so damn determined to win that Keith can rarely guess what his next move will be.
Usually, anyway.
Keith knocks Lance to the floor again and can't help the grunt of frustration.
"Lance, what's going on? Where's your head? That's the fifth time I've knocked you down in ten dobashes," Keith reaches out a hand to help Lance up, again. He doesn't take it, pushing himself up without meeting Keith's eyes or answering him.
Keith looks over his shoulder as he hears Shiro approach.
"Lance, why don't you move to target practice? Let Hunk know to head here for sparring."
Lance nods and heads to the other side of the room without a word. Keith watches him go, and doesn't realize he's completely in his head until Hunk is right in front of him.
"What's up with Lance today?" Keith asks, mostly to himself. Thankfully, Hunk answers.
"He gets like this sometimes," Hunk says with a shrug, "at the Garrison he'd usually call home or go find his sister when he started to close up like this but…"
Hunk leaves the rest unsaid, like it's obvious.
"But what?"
"It's just harder to deal with the homesickness when you're millions of light-years away with no way to contact your family."
Oh.
Keith looks across the room at Lance again, where he's lining up shot after shot and taking a target out each time.
Then he gets punched in the arm so hard he nearly falls over.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry dude!” Hunk holds his hands up by his shoulders, face full of regret, "I thought you were ready!"
"No, that's on me, I should be paying attention." Keith shakes his thoughts free of Lance and fixes his stance, "I'm ready now."
****************************************************
Keith can't stop thinking about what Hunk told him.
It doesn't help that two days later, Lance is still off. Too quiet, too still, smiles that don't reach his eyes and laughs that sound hollow. It's all wrong, and if no one else is going to do anything about it, then Keith will.
Only… he has no idea how.
And he still has no idea when he wanders onto the observation deck in the middle of the night to find Lance seated staring out the window with a blanket draped over his shoulders.
Keith pauses when he sees Lance, who hasn't noticed him yet. He almost turns around, finds somewhere else to wait out the insomnia. But then he thinks about another day of this too still, wrong Lance, and he steps forward.
He makes sure Lance can hear his approach, but the other boy shows no sign of it. When he reaches his side, Keith simply sits down a few feet away, sharing the view.
When Shiro was first working to pry adolescent Keith out of his shell, anytime he tried asking Keith about himself–what he liked, questions about his past–Keith would shut down completely. It was the times that Shiro would share something of himself with Keith that actually worked to bridge the gap between them. Maybe Keith can do the same for Lance.
“When I was little, my dad used to tell me these stories based on Korean folktales,” Keith says suddenly.
Lance doesn’t respond, but Keith can tell he’s listening.
“My favorites were the ones that included dragons,” he continued. “Korean dragons aren’t like the ones you see depicted in fantasy stories. They have a more serpent-like body, and they’re made up of parts of lots of creatures. Deer antlers, fish scales, a long beard. They don’t have wings, but they can fly. They also don’t breathe fire. They're actually associated with rain and the ocean. Oh, and they can shapeshift.
“My dad always made me the main character when he told them, so that’s how I remember them best.”
Keith feels Lance’s eyes on him. Keep going.
“So Keith lives with his dad, who’s blind. Their life is hard but Keith helps his dad however he can. One day, Keith’s dad falls into a river and is saved by a monk. The monk says his sight could be restored if he delivers 300 bags of rice to the temple. He promises to bring them and returns home to Keith. Upon returning home, Keith’s dad realizes there’s no way they can afford the 300 bags of rice, and falls to despair.
“At the same time, merchant ships are being sunk by the Dragon King, and the sailors are in need of a sacrifice to appease him. Keith, out of compassion for his father, goes to the merchants and offers himself as a sacrifice in exchange for the 300 bags of rice.”
As Keith speaks, he hears his father’s voice in his head, the deep rumble with a hint of southern twang that he picked up from his many years in Texas.
Lance has shifted now to face Keith, fully engaged in the story.
“When Keith throws himself into the ocean, the Dragon King is moved by his selflessness and love for his father, so the Dragon King saves Keith and invites him to live in his underwater palace.”
“He gets an underwater palace?” Lance interrupts, “I’m calling dibs, I get to be the Dragon King.”
“What–” Keith reels, surprised to see Lance acting like his normal self so suddenly, “You can’t just call dibs, the Dragon King is a Dragon! Serpent body, beard, antlers, remember?”
“Yeah dude but you also said dragons can shapeshift, and what Dragon King wouldn’t want to look like this?” Lance gestures to himself, eyebrows posed in a way Keith can only assume (but would never admit) is meant to be sexy. “Plus,” Lance continues, “you said the dragons have water affinities, and hello?! I’m the water paladin! Plus I grew up on the beach, the ocean’s in my blood.”
“Fine,” Keith gives in before Lance closes off again, thinking about home, “you can be the Dragon King, I guess.”
“Sweet!” Lance says with an excited wiggle, smile bright and (finally) reaching his eyes.
“So the Dragon King–”
“Lance the Dragon King.”
Keith sighs. It sounds entirely too fond, even to him. “Lance the Dragon King invites Keith to his underwater palace to live as his honored guest. After a while–”
“Wait a minute, Keith! Aren’t you going to set the scene? I have an underwater palace! Tell me about my awesome crib!”
“That’s not part of the story. Just use your imagination.”
“Nope, nuh uh, I am not getting an underwater palace only to have the details resigned to,” Lance lifts his fingers to make air quotes, “use your imagination.”
Keith only gives Lance a deadpan stare. “Do you want me to tell the story or not?”
“I want to know how epic my underwater palace is.”
“You describe it then!”
“Ok,” Lance bounces upright in this seat, leaning forward with his hands out to set the scene, “so the buildings are all made out of giant leaf coral, right? And there’s a main plaza in the middle, on a huge, flat, elkhorn coral, and there’s all these bioluminescent algae floating around to give everything a soft, magical glow. Oh! And my throne is made of sea sponge because I’ve always thought they look like they should be comfy to sit on.”
Keith fights to keep the smile off his face, but he can’t quite stop the corner of his mouth from twitching up slightly. “Right. So Keith stays at the underwater palace as the Drago– Lance the Dragon King’s guest. After a while though, Lance can tell that Keith is…” Keith trails off to silence, only now realizing his mistake.
"Keith is what?” Lance asks, leaning forward.
"He's homesick," Keith says in a hushed voice, "he misses his father."
"Oh," Lance says just as quietly.
Damn it, Keith messed up. What was he thinking, telling Lance this story? Why did he even think he, of all people, could help make Lance feel better?
"So what happens next?”
Lance's question breaks through Keith's thoughts.
When Keith looks up, Lance's face is open still, and he's looking at Keith expectantly.
"Well… Lance the Dragon King sees that Keith is unhappy, so he offers to send him home. He uses his power to transform Keith into a beautiful white lotus flower. That’s… about when I’d usually fall asleep. The original folktale goes on from there, the King falls in love with the selfless daughter and she’s able to reunite with her father. Happy ending."
“Dude,” Lance gives Keith a flat look, “that’s not how you tell a happy ending.”
Keith just raises a questioning eyebrow in response.
“Where’s the build up? The suspense? The payoff?” Lance gestures broadly with each statement, the blanket falling from his shoulders. “Where’s the dramatic, heartfelt conclusion?”
“I’m… sorry?”
Keith can’t tell if this idea worked or not. On the one hand, there’s more light in Lance’s eyes than he’s seen in days. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to like Keith’s story very much.
“You owe me a happy ending next time,” Lance states with the air of making a declaration.
Oh.
“Ok sure,” Keith replies, feeling the faintest tug at the corner of his mouth.
Lance takes over the conversation from there and they sit watching out the window a little longer before both heading to bed.