Chapter Text
Escape velocity, noun [astronomy] – the speed an object needs to reach to escape the gravitational pull of a planet or moon and move out into space
—35.08, Earth, Arizona
Fucking hysterical. That’s what this is.
Lance is staring at the invite in front of him. It’s not really an invite, the tone of it makes it pretty clear, more of a summoning. More of a, if Earth doesn’t send a diplomat, we’re going to blow this fucking planet right up type thing.
And his boss thought it would be a great idea to send Lance.
That’s what he’s going to pretend happened at least. Because he can very clearly see his own name on top of the invite. This invitation was addressed to him, and was very much asking for him.
Still, he needs someone to blame. And that might as well be the person who called him into this office.
“I’m not sure I’m the perfect candidate for this,” Lance mutters as he skims the text.
New leadership generation, new peace treaty – all alliance representatives and potential new trading partners have to be present for the two-day long conference.
Margaret smiles. “You’re the only candidate for this,” she says.
“I don’t think I want to be.”
“I’m afraid the matter is already out of your hands,” Margaret answers with a shrug. She’s tapping her pencil against her desk. Something that Lance does all the time, but never even considered it to be annoying until right now that it’s not him that’s doing it.
Tap tap tap.
Lance’s eyes stay glued to the page.
“They’re really going to pull out all the stops to make for a convincing alliance partner.”
“Not doing a great job with the phrasing in here,” he says, vaguely gesturing at the somewhat threatening words on the data pad. “I feel like I’m being held at gunpoint, Margaret.”
She doesn’t laugh. “They’ve been led by warlords for millennia. Some of that is bound to reflect in their language.” If anything, she seems a bit impatient now, just wanting to get this over with. “View it as a four-week spa retreat with lots of long meetings in between.”
Tap tap tap.
“Wait a minute.” Lance’s gaze snaps back up at his boss where she’s still sitting with her legs crossed, hammering the pen against hardwood. Her white hair is slicked back so tightly into a bun that Lance is glad there’s no sunlight streaming into the room. The reflection in the egregious amount of gel would probably blind him. “Four weeks? This says two days.”
“Their days take a little bit longer than ours. Everything over there takes a little bit longer, now that I’m thinking about it.” Her hand stills. “The Blade managed to talk them down from four days, so it’s still very short for their taste.”
“I can’t be up there for four weeks,” he protests, although he knows he doesn’t have a whole lot of leverage here. None at all, actually. This is his literal job.
And it’s not like he has anything to do that would require him to be on Earth either. His garden has a fully automated sprinkler system and his cat would probably jump for joy if he took her to spend some time with Veronica and her wife.
He would spend most of his time at work anyway, keeping busy, answering inquiries, calling, negotiating, doing what he’s good at. Doing what he loves.
Might as well go to that off-planet conference and do the same thing there, right?
If the Blade is there as well, at least it could be somewhat less boring. He enjoys working with Kolivan – ever since Lance found out a couple years ago that he's actually a big softie underneath all that gruff exterior, they’ve gotten along a lot better.
Margaret stares expectantly at him, and only now Lance notices that she’d said something. “Sorry?” he asks.
“I’d love to trade places with you, but it’s your name on the invite.”
Lance bites his lip, teeth burying themselves in soft flesh. “Okay.” He nods decisively. “I’ll do it.”
“Not like you had a choice,” Margaret answers with a smile. Lance is pretty sure it’s more of a threat than reassurance.
Right.
Not like he had a choice.
The day before he departs, he brings Blue over to Veronica’s place. She meows the whole way there, clawing at her carrier in the backseat of Lance’s old truck, even attempting to get her claws through the bars to swipe at Lance’s arm and murder him in cold blood.
He tries to soothe her, bribe her with snacks, but she’s really not having any of that. She just hates being in the car. And Lance can’t really fault her for that, although he would appreciate not bleeding out in the middle of a highway while he’s driving.
“You’re a beast,” he says to her as he presses down on the doorbell of his sister’s place. Blue meows again in response. Long and suffering, as if she’s really, truly dying. “And a drama queen.”
The sun beats down on him from above, the few trees planted next to the porch doing little to shield him from the warmth of the pavement below that makes him feel like he’s standing in a large non-stick pan. At the very least they offer some shade.
He wipes the budding sweat off of his forehead with the back of his free hand, squinting through the little diamond-shaped glass panel in the middle of the door, trying to make out any sort of movement.
It still catches him by surprise when the door finally swings open, revealing Veronica with gardening gloves on and a tank top that is definitely made up of 100% sweat at this point. She’s got a fan made of an old newspaper in her hand, her face glowing in the bright red of exertion.
“Come in,” she says unceremoniously. “I’m not gonna hug you in this weather, but I hope you can feel the love.”
Lance smiles, but he still presses a kiss to her cheek, unsurprised at the taste of salt clinging to his lips after.
The AC inside is cranked all the way to the max, and it sends a shiver down his spine as he steps inside.
He sets the carrier down and lets Blue out. She immediately makes a beeline for his sister’s bare legs, rubbing herself up against them, leaving a trail of orange fur stuck to Veronica’s sweaty skin. She meows for her attention like she’s been starved of it her whole life.
“We’re taking care of the garden right now,” Veronica says as she kneels down to pet Blue’s head, getting a generous amount of dirt on her in the process, “but do you have time to stay for a bit?”
“I’m scheduled to leave at sunrise tomorrow,” he answers, closing the crate and putting it up on top of the wardrobe to his right.
“Lance.” Veronica levels him with a half-hearted glare. “I’m asking if you want to stay for a beer. Not if you want to stay here forever.”
“I–” he hesitates, pushing his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Yeah, maybe.”
With a satisfied smile, Veronica leads him into the garden. It’s like an oasis in this weather. Small, yet filled to the brim with wide-spanning trees and overgrown wildflowers, insects buzzing, butterflies competing for prime spots in the blooms.
Acxa is in the process of digging a hole to re-position one of the trees when she sees them coming. She looks equally exhausted as Veronica, the skin on her shoulders painted a bright lilac from what Lance assumes must be sunburn.
It’s good to see them both again.
They sit around a small table with folding chairs in the shade of the largest tree in their garden. Veronica had cracked open the ice-cooler, pushing a bottle of vaguely bad-tasting craft beer into his hand.
“Four weeks,” Veronica muses, lifting her own bottle (same brand, different flavor (hers is much better than Lance’s)) to her lips. “That’s the longest one yet, right?”
Lance nods, fingers scratching at the paper label on his bottle. The glue got mostly dissolved by the condensation on the glass which makes it easy to push it around as he likes. He’s invested in peeling this thing off in one go.
“You’re going to be okay with that?”
“Yeah,” Lance answers. “I think so.”
His thoughts drift back to his conversation with Margaret a few days ago. It’s his name on the invite. He doesn’t really have a choice.
It’s pretty clear to him that he’s only been picked because of his past achievements with Voltron and not because of his (quite extensive) expertise as a diplomat. Yet it really only adds to the load on his shoulders that comes with following up on the invitation. Still taking credit for something that happened so many years ago, when he’d barely breached into adulthood, that he has so little recollection of, feels off. Feels wrong, almost.
No one had ever cared about that.
Ex-Paladin, Ex-Defender of the Universe.
It adds a certain amount of flair when he’s being passed around and introduced to influential people, shown off like a newly acquired plastic doll.
They’re going to ask what his favorite part of being a paladin was, and Lance won’t say that it wasn’t mostly fun and games – he’ll say his favorite part was doing an aerial silk routine on the Voltron Show, and that’ll get some laughs even out of the biggest hard-asses.
Veronica looks like she’s going to say something, like offer to talk to his boss about it, or ask if Lance has talked to his boss already. Which, obviously, he has.
“Is the Blade present?” Acxa asks instead, uncrossing her legs and slumping back into her chair. Sweat gathered at her temples rolls down in small droplets, clumping up the stray hair escaping her ponytail.
“Yup. Do you know who’s coming to join me in my unending suffering?”
She’s joined the ranks of the Blade’s leaders a few years back, but has since reduced her workload a bit, doing less footwork and more of the diplomatic cases. Asking her is probably a good idea, because Acxa knows her shit.
“Not me,” she mutters. “Probably Kolivan. Although, he apparently broke his foot last time planet-side and has been less than helpful on any mission since then.”
“He’s been causing a fucking stink everywhere, if you ask me,” Veronica juts in. “I love that guy as much as the next one, but the last debrief with him was hell.”
Lance peels off the label. “That sounds fun.”
“He’s been very, uh, yell-y. I think it’s been stressing him out that he can’t really physically do much. It’s only two weeks of ordered rest and he’s already acting like he’s, like, two seconds away from exploding.”
“Yelling won’t help with that.”
“I’m sure he knows that. But honestly, for your sake, I hope he’s not the one coming to join you.”
“I have to agree,” Acxa says. “Keith is off-duty right now, so it could be Krolia, as well.”
The pricking sensation from his nails in the inside of his palm makes him jerk upright a bit – he hadn’t noticed that’d crumpled the label in his hand.
“Krolia would be cool,” he mutters, trying to smooth out the paper with his unsteady fingers. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“She’s never been great at the diplomatic stuff though, you might have to cover her ass if she joins you,” Veronica remarks with a grin. “You’re gonna have to suck up to those guys extra hard to balance her out.”
Unexpectedly, Lance laughs. He watches Blue step out into the garden, nervously taking in the new surroundings. “Nothing better than that,” he says.
“Well, if anyone can do that, it’s you.”
He ends up staying past sunset, for lunch and for dinner, helping them in the garden, letting himself bask in the fuzzy feelings that come with being around his loved ones. So what if he’s going to be tired tomorrow? He doesn’t think he could bring himself to regret that.
The alternative would be sitting on his couch in his empty apartment, counting his fingers down from ten and back up again, jerking off a couple of times, maybe blasting himself with the sound of his TV and the radio at the same time so he doesn’t let his thoughts stray to where he doesn’t want them to go.
The warmth of the sun still lingers on his skin when he sets foot into his designated ship the next morning. It’s 5 AM, and the first streaks of orange light up what’s left of the night sky while Lance throws his bag into the bunk bed in the back of the ship.
Like all newer Earth-designed ships, it’s disgustingly sleek, without any space for whimsy or joy, really. Lance hates them. He hates the cold steel, he hates the bright white fluorescent lights, he hates how every room somehow manages to look like an airplane bathroom.
He waits until the last possible second to plop himself down in the pilot’s seat. The course has been charted for him already, and he swallows as he sees the 1 Day 14 Hours estimate until he arrives at his destination.
A shuddering breath spills from between his quivering lips.
It’s fine, he tells himself.
He flicks a few switches and the engine roars to life.
Tap tap tap, comes the sound of his foot against the floor.
His hands clench around the controls as he’s done it a million times before.
He swallows down the taste of copper in his mouth.
There’s no way to escape the feeling of his body being pressed back into the seat as he builds up enough momentum to leave Earth. Gravity is a wall of sheer force – the Earth doing everything in its power to keep him tied to its core.
And Lance escapes, barely.
His stomach feels like it’s about to drop into his legs, his bones feel compressed into a tightly sealed vacuum, his flesh pulled back by everything at once, the Earth’s greedy tendrils winding around his spine.
It’s a feeling like none other.
For one day and fourteen hours, Lance is restless.
The bunk is a bit too small for him – he can’t stretch out without letting his feet hang into the hallway, so he mostly dozes off curled up in the cockpit, legs pulled up onto the leather of his seat.
He texts Shiro after receiving a picture of his kid on her first day of second grade, and he promises to meet them for dinner once this conference is over.
He talks with Matt on the phone for a solid two hours, having made the mistake of asking about his latest project, sending him into a spiral of “oh, and…”.
He throws a bouncy ball to the ground and against the wall over and over again until it hits him smack-dab in the middle of his forehead and he gives up.
He reads the second half of the sci-fi novel he brought along and gives it a bad review.
He doodles shitty sketches of frogs into the margins of his briefing that he barely read.
It’s pacing and it’s keeping himself occupied somehow.
Only when the indigo, bright blue planet surrounded by rings larger than Saturn’s comes into view, Lance actually makes an effort to try and read the briefing.
But the noise of his own thoughts coupled with the low rumble of the ship’s engine make the words seem to blend into each other, creating strings of letters that blur into muddled messes of color that make next to no sense at all. He throws the idea of reading it out of the airlock, and instead lets the robotic voice of his data pad sound it out for him.
Barely anything sticks, and it’s probably made harder by the fact that Lance is trying to get his uniform on at the same as he listens, jumping to pull his freshly pressed slacks over his thighs, fumbling with the clasps and buttons of the jacket across his chest.
The tone of anthracite really does nothing for him, Lance thinks as he gives himself a once-over in the reflection in one of the windows. Not even the very nice fit of the jacket can fix this atrocity that’s specifically reserved for diplomats.
At the very least his ass looks fantastic.
Small mercies.
What Lance eventually gathers from the Exclusive Edition Boring Briefing Audiobook is that this planet’s leadership used to be at odds with the alliance. They used to make an actual effort to disrupt their trade routes and offer nothing but hostility to travelers who had to make stops in their system. That was until the Alliance had proposed a peace treaty. It held, shakily, but it stopped the planet’s offenses for a while.
Iylsed now has a new generation of leaders, a council of 12 people willing to work together to join with the alliance for good, putting their past behind them.
All of them will be present at the conference, and all of them apparently have wildly different ideas of what their new contract with the alliance needs.
Lance slumps over, by now sitting in his chair again, letting his forehead rest against the data pad.
This is going to be great.
The first thing he notices when he touches down in the capital city’s port and steps out of his ship is that the gravity is a little lighter than it is on Earth. It’s heaven for his knees and his spine, a much needed reprieve from carrying around his own weight.
On the flip side, it’s a steady reminder that he’s not home anymore.
Once he pays his fee, he’s greeted by two weirdly humanoid guards with cyan skin and large antler-like growths on the top of their heads. Their eyes lack irises, instead their entire eyes are a deep dark blue with a slitted, barely-visible pupil in the middle. Both of them, more worryingly, hold large spears in their hands.
Lance bows to greet them and they tap their spears to the ground in return.
The capital city is futuristic as hell, Lance notes. With buildings tall enough to pierce the sky, built as organic shapes winding up and up, interconnected with one another through bridges and tunnels and thick ropes of immovable metal. Trees shield against the sun that shines bright from its spot between the planet’s visible rings. Their leaves look thick and spongy, and less surprisingly, given what the planet looks like from space, blue. Every free space that’s not occupied by pathways or buildings or market stands is filled up by those sponge-like trees.
There’s something new to discover around every corner. Be it a new shape of building, a plant unlike anything he’s ever seen before, Iylsedins with colorful beads decorating their antlers. It makes the way to the conference building a lot more interesting and a lot less nerve-wracking than Lance had thought it to be.
He’s shown to his room and instructed to go to the top floor in thirty minutes to attend the introductory ceremony.
The room is shaped vaguely organically, not unlike the building itself, with no hard edges, furniture built to accommodate for the rounded floors and walls. It has a round window on the south side, facing the rather large bed, giving Lance a stunning view out into the city.
Right now, he thinks he’ll be able to get through these four weeks just fine. Probably.
Getting settled into his room takes some time, and he’s nearly sprinting towards the elevators and then again to get to the boardroom on time.
It’s oval-shaped, made complete by a large round table in the middle with at least 24 seats around it. The eastern side of the room is a singular window pane that lets the light stream in.
He’s one of the last few to arrive, and he’s glad to see some familiar faces around, although they’re mostly people he’s seen through a holo screen during the past years.
New Altea has sent someone he hasn’t seen yet, a woman with dark skin, purple marks and shining black hair, maybe a couple of years older than Lance by Human standards. He only gives her a small nod and a smile as he finds his way to the spot marked with his name.
He perks up when he sees that the empty spot next to his is marked for Kolivan, but as he looks for his gigantic purple sorta-apprehensive-friend, he can’t seem to find him.
The minutes tick by as everyone finds their places, and the seat next to Lance stays empty.
He finds himself getting fidgety. Finds himself wondering if something happened to Kolivan.
One of the twelve new Iylsedin leaders stands then, dressed in a bright sun-yellow, clasping her hands in front of her chest as she warmly welcomes all of them and thanks them for their time.
Her tone is much less threatening than it initially sounded in the invitation and Lance can’t help but breathe out a little sigh of relief at that.
He listens as he arranges the needed files in his data pad according to her advice. It’s all pretty standard up until now.
She repeats what was said in the briefing for the first twenty minutes, which makes Lance feel significantly less bad for barely listening back on his ship. He’s making up for it now. He’s even nodding very attentively. Holding eye-contact. All that jazz. Never let anyone say he’s bad at his job.
Then she explains the informative meetings and exploration trips (whatever the hell that is going to be) will be held in small groups while the negotiations will take place with everyone present. They are going to try to accommodate to the different day-night cycles on everyone’s home worlds, but cannot promise that everything will work out quite as smoothly. As some of them come from planets that have days as short as 24 hours, from folks that are strictly nocturnal, from some that do not sleep for months at a time, it’s going to get complicated at times.
Everything will be spaced out with plenty of downtime to replenish and get needed rest, but everyone’s presence is important, and that will have to take priority.
Lance furrows his brows as he looks over his planned schedule for the next week. He’s definitely gonna have to sacrifice some sleep here. Yikes.
The first hour flies by.
Lance’s posture has gone from somewhat respectable to bad to worse, and his attention span is slowly but surely reaching its breaking point, when the door in the back of the room slides open.
Blue and gray and black. Long, dark hair. A familiar set of eyes. The same faded scar carved along his cheek.
Lance jerks upright, nearly jumping out of his chair.
“I’m filling in for Kolivan.”
The words strike right through Lance’s sternum. And he didn’t even have his defenses up. He didn’t have time to prepare.
Although somewhere deep down, he knows that no time in the world could’ve prepared him for seeing Keith again.
“He was needed for an emergency in–”
The words die on Keith’s tongue as his eyes meet Lance’s.
Silence stretches inside of the room, everyone expectantly looking at Keith to finish his sentence.
Lance’s hands curl into tight fists under the table as he desperately wills himself to relax. But how can he, when Keith’s eyes harden, and his lips press into a thin line, his jaw working as he clenches his teeth? How can he, when that feels like another hit right where it hurts?
It’s fine.
“Sorry,” Keith finally says, unsticking his gaze from Lance’s sitting form. He bows toward the twelve leaders. “Kolivan got caught up in an emergency call and I will be filling in for him. I’m representing the Blade of Marmora in his stead.”
Lance is struggling to wrap his head around those words.
“What is your name, Blade?” the Iylsedin dressed in yellow asks.
“Kogane.”
“Very well, please take your seat.” She gestures to the open spot next to Lance, where the sign now displays KOGANE instead of KOLIVAN.
Keith follows her direction, nodding solemnly.
Lance doesn’t look at him when he sits down.
It’s fine. It’s just Keith.
—21.12, Earth, Cuba
“You’re crazy,” Keith mutters as he closes the door to Lance’s childhood bedroom after making it inside, but the growing smile on his face betrays him. His cheeks are painted in a deep red from the wine he’s had, and Lance’s heart beats so much faster in his chest at the sight of that. It might jump out of his chest and run right over to Keith, really. And that would just be embarrassing as hell. “This is the third time tonight we’ve both used the bathroom excuse at the same time.”
Lance leans back onto his elbows, a smug half-tilt tugging at his lips. “Forgive me for wanting to spend some time with my boyfriend.”
“There’s no way we’re getting out of this unnoticed.”
“They’re all way too busy trying to keep up with my family to even think about us,” Lance answers, making grabby hands at Keith.
With only a little bit of an eye-roll, Keith comes closer, joining Lance on his old bed, the frame creaking as he sits down next to him. “And when they go to use the bathroom only to see that not one of the two is occupied?”
“Baby,” Lance coos, moving to straddle Keith’s hips, climbing into his lap and softly brushing the hair out of his face. “You’re overthinking this.”
The bed creaks again, damningly loud.
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are,” he says. “If someone asks I’ll just say I was showing you something.”
Keith’s eyes glow like gold-stricken amber in the soft light of the bedside lamp. It nearly catches Lance off guard. Only nearly.
The rum in his system softens the edges of surprise, lets the inklings of love bleed into him instead. He hasn’t said it yet, but fuck, does it sit on the tip of his tongue.
“Like that’s less suspicious.”
“It is, definitely.” Lance presses a kiss into Keith’s hairline so he doesn’t let himself slip up. “I would believe me.”
Keith’s gloved hands land on Lance’s hips, squeezing at his sides. “I don’t think anyone else would.”
“They’re not master detectives hellbent on figuring us out, you know?”
“Lance…”
“Let them find out. Whatever. Shiro won’t give a fuck if we’re boning.”
Lance lets his own hands trace over Keith’s forearms, fingers slowly dragging over soft dark hair and scar tissue and skin and muscle and just, Keith. He lets himself have this, at least. Because he can.
“You’re so–”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t stand you.”
“Good, because I can’t stand you either.”
He doesn’t even overthink it as he leans forward to kiss Keith, slowly and softly and still holding on to him. And Keith responds by sliding Lance’s shirt up, just the tiniest bit, which Lance shuts down almost immediately.
“Now that would actually be suspicious,” he whispers into Keith’s mouth.
Keith sighs, contenting himself by cupping Lance’s jaw instead, fingers curling into his hair, thumbs brushing over the Altean markings on his cheeks.
It makes Lance feel giggly and fucking high above it all, his whole world reducing down to where Keith’s lips meet his own, to every single point of contact between them.
He feels fucking incandescent.
Sometime later, the noise outside of the room picks up, loud laughter and voices coming from the living room underneath them. Time had passed so seamlessly, imperceptibly, so fast that they hadn’t noticed it at all.
Lance pulls back, blinking, willing the room to stop spinning, focusing his gaze on Keith’s kiss-bitten lips. He squints, as if that would make hearing what’s being said easier.
And maybe it does, because Keith’s eyes widen as the sound gets louder.
“Motherfucker,” he curses. “That’s the countdown.”
Lance scrambles. “Shit.”
They’re by the door in less than ten seconds.
Lance has his hand on the handle. “How does my hair look?” he asks. “Did you mess it up?”
Keith blinks. “Not– Uh. Could be worse.”
Lance tries to smooth it out with one hand. “Asshole,” he says and pushes the door open.
“3…2…”
They just need to get down the stairs and around the corner and act as if they’ve been there the whole time. Easy as pie.
“Hey, Lance?”
But Keith has other plans, apparently.
The clock strikes midnight and Keith pushes Lance against the wall, knocking an old picture of whatever the fuck down in the process.
His hand fists into the cotton of Lance’s shirt, and he surges forward for what must be the most desperate kiss that Lance has had yet in the three months they’ve been together. Lance gasps into the space between them, letting Keith hold his weight, listening to the noise surrounding them explode into deafening cheers.
The kiss is almost frenzied, lips crashing against each other over and over, teeth dragging across flesh, the feeling of Keith’s tongue soothing over it right after. Lance tries hard to not make any sounds, but it borders on being impossible. The whine that escapes him as Keith presses him harder into the wall really just slipped out. But Keith shuts him up again right after.
It’s all Keith and it’s possibly the happiest Lance been in years.
Keith untangles himself first, pressing his forehead against Lance’s. Breathing in where Lance is breathing out.
“Happy new year,” he says.
Lance laughs, bright and open. “Happy new year to you, too.”
When they arrive downstairs a minute too late, no one really notices with the exception of Hunk, who pulls Lance into a bone-crushing hug almost immediately.
“You missed it, buddy! Happy new year!” he exclaims, easily lifting Lance off of his feet.
Lance grins. “You too, man,” he says as he gets set down again, slinging his arm around Hunk’s shoulder. “I think I had too much to drink.”
Hunk looks at him, a sliver of worry in his eyes. “You okay now?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Ugh, no wonder you look like that,” he says as he catches sight of Lance’s hair. He reaches out to fix it, rather clumsily trying to untangle his messy curls. “Next time you tell me, alright?”
“Dude,” Lance says. “I swear it was super-duper okay. Keith took care of me.”
“Keith?” Hunk asks, immediately giving up his quest to fix Lance’s hair. “Guess we’re lucky he didn’t try to drown you in the toilet.”
Keith meets his eyes from across the room, his face blushing bright red, his cheek squished by Lance’s mother pressing a wet kiss to it.
Lance smiles – it’s on his face before he can even think about it.
“Keith can be really nice when he wants to be,” he says.
“I should’ve recorded that,” Hunk answers with a snort. “Keith will never believe me if I tell him you said that.”
“Better keep it secret then,” he jokes and finally tears his eyes away from Keith to look back at his best friend. “Come on, didn’t Shiro say he brought tequila?”
“Oh, no, you are not getting your drunk little hands on that!”
But Lance is already untangling himself, moving into the crowd and navigating toward Shiro’s ugly Garrison-issued travel bag. “Yo! Matt, Pidge, Keith!” he hollers over the noise through his hands cupped around his mouth. “Tequila!”
Hunk follows hot on his heels.
And if Lance’s hand brushes Keith’s a couple times too many while they stand gathered outside, watching the moon move across the sky, laughing and screaming with energy, passing drinks around, no one points it out to them.
—35.08, Iylsed, Mirtral
Lance dips the very second the introductory ceremony concludes. The traditional Iylsedin piece of music stops, and Lance is getting the fuck out of there.
He doesn’t even linger for a second. Just grabs his things and makes a run for it right back down to his room.
When his door finally closes behind him, Lance’s chest is heaving with ragged breaths.
What the fuck is Keith doing here?
It’s one thing to see him once every year, having exactly 364 days to prepare in advance, but it’s a whole other thing to have him show up here, and to be stuck here alongside him for the next four fucking weeks.
It’s, above all, not fucking fair.
Because he knows Keith doesn’t want to see him, and he’s probably still furious over what happened years ago, and he definitely didn’t think Lance would be here either, if the look on his face was anything to go by.
Every breath is a glass shard to his lungs. Every inhale an old wound that’s begging not be reopened.
He digs the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids. Inhales and holds it.
Inhales again.
Again.
He’s not breathing out.
His lungs expand, pushing against his ribs, straining bones to their limits, and Lance thinks he’s going to start crying.
He thinks it for just a moment, one that feels too heavy and overwhelming for something that should be so simple.
It’s just Keith.
It’s just Keith, and they have both proven over and over that they can be civil around each other. They can be amicable, even. As long as they stay out of each other’s way.
And maybe that’s exactly what he has to do here. That’s the game to play.
- Stay as far away as humanly possible from Keith.
- Do not talk to Keith.
- Preferably, but this is optional, do not even look at Keith.
He finds himself wanting to text someone about this. Wanting to call someone. Actually, most definitely Hunk, because he’d know exactly what to do.
But Lance can vividly imagine how that conversation would go. He would say, “Keith’s here!” and Hunk would say, “okay? Tell him I said hi!”, because no one ever fucking knew. Because somehow, no one had ever found out, and both Lance and Keith had kept their mouths tightly shut about it.
All everyone knows is that they went from strained rivals to barely even friends to two people who can’t be in a room with each other without starting a fight. They all know something happened, but never really what had caused it.
He told himself it was easier that way.
Now, he’s coming to regret it.
But hey, that’s more than ten years too late.
Before the next meeting starts, he makes his way down to the building’s mess hall, hoping to find something edible in there.
Easier said than done, when a lot of the food is either the awful Altean goo that kicks Lance’s sensory issues into overdrive these days, or something that looks more watery than the worst of soups.
He settles for a bowl of grains with something green on top, and finds himself a place to sit.
Alone, preferably. He doesn’t know if he’s in the mood to talk right now, even if it were someone he knows well. Maybe after he’s had some sleep, he’ll be right back to the old Lance. Maybe then he’ll be a little less tense, a little less on edge.
The quiet corner he found doesn’t stay quiet for long. Of course it doesn’t.
“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” says a voice from above, and then there’s someone sitting in front of him.
The Altean diplomat from earlier introduces herself as Sahirya, shaking his hand with an almost shy smile on her lips.
She asks about him, about his role on Earth, which he answers politely, smiling at her jokes, trying to not make her feel like she’s talking to a wall.
Soon, though, he notices the changes in her posture, the way she’s leaning in, the way she’s blushing just a little more at what he says, the way the eye contact seems more intense. And Lance can feel it going into a different direction.
Especially when she says, “I couldn’t really help but notice your marks. You’re special, huh? They suit you, I think.”
And if there’s one thing that Lance loves, it’s a woman who’s direct with him.
Just– Just not right now.
“I’m–” The same age old sentence threatens to spill from his lips.
“I’m engaged,” is what the memory foam he’s made of wants him to say.
But he’s not. Not anymore.
Hasn’t been for almost a full year now.
Sometimes he still thinks he can see the tan line of his ring, even though it’s been burnt over by countless hours in the sun. There’s not even a ghost of it left.
He briefly wonders if she still goes through the same thing. If she also starts, and halts herself.
“I’m not really looking to uh– You know,” he says, and it comes out a little harsher than he wanted it to. “But I’d love to get to know you better.”
Sahirya smiles, not a trace of disdain on her features. “It’s all good, Lance,” she answers. “Thought I’d give it a shot.”
And that’s pretty nice to hear, actually. “I’m glad you did.” Lance smiles back at her. “Which group are you in, by the way?”
They find out their schedule looks almost identical for the most part, which means that Lance won’t have to worry too much about feeling out of place. She asks if Lance has any plans for his free time tonight, and when Lance says that he’s planning on sleeping, she genuinely laughs at that.
Sahirya loosely invites him to join her for some deeply platonic drinks tonight, and the corners of Lance’s lips tug up even more when he accepts that invitation.
With the promise of drinks on the horizon, Lance makes it through the next meeting – an overview of potential trading offers – without too much trouble. He doesn’t even lift his head when Keith walks in. Or when Keith sits down on the designated chair next to him. Or when Keith taps his fingers against his own thigh.
Tap tap tap.
Lance doesn’t let it distract him.
He nods, listens and takes notes and he really feels a little bit like he’s back at university.
Once that’s done (only one hour longer than scheduled! Wow!), he goes back to his room to get dressed. The scratchy uniform comes off, and Lance stuffs it into the laundry chute. He hopes it works like it did back on the castle, otherwise he’s gonna have to show up in his civilian clothes tomorrow, and that would probably not be seen as something positive.
Could he call someone and ask? Probably! Is he insane? Absolutely not.
So he won’t call. And he’ll just hope it’ll get back to him on time.
He changes into his favorite black jeans and the nice blue linen shirt that he loves so much and he feels like he’s ready to take on the world. It makes even the artificial gravity feel a little less off.
He pockets his phone, takes a deep breath, gives his curls a last little tug, absentmindedly noting that he should probably get his undercut shaved again sometime soon if he wants this thing to keep looking good, and pushes the button next to the door to open it.
As he leaves the room, he turns his head to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything important, when a heavy weight slams into his side – catching him by surprise and sending him stumbling against the open doorframe.
“Watch i–” comes a too familiar voice, trailing off at the last second. “Fuck. Hi, Lance.”
Lance steadies his weight on the wall next to him, taking a moment to gather himself even if just to spite Keith. He lets his gaze drag upwards, slowly, taking in the beat-up jeans and horribly old boots, the dark brown leather jacket that is in desperate need of some love, and the braid that’s already sporting a few early grays in there.
Fun fact: Lance hasn’t been this close to Keith in seven very solid years.
Fun fact: it’s not very fun, is it?
Because just the sight of those few gray strands makes something ugly and deep-seated crawl up from his stomach into his throat. Something overwhelming and all-consuming and unfair. Something he’d rather shove away, something he’d rather dispose of in one of those nuclear waste barrels, seal that shit up as tightly as humanly possible, and bury it so far down in the earth that he can feel the heat of its core on his skin as he digs with his hands and nails.
Lance doesn’t meet Keith’s eyes. Focuses on the uneven bridge of Keith’s nose instead.
If he were younger, still in his early twenties, where being a petty asshole was something he did with pride, he’d say “oh, Keith, buddy! Didn’t even notice you were here!”. But that’s a distant memory of who he once was. And he’s– He doesn’t want to–
He tells himself he doesn’t want to fight with Keith here. Ignores the simmering urge underneath his skin.
So, instead, he just says, “hey,” like a complete fucking idiot.
“Sorry, I–” Keith clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t think anyone else was on this floor.”
Lance laughs. It’s a not a good laugh, nor one that’s particularly convincing. It’s hoarse and too high in pitch and it seems to cause Keith damn near actual physical pain.
“Uh, yup,” he says, trying to not let the near-lethal amount of adrenaline in his system affect him too much. His hands feel like they’re shaking. He doesn’t know if they are. “That’s my room right here.” He doesn’t dare to look.
“Ah,” Keith answers. As noncommittally as it gets. He jerks his shoulder towards the room right next to Lance’s. “That one’s mine.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s–” God, Lance needs to get a fucking grip. “Cool. Super coolio.”
Keith’s brows furrow. “I guess.”
Unfortunately, Lance has always had a knack for getting verbal fucking diarrhea when things got too uncomfortable. And this is pretty high up on his personal uncomfy-list.
He feels it coming on, and he really doesn’t know what to do to stop it.
“Almost like on the castle, huh?”
Oh, man.
Keith blanches. The color honest to god drains from his cheeks.
“Sure,” he says flatly. “I’m gonna, uh–” He gestures to the staircase behind Lance.
Lance raises his hands, a lackluster gesture of ‘sorry’, and moves to the side. “Yeah, I’m kinda late to drinks, so…” He lets the sentence linger for a second too long.
Keith halts, barely half a step taken. He looks at Lance, eyes searching for something, anything. Lance doesn’t know if he finds it.
He doesn’t know if Keith had ever found it.
Probably not.
“Ah.” Keith finally frees Lance from the shackles of his stupidly intense eyes and walks down the hallway. “Enjoy your drinks,” he calls over his shoulder.
Lance turns away without saying anything, hellbent on reaching the elevator on the other end of the hallway before Keith reaches the staircase on his end.
It’s not until the elevator doors slide shut behind him that Lance lets himself unclench his jaw.
This was not just the closest, but also the longest and probably most awkward encounter he’s had with Keith in nearly a decade.
And with just that little interaction, he’d failed every single point on his list from earlier.
And now he knows that Keith has gray hairs and that he still wears the same shitty boots he wore when they were together, and that they have their rooms right next to each other. Because of course they do.
He breathes in. He breathes out.
And when he looks down at his hands, they’re shaking.