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autisticlancemcclain · 7 months

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Keith thinks he might actually sink into his bed, that’s how goddamn tired he is.

It’s just been — such a long day. Painfully long. Keith thought dragging his brother out of Black’s astral plane would make things less stressful, but nooooo. Of course not. That would be too easy. Of course Shiro decides he doesn’t want the Black Paladin title back, and that, actually, he’d like to retire. Of course Keith can in no way find it within himself to force his brother, who only ever wanted to explore, back into the crushing expectations of the leader of the universe’s strongest weapon.

So. It’s just — a lot.

There weren’t even any missions today. Honestly, Keith prefers mission days — they’re a one-and-done kind of deal. You fly into battle, you think you’re gonna die, you panic about your friends dying, usually no one dies, you either complete the mission or you don’t, you go home. Of course there’s the soul crushing terror and overuse of energy that comes at the price of actual genuine years off his life, but that’s so clearly a Future Keith problem. Once Keith parks Black into the hangar he can Stop Thinking About it, except of course for the horrifying and endless nightmares.

But all this planning shit is horrendous.

First of all, Keith is an action guy. An investigation guy too, sometimes, if there is conspiracy involved (and/or some fuckass has challenged him in any way no matter how minuscule), but what he is not is a tactician guy. A planning guy. That kind of shit is for people who have crippling anxiety and are plagued with constant thoughts about how everything can and will go wrong. That’s why it’s a job for Lance. And Allura. And Hunk. And Shiro.

But not Keith. Keith prefers to walk blindly into dangerous situations and deal with whatever is thrown at him after. Black Paladin Keith, however, motherfucker that he is, has to sit down in meetings for a thousand hours and listen to people argue and try not to wish death and curses upon a myriad of irritating Coalition leaders and allies.

Keith needs a goddamn nap.

Not even bothering to take off his boots, and ignoring the Lance-shaped voice in his head squawking about how disgusting that is, Keith stuffs his face into his pillow, reaching blindly for a blanket and yanking it up to his ears. He is going to Sleep, goddamnit. He is going to keep his comm where it is, stuffed under his mattress, and pass the hell out, to be woken only by some terrible and glorious act of God herself. The universe and all its associates can take an hour to kindly piss the hell off and leave Keith alone.

A knock sounds on his door.

Keith screams. Loudly.

“Keith?” calls a voice, muffled through the doorway, and of course it is the one person in the entire world who Keith has never and will never be able to say no to.

“Hnnnnnngh,” Keith responds. He actually tears up, a little.

The door slides open. Hunk pokes his head in, smile sweet and guilty and hopeful.

“I’m going to swallow engine oil,” Keith anguishes.

“Maybe don’t,” Hunk suggests lightly.

Keith groans again, shoving his head back into the pillow. Hunk patiently waits for Keith to get his shit together enough to lift his head again. Probably because he knows he’s more effective if he can manipulate Keith via facial expressions. Ugh. Keith should ask if he can return his friends. Get store credit, maybe. It’s not worth it.

Hunk smiles sunnily when Keith manages to pull away from his pillow, proving his point. Keith scowls extra hard at him.

“I am busy, Hunk.”

“I need parts,” he pleads, hands pressed together and under his chin. “Pretty pretty please.”

“You have a lion that you can pilot yourself!”

“I need the parts for the lion. Duh.”

Keith groans again. He should say no. He probably can say no. If it was urgent, Coran would be flying the castle for the parts. Hunk is coming to Keith because he knows damn well that Keith is a sucker with a saviour complex. Keith is not going to give in this time.

…Except he is so. Because he is a sucker with a fucking saviour complex.

Fuck.

“You’re bumped down to third favourite,” Keith grouches, rolling off the bed and allowing himself three seconds to sprawl on the floor.

“Yeah, right,” Hunk snorts.

Keith growls. Hunk, wisely, chooses against anymore teasing or commentary, deciding instead to quickly back away and head back down to his workshop.

“Okay thanks Keith bye! Love you bunches!”

Keith rolls his eyes, fighting off the smile that traitorously wants to fight it’s way across his lips, and reaches for his comm to get the details of Hunk’s errand.

“I am going to fucking bite him,” he says, carefully controlled, as he reads the message.

MISSION SHOULD YOU ACCEPT: get parts for hunk because you love him so

OBJECTIVE: obtain 174g of Noxalian black ore (pure as possible)

PEOPLE NECESSARY: two so you should take lance probably ;)

LOCATION: Noxalia-1242

DANGER LEVEL: like -2 but you’re so whipped for lance that it probably brings it up to like a 12 lol. loser

He’s red in the ears and it’s goddamn annoying, is what it is, because these are official mission documents, Hunk, which means they are technically public Coalition information once the mission has been completed. Public.

Hunk is the worst out of all of them for that. He actually had the highest record of diplomatic incidents caused, because he is actually physically incapable of keeping his comments to himself and this can, as one might anticipate, offend a large number of people.

But since he is a good fucking friend (the best, maybe) especially because his friends are class four menaces who do not deserve it in the slightest, Keith drags himself away from his bedroom and towards the materials room, where he knows Lance is.

He makes his frustration known.

Despite the fact that he was stomping like a petulant child and Lance has ears akin to the sonar receptors of a Navy submarine, Lance doesn’t react when he comes into the room, hunched as he is over a project of his.

Keith stops short. He grins wickedly, mood suddenly shifted.

Oh ho.

Oh ho ho.

Quieter, now, although he knows it doesn’t matter, Keith creeps towards the Red Paladin. He makes sure his footfalls are soundless and soft, just like he was taught by the Blades, and his body is directly behind Lance, in the blind spot of his peripheral vision. He focuses on the chair Lance is sitting on rather than his actual person so as to not envoy the feeling of being stared at. And quietly, quietly, he sneaks up behind him.

“RAH!” he shouts, seizing Lance’s shoulders and shaking them. Lance shrieks at the top of his lungs, jumping twelve cubic meters into the air, flailing wildly and sending his sketchbook flying at Keith’s face. Lance’s aim, as it always is, rings true, and the spine of the heavy book nails Keith directly on the bridge of his nose.

“Ow!” Keith yells, pain made worse by the heaving gasps of his laughter.

“¡Chingada madre de cráneo grueso!” Lance screams, hand pressed to his chest, and then, for Keith’s benefit, continues: “You mother fucker! You backwards, tumbleweed-guzzling, sand-eating, cow-fucking son of a minotaur! I’ll fucking get you! I’ll fucking — crush you to death! Come closer, Kogane, I swear to God I’ll wreck your shit —”

Breathless, weak, and wheezing, there’s nothing Keith can do to avoid Lance’s menacing advancing. He can’t even summon the strength to lift his arms to defend himself from Lance’s smacking. He just sits there, taking it, laughing harder every time he remembers just how fucking high Lance had jumped.

“You fucking — stop fucking laughing! Asshole!”

Lance’s expression is only growing more murderous. His mouth is pulled back in a snarl and he sure are shit isn’t pulling his punches. The only thing assuring Keith that he’s not genuinely about to die, curled on the floor, completely devoid of dignity, is the ever-present warmth in Lance’s brown eyes, even as they’re narrowed in fury.

“I — I’m sorry,” Keith wheezes, loosely wrapping his hands around Lance’s ankle as he kicks him. “Please. Oh my God. Stop. I cant breathe.”

“I hope you suffocate!” Lance shrieks.

“Lance, please,” Keith begs. With more strength than he knew he had, Keith heaves a giant, calming breath, shoving the image of Lance’s face as he’d practically flipped off the chair far into the recesses of his mind. Fuck. “I’m sorry. You were so focused. I couldn’t resist.”

Lance huffs. He kicks Keith one last time for prosperity before plopping on the floor next to him, scowl still affixed to his face, but lips twitching with a clear attempt to keep it there.

“I’m allowing your amusement because I laughed today when Senator Grmsx called you a toad. But watch your back.”

“Noted,” Keith says with amusement. He sighs, breath shuddering with the last of his laughter, and stretches out, sliding his feet under Lance’s thighs and resting the back of his skull on the floor. He stares at the ceiling until his vision gets unfocused and blurry, making the glowing blue streaks warp and swirl. He smiles slightly when he feels Lance’s arm hook around his bent knees.

“I got conned,” he laments, flipping his arms behind his head.

Lance hums. “Hunk?”

“Yep.”

“Capitalised on your intense need to do things for your friends to send you on errands?”

“Mhm.”

“Sucks to suck.”

Keith tucks his folded hands under his head and looks up at Lance, smiling in a mirror to Hunk, earlier, sweet and guilty and hopeful. “Well…”

Lance pulls away, waving his hands. “Nuh-uh. No way. You’re not dragging me into your shit, Superman. You want to help everyone around you like the tryhard golden retriever you are, that’s a you problem. I’m a bitch on purpose so I can be errand-free.”

“Please?” Keith tries, batting his eyelashes. The thirteen year old version of himself in his head is dying of embarrassment. (Good. He can suffer for a bit. He used to insist on sleeping on the floor because sleeping on a bed was ‘too mainstream’.)

Lance glares at him. Keith can actually physically see his resolve breaking. He’s very smug about it.

“Ugh,” Lance says.

“Thank you,” Keith says, smirking.

“Ugh,” Lance says again, much more pointed. “Where are we even going?”

Keith climbs to his feet, offering a hand to pull Lance up, too. He stretches and shifts his shoulders, leading them both out of the material room and down to the hangars.

“Noxalia-1242. Hunk needs some kind of ore.”

Lance gasps, dropping Keith’s hand. It is then that Keith realises that they were holding hands, and chokes on his own spit.

“Noxalia-1242? You sure?”

“Yes,” Keith rasps, still dying. Lance doesn’t notice, beaming so wide his eyes are nearly forced shut. He lets out this shout of excitement and wiggles, a little, like he can’t contain himself, and it’s so fucking cute that Keith somehow chokes again, which he didn’t think was possible. There’s a genuine concern that he may pass away.

“You should’ve led with that! Let’s go let’s go let’s go!”

He sprints the rest of the way to Black’s hangar, dragging Keith along. Keith tries desperately to get ahold of himself. It works about 27%, which is way more than he was expecting.

Lance is practically bouncing in glee the entire trip, scrambling out of his seatbelt and twirling around the cabin the second they breach the castle’s orbit. He’s actually humming to himself. Keith’s grinning so wide it hurts, and he doesn’t even know why they’re excited. Lance is just — infectious, as he always is; bright and all-encompassing and sparkling.

It’s a struggle and a half to land, and not just because Lance is being distracting. (Or, well, that Keith is distracted by him. It’s not really Lance’s fault. Keith was once distracted by Lance yawning, for reasons he’s too embarrassed to admit even to himself.) The surface of the planet is slate grey and thick with swirling, furious clouds, and it’s a testament to Black’s power that they manage to stay mostly steady, because Keith is a good pilot but he well and truly can’t see shit. The landing is rough.

“C’mon, c’mon!” Lance urges, out of his seatbelt faster than Keith can blink and rushing him to get out of his. “Let’s go!”

“I’m coming, Jesus,” Keith mumbles, finally releasing that damn buckle. He has to sprint to keep up with Lance, following him to the slowly opening hatch.

When they get to the open door, Keith is assaulted with a gust of frigid air and a spray of water. He curses, ducking to the side, hiking his collar over his head so he doesn’t get too soaked. He wishes he’d known to bring his armour.

“Fuck, it’s — pouring!”

Lance laughs, delighted, and before Keith can even think to stop him he sprints down the ramp, into the rain, soaked to the bone immediately.

“Lance! Lance — come back here! What are you doing?!”

But Lance only laughs again, and Keith can’t hear it because of a roar of thunder but he can see it in the giant grin on Lance’s face, open-mouthed, and the way he squeezes his eyes shut and tips his head back and opens his arms to the skies like he’s worried the rain isn’t soaking enough of him.

“You’re going to get pneumonia, you anaemic dumbass!” Keith shouts.

“Come join me!” Lance shouts back.

The worst part is that Keith doesn’t even think.

He stumbles down the ramp without even a second of hesitation, before he’d even realized he’d moved, cursing the whole time, shocked with the sudden onslaught of cold and windy and wet. There’s something about the way Lance said it, not come out here not it’s just rain, dorkus not come get wet!, but come join me. Like it’s not about the rain but about the rain with Lance.

The very iron in Keith’s blood is pulled to him like the world’s strongest magnet.

“If I wanted to get soaked for no reason I’d jump in the pool fully clothed,” Keith grumbles, but there’s a breathless quality to his voice that cannot he muffled.

For the first time since he sprinted out of Black like a madman, Lance tears his face away from the heavens, looking at Keith with eyes that seem impossibly dark with from the reflection of the clouds, almost black as the storm.

“You hate the rain?”

“Yes!” Keith says emphatically, but he hears his own voice like a distant echo, far away. Lance’s laughter is bright and feels louder than the thunder, like clinking gold bangles. Keith’s heart drops to his stomach and his eyes go wider than planets.

Lance turns, slowly, hands still spread wide, face easy and open and peaceful in a way Keith has never seen on him, turned back up the the pelting rain, every droplet doing something to him that makes him glow.

“How could anyone hate the rain?”

Suddenly, wholly, breathlessly, Keith doesn’t. His collar slides from his slackened fingers and flops back over his neck, soaked through. His hair plasters to his forehead and it’s wet and cold and water drips directly into his eyes but suddenly he is warmed from the very centre of himself, ricocheting outwards.

“It’s breathtaking,” Keith finally admits, and he is, this son of the skies, this boy of the rain. He is the most breathtaking thing Keith has ever seen in his life.

He swallows, tilts his head up to the sky, and smiles.

———

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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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Keith walks into the briefing room expecting very little. They still have a couple days until their nearest big mission, and they’ve already planned it ad nauseam, so he isn’t sure what Allura needs to discuss.

But, black paladin or not, Keith knows damn well that Allura’s the boss, so. To the briefing room he goes.

He’s greeted with a beaming smile from Lance the second he walks through the door, which is surprising for a few reasons, but largely because last time he checked, he was firmly on Lance’s shit list. (They’d had an argument last night while Lance was on kitchen clean-up duty that had ended with Lance scooping a pot of dirty dishwater and dumping it over Keith’s head before storming out. So. How Lance went from absolutely furious to smiling at Keith like Keith was the sun after a storm was a mystery, but Keith has always thrived when Lance gave him any attention, so he decides not to question it.)

“Come sit next to me,” Lance offers, and obviously Keith does not hesitate to do so. The second he sits down, Lance reaches over and wraps his arm tightly around Keith’s, then hooks his ankle around the leg of Keith’s chair, yanking him closer.

Damn, someone’s in a magically wonderful mood, Keith thinks, pleased.

Before he can ask Lance what has him to happy, Allura strides into the room, straight to her place at the head of the table, and starts the briefing immediately.

“Alright, everyone. This briefing is going to be about a new mission we’ve just received. We’re expected to make an extended appearance at the Ghuwa System’s ball.”

Lance’s hold tightens as soon as Allura finishes her sentence, and suddenly his ‘magically wonderful mood’ makes perfect sense.

Oh, that motherfucker.

“You are a snake,” he hisses to Lance, who smirks and does not look at him.

“Shut up and pay attention,” he whispers back.

Keith does, but barely, busy fuming at Lance for setting him up.

What a butthead.

Usually, when anything even remotely suggesting a ball or dance or gala or whatever the fuck leaves Allura’s mouth, Keith finds a way to get the hell out of the room. Whether it be subtly inducing an argument between Pidge and Hunk so he can slip away unnoticed, or straight-up just leaving, he finds a way to not be involved.

And, yeah. He knows it’s a little immature. But he fucking hates stupid dances, and he’s fucking right to hate them. For starters, they are a massive waste of time. They had a war to win. Why the fuck are they spending literally any time at all twirling around a dance floor, or whatever? Secondly, and admittedly more selfishly, is that Keith just didn’t… do dances. He doesn’t know how, and standing awkwardly on the sidelines makes him uncomfortable. It’s not like he’s serving any great purpose, either. In the early days of Voltron, he’d make his presence for twenty or so minutes, then informed Shiro he was going to the washroom and just never come back. And it wasn’t an issue! Treaties were always signed, alliances always went through, with or without his presence. It was literally, in every sense of the word, a massive waste of his time.

“Some of us,” Allura says, pointedly looking at the space just above Keith’s head, “have been… flaky, in the past, in regards to these missions. And because I am endlessly benevolent —”

Lance snorts, making Allura whip a pen at his head without looking, nailing him square in the forehead. A dark satisfaction rises up in Keith’s chest.

That’s what you get, you backstabber.

“Endlessly benevolent,” Allura repeats, “so I have let it slide. But that won’t work anymore. Some of you are the leader of Voltron, now, it would be in the best interest of this mysterious person or persons to show up to these missions without complaining.”

“How come I can’t complain?” Keith protests. “I should be allowed to complain a little!”

“Who says I’m talking about you?”

“How many other leaders of Voltron are you referencing?!”

Allura shrugs, heavy amusement in her eyes giving her away. “Who knows. Anyways. The ball is tomorrow night, you’re expected to dress formally and each of you will be expected to dance at least once.” This time, she looks pointedly in Pidge’s direction. “That also means that certain tiny geniuses cannot hide behind their tall engineer friend.”

Pidge huffs. “I do not hide behind Hunk.”

“You really do,” Hunk says apologetically. “Sorry, man.”

“If that’s all, Princess,” Lance says before Pidge can argue, “Keith and I have somewhere to be?”

Oh, shit.

“That’s right,” Allura says, smirking a little. “You’re free to go.”

Double oh, shit.

“Or you could just execute me,” Keith offers.

Allura, Pidge, and Hunk all snigger, while Lance rolls his eyes and yanks Keith to his feet.

“You are the most dramatic person on this ship,” he says, which coming from him is the equivalent of a whale telling a dolphin it should lose a few pounds.

“That’s a dollar in the ridiculously strange cowboy idiom jar,” Lance says, dragging him down a mess of hallways, and Keith scowls.

“My idioms are normal.”

“They’re really not, dude. The six hundred twenty-two dollars you currently to the jar prove otherwise.

“I do not owe six hundred fucking dollars to the jar!” Keith protests, and he knows he’s right when Lance smirks.

“Right. You owe six hundred twenty-two.”

“I’ll give you an idiom. How about you shove your lying tongue right up my —”

“We’re here,” Lance interrupts, visibly holding back laughter.

Jerk.

Huffing and generously deciding to drop it, Keith looks around. ‘Here’ seems to be — an atrium, of some sort?

“I know part of the reason these diplomatic missions freak you out is because they make you uncomfortable,” Lance says matter-of-factly. “I can’t fix that, but I might be able to help.”

“I hate the diplomatic missions because they’re a waste of time,” Keith argues.

Lance sighs, shoulders slumping, and suddenly all the stress is visible on his face, tense lines furrowing his brow and deepening his frown.

“Look, man. I know — I know it feels like we’ve gotta be fighting 24/7. But that’s not what war is. Not all of it, anyway.” Dark brown eyes lock onto Keith’s, tired and anxious. “Do you have any idea how fucking scary we are?”

Keith blinks. That’s… not at all what he was expecting.

“What?”

“Dude, imagine something for a second. Imagine there was this group of aliens on Earth. They each piloted their own insanely intricate and supernatural mecha-vehicle — sentient mecha-vehicle — and can combine to make a weapon of war equivalent to what is essentially and armoured tank that can shoot nuclear bombs. And each of these mechas is piloted by an alien with different, intense levels of strengths. One of them is a genius engineer, who can build anything out of scraps. One’s basically a walking supercomputer and can hack into anything with a code. One’s a shapeshifting, superstrength-having, royally-raised warrior. Another team member isn’t a pilot, but has the cultural information of basically every planet to ever trade in the universe. And one of their pilots is this unbelievably skilled prodigy who can out-manoeuvre any opponent to ever sit in an aircraft. Keith,” Lance holds his hands up, exhausted and exasperated. “Keith, can’t you see the fucking power we hold? I think we take it for granted. We are the only thing that can stand against Zarkon’s Empire. Just Voltron. That’s it. Dude, people are terrified of us. Don’t you see?”

“You missed one,” Keith says quietly, which is really kind of off-topic but the only thing he can think to say.

“What?”

“A pilot. Hunk, Pidge, Allura, me. You even got Coran. You missed one.”

Lance’s face turns pained. “I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean to exclude Shiro. Fuck. I just meant currently. But you’re right — once we find him again, our other pilot is going to be the Champion. Who the fuck could stand a chance against the Champion?”

“No, Lance,” Keith says, voice a little urgent. “I mean, yeah, sure, of course Shiro’s powerful, but. I meant you. In your original lineup, you forgot to mention yourself.”

“Oh, sure.” Lance flaps a dismissive hand. “I can shoot, I can pilot, I’m a fucking paladin. Of course I’m up there.”

Keith shifts uncomfortably. There’s something…off, there, but Keith can’t pinpoint it. He’s not sure he’d be able to bring it up, even if he could.

(But there’s something there in the way Lance doesn’t count himself among the rest of them.)

“But you get what I’m saying, right?” Lance continues. “We’re scary as shit. Sure, we say we’re fighting Zarkon, but how the hell are civilians supposed to trust us?”

“I mean, we very much do fight Zarkon. We’re not just saying that. They should be able to trust our actions, if not our words — we do fight him.”

“For what purpose?” Lance counters. “Most of these people have either been brutally colonized and been victims of genocide, or have been under that threat. They’ve spent the last ten thousand years — think about that for a goddamn second, some of these planets have been enslaved by Zarkon for longer that humans have had widespread civilizations — with the only truth that powerful people use power to hurt people. Why the hell would they assume that we want to do anything but take Zarkon’s place? Why would they assume that we want to stop him for any reason other than to make our own empire? I mean, look at any human war! Do you know who it was to overthrow Stalin?”

“Hitler,” Keith says quietly.

“Exactly. And millions of people rejoiced when he did, only to be blindsided by his real reason for overthrowing Stalin’s empire. You can’t blame people for wanting to — for lack of a better word — humanize us, Keith. They’re terrified, and they desperately want to trust us, but they have no reason to.”

Keith lets that sit in the air between them for a moment, because holy shit.

“I never thought of it that way,” he admits.

Lance smiles, but there’s no joy behind it. “I know. That’s why I explained it. I’m not mad at you, man. None of us are. Hell, I had to explain this exact thing to Pidge a couple months ago. It’s hard to conceptualize how anyone else might be thinking of us.”

“Not for you, though. You had no issue figuring this out on your own.”

“Eh. My mother is a history professor. I’m familiar with the facets of war. I had a leg up on you.”

“Still.”

“Seriously, Keith, it’s fine. I didn’t come here to make you all guilty, or whatever. I know you’re going to take this seriously. I trust you. I came here to teach you how to dance.”

It’s such an abrupt subject change that it take Keith a second and a half to process it.

“Wait — really?”

Lance hums in affirmation, stepping over to the side to fiddle with some sort of device. “Yep. I figured half the reason you hate these things so much is because you don’t know how to have fun at them.”

“That’s because there’s no way to have fun at them,” Keith says stubbornly. “I’ll take them seriously —” because there’s no way he can not, now, not with that startling perspective Lance put in his head — “but that’s it. I’ll show up and not glare at people. Boom! Now I’m not scary.”

“Not gonna cut it, batboy,” Lance says, amused. “You’re the leader of Voltron, now. People are expecting you to lead us. Part of that is leading by example. Ergo — you’re expected to dance.”

“Well, then, the only thing this mission is going to accomplish is to make this planet lose all faith in us, because I will not be the shining example of elegance!”

“That’s why I’m teaching you,” Lance says easily, apparently very used to Keith’s freak-outs.

Which. Is kind of a nice feeling, if Keith’s being honest.

“How the hell are you going to teach me how to dance enough for me to not look like a fool?”

Lance pauses his fiddling to look at Keith firmly. “Keith. Chill out a goddamn second. Take a deep breath.”

Keith does.

“Good. Now, listen to me. I am not going to attempt to teach you every dance known to man and beyond in the next couple of hours, okay? I’m just going to teach you to waltz. It’s easy, it’s a staple at every ball we’ve been to, and it’s genuinely kind of hard to fuck up. Plus, if I can just get this damn thing working —“ Lance glares at the device, hands on his hips and eyes crossed in frustration — “this song in particular actually has the dance instructions in the lyrics.”

Keith blinks. There’s only one song Keith can think of with waltzing instructions in the lyrics. But that would be ridiculous.

Is he —?

No.

No way.

Right?

“Aha!”

Lance grins as steady hi-hats begin to sound out of hidden speakers, along with a simple guitar melody.

Holy shit. He is.

“Are you seriously going to teach me to waltz using a song from High School Musical 3?”

“Are you seriously able to recognize this song after three notes?” Lance shoots back immediately.

And, well.

Keith — 1124. Lance — 1345.

(Keith’s been having something of a rough couple weeks. He’ll catch up. Probably.)

“Touché,” he says eventually, and Lance laughs as he walks over to Keith, humming along to the music.

“Take my hand,” he sings, along with Vanessa Hudgens.

“Are we seriously doing this.”

“Take a breath,” Lance sings louder, and Keith huffs before conceding. His dance lessons will be accompanied by one exclusive serenade by Lance McClain, apparently.

That’s…fine. His heart can definitely handle that.

“Pull me close, and take one step.”

Keith bites his lip and does as Lance instructs, and — oh, God. He lied to himself. His heart can most definitely not handle that.

He hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels, even though he knows it is.

“Wait, am I leading?” Keith asks, because that seems… odd, even though he definitely is.

Lance doesn’t answer, but does carefully untangle one of his hands, and then raises it to Keith’s face, gently tilting it up to face his.

“Keep your eyes locked on mine,” he sings, quieter than before, “and let the music be your guide.”

Keith goes mute, any and all questions dying in his throat, as he looks into Lance’s face and feels his heart pounding relentlessly in his chest.

As the song crests into a duet, less of a dancing instruction and more clearly a love song, Lance fades into humming, keeping his hold onto Keith and occasionally correcting his stance as Keith twirls then around in wide circles.

“You’re doing great,” Lance says softly. “See? Not so hard.”

Not physically, sure.

But emotionally?

“Surprised I haven’t lead you straight into a wall,” Keith manages to choke out, and Lance smiles.

“Leading’s actually easier than following, when you waltz,” he whispers, like it’s a secret, something only Keith can hear. “See, cause I’m doing everything you’re doing, but backwards.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Here, let’s step it up.”

Keith’s not sure if he’ll be able to handle that, honestly, but he can barely even keep his breath even, so he can’t bring himself to focus hard enough to protest.

“Okay, so you’ve got on hand in my waist and one hand in mine, right?”

Oh, believe me, Lance, Keith thinks hysterically, I know.

“On the next downbeat, you’re going to lift the hand in mine above our heads and let go of my waist, okay?”

Lance barely gives him time to nod before the downbeat hits and Lance twirls neatly under their raised arms.

“Okay, now you can put your hand back on my waist. Easy, see? But it looks real fancy for everyone else.”

Keith’s skin burns through his shirt when Lance’s hand comes back to rest on his shoulder. He wonders if his hand burns Lance’s waist just as fiercely.

“God, Keith, you’re killing it! You’re a natural. Makes sense, seeing how easily you fight. Fighting and dancing are cousins.”

Lance smiles so brightly, looking at Keith with so much pride and — and affection, in his eyes, and Keith can barely understand what compels him to do it but he can no more stop it than he can stop his heart from beating, his lungs from filling; when the song swells, Troy and Gabriella’s voices twirling together in passionate harmony, Keith dips Lance.

Just. Leans forward and drapes Lance over his arm.

Lance’s lips part in shock, and he stares up at Keith, stunned but — trusting.

Keith swallows roughly. He should — he should pull Lance back up. Keep dancing. A dip would make sense, would be explainable. They’re waltzing, after all. But the longer Keith holds the position, the less he can explain himself.

He can’t bring himself to pull away.

“Keith?” Lance asks, but he doesn’t sound confused. He doesn’t sound like he’s asking Keith what he’s doing. More like — more like asking permission.

“Yeah, Lance,” Keith whispers.

Granting it.

Lance sighs, and his eyes close, and — “Don’t drop me, Red,” —then he’s tilting his head up and pressing his lips to Keith’s.

Keith tightens his hold around Lance’s waist, pressing back just as gently.

“Never.”

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