#keith pov | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mothmanavenue · 7 months

Text

In conjuntion with this art piece here

...

The war doesn’t end with a crash or a bang. Nothing explodes in a fiery shower the way he’d read about in books as a kid. There's no rocking of the ground as the world shifts under their feet, and a curling anxiety in his gut as he desperately reaches out in the link for a glimmer of one just one of his teammates, his family, his lover.

There’s just the dead drop of a falling lion as a ceasefire is called. It’s just the feeling of his fingers relaxing from a white knuckled grip on Red’s controls and his head falling back with a dull thud against the headrest of the pilot’s chair. It’s the unwinding of his spine as he slumps, all his strength and exhaustion collapsing in on him as he surrenders flight back to his lion, her battle roar softening to a gentle rumble in the back of his mind. It’s the gasps of relief and whispered gratitude of his family echoing in his ears, letting him know they’re safe, they’ve made it, it’s finally done.

Keith is completely unsurprised to note which one he prefers.

Red’s purr is a constant source of comfort in his mind as he curls his legs toward his chest, eyes squinted in lazy, bone deep weariness, brain barely processing Shiro and Allura from their respective command stations outlining the conditions of ceasefire. He can barely think about anything outside the cramping in his fingers and the bleariness of his eyes from entire successive days spent raising Voltron’s sword, pouring his energy and willpower into convincing the strongest weapons in the universe to bend to his will.

It’s ok if he misses something. The team will catch him up. They always have, when the tiredness consumes him, and he checks out of conversations and discussion, slumping against the nearest comforting shoulder.

Allura’s voice is as sharp and clear as the crown that adorns her head; the queen of Altea in all her glory commands her troops from the midst of battle. Keith’s attention had been laser focused on ensuring Voltron’s continued presence, but nothing in the world could keep him from watching for Allura’s flashing blue light as she approached Haggar, now withered and raging, and knelt in front of her. Keith missed what was said, the words exchanged. But he saw the tightening of his Queen, his sister’s, shoulders, and the hand wrapping tight around the witch’s neck.

It’s been a long eight days on this earth of his.

His brain clocks out in that moment, and he rides the warm haze he’s in, letting the satisfaction of success settle into his bones. It’s not time for celebration just yet. It will come later once the dead is counted and the shrouds are laid. Keith knows better than most the toll of war, and he dreads the time that will come when the lists of the dead will be handed to them, and he will need hours, days, weeks, to grieve people he did and didn’t know and names he’s cherished and ones he’s never heard, and each loss will still hit like a blow to the ribs. After that, the celebration will come. The ballrooms of the castle will glow with life and Hunk will dress in gold, Shiro’s white hair will gleam in the light, and Pidge will protest that she just won a war, she deserves a drink. Allura will stand regal at their side, and her shoulders will be light, free from the burden of an avenger, and she will turn to them with a gleaming grin and they won’t have any choice but to smile back at her.

And lance.

Lance will be so handsome in his blue suit, golden and silver threaded in painstaking embroidery in the bed of deep sky. His hair will fall loose and natural in his eyes, heavenly blues, and earthy brown under the string set of his eyebrows, and he’ll gleam like a freshly lit candle.

He’ll take Keith’s breath away and Keith will never want it back.

But that comes after.

Right now, here, Red lands on dusty earth and grumbles in his head about doing all the work. He’s sure none of the other lions give their other halves this much shit. He loves her so fiercely it burns his throat and eyes. He can’t believe he ever spent a day outside of her. Can’t believe he wasn’t raised alongside this wonderful, temperamental, protective, grouchy cat, who bossed him and fussed him, and purred and cooed when he screamed in his dreams. Can’t believe there ever was a time he resigned himself to not having this. What a fool he was.

The wave of emotion fills the cockpit in a lilting hum, and she lights up around him, Voltron blue piercing through the chunks in his armour. Red is as alive as a blaze and warm as a hearth in his head.

Her mouth drops open with one final swell of affection, as she releases her paladin to his home ground.

Keith murmurs a breathy thank you i love you you’re everything to me, as he stumbles out, hand grasping the cool metal as he comes to a rest on the shifting sands. The sand is warm from fire and fighting and it hits him all at one.

He crouches down, head hanging as he pants and gasps for breath. The emotion of the past few days shutter his eyesight till all he sees in the grains of sand sticking to his gauntlets. His head spins and his hair is falling out of the ponytail he’d tied it back in, and his breath is coming hard now.

Something is missing. Somethings not quite right.

The swords have fallen, the helmets tossed to the side, red looms protective behind him. The shields are down the guards are dropped and he can feel the press of the Voltron bond that lets him know his team is landing nearby, drawn together with a gravitational pull.

He draws in breath, cool and refreshing and tinged with the scent of burning. Around him the sand is interspersed with freshly formed glass.

He raises his head, expecting to see the heavens above him. He wants to take in the freshly healed scar of the newly collapsed Rigel star system. Wants to know how the blazing lights of thousands of planets worth of warfare look set against the familiar earth sky. He think he might look at the constellations, like he did not far from here a hundred years ago, tucked into his dad's strong, solid arms, the scratch of a stubbly chin accompanying a moving mouth as it named Orion, Cassiopeia, Gemini.

He looks up expecting to see stars, and instead, he sees the sun.

Lance's smile is crooked, and his breath comes fast, like he ran, as he hovers over him. Their faces are so close he can count each individual freckle on this boy’s face, as precious to him as the gleam of moonlight cutting paths across the castle hallways. Oh this boy, this absolute death of him.

“Hey lover,” the words leave Lance’s mouth with ease and anticipation, years of pent-up adoration spilling out with every vowel, “we did it.”

Keith feels his own smile steal across his face, “yeah, we did.”

If possible, Lance's smile grows wider, crinkling the already forming smile lines at his eyes. Keith thinks of the products that line the counter of his bathroom sink, just waiting for a pretty bronzed hand to pick them up when the separation hits, and their resolves are softened by the press of late hours and long silence.

A silly waste. Keith likes this look on Lance.

Aging.

What a wonderful thing he never thought he’d get to have.

“You know what that means?”

Lance's voice is smooth, the tremble that only a practiced ear could pick out masked by the sincerity and anticipation that has dogged their every conversation since that night on the dais.

“We’ll wait.”

“Until when, Keith?”

“Until it’s done. When it’s done then we can have this. We can’t lose everyone for each other.”

“I’m yours?”

“When it’s done then. And when it’s done, I’m bringing you home with me. I’m putting a ring on your finger and I’m never letting you go. You’re it for me, Keith.”

“I’m not asking you to wait, that’s not fair-“

“I followed you into space Keith. I followed you to the point of no return. You aren’t asking me anything and that’s a damn shame. I’d give you anything you asked for.”

“When it’s done lance, when it’s done, I’ll ask you anything you want me to. I’ll come home with you, I’ll share a bed with you. I’ll be yours as long as you’ll have me.”

“Don’t joke, honey,”

“I’m not. You’re mine, lance”

“And-“

“you’re mine.”

The words reverberate in his head, and oh. This is what it was. The smooth slot of this thing that’s been so long coming.

Lance drops to his knees in front of him, one warm hand coming to rest on his cheek. Keith leans his head into it. He’s too tired for restraint, or shame, or any other useless emotion that would’ve held a younger him back. He’s got nothing to lose. He’s won. There’s no reason left to hold back. What a novel idea. It coats him and leaves him shivering at the feel of a gloved thumb running gently over his cheekbones.

His eyes fall back open from their unconscious close, and Lance is so close.

Honest, sweet, honourable lance. The sandpaper to all his rough edges. The iron that absorbed his burning heat. The shore that meets his rocking tide.

Keith can hear the thunder of Pidge’s feet as they run across the uneven terrain. Hunk is following after her, his voice a cacophony of relief and joy. Shiro’s laughter is warm and thick as honey, coming easier than it has since aliens were a late-night story. Allura is giggling, high and bright, and a little hysterical. It’s ok. She’ll pull herself back together and they’ll be there to fill the cracks with liquid gold.

(Or glitter. She’d like glitter.)

Lance is watching him, and Keith’s eyes drift back to him. Lance hasn’t looked away in years. Something, some last resistance hidden away so deep he didn’t even know to search for a cure, falls away.

He leans in and closes the gap.

...

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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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Keith kind of feels like he’s breaking the law when he steps on the marina.

He’s not, of course. The docks are open to the public, and he is The Public. Well, one of them, anyway. But looking at the myriad of speedboats and yachts parked (parked? Is parked the right word? God, Keith doesn’t know shit about boats), Keith is getting a little nervous. He feels like his shitty credit score is tattooed on his forehead, like a honing beam of judgement for the various rich people he can see drinking on their luxury boats at eleven in the morning because none of them have jobs. What the hell is Lance doing inviting them all on a ‘boat trip’, anyway? Lance sure as shit can’t afford a boat. He probably can’t afford to rent one, either. Keith once witnessed him pay for a single pack of ramen with a ziploc bag of pennies.

Keith stops at the parking spot (??) Lance texted him, glancing down at his phone, squinting, then back up at the boat at spot 93. It’s a decently large boat, but not equipped to live on. It doesn’t necessarily look like a party boat, but not like it’s for fishing, either. It looks, to Keith, like a decently nice boat. Probably a few ten thousand dollars.

Did Lance steal this fucking boat?

No, right? Lance isn’t good at stealing. Well, he’s not good at not getting caught. He’s shit at lying and usually just bats his eyelashes until he gets his way. He’s not even that successful at it. Certainly not successful enough to flirt his way into boat ownership. Probably. There was that time he flirted his way out of a speeding ticket, but still, a boat? That’s —

“Keith! Keith! Hi! Over here!” Keith startles at Lance’s voice, craning his neck over to try and see over the bow of the boat. He knows that tone of Lance’s voice — he’s definitely leaning over something and waving like a lunatic, beaming brightly, brown eyes squinted in his enthusiasm.

“Lance?” Keith calls, smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Where are you?”

“Behind you, dummy! Turn around! You got the wrong boat!”

Keith whirls around, yelping as he slips in a puddle and his stupid flipflops — he knew he should have ignored Shiro and worn his boots — slide out from under him. He windmills his arms to no avail, landing flat on his ass.

Lance hyena laughs, because he is a horrible jackass who thinks Keith’s pain is funny.

Resisting the urge to roll off the dock and drown himself in the marina (if only because he can see some really long seaweed growing in the water and the idea of it touching his legs or something makes him want to throw up) Keith pulls himself to his feet.

“Let me up,” he grouches.

Lance wipes a fake tear from his eye, tossing down an honest-to-god rope ladder. “Oh, that was the good stuff. Hey, buddy, do you maybe want to trip again? I could use the laugh.”

“I’m gonna strangle you with this rope the second I get up there.”

“Mhm. Sure, Mullet. Mutiny your captain.”

“Ha!” Keith swings his legs over the side of the boat, pulling it up after him. “You’re no captain, you dork.”

Lance sticks his tongue out at him. “Am so! My boat, after all.”

Keith accepts Lance’s hug, squeezing back just as tightly. Lance’s hugs are always tight. He hugs like he’s seeing you for the first time in months, like he won’t see you again for ages, like he’s saying it’s-good-to-see-you and hello-goodbye and I’m-going-to-miss-you all in one. It’s intoxicating. It makes Keith want to hold him for eternity.

“Having a boat does not make you a captain,” Keith teases, forcing himself to pull away and act like a normal person. “How’d you get this piece of shit, anyway? No offense.”

Because this boat is kind of a piece of shit, especially compared to the one he was mistakenly in front of earlier. It’s not, like, falling apart or anything, but it’s a little rusty in some parts, and a whole heap smaller. He can stand at one end of the boat and walk maybe fifteen steps to the other end, straight across. The end he’s on has a cooler — filled with booze if he knows Lance, and he’d like to think he does — and some crates of what Keith can only assume is boat equipment (again, Keith doesn’t know shit about boats). The other end has the steering wheel, and dozens and dozens of pillows and blankets at the base of it. The inner walls of the boat have several cute paintings, ranging from silly doodles that are painted with the confident hand of a child and beautifully intricate landscapes.

Lance smiles again when he sees where Keith is looking, running gentle fingertips over a blocky drawing of some imagined creature.

“Veronica got this project boat with her ex girlfriend forever ago,” he explains. “It didn’t work when they got it. It didn’t even have an engine. She’s been rebuilding it forever, and I’ve been helping!”

Keith grins. “You mean you’ve been handing her tools and running errands?”

Lance glares. “I — did other things! I painted it!”

“That’s true,” Keith admits. He glances at the many paintings again, colourful and bright and dorky. “They’re nice.”

“Nice,” Lance scoffs, but there’s no hurt in his voice. “This boat could be in the Louvre!”

Keith has to physically shove down the gooey shit he wants to say to that. It’s not easy. His brain is annoying.

“Where’s everyone else?” he says instead. “I’m never the first person to these things.”

For the first time since Keith arrived, Lance starts to look a little troubled. “I was going to ask you that, actually. Hunk said he and Pidge were going to meet up at your’s and Shiro’s house? And Allura and Shiro have barely spent a day apart since they started that project at work, so I figured she was coming with you guys.”

“I thought the team was meeting up with you,” Keith says slowly. “Shiro left before me.”

For the briefest of seconds, Lance’s face collapses into something absolutely crestfallen. Just as quickly it shutters, and his eyes dull as he physically forces a pleasant look on his face.

“I’m sure they’re on their way,” he says. “I’ll call them, maybe they —”

Something uncomfortable begins to churn in Keith’s stomach. “Lance —”

“—hopefully they’re all okay —”

“Lance, maybe —”

“Hey, Lance!”

Pidge sounds downright giggly, which is beyond unusual. Keith can’t remember the last time he described Pidge as giggly. Maniacal, sure, sweet even — occasionally, Keith might add — but never giggly.

Immediately he’s suspicious.

“Hey, Pidge,” Lance says. There’s so much hope in his voice that it’s painful to hear. “You on your way over?”

There’s rustling over the phone, and a muffled hey, no pushing!, then some more rustling.

“We actually can’t make it,” someone says apologetically.

The crestfallen look is back on Lance’s face, and this time he can’t quite fight it off.

Hunk continues, totally oblivious. “This huge thing came up at work, so me and Pidge are swamped, and we figured if we couldn’t make it then it wouldn’t be a whole crew thing, so Shiro and Allura figured it would be best to finish their project too —”

“That’s fine,” Lance says. His voice is reedy. He hangs up in the middle of Hunk promising to reschedule sometime soon. The muffled bang of his phone hitting the wooden floorboards is deafening, a million times louder than the waves beating softly up against the side of the boat. Keith is completely frozen where he stands, looking at Lance with wide eyes.

What the fuck was that? Never in the time that he has known them has any one of his friends been so…callous. He’s spent his whole life measuring himself to Shiro’s example, for fuck’s sake. He’s always been proud to have friends as good as his, because they are good: good friends, good people. Sure, they’re all a little weird and scatterbrained and all over the place, but they’ve never blatantly blown someone off before. Especially not Lance; not when he’s been planning something for them for weeks. He’s hardly talked about anything else, even if he wouldn’t tell them any details so as not to spoil the surprise. He practically glowed every time he had the chance to bring it up, and that’s not just Keith’s opinion.

“Lance,” Keith tries, walking over to where he stands, motionless at the helm. He doesn’t so much as twitch at Keith’s voice, as if he doesn’t hear him. “Lance?” Keith tries again, hesitantly putting a hand on his arm. Lance startles at the touch. He looks lost for a moment, then he plasters that same plasticly pleasant look on his face.

“Lance,” Keith says again, for the third time in a row. It’s pleading, this time. Please don’t pull that with me.

But Keith doesn’t have the words for that, so Lance doesn’t hear it.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind taking this trip with just you,” Lance says, puffing out his chest in that bravado way of his he does when he’s trying his hardest to be obnoxious. “I mean, the stink of your mullet is a little suffocating, but I think I’ll manage.”

Beginning to feel like a broken record, Keith says his name again. He can’t quite keep the hurt out of his voice, for Lance and for him, really. It feels almost like a betrayal, like everyone would let then down like this, without so much as a word of apology. He can’t imagine how upset Lance must truly be.

“Unless you have somewhere to be, too?” Lance says loudly, cutting him off. His expression hasn’t changed, but there’s something almost pleading in his eyes, like he’s begging Keith to drop it, to take the bait, to change to subject.

Keith is most definitely reading into things. But he changes the subject anyway.

He raises an eyebrow, decking Lance in the shoulder. “I’m not the stinky one, Mr Axe Body Spray.”

“I have never used Axe in my life!” Lance shrieks, incensed. Some genuine incredulousness bleeds into his voice, which is both relieving and gratifying — it’s good to know that Keith can rely on his ability to rile Lance up in one sentence. “It’s a tasteful designer cologne that Rachel gets me for Christmas every year because she has no idea how to buy presents for people!”

“Yeah, that you fuckin’ bathe in.”

“I put a little bit on my wrists and neck, you jackass —”

“— and your arms and legs and face and hair and —”

“I am going to shove you overboard to be eaten by orcas, you shithead.”

“Yeah, yeah. You gonna take me on this boat ride you promised, or are you gonna keep stalling?”

Rolling his eyes and grumbling, Lance starts the engine, clumsily guiding the boat out of its parking spot (?????) and starting out to open sea. After sailing them far enough that they nearly lose sight of shore, Lance kills the engine, dragging the cooler over to the nest of pillows.

“I bought half the liquor store,” he says, voice muffled as he ruffles through it. “You see, the original intent was to get all six of us plastered, and getting Hunk plastered is both difficult and expensive.” He sounds a strange mix of bitter and amused, which Keith feels is understandable. He finally finds what he’s looking for, bottles clinking as he yanks two out. “I hate vodka, and since Pidge isn’t here to clown me for it, I’m drinking this entire bottle of bellini instead. I brought you scotch, since you are the soul of an angsty cowboy trapped in the body of an annoying nerd.”

Keith takes the offered bottle. He recognises the brand — it’s cheap, it’s gross, and it’s fucking concentrated. He takes a swig and gags.

“Lance, this shit tastes like gasoline.”

He bottle of something hits him in the chest, hard.

“Ow!”

“Gatorade! I thought ahead!”

Sure enough, Lance has thrown — rudely — to him a half litre bottle of red Gatorade, Keith’s favourite.

“It’s double smart, because not only does it make alcohol taste less shit, but it’s got electrolytes so you won’t get a hangover.”

Keith tilts his head questioningly. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Works for me,” Lance says, shrugging.

“Yeah, but you get drunk off two shots, twig boy. Fuck, you’re already tipsy and you’ve only had a third of that bottle.”

“And this bottle was only eight dollars! Hell yeah to me!”

Keith snorts, clinking his bottle with Lance’s and taking a swig, chasing it down with the Gatorade.

He makes a face. Unfortunately instead of making the scotch taste better, the scotch is making the Gatorade taste worst. Ugh.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot the music! I brought your favourite album too, emo boy.”

Lance scrambles to his feet, tripping immediately on one of the many pillows. Keith surges forward, thrusting his arm around Lance’s chest, barely keeping him from faceplanting on the floor.

“Jesus, Lance. You’re the worst lightweight I’ve ever met.”

Lance giggles. The tension that had strung his shoulders after the call as melted away, at least a little. Keith doesn’t even feel the buzz of the alcohol yet, but he’s definitely feeling a little looser.

“How about you sit down, huh? You’re gonna fall on your face. Did you eat today? You don’t usually get this tipsy so easy.”

Lance squints, thinking for a minute. “Fuck, no. I made myself eggs this morning but then Sylvio was late to ballet and Lisa had already left to take Nadia to football so I had to take him and by the time I got back I barely had enough time to pack everything and get to the boat and —”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, amused. “Get some of the food from the cooler. I’ll get the music. Where’s all the stuff?”

“Second crate,” Lance says, mouth full. Gross. “The one with the Moana stickers.”

Keith takes another swig of scotch, makes a face, and then sets it down, ambling over to the box. Between the waves gently rocking the boat and the slight heaviness of his limbs that he’s starting to feel, he barely makes it without tripping just as much as Lance would have, but hey. He successfully conned Lance out of picking the music, so who’s the real winner here?

“Lance, you pretentious indie dweeb!” Keith exclaims, laughing. In the box is a bright pink Bratz CD player that he no doubt stole from the back of one of his sister’s closets, and a stack of maybe forty CDs.

“Physical media rules!” Lance cheers. “Fuck subscriptions!”

Rolling his eyes fondly, Keith locates the album Lance was talking about, loading it into the disc drive and pressing play.

The future is bulletproof, the aftermath is secondary…

He carefully nudges up the handle, trying carefully to walk with the waves so he doesn’t drop Lance’s player as he brings it back to the pillow nest.

“I think you’re actually just too broke to afford Spotify, dude.”

Lance shrugs. “Eh, that’s part of it.” He tosses the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth, washing it down with another gulp of bubbling peach wine right from the bottle. Keith follows his example, making a face again, because Lord above the Gatorade does not help at all.

“Yeah? What’s the other part?”

“You sure you want to know?” Lance asks, setting down his wine and scooching closer to Keith. He crosses his legs and puts his hands in his lap, leaning forward, dark eyes wide and expression serious.

Keith nods, intrigued.

Lance’s eyes turn mischievous. “Well, you see, my favourite music is garbage pop music.”

Keith has been in the car with Lance before. He’s well aware. He’s heard more Kesha and Justin Bieber than any one person should ever have to, and he even likes their music well enough. Lance is just insane.

“Believe me, I’m aware.”

“And as you may also be aware, I am contractually obligated to be the most annoying person in any room.”

Keith snorts. “Okay?”

“Think about it, doofus. When I pull out the CDs, all the pop lovers roll their eyes, because they think I’m a pretentious indie asshole.” He gestures to Keith, referencing his earlier comment. “Exhibit A.”

“…Fair. Carry on.”

“But when whatever badly dubbed party music I’m in the mood for starts blaring from my speakers, all the indie people think I’m a poser! It’s a win-win.”

Keith laughs outright. He knows the exact kind of indie people Lance is talking about, and just imagining their scandalized faces is funny.

“No one pisses people off quite like you, Lance McClain. I’ll give you that.”

Lance preens. “Thank you. It’s a gift.”

They work their way through their respective bottles, and then they split a cooler, both of them well past tipsy by the time the album ends. Lance wobbles over to his CD selection and ruffles through for what feels like ages, whooping when he finds what he’s looking for. He flashes to case at Keith, showing ‘KARAOKE TUNEZ’ written in Lance’s loopy handwriting.

“No way,” Keith protests, although not very hard.

“Yes way!” Lance insists. He grips onto the steering wheel, heaving himself up. The boat lunches slightly, making them both laugh, but finally he’s steady on his feet — or at least as steady as you can be while drunk — just as Taylor Swift’s Love Story starts blaring. He grabs Keith’s hands and pulls him up, and both of them almost go tumbling again, but they manage to stay upright, leaning on each other and laughing themselves stupid.

“We don’t need them!” Lance yells as the banjos go off. Keith is so plastered that he barely remembers who Lance is talking about. It takes him a solid thirty seconds to remember that there were supposed to be four other people on this boat, drinking all this booze, and Keith and Lance have plowed their way through a good half of it on their own. Oops. “Sing louder, country boy!”

Keith does. He sings himself hoarse, actually, as Lance’s mixtape clicks through every great song from the last forty years, dancing around and shaking his head and revelling in the fact that there’s no one there to watch him. No one but Lance, who’s pretending to throw dollar bills at him.

It’s the most fun he’s had in ages.

He stops drinking at some point — not by choice, but something bumps the side of the boat and his bottle goes flying — but by then it doesn’t matter. He’s so plastered that everything is glowing and warm and fantastic and he’s dancing with Lance and he can’t remember what feeling bad looks like, or why he’d even bother in the first place. All he cares about is watching the sun go down, cheering with Lance as it does, then dancing around with him in drunken circles until one of them trips, dragging them both on top of the pillow next in a giggling mess.

“Let’s just stay here for a while,” Lance suggests. His voice is so slurred that it sounds more like Lez jussay ere for whi’, but Keith thinks he’s got it. “The stars are nice.”

Keith snorts. “Sure. Stars. Not because you can’t stand, or anything.”

“I can so stand!” Lance protests, but he’s laughing too much for any true argument to come through. “Lemme — I’ll show you!”

“Sit down, dumbass,” Keith says, grabbing his shirt and yanking him back down. “You’re gonna go overboard and drown. Just — lay back with me a while.”

Lance looks at him a while, squinted look fading into something more open and relaxed the longer he stares. The lights on the boat are dim, but the darkness around them is so deep that they get swallowed up. Under the stars, Lance’s eyes are so brown and glossy they’re black, blacker than the ocean. Keith feels there’s a bigger danger drowning in them than in the sea.

“Okay,” Lance says softly. There’s a flash of his teeth as he smiles. Keith watches as his silhouette flops backwards on the pillows, arms resting in a heap around his head, beat-up pink converse slapping the ground as he relaxes his legs.

Keith takes a few more seconds to look at him. There’s not much to see, illuminated by the tiny lights in the boat, but Keith takes a moment anyway.

A hand shoots up, very narrowly missing smacking him straight in his nose. Long fingers curl tightly around the collar of his loosely-buttoned shirt and the next thing he knows he’s being yanked down, yelping.

“I’m not lying here alone, Mullet-head. This is a party.”

“Yeesh, okay, I’m coming.”

Lance doesn’t say anything more, bar a quiet huff of amusement, as Keith settles next to him. They lie in silence next to each other, their earlier energy slowly cooling down, just watching the stars, rocked by the gentle waves.

Keith is out like a light in twenty minutes.

———

When Keith wakes, three horrible things hit him at once: his head pounds, his mouth tastes like rotten fish marinating in dog shit, and everything around him is so, so goddamn bright it honestly feels kind of targeted. Fuck the sun.

“Lance, I hate you,” Keith mumbles, because he feels like blaming Lance is a safe bet. He squints until he locates the asshole in question, who is curled up with all of the pillows — which explains why Keith is currently laying on the cold hard floor — and still sleeping peacefully.

Ugh. How dare he.

Cursing, Keith drags himself to his feet, having to pause for a while on his knees to orient himself and fight down the nausea. When he’s finally upright, he stumbles over to the cooler, thankfully still cold, and gulps down the first water bottle he gets his hands on in three seconds. His next bottle he drinks a little more carefully, swishing the water around his mouth to substitute for brushing his teeth until they can get back to shore.

Once he actually starts to feel like a person again, complete with rational, semi-linear thought process, he looks around himself with fresh eyes. They’re a lot… farther out than he thought they were, but he figures everyone feels like that once the shore is out of eyesight. They can’t be too far, the boat’s gas tank isn’t all that big. They don’t seem to have lost anything overboard while drunk and dumb, which is good. He sees all three crates from before they left, and the cooler is obviously still here. Lance is still actively hogging every single one of the pillows, a couple blankets as well, totally dead to the world. Keith checks his phone, noting with a sigh of relief that he still has about half battery life, and it’s not even that late in the day — ten o’clock; plenty of time to ride home and recalibrate before work tomorrow. All is well.

He finishes his second water bottle, tossing the empty plastic back into the cooler for lack of other places to put it, and stumbles back over to the helm and the pillow pile.

“Lance,” he tries, poking him half-heartedly. “Time to wake up.”

Lance groans, grabbing one of the numerous pillows and shoving it over his head.

“Oh, come on. It’s ten in the morning. You’ve had a ton of time to sleep. Time to go home.”

“Keith, fuck off.”

Keith will deny the automatic quirk of his lips at Lance’s gravelly, sleep-heavy voice, along with the immediate and reflective satisfaction that bubbles up when Lance is annoyed.

It’s his own brain. He’s allowed to think and feel whatever the hell he wants in his own brain, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.

“If you get up now, I promise to let you have first pick of the leftover sandwiches.”

There’s a pause, considering, and then a long, drawn-out groan as Lance bitchily unburies himself from the pillow pile and crawls over to the cooler.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Keith mutters, grinning.

It takes Lance’s zombie ass twice as long as it took Keith to wake up, because Lance is the most vampiric person Keith knows. The only time he ever sees the sunrise is when he just decides not to sleep through the night. Keith doesn’t think he’s woken up before eleven in years.

“Ready to head back?” Keith asks, once some of the life has returned to Lance’s eyes. He only grunts in reply, but that’s not a huge surprise. It’ll be another forty minutes until Lance can make himself speak again.

Keith settles against the side of the boat, rearranging the pillows so he can sit comfortably and dick around on his phone while Lance steers them back to shore. There’s no signal this far out, so he just ends up switching between cleaning out his camera roll and playing Temple Run as discreetly as he can, because he and Lance have a lowkey competition going on for this game for the past three years now, and Keith will not lose. Lance may currently have the upper hand but not for long, baby, because Keith has —

“Shit,” Lance says, very very quietly, and Keith feels dread pool in his stomach like a rock.

“Lance?” he questions, and inconspicuously as possible. “All good?”

“Fine,” Lance says, only his voice sounds very high-pitched and not fine, because Lance is a garbage liar. “Everything is manageable. No need to worry.”

Keith abandons his game, looking up to give Lance his full attention. He’s got one hand white-knuckling the steering wheel, despite the calmness of the waves, and the other jamming a bunch of buttons on a little device. His face is grey in panic.

“Lance, tell me what’s wrong.” He tries his best to keep his tone even and calm, but it doesn’t go well. The panic wells up in him and it wells up fast, because he can see nothing but blue skies and sea and the captain of the goddamn boat he’s on is looking like he’s on death row.

“Well, it’s all fine, really, but the thing is that the GPS is doing its level best to tell us where we are and it’s having a bit of a moment. A struggle, if you will. Honestly not that big of —”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, sealing back the bile in his throat, “please tell me we’re not fucking lost.”

Lance laughs, high-pitched and humourless and scared. “Sure,” he says, once he’s gotten ahold of himself. “I won’t tell you.”

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kogane1023 · 8 months

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YO ME WHEN I POST A FANFICTION ON AO3 THAT PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY READ??

come check it out :)

So You Wanna Be Famous? (3050 words, in progress) by BlackIronRaven Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Teen And Up Audiences (Might change to Mature later? Depends on how realism I feel like getting with the actual Band Stuff) Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Adam & Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron), Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Allura/Romelle (Voltron), Allura/Veronica (Voltron), Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Allura & Coran (Voltron), Adam/Shiro (Voltron) Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Adam (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), Shay (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Lotor (Voltron), Lotor's Generals (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Romelle (Voltron), Veronica (Voltron) Additional Tags: klance, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, The full gang is here and they're all gay your honor, Gay Keith (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Bisexual Allura (Voltron), Trans Shay (Voltron), Modern Era, Disabled Shiro, Disabled Character, Autistic Keith (Voltron), emo band eraaaaaa, foster kid Keith Series: Part 1 of The Paths of Stars Summary: "I think we should start a band," Shiro said. Keith shot him a glance. "No thanks." Nobody has an easy life. For Keith, it's been one screwball after another. After getting kicked out of Air Force training for improper behavior, he returns to his old foster brother Shiro in Detroit, Michigan. Frustrated with the state of the world, the pair starts writing. At first, it's just words, a way for them to work through their anger at the world around them - but neither of them could have predicted what their little passion project would lead to.

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vampirekacxa · 2 years

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“Wait, where are you going?”

#kacxa #acxa #keith #keith kogane #vld #vldedit #s7 #keith pov #he protects #🖤#officially my first kacxa post #mine

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violets-are-the-answer · 10 months

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New Chapter Just Dropped!

#Voltron #keith vld #archive of our own #lance vld #klance #ao3 fanfic #keith pov

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apprentice-s · 9 months

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i can feel your energy from a mile away (1/3)

#voltron #lance mcclain #keith kogane #klance #vld keith #vld lance #vld #c-t art only #I’ll finish this guys trust #if u check out the song this is from im pretty sure u can reliably see where I’m going with this #but umm lance pov and final part coming soon xD #🎶 if you knew me better you’d know better than to leave me (t)here #mwah #top tier song

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coolnonsenseworld · 8 months

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When Keith says he'd break the world in half to protect him, Lance says he'd put it back together for him.

Out of all the Universes they got to know, the other is still closest to home.

Prints on pre-order -> linktr.ee/mezzy

#klance #laith #lance voltron #keith voltron #voltron legendary defender #DO YOU Know how many notes i have on my phone that sound like halfassed love poems about how they exist #too many #though my currently fav one was not about them #but the series about 30 things Lance loves about Keith from Lances POV comes pretty close #ugh i feel them so intensely sometimes that if emotions could cut id gordian knot fix the world #no cap #the power of projection in fictional worlds is wild

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arachred · 20 days

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me when i see someone reduce keith's entire character to being hotheaded angry and mean

#pov: you are the vld promo team #he just has some big feelings #i could talk for hours about keith kogane if only someone would listen #vld keith #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld keith kogane #keith kogane #keith voltron #vld

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kickis-conan-king · 1 year

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I want a Voltron fanfic that uses the ideas of the “humans are space orcs” thing. Like why were humans of all creatures mystically chosen by the universe to be the paladins this time around when last time a different species entirely were assigned to each lion? Oh, I’ll tell you why. Humans are pursuit predators-they have perfected the kind of stamina required to hunt down a 10,000 yr old empire. As a species they managed to stick around long enough to evolve sentience not because of any particular advantage they hold over the rest of the beings on earth but bc of their sheer ability to survive. Good luck killing these guys, Zarkon. Humans are naturally primed to pack bond which is why these paladins are able to form Voltron immediately and it’s part of what makes them so dangerous. Earth is a planet of many cultures, unlike most of the planets seen in the show which for simplicity’s sake seem to have one planet wide culture. This exposure to so many different cultures makes them exceptionally good at forming alliances-perfect skill when leading a war effort. They are inventive, able to digest most anything, able to live through broken bones, and come from a hell planet. Evolution basically made the perfect kind of creatures to pilot the lions. The Alteans are also from a hell world but they developed things like shape shifting and super strength and quintessence sensitivity to beat it-humans didn’t do that. They did something else and it’s far more terrifying.

#fic inspo #it would be written from Alluras pov #I want it so bad lol #I might just have to write it myself #plz rec if anyone knows any fic like this #Voltron #vld #keith kogane #lance mcclain #pidge #hunk #Shiro #allura #vld coran #altea #humans are space orcs

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discordiansamba · 4 months

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concept where Keith abruptly turns Galra while he's still at the Garrison, except he has a roommate. That roommate is Kinkade. This somehow results in three out of the four (future) MFE pilots trying to smuggle Keith out of the Garrison, all while trying to doge both James and Shiro for two entirely different reasons.

kinkade, furiously texting rizavi: sos. keith's purple.

rizavi: what the fuck

kinkade: I don't know!!! Can you cover for him? You've got your first class together.

#extremely fond of the headcanon that Keith was actually on good terms with the other three MFE pilots like.#yeah. they were also James' friend. but they were also Keith's friend. no these are not mutually exclusive things #pov: you wake up and your roommate is fucking purple. what do you do.#mfe paladins au

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bisexual-birdy · 2 months

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in the year of our lord 2024 i am reading klance fics and crying because i miss my mom

i need help

#jesus christ what is my life #klance #listen it was this rly amazing fic from krolias pov #it was her being protective of keith and being rly suspicious of lance #and like if kept switching from the past to the present where she’s giving her all to make sure lance gets back to keith #like i’m crying that’s so my mom coded #i swear i’m not always this sad

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mothmanavenue · 5 months

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blade of marmora chronicles (letters sent home)

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autisticlancemcclain · 9 months

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Lance knows he talks way too fucking much.

He started talking at seven months old. He never stopped. It was his older brother Marco, he thinks, who first called him Motormouth, but honestly he doesn’t remember. He’s been called that and Lancito Lorito longer than he can remember.

He loved the nickname, when he was little. His brothers or sisters or cousins or parents would groan, playfully, when they saw the look in his eyes, but always indulged his constant lectures and ideas and rambling. Motormouth meant you talk a lot but I like to listen. Motormouth meant I know you enough to have a trait I associate with you. Motormouth meant fondness and teasing and care. He loved that name.

When he was seven years old, one of his friends tugged her older sister over to where Lance was colouring with sidewalk chalk on the pavement.

“Look,” she’d said, gesturing to Lance but not talking to him. Lance had looked up from his chalk and smiled at her, opening his mouth to say hello but was interrupted by the subtle elbow she’s jammed into her sister’s side, and her muttered, “Watch this.”

“Hey, Motormouth,” she’d said, and Lance grinned, feeling something warm bloom in his stomach at her use of the nickname, oblivious to the choked-back laughter of the sister. “What was that thing you were talking about earlier? About the comet?”

If at all possible, Lance had brightened further, dropping the chalk and dusting off his hands as he’d launched into an explanation about the comet he’d been tracking with his dad. It was supposed to be visible for the first time in thousands of years that month, and he’d been buzzing with excitement about it. He talked about it to everyone who even appeared like they were maybe going to ask him about it. He’s rambled about it to the cashier at the grocery store the evening before.

“Just look at him,” his friend’s sister had said, something almost like awe in her voice, but not quite. Lance faltered, trailing off mid-sentence. “You were right. He’s like a wind-up toy.”

“Mo-tor-mouth,” his friend had said, in a distinct, sing-songy voice. “I told you I could make him do it on command.”

The girls burst into giggles. Lance had looked around, hesitantly, and found a number of his classmates giggling to themselves, at him or not he didn’t know, but he did know that he felt, distinctly, like he was in a zoo, and his friend was not his friend but a keeper who’d brought spectators to observe him and his freakish oddness.

Motormouth had felt, for the first time, like the insult he didn’t know it had always been. He felt trapped.

He’s grown since then. He’s no longer seven years old and oblivious to the fact that some people are quietly cruel. He knows the warning signs, now, of when someone is mocking him, of when he’s being treated like a pet, like an amusing little weirdo to cart around and show off. He knows the difference now between amusement and endearment.

But that feeling, that realization. The brick-to-the-face understanding that he was wrong about how other people cared about him the whole time he loved them.

He has never been able to un-know that.

———

He and Keith have a system. Lance starts work earlier, and is home earlier too, so he makes dinner for them. Keith cleans up after, crawling into bed next to a half-asleep Lance if they eat late enough. Sometimes, though, Keith gets home early, finished a repair faster than he’d anticipated, and decides he wants to make them supper for a change. Today Lance sits on the counter, kicking his legs and eating half the vegetables Keith has cut, grinning every time Keith lets him get away with it.

“…And there was this one woman who came on the trails today, babe, I swear to God, she’s the same nightmare lady you had to deal with a couple months ago. You remember that?”

Keith hums, hiking up one shoulder.

“The cooking oil lady. Who threw her baby’s rattle at your head because you told her you couldn’t put canola oil in her engine to make things cheaper.”

Keith snorts. “Oh, that nightmare.”

“Yeah!” Lance says, muffled by the four slices of bell pepper he’s shoved in his mouth at once. Keith stares flatly at him and smacks his hand, but the corner of his mouth twitches, and he walks over to the fridge to grab a new pepper without a word of admonishment. Loser.

Lance doesn’t say anything for a moment, following a new, bell-pepper related thought, and startled slightly when Keith clears his throat slightly and prompts, “You met cooking oil lady?”

“Oh yeah! On the trails today. We had to shut down one of them because Selena — remember the red wolf I told you about? The one who sings the loudest in her pack and has the reddest fur? I named her Selena after the singer, yeah, you remember — had her cubs the other day! So she’s super duper extra protective of the whole area, basically, and so is the rest of the pack, so humans going near their area is going to freak them out and that’s not fair to anybody. Hey, did you know red wolves are monogamous? Most wolf species are but red wolves especially show a really strong family unit. It’s really cute, actually, Selena her mate always go on wolf dates and stuff and terrorize the park-goers —”

“Trail,” Keith redirects gently, turning off the burner and scooping their food into two plates. He grabs them both, flicking Lance’s hand away, and sets them at the kitchen island, arranging the plates so they’re sat next to each other instead of across.

“Right, trail,” Lance says. As soon as he sits down and starts to eat, one of Keith’s hands comes to rest on his thigh, palm curving around the inner flesh and fingertips resting gently on the ankle tucked under it. He moves his thumb back and forth slowly, not to instigate, just to touch. Lance leans against him without even thinking about it.

“So. Trial closed. Not even that busy of a trail, honestly. One of the least popular ones. But this lady shows up, stroller in camo and packed to the nines like a fuckin, tactical mom, or something, and starts just hauling ass down the trail, breezing past the closed sign. And I’m like.” He points his fork in Keith’s direction, so he can Get The Vibe. His boyfriend smiles into his stir fry. “I mean, I didn’t want to be the one to handle her. But no one else did, either, and let me tell you she was hauling fucking ass down that trail, and I didn’t want her to actually disturb Selena or anything, so I had be like ma’am. Please. The sign very clearly says closed. And she ignored me, so I just stopped in front of her, and then she started screaming at me! All about how she has been to this trail all the time and she’s a loyal park-goer and it’s a public park, as if that means anything. I seriously thought she was never going to stop.”

He hears the irony as soon as he says it. I thought she was never going to stop. He’s like a wind-up toy. He manages to stop himself from tensing, barely, diverting into something like a twitch. He’s aware suddenly that he has been talking nonstop from essentially the second he walked in the front door and was delighted to find Keith’s boots already at the door, hear the quiet clanking of him in the kitchen. He can’t even remember if he’d bothered saying hello, or if he’d just launched right into whatever word salad was on his mind. God, did he even start with a full sentence? He does that sometimes, he just starts from the middle of his own thoughts like anyone would have any idea what he’s talking about, he’s honestly just kind of obsessed with the sound of his own voice, he thinks, he must be, because he just never stops, does he —

“I hope I die first.”

Lance blinks. He looks over at his boyfriend, wondering if he spaced out long enough that his brain just made something the fuck up to get him back on track (wouldn’t be the first time).

“…Pardon?”

Keith continues to eat, unbothered, casual. He’s not even feigning casualness, either — he tends to half-lid his eyes when he’s pretending something doesn’t bother him. He’s completely at ease, right now, hand still warm and heavy on Lance’s thigh.

“Sometimes I just think about how there’s a possibility that you’ll die before me, I guess.” He turns to Lance, finally, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry. That was emo. I just…you go silent, sometimes, and I’m worried I’ll have to miss every time you spoke.”

Lance doesn’t know what to say. For once, his revving engines are completely silent. He sits there, frozen, staring almost blankly at his plate. Keith is humming quietly to himself, something ridiculous and made-up. They’re still in each other’s spaces, the two of them, and so Lance knows Keith feels it when he shudders, slightly, as a lump grows in his throat, as he desperately blinks away the tears in his eyes.

Keith turns his head slightly to press a kiss to Lance’s hair. He holds his face there, lips pressed to Lance’s skin, soft exhales blowing strands of Lance’s curls.

“What’s wrong, Motormouth?” Keith murmurs. The concern is evident in his voice, and maybe some panic, too, like he’s worried he’s the reason Lance is upset.

Lance smiles. A tear escapes from the corner of his eye an burns a trail down his cheek. He wipes it, quickly, swiping a hand across his face before resting it on the hand that Keith still holds on his leg. Keith flips his hand palm-side up so he can interlock their fingers together. If he feels the wetness of the wiped tears, he doesn’t say anything, only their squeezes their hands together three times in quick succession.

There is no mistaking the fondness bleeding from Keith’s voice. There is no mistaking amusement for endearment, here.

Lance can be annoying. He knows he can. And he no doubt has moments where he annoys Keith, even. But he’s not seven, anymore. He knows to watch for the signs. And for whatever he can’t catch — he’ll just have to trust.

“Nothing,” he whispers, turning his head to catch Keith’s mouth against his. “It’s just nice to…know, I guess, that you love me.”

Keith hums, kissing back, reaching his free hand up to curl around Lance’s cheek, holding him gently. “Good. Don’t forget.”

———

based on this post

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