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Keith didn't think he'd been patient a day in his life until Lance McClain.
Not that it was an immediate thing, of course.
But two years after the end of the war, under the velvet of night and back beneath an Earthen moon, Keith met Lance's lidded gaze where it hovered over him and thought, not for the first time, that maybe he could wait forever.
In the dark fold of Lance's bedroom, the world imploded and expanded again between their foreheads knocking together and breaths mingling in open mouths. Keith had been through countless galaxies, but the only one that mattered to him right then was Lance's teeth on his pulse and the heavy heat of a palm.
Each stroke punched the breath out of Keith's lungs like oxygen hemorrhaging from a torn suit. He was stripped raw and shaking the way he could only ever be under Lance's hands, both of them reaching out to steady themselves.
In the dark, it was almost too easy to forget that this wasn't something Keith could hold on to for more than a night. Or at least, hadn't been able to in a long time. Thin moonlight filtered through a gap in the curtains, painting a stripe over Lance's ribs that Keith trailed with his thumbs. He was beautiful.
Keith would be outside Earth's solar system again in less than twelve hours.
He didn't know if Lance might be with him this time. He didn't want to think about it.
So Keith focused on what was real, here, now: the warmth of Lance's shoulder blades under his fingertips, muscles shifting; the pressure on his chest. The heat sinking around him; the breath hot and damp on his cheek. He snapped his hips up and panted all the things that they wouldn't talk about in the morning, and swallowed down Lance's words in return.
More for the list.
• • •
The first time Keith let an I love you slip was during the hurtling heat-death of the war, as battles stretched longer and closer together and the thinning margins of supplies and ships and soldiers closed in.
The two of them were tangled together, collapsed on Lance's bed after thirty vargas in and out of their lions. Keith's limbs ached. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the biting grip of a sword in his hand. He slid it flat over Lance's side instead.
Keith and Allura's post-battle debrief hadn't lasted long, but no one had left the bridge right away. Slumped in various states of armor against any available surface, the team had taken each other in, reassuring themselves that everyone was alive and intact another day.
But the need for showers and sleep had taken over soon enough, sending them trudging off to their rooms with yawns and promises of morning.
Keith's shoulders brushed against Lance's as they shuffled down the castle hallway. With the absentminded ease of a familiar motion, fingers around Keith's wrist led him into Lance's room, and then shower, and then bed, where his head laid heavy over Lance's heart, fingers twisted in the soft fabric of his shirt.
Half-delirious with exhaustion, feeling Lance's pulse on his temple more than he could hear it through ringing ears, all Keith could think was that Lance was alive, and so he said the only thing he knew was true.
But they had to be awake and stationed in seven hours. So at Keith's whisper, Lance just pressed lips to the top of his head and rolled them onto their sides, breathing into his hair and snaking an arm firmly around Keith's torso to fall asleep.
A week later, Keith stumbled out of a healing pod.
There was never enough time anymore. The team had taken to stints in the pods just long enough to repair internal damage before they were on their way to the next planet under attack, scars left to harden and silver under armor.
There was always still someone to catch them, though.
Warm hands gripped Keith's shoulders, guiding him to lean against a table. He blinked open stinging eyes, brows knitted tight, slowly piecing together the jump from clutching shrapnel in his stomach to the cold air of the medbay and familiar silhouette in front of him.
Lance moved efficiently, peeling down Keith's suit and wrapping white bandages tight around the barely-together lattice of his abdomen. The pressure pulled a sharp inhale from Keith, his fingers curling around the edge of the metal table a little harder.
"Sorry, I'm sorry," Lance whispered. "It's done."
He helped Keith roll up the flight suit, updating him quietly on the team as they pieced armor back on. Already taking fire in their lions, four vargas after leaving the battle Keith had been pulled out of. Guilt curled in Keith's gut like smoke. Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Lance—they'd all had to keep fighting without him. Everyone was skilled in their lions, but they were better as one. He should've been there. He should've been faster, smarter.
Lance finished clicking Keith's chestplate into place, his chin leaned over the collar, but didn't pull back all the way. He let his shoulders curl inwards and cheek fall against Keith's jaw, swaying forward and inhaling shudderingly against the skin there. Lance thumbed the boundary where fabric met Keith's nape, smoothing over a nonexistent wrinkle, and breathed out I love you warm and desperate against his neck.
But they could hear the team's strained voices through the comms of Keith's helmet where it sat on the table. So at Lance's whisper, Keith just carded stiff fingers through the curls behind Lance's ear and silently tucked away how those three words made him feel, slotting it into place beside a fragile, bird-boned hope for the war's end.
It wasn't a secret, really, that they were—whatever they were. Yet Keith couldn't explain it to himself, let alone the team. So he didn't. No one asked, anyways.
Keith wasn't sure if they didn't feel the need to, or if they really didn't notice. It wasn't exactly out of the ordinary, he supposed, when his room went unused more nights than not. Or when he and Lance showed up with a few more bruises. Allura and Pidge had practically taken to sleeping at the bridge, Coalition intel and correspondence glowing on the screens at all hours. And they had all stopped being able to keep track of injuries a long time ago.
Keith had known from the start that he wasn't going be the one to bring it up to Lance, either.
What are we doing? Keith didn't know how to ask. Was afraid to know the answer. Lance was his tether in the empty vacuum of space, hooked deep inside him somewhere soft and essential, but what was he to Lance? Was it anything beyond the need for a set of arms in the belly of war?
Maybe, he thought.
So Keith was selfish, and hoarded each touch for his own like an animal that didn't know when its next meal would be, and never warned Lance of the fact that if the war ended, there would be an entire universe of people better-suited to living than Keith was.
And then, against what felt like all odds, the war came to a shuddering close. Dust hung quiet in the air and Keith finally had what that secret hope was for—his family, alive. The time to be with them without the constant threat of emergency alarms. The chance to figure out what something more might be with Lance in a free universe.
It felt surreal, after everything that had happened. Too good to be true. Which, by Keith's track record, usually meant something was about to come undone.
If he didn't do it himself first.
He visited Lance's family in their home for a week. Keith felt strange. He didn't know what to do with the knowing way Lance's mother looked at him, or the way she gave him pajamas and directed him to Lance's room without asking. Didn't know what to do with the way the McClain siblings watched him jolt at loud noises. Felt guilty at the way his hand twitched for a nonexistent bayard at the sudden movements of Lance's young niece and nephew.
It was stupid; Keith should have been happy that the war was over. He was happy that it was over. He'd fought and wished and sacrificed for it for so long.
He visited Shiro next. Saw him start to rebuild a life on Earth. He watched Hunk and Pidge reunite with their families, their real families, and scatter to their own callings. He waved to Krolia as she headed for leadership in the Blade, and to Allura and Coran and Romelle as they left to begin the work of New Altea. And no matter how much he tried to shove it down, Keith couldn't help but feel like the family he'd finally found was leaving him behind.
A 10,000-year war spanning most of the known universe didn't simply vanish without a trace. From planets or from Keith, apparently. He'd been born because of it—for it, maybe—long before he even knew it existed. The war had kept him in motion for so long that he wasn't sure what would happen if he stopped.
So Keith did what he knew, and he left, too.
Kolivan and Krolia offered him a spot on a mission and he accepted without reading the briefing.
And when Lance stopped on Earth, he stayed. And stayed.
• • •
Keith threw himself into anything he could: humanitarian runs, taking out lingering hostile cells, rebuilding efforts. It didn't matter what, as long as he was moving.
The bombed-out husks of alien cities looked a lot like the building Keith's dad died in. Black ribs of rebar lacerated a skyline and he was eight again, standing in front of charred scaffolding while a social worker spoke next to him. He saved a lot of people, Keith. You should be proud.
Keith tried not to dwell on it. He let intertia pull him.
He was doing something meaningful, Keith told himself.
He was the scream of an engine pushed past its limit.
He was helping people.
He was a ship careening through the atmosphere, heat shields ripping off with the force, unable to fight his own gravity.
• • •
Keith didn't explain why he showed up at Lance's the first time he was back on Earth, five months after the end of the war.
His ship touched down as dusk faded into night, crickets sprining out of the way, wind-tossed grass illuminated violet.
"Hey," Lance said in the doorway. He blinked at Keith's existence on his front step, eyes roving over him and hand dropping distractedly from the handle. He leaned forward, taking a step without seeming to realize it.
"Hey," Keith repeated. He couldn't stop the way his mouth started to rise at the corners, taking in the familiar lines of Lance's limbs, his ruffled hair, the wide blow of his pupils in the honey glow of the porch light. Something in Keith's chest silently clicked into place. "This place needs better parking."
A lopsided grin slowly tugged at Lance's face, disbelieving exhale morphing into a laugh. He shook his head, eyes fixed on Keith.
"And you need better manners, but I see you haven't learned that yet." Lance spread his arms. "When the hell did you get back? Actually, no, I don't care—why are you still standing down there? Get in here, idiot."
They fell into conversation easily and into bed easier. It was like a moment hadn't passed, if Keith ignored the slightly desperate way their mouths met, fingers and teeth leaving bruises a shade darker.
"Sooo," Lance said next to him in the kitchen as they cleaned up from breakfast, two days later. "You meet any hot aliens out there?"
They had run out of things to catch up on, apparently.
Keith rolled his eyes. "No."
Lance laughed out a breath, wiping the dish in his hands with a towel. "Yeah, true, you're probably still scaring away anyone who would be interested with that scowl." He glanced over. "And your aversion to scissors."
"Didn't hear you complaining about my hair last night," Keith muttered. He stuck his empty coffee cup under the stream of the sink.
Lance hummed noncommitally, the corner of his mouth curling up. He turned to place the dry plate into the cupboard overhead, face hidden. The only sounds for a moment were the steady splash of water and quiet thud of the cabinet door closing before he spun back, leaning a hip against the counter.
"No, but really, no one's tried to tap that?" Lance's voice was light. Casual, his eyebrows raised, the verbal equivalent of an elbow nudge. He wasn't looking Keith in the eye.
Keith answered without thinking. "A couple times, I guess."
"And, what, you didn't want to?"
He stilled, looking down at the mug in front of him. Keith watched water run over it, the memory of his last mission on a populated planet rising unbidden.
There'd been a celebration after the Blade helped clean up a lingering empire mining operation. Less Voltron-centric than the ones Keith had fumbled through as black paladin, but he was still more recognizable than he'd like to be. He found his way to the bar, the press of bodies crowded around it letting him fade into the mix.
Keith had been several drinks in when a humanoid alien slid next to him. Half-Galran, maybe. Attractive in a sleek, bland sort of way, he supposed. He frowned without really meaning to. They leaned into his space.
You with anyone? You look like you could use some company.
Keith stared. Unconciously, tan skin and expressive hands filled his mind. Curved scars and a biting smile. Actual bites against his throat, a hot mouth on—
I'm—engaged, he'd blurted out. And then froze. Why the fuck had he said that?
Really, the alien had asked, yellow eyes sweeping him up and down. I don't see them here. Or a marking.
It's not, uh, our…custom, Keith said, digging his grave deeper even as he listened to his own words with horror. His knuckles went white around the glass in his hand. The packed room suddenly felt claustrophobic rather than anonymous; strange and disorienting and far, far, away from where Keith should be.
Lilac fingers brushed his wrist. Well, if you change your mind—
Keith hadn't stuck around to hear the end of that sentence. He'd downed the rest of his drink and practically fled, shoving away the hand sliding up his forearm and smacking an uncounted amount of GAC onto the bar.
His body was a disjointed thing walking back to his ship. Unmoored. He fell onto the small cot, head swimming. I'm so drunk. I miss Lance. The ceiling spun. I'm so drunk and I miss Lance. Keith didn't notice the hitching of his breath until he felt tears hit the pillow.
In Lance's kitchen, heat needled up the back of Keith's neck, embarrassment burning hot in his gut. He started moving again, swirling a sponge around the inside of the mug. Keith prayed that the warmth of his face wasn't noticeable.
"I told them I wasn't interested."
Lance's eyes finally flicked to his, an amused smile playing at his lips. He didn't say anything, but Keith felt see-through, somehow, anyway.
"Hmm. More for me, I guess." Lance leaned against him, draping an arm over his shoulders and leaning in.
"You could." The words tipped out of Keith's mouth like desert rocks over the lip of a canyon, nudged by a step too close to the edge.
Lance raised an eyebrow. "Could what?"
"Um." Keith's heart pounded. Could have more. Could have any of it, all of it. He set the clean, dripping mug down. Shut off the tap.
"Hey, don't think too hard," Lance teased, poking the pink of Keith's cheekbone with a finger. Keith started to dry his hands on the sides of his pants. Lance slapped them off the fabric, nose wrinkling.
"Dude, there's a towel right there."
Keith narrowed his eyes and grabbed Lance's shirt instead, ignoring his indignant squawk.
"I just—you know there's always a spot for you, right?" Keith's fingers curled, tugging Lance a little closer. "In—wherever I am."
"Oh." Lance's finger dropped to Keith's collarbone, toying with his neckline. His brows pinched for a moment before smoothing back out. "Yeah, I—yeah. Thanks."
Keith searched Lance's eyes, trying to gauge what he was thinking. A useless endeavor to him, as usual. Lance didn't move to say anything else.
"Okay." Keith took a breath. Chewed the inside of his cheek. "I, uh, gotta head out soon."
"Okay," Lance repeated quietly, facing him fully. His hands met behind Keith's neck, fingers winding into dark hair. Keith's uncurled and swept lower, thumbs squeezing warm hipbones.
Lance pressed forward, their lips meeting soft as sand, like they had all the time in the world. Like there wasn't about to be several galaxies between them again. Lance's tongue slid against his. Keith could taste the coffee.
Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed faintly for the hour mark.
When he stepped down off the front porch, Keith hesitated, waiting for something else. He wasn't sure what. For Lance to ask him to stay? For Lance to say that the farm wouldn't need him much longer, now that it was up and running?
He didn't do either.
"See you," Keith said. His left hand worried at the lining of his jacket pocket, the marrow of his bones protesting the distance already.
"Yeah," Lance answered quietly, watching Keith turn and walk towards the Blade ship docked at the edge of the property. His fingers drummed lightly on the doorframe. "I'll be here."
• • •
Keith didn't explain when he showed up to Lance's farm the next time, either.
Or the four times after that.
• • •
Lance didn't ask.
Maybe he didn't need to.
• • •
Two years after the end of the war, Keith watched a stripe of moonlight shift across Lance's bare torso and thought that he might be able to wait forever—and that he would always, always want more.
After cleaning up, Keith slipped back under the covers and Lance pulled him close without opening his eyes, muscle memory reaching through the gauze of sleep and two years spent more often apart than together.
With Lance curled behind him, an arm slung heavy over Keith's ribs, he could almost pretend that they were back in Lance's castleship bedroom, hidden from the universe for a few hours before the next battle. Keith listened to the small fan in the corner and let it morph into the castle's low, perpetual hum.
Shiro's therapist would probably tell him that it wasn't healthy to be fantasizing about being back in the war. The thought nearly made him huff out a laugh. As if Keith had ever been very good at doing what was healthy for him.
He let himself keep the illusion until he drifted asleep.
In the morning, Keith stepped across the porch, crossing the edge of the roof's shadow into bright sunlight. It was already growing hot outside. He let his duffel bag drop with a soft thud, turning back to where Lance still stood in the doorway.
Lance leaned casually with one arm against the frame, the other loosely picking at the hem of his open button-up. Familiar. And not. The same unconscious habit he'd had since the Garrison. Sleeves rolled up over forearms built from nearly two years of farm work rather than the feathered muscles of a trigger finger.
Keith let his eyes trail the drape of worn cotton over square shoulders. The shoulders he had traced with light fingertips in the threads of morning, the shoulders that had supported him upright as he bled out in an alien field. The shoulders he'd watched shake and heave over a toilet the first time Lance had shot someone point blank, the shoulders he'd held in a castleship bed while the roiling mess of the universe narrowed to the sliver of air between their mouths.
"Your fly's down," Keith told him.
Lance's chin jerked down in surprise to look before coming back up. His eyes narrowed. "No, it's not."
"It's not," Keith agreed easily, biting back a smile. He scuffed his boot on the ground, kicking his bag lightly. "Want to go for a ride?"
"Thought we just did," Lance said, eyebrows raising and lids lowering in the exaggerated way that Keith was annoyingly, endlessly endeared by.
Keith scoffed. "Perv."
"Freak," Lance shot back, grinning. "You were the one looking at my dick."
"Whatever." Keith ran his tongue against his cheek. "Do you, though? Wanna go, uh, see the stars?"
Lance blew out a slow breath. His smile dimmed into something more even. Fingers tugged at the hem of his shirt again. "I'm good. We've got a big shipment going out today, anyways."
"Oh." Keith tried to ignore the sink of his stomach. "Which planet? You could…it could be good to get out there again."
"What, you want me to be the one flying it up there?" Lance nudged the toe of his shoe against Keith's, mouth curling at one side. "Thought you got over thinking I was a cargo pilot."
"No, dumbass." Keith rolled his eyes, nudging Lance's foot back. "I mean—" he hesitated, unsure of how to say it. "Do you ever miss it?"
Lance stilled for blink, then tilted his head, eyebrows raised. "Almost getting blown up every day? No."
"No, I don't know." Keith watched a breeze rustle through the fields east of the house. His left thumb rubbed the side of his forefinger, arms folded loosely across his chest. "Flying. Space."
Me.
Lance gazed past Keith's ear, nodding shallowly as if listening intently to something.
He stilled. Shrugged. Blue eyes flicked back to Keith's. "I missed Earth for longer."
Keith's jaw tightened slightly; it wasn't really an answer. He took a breath.
"We, uh…there's a short mission, soon. Not far, either." Bright morning light had started to creep up Lance's legs, the roof's shadow shifting. "We could use another pilot."
"I'm sure anyone at the Garrison would be happy to help."
Keith ignored that.
"I'm saying there's a spot for you, if you want it. We're gonna be working with Pidge, too, this time," he offered.
Keith knew it wasn't going to work even as he was saying it; recognized that the look slowly shuttering over Lance's face meant he was pushing too hard again. Still Keith kept going, because what the fuck else was he supposed to do? Just give up? Let the one person who had always dreamed of space fade out on a farm? "We'd meet them in the solar system over before heading down, it's—"
"I said I'm good, alright?" Lance interrupted. His voice almost hit the mark. Almost light enough to be believable. "Sounds great, though. You guys, still saving the universe and all that jazz." His hand lifted in a half-wave to punctuate the last word.
And why aren't you? Keith wanted to yell. What the hell are you doing here? He gripped his left thumb in a fist, hard, pushing that thought down into his chest.
"Why not?" Keith asked.
"It's…" Lance trailed off. His brows pressed together, almost uncertain, then shook his head, jaw hardening. "This is what I chose. I'm—it's making a difference."
"Okay," Keith started slowly, sentence picking up pace as he spoke, "You're right, the farm is making a difference, but it doesn't need to be you. Anyone could be here."
Lance's glinting knife of a smile was teasing, but Keith didn't miss the way his eyes flashed and darted to the side before settling back on him.
"Well, if just anyone can do this, you should think it's perfect for me."
Jesus, was Keith really that bad at this still, or was Lance trying to talk around him in circles?
Keith felt a bizarre sense of being misplaced in time, suddenly over-aware of the sun on his skin and the humid air pressing around him. Like this was a conversation they should be having in the echoing white halls of the castleship, before the lions they piloted changed, before the prickly scales of rivalry and insecurity shed into something new and unspoken.
"No, that's not—why would I—" Keith clenched his teeth and blew out a breath through his nose, searching the roof beams as if the right words would somehow be written there. They weren't. He forced himself to look back down, eyes flicking back and forth between Lance's.
"Obviously what you've been doing is important, Lance. Difficult. Whatever," Keith shook his head, looking for the point he was trying to make before it was deflected. "I mean that you could be more useful out there. Someone else can take over here, but nobody has the kind of experience you do in space."
Lance huffed, eyes unreadable. "You do."
"Yeah." Keith swallowed. "Because we were together."
"Right, except for when you left to go do top-secret missions and I was, what, dicking around in the castle for months? Getting myself killed?"
Fuck, why did trying to talk about this always have to be so hard? Keith didn't know how to say it in words that Lance would listen to. Couldn't he take one look at them standing here, a single packed bag between them, and see that something wasn't right?
Keith squeezed his eyes shut hard for a moment, taking in a breath, ready to put his foot in it the way he seemed so good at doing with Lance. He opened them as the first words spilled out, shouldering through sentences without a plan.
"Listen, I've tried to give you time, because you—we went through a lot, I mean, obviously, and your family is here, which is important to you, but you aren't—you hardly even see them anymore! Veronica said you haven't visited in months!" Keith threw out a hand. "And it's hard to see you here, okay? It's hard to see you like this is—like you're trying to convince yourself that this is what you want, Lance, because I don't believe you!"
Keith could hardly hear the words that were coming out of his own pleading mouth, couldn't stop them from pouring past his lips even as he watched Lance's start to tremble. "What happened to the Lance that loved flying; who knew exactly who he was and what he—"
"Maybe this is me, Keith!"
Keith blinked.
His fingers twitched at the way Lance's voice cracked.
"What?" he croaked.
Lance's shoulders tightened towards his ears.
"Maybe I wasn't supposed to be out there. Maybe it was a fluke, and I just happened to be…y'know. The most convenient option." He laughed humorlessly, waving a wild hand through the air. "I mean, fuck, I'm the only one who can't—who hasn't—" Lance snapped his mouth shut over the hitch in his breath.
Keith stared at him. The hell? It was so backwards from everything Keith believed that he didn't even know where to start. His eyes burned. "You don't mean that."
Lance stared back.
Keith's skin felt hot. He had the crawling urge to strip it off, to brandish the tangled mess of veins where his blood might as well have run blue, blue, blue; to plead, See? Don't you see? Wasn't it obvious? All the places where Lance held him together, the places that frayed a little further each time he punched through the atmosphere without him?
Words climbed out of Keith's chest and through his throat, molten the whole way up.
"I wouldn't have made it through the end of the war, trying to lead, without you in—without you."
Keith wasn't sure if it was his breath or Lance's that sounded so shaky.
"And I don't think this is what you want to be doing. I don't."
The corners of Lance's mouth trembled. He opened it, hesitating for one heartbeat. Two. He took the shot anyway.
"Sorry I don't want to play sidekick anymore."
Something slid clean through Keith, ice-hot and devastating as a blade slipped between his ribs.
"That's not what I meant, you—"
"Right," Lance cut him off. He half-blinked, eyes hard with unfallen tears. His jaw clenched, working to the side once before speaking, "Well, then sorry it's so hard for you."
Lance's posture was tight and guarded against the doorframe, the hand that had hung loosely at his side now crossed over his other elbow. The inside of the house seemed darker than it had before, constrasted against the hot sunlight overhead, the edges of his silhouette faded.
Lance turned his head to the side, his brows twitching for a long moment before his expression smoothed out into something unnervingly blank. Birds whistled somewhere nearby, cheerful and incongruent.
"You should go, Keith."
Lance's fingers dug into the sleeve of his shirt at his elbow. Keith's stomach rolled. Twistedly, he felt almost like he had that day they'd found Blue, white-knuckling Lance's headrest while the ground dropped from underneath them faster than should have been possible.
"Lance—"
"Just drop it, man."
The air was silent for a moment. Keith opened his mouth to say—something, he didn't know what, but Lance cut in again.
"Thanks for visiting." His eyes were cast somewhere past Keith's shoulder. A weak, hot breeze flicked Keith's fringe across his cheekbones. "Tell Pidge hey for me."
And at the plastered casualness of Lance's tone, suddenly, Keith couldn't stand it anymore. The way he side-stepped every attempt to talk about leaving, winding around Keith in circles; the refusal to say anything real about why he was staying on the farm; the way the collar of Lance's fucking button-up only partly covered the fresh hickeys on his neck while he wouldn't look Keith in the eye.
Keith's knuckles ached. He wasn't sure if it was the phantom urge to hit something, or the recurring pain all of the paladins had grown used to, chronic overuse from throttling the lions' controls for hours and days on end.
The tinder in his chest sparked and caught. Dry flame curled under his ribs, stinging his eyes.
"Tell her yourself," Keith snapped, grabbing his bag off the ground and slinging it over his shoulder. He gripped the strap harder and looked back up at Lance for a moment, searching. Lance looked back at him. He didn't move a muscle. His gaze swirled.
Keith turned for his ship gleaming too-bright in the morning sun. The crunch of grass under his boots was barely audible over the roar of blood in his ears.
Inside the ship, the air hung still and cool.
The back of Keith's shirt dragged uncomfortably as he pulled it off, and his flight suit chafed twice as bad over sweat-damp skin as he shoved into it. God, he couldn't fucking stand the humidity here.
Yet you keep coming back, a voice in his head reminded him. Keith dropped into the pilot's seat, tossing his bag to the side unceremoniously. The chair to his right was empty. Same as it had been at the end of every other visit.
The single-passenger Blade jets were nicer. Faster. There was no reason for Keith to take a ship big enough to carry another pilot and a cargo hold every trip to Earth. And yet here he was, gazing blankly to the side at the open surface of the seat next to him.
Yeah. Keith tried to think it bitterly, to hold on to the spark of frustration that had flared on Lance's porch, but it was already out by the time the back of his head hit the chair. He let gravity tip his neck back to center, staring unseeingly at the ship's ceiling, hands laying limp in his lap, wrists turned up and in. Yeah, I would suffer anything for him.
Periapsis; apoapsis. Always orbiting each other around and around, playing out the same dance over and over. They would pretend like everything was the same, and they'd fuck, and say things they meant but couldn't look directly at. Morning would come around and Lance would deflect, and Keith would ruin the afterglow by pushing too hard.
Then he would show up back on Lance's step, and Lance would open the door, tan fingers curling around his wrist and pulling him through the threshold the same way they had tugged him out of lines of fire and past sliding bedroom doors.
And so, Keith would keep coming back here with a passenger ship and the offer of a way to see space again. Maybe Lance would eventually sit in the empty seat. Maybe he never would. Maybe they'd talk about what they were doing; maybe they would keep playing this game forever. And for however long it lasted, like a wave sweeping in across the sand, Keith would take any of it.