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Lance becomes aware of himself between one step and another.
His left foot lands on the packed dirt beneath him and he almost stumbles, his eyebrows drawing in and his mouth turning downward as something visceral inside him shouts this isn’t right.
Lance realizes what isn’t right a moment later, of course. Because how often does a person realize they exist, just out of the blue like that? In fact, Lance would be tempted to think he’d never existed before this very moment if he didn’t understand innately that that was impossible. People don’t just suddenly start existing, guns strapped to their belt and a group of friends surrounding them, laughing.
“—and that’s when I said, ‘This is your last chance,’” a girl says dramatically. She’s one of the few that Lance is walking with — that he’s still walking with, because he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he must be with these people for a reason — “And he still doesn’t give it over. And that’s when Lance shot him,” she says proudly, and everyone laughs. A guy to Lance’s left slaps him on the back, and Lance manages a grin. It feels like what he’s supposed to do.
A small part of Lance wants to stop right there, sit down, and try to figure out what’s happening to him. Because the fact that he doesn’t remember anything concrete — doesn’t even remember existing before less than a minute ago — is definitely alarming. But his instincts, developed from who-knows-what, tell Lance to continue on. To fit in.
He’s surrounded by people armed with weapons, after all, and according to them, he kills people too.
“First round’s on me,” claims the guy who slapped Lance on the back. He finally decides to get a good look at these people.
The girl who praised him has long, black hair, swishing around her waist with every step. Her skin is pinkish and she’s wearing blue glasses that take up half her face. The guy to the left of Lance is terrifying, and Lance would flinch away from him were they not travelling together. He’s huge, with muscles all over and tattoos covering half of his face. Half of his body, Lance guesses, noticing that though they disappear under the collar of his shirt, they reappear down the length of his arm.
There’s one other person, who Lance hasn’t heard speak yet, but when he gets a good look at him, he can’t help flinching.
Two feelings flash through him at once — recognition and revulsion.
Keith, his brain supplies. Same as it supplied his own name, somewhere in its murky depths, where Lance is now convinced memories must exist. He didn’t burst into existence in this hot, humid, dusty town, with guns on his hips and what must be criminals on either side of him. No, he existed long before that, and for whatever reason, everything he knows about himself, about these people, is blocked from his mind.
Lance decides right then and there not to let any of them know. He doesn’t trust any of his companions. He’s convinced that they’re criminals, or mercenaries, or some sort of bad guys, and he’s not willing to test his luck with any version of the truth. There’s no telling whether they’d help him or take advantage of him in this state.
As for Keith, Lance decides he trusts him even less. The others must be nice enough or perhaps trustworthy enough to have disappeared in the fog of his own mind, but something about Keith was prickly enough to snag above the surface. Something about him stands out, and Lance is sure it’s because he doesn’t like him. More than that, Lance realizes. He thinks he hates them. He thinks they’re rivals, or enemies, and he has no idea why he’s traveling with him now.
Because Lance’s memories may have disappeared, but nothing could erase the fact from his mind that Keith is someone he absolutely despises.
“Home, sweet home,” the pink girl says, kicking open the door of what is clearly a bar, not an actual home. A cheer goes up — their little group must be popular — and despite the tattoo guy’s promise to buy the first round, he doesn’t get the chance. The pink girl leads their group to a table in a corner, and a server appears moments later with a handful of drinks.
“On the house,” he declares. “And your next two rounds have already been paid for,” he adds, pointing in the direction of some people sitting at the bar.
“See, this is why I don’t mind putting my life on the line,” the pink girl says. “It’s always worth it in the end.”
“Unless you die,” says the tattoo guy.
“Please, Avik,” she snorts. “If bringing Keith along didn’t kill me, nothing can.”
Avik laughs, and deciding to play along, so does Lance. Keith slumps into his seat, glowering, still not having said a word.
“Oh, c’mon, Keith,” Avik says. “You know it’s true. I thought you and Lance were gonna get us killed at least five different times.”
“It’s not my fault that I can’t stand Keith,” Lance says. It’s the only thing that feels true coming out of his mouth.
The girl guffaws, slamming her now empty — wow — drink on the table. “You two have got to learn to get along,” she says. Keith’s expression morphs into one that Lance is sure he’s wearing himself, and she scoffs. “You have to admit, today’s mission went by smoother than any others,” she says, pointing at Lance. “And you,” she says, pointing at Keith now, “work much better with a team than I thought you would. Wasn’t that better than being a loner?”
“I work fine on my own,” Keith says, and for some reason, his voice sends a jolt through Lance. It’s just so familiar, when everything else around him is absolutely foreign. It makes Lance feel weirdly nostalgic, despite the fact that he hates the guy, because as least it’s something that he recognizes.
“Sure,” Avik says. “But it’s nice to have other people watching your back. Right, Laya?”
Laya shrugs noncommittally. “If I can learn to work with people, so can you, Keith.”
Lance, trying to take a moment to process everything, distracts himself with his drink. He tries to keep track of what he knows.
These people, Avik and Laya, appear to be his teammates, of a sort. People that he can probably trust, at least more than the average stranger. Still, Lance doesn’t want to put himself in undue danger. If he can figure out and solve this memory thing on his own, he will.
Because first and foremost, Lance is pretty sure this town, this world, is an every man for himself kind of world. And though they may be working as a team, Lance can’t be sure that they’ll always be. And he can’t even be sure of how long they’ve been working together in the first place.
Furthermore, there’s the matter of Keith. He remembers him. Not in the way that memories should work, but as in Lance recognized him right off the bat. He knows nothing of importance about the guy — nothing other than his name, the sound of his voice, and his appearance — but he gets the feeling that he’s known Keith longer than the others.
If Lance had to guess, he would assume that they’d been enemies for quite some time. Or maybe just rivals. Maybe they’ve fought for the same jobs and missions, or just haven’t gotten along, and have a natural dislike of each other. Not enough dislike to kill each other, but to not want to have to work together for a mission. It’s clear neither of them liked it, though Lance almost wishes he could ask Keith for clarification on everything. On how long they’ve known each other, on how today’s mission went.
There’s also the fact that they seem to have some sort of important, if dangerous, job. Lance gets the feeling that he would know how to use the guns at his hips with instinct alone. They’re clearly popular, because the people in this bar were glad to see them. And whatever they do, it involves killing people. Lance apparently killed someone shortly before he came to. Maybe that’s how he lost his memory.
And that’s all Lance really knows.
By the time he’s reached the end of his ruminations, he’s reached the bottom of his drink as well and is being supplied with a new one. Avik and Laya are deep in a conversation, and Keith is as quiet as Lance is, his grip tight on his own glass. He must not be comfortable sitting here with them, a group of friends, or a team, where he’s clearly an outsider. Except right now, Lance feels that they have that much in common. Keith doesn’t know it, but Lance is just as much as an outsider as him at the moment.
And with that, Lance does his best to blend in for the rest of the night. To act like he knows what’s going on, knows the people and places and stories that his friends mention, and tries to chime in accordingly when he can. For whatever reason, Lance is convinced that his secrecy on his missing memory is imperative.
--
As the weeks pass, Lance decides that his memory will likely never return.
He should probably be more upset by this, he thinks. Except for the fact that Lance has no idea what he’s forgetting, no idea if he should be missing anyone, and can’t really find it in himself to care.
He’s managed to blend in well enough. Fortunately, he lives in a rundown apartment building where many of them — mercenaries, that is — reside. This means he was led directly back here after their night of drinking almost a month ago, which was a stroke of luck, really. Unfortunately, it means Keith lives in the same building as well, though thankfully on a separate floor.
The apartment isn’t much, but it’s home, Lance guesses. It’s really just two separate rooms. A small kitchen and a living room combined, and a bedroom with its own, small bathroom. But it’s plenty big enough for one person to live in alone.
Also thankfully, Lance doesn’t have to go out and do much of his own job hunting. He’s pretty sure he would’ve, normally. Just to get some extra funds and keep busy. But even without that, he’s given a number of assignments from higher-ups, who live on the bottom floor of the apartment building, and that’s good enough for him.
His first several missions were completed with Avik and Laya at his side, which Lance is incredibly grateful for. It’s thanks to them that he learned his way around the town, learned the slang, learned how they operate and find their targets. When he finally had a mission on his own, nerves almost ate him alive, but Lance carried out that mission as easily as all the others.
It’s not all killing, either, though it’s obvious that Lance isn’t killing innocent people. Every one of his targets are guilty from some kind of crime — the big, bad crimes that make even Lance shudder — but he’s not so sure that everyone follows the same guidelines as he does. He thinks that some of the other mercenaries applied with less strict rules for who they’d kill.
Above all, the missions that interest Lance the most are the ones that involve Keith. He’s only joined them on two separate occasions, not including that first day when Lance realized he existed. Every time Keith’s with them, Lance’s senses are on high alert, for whatever reason. Everything about Keith feels crucial. Part of Lance thinks it’s because Keith is one of the few people around here that looks like him.
This planet is clearly home to all kinds of people. They have different skin, different limbs, different features — but Keith looks the most similar to Lance. And even if he didn’t, even if he had purple skin or knives for hands, Lance is still sure he would recognize him. The longer this goes on, the memory loss and confusion and trying to blend in, the more convinced Lance becomes that Keith is somehow the key to it. Or an important piece, at least.
Part of Lance wonders if it’s Keith’s fault that he’s like this. If Keith somehow found a way to erase his memories and is now happily watching Lance pretend to be completely comfortable in this life he has no knowledge of.
This theory only serves to make Lance’s hatred of Keith grow stronger. He finds himself thinking angrily of him even when Keith’s nowhere around, just scavenging around his apartment for dinner and trailing down to his favorite bar with Avik and Laya. (They always go to O’Falligans, which they affectionally call any word in existence, preceded by the letter ‘O’.)
“If it isn’t my favorite sharpshooter!” Fall says. He’s the bartender and owner of the bar, plus his full name is actually Falligan, but everyone just calls him Fall.
“Hey,” Lance says, sliding into a barstool. “How’s business?”
“Better, now that you’re here,” Fall says winningly. He’s not flirting, though Lance wouldn’t entirely mind, considering the fact that he’s young and attractive. In reality, he’s just being truthful. People buy drinks for Lance more often than Lance buys drinks for himself, and Fall usually ends up with more money (and drinks) than Lance can actually consume. He always makes a profit.
Despite Lance’s popularity, which he assumes was hard-won, he doesn’t actually have many friends. None other than Avik and Laya, anyway. And maybe Fall. It’s actually starting to get a little bit depressing, because deep down, Lance feels like he’s supposed to be surrounded by friends. He feels like he’s supposed to be this social person with a close-knit group, and though he has no trouble joking and laughing with the strangers-turned-acquaintances that he meets at the bar on an almost daily basis, it’s not quite what he’s looking for.
And though Avik and Laya are actually pretty good friends — Lance no longer really thinks they’d do anything to harm him if he came clean about his memory, but he figures you can never be too careful, and it kind of feels too late to admit it now, anyway — they aren’t as close as Lance thinks they should be. They don’t come over to his apartment to hang out, and he doesn’t go to theirs. And no one thinks that there’s a problem with all that.
Within minutes, Lance has a drink in front of him. It’s a fruity drink, which is actually what Lance prefers, though most of the time people just end up buying him beers. Probably because he seems so manly.
Lance snorts into his drink, amused by himself.
He’s only halfway through it when he realizes he’s not alone at the bar. Three seats down, sitting by himself and without a drink of his own, is Keith. Lance abruptly sits up, having been leaning over the counter and sipping continually from his drink in silence.
Keith’s staring at him, and he continues staring at him even after Lance has clearly caught him in the act.
“Well?” Lance says. “Are you just going to sit there all creepily, or are you going to tell me what you want?”
Frowning, Keith seems to hesitate before getting out of his seat. For a second Lance thinks he managed to scare him off, but then Keith crosses the space between them and sinks onto the stool beside Lance.
“I bought you that drink,” he says preemptively, and Lance promptly spits his mouthful back into the cup before realizing he’d probably be dead already if it were actually poisoned. Still, doesn’t hurt to ask.
“What’s in it?” he says warily.
“It’s a margarita, Lance,” Keith says. “It’s tequila. And strawberries.”
Lance squints at him suspiciously.
“I thought that drink was your favorite.”
Lance has no idea how he knows this, especially since he normally receives beer from his many admirers, but he decides to accept it. Keith clearly knows more about him than he knows about Keith. Maybe he saw Lance order this himself one day, back when he was a normal person who remembered what kind of drinks he likes.
“It’s good,” Lance admits. “I just don’t get why you’d buy one for me.”
Keith, despite everything, looks slightly abashed. “I wanted to ask you a favor,” he admits. “Thought it’d be a good idea to sweeten you up first.”
“Five more of these and I’d be willing to fuck you,” Lance jokes. “No more, no less.”
Keith’s face goes as red as— Lance blinks, the perfect descriptor prancing at the back of his mind, something that he feels is the most obvious choice to compare the color of Keith’s face to, and then it disappears. The second most obvious choice comes.
Keith looks like a tomato.
“I didn’t come to proposition you for… that,” Keith says, still blushing. Lance was obviously joking, but maybe it wasn’t so obvious to Keith. Not that Lance wouldn’t fuck him, honestly. Despite the anger that plagues Lance whenever he sees Keith, not even he can disillusion himself into thinking Keith isn’t the most attractive person he’s ever seen. That thought, however, is one that he’ll never admit to said person, thank you very much.
“I figured,” Lance snorts. “What do you really want?”
Keith slides a card onto the table. Lance recognizes it, receiving several throughout each week himself. It’s a hit card, and the name upon it is Keith’s target. “I want your help,” Keith says.
“My help,” Lance repeats, deadpan.
“Yes,” Keith says. “It’s a… sensitive mission.”
“And you wanted me,” Lance reiterates.
“I’ve only ever teamed up with you three before,” Keith points out. “And I think you’re best suited for the job. We can split it 50-50.”
Lance honestly doesn’t think he even needs the money. He doesn’t remember the password to his bank account, unfortunately, but with his regular payments and the fact that his card’s never been declined, he’s pretty sure he’s well-off. Even still, he kind of doesn’t want to pass up this chance. The chance to get closer to Keith. To see if he’s acting suspiciously. To maybe force him to tell the truth, and to return Lance’s memories if he can.
“Fine,” Lance says. “When do we go?”
Keith smiles sheepishly. “Now, preferably.”
Lance spits his most recent mouthful back into the drink. He’s making a habit of it, apparently. “And you really thought it’d be a good idea to buy me a drink beforehand?” he scoffs, pushing himself out of the stool. Honestly, Lance only barely just has a buzz, but it’s probably never a good idea to get yourself into a dangerous situation with any amount of alcohol in your veins. Maybe Keith’s trying to finish him off. Get him killed.
Well, he’ll have to try a lot harder than that. Lance has realized over and over again how well his aim is, and he’s pretty sure he could go on a mission and succeed even if he was three sheets to the wind.
“Let’s do this,” he says.
--
“You know, you could’ve mentioned that our target was the scariest person on the planet,” Lance whispers.
He’s long since lost his buzz, in the hours that they’ve been working together. First, they hopped onto Keith’s hovercycle and drove well outside of town. Lance clung onto Keith for dear life as they zoomed down dark, empty roads, trying to ignore the press of Keith’s back against his chest, the feeling of his toned stomach against Lance’s hands.
What? He already mentioned he found the guy attractive.
Finally, they reached the warehouse where Keith’s target actually is. It’s a big factory, advertised as producing machine parts but actually just a cover for the guy who runs it and his little gang of criminals. Lance didn’t get the full run-down, but this guy apparently kills innocent people all the time, and in horrific ways.
If Lance had to guess, he’d say the man is eight feet tall. The name on Keith’s card simply says “The Wrecker,” so he has that going for him, apparently. Wrecking stuff. Whatever that means.
Lance assumed that between the two of them it would be a relatively simple mission, but the warehouse is booby-trapped to hell and back, and it’s been a lot more slow going than anticipated. Currently, they’re squeezed together in an air shaft, side-by-side and much too close for comfort.
Through the vent, Lance can see their target. He looks like a much scarier, much more murderous version of Avik. Lance bets his teeth are stronger than Lance’s entire body.
“How was I supposed to know what he looked like?” Keith hisses back. They can’t help but continue to just stare down at the guy, trying to devise some sort of plan for his defeat. It’s harder than it looks.
Thanks to the armor he’s wearing, Lance isn’t confident that he can get a clear shot. Especially not from up here, at this angle. Plus, the vent will likely groan when they try to remove it, so that’ll capture the Wrecker’s attention immediately.
Keith was definitely right to enlist the help of someone for this mission, though Lance is now starting to wish it hadn’t been him.
“We’re going to have to distract him,” Lance admits. Something that he’s been thinking for a while but hadn’t wanted to voice aloud.
“I know,” Keith sighs. The reason is obvious. Neither one of them want to be the bait, forced to depend on the other in order to not be murdered.
“If you dropped down, I could wait up here for the chance to shoot him,” Lance says.
“And maybe never get one,” Keith counters. “If you drop down, you can try to shoot him down there. And if that doesn’t work, I can drop down and stab him in the neck.”
Lance just gives Keith this blank look, because that plan isn’t any better than his own. In fact, it might actually be worse.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” Keith suggests, and Lance sighs. With two equally bad plans, they might as well get their attempt over with.
Silently, they both hold out their hands and play through the game without talking. Lance throws out paper. Keith, somehow predictably, does rock.
“Two out of three,” Keith begs.
The next round, Lance does scissors. Keith still does rock.
For the third round, convinced that Keith won’t possibly do rock again, Lance repeats scissors. And Keith still does rock.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Lance hisses.
“And yet I won,” Keith says, grinning. Something about that grin strikes in Lance’s memory, the fog in the back of his head, but it’s gone almost as quickly as it appeared. Lance can’t think of a reason why Keith would’ve grinned at him before.
Even so, he feels oddly… relieved, to be the one going down there. It doesn’t make any sense. For someone who hates Keith unquestioningly, why would he ever want to protect him?
Lance decides the answer for himself. Even though he hated Keith, he must’ve also been attracted to him. More than in just appearance, unfortunately. Perhaps there were even a bit of feelings involved.
Or, maybe they used to date, and then things went sour, and now they hate each other.
Or, perhaps Lance is just delusional. Perhaps they’ve always hated each other, and now that Lance’s mind is a blank slate, new, random feelings are arising. But he trusts the ingrained hate above all else. It’s the only thing he remembers clearly about his past, and there must be a reason for it.
Still, Lance lost, fair and square, so he’s going to be the one to play the bait. The grate is directly in front of them, and with no easy way to back up — the vents are suffocatingly tight — the two of them are forced to shuffle around until Lance will be able to actually fall through it. Basically, Keith is laying flat-out on the bottom of the vent and Lance is just barely hovering above him in the miniscule amount of space there.
“Wish me luck,” Lance mutters, before banging his elbow against the grate with as much power as he can manage in the cramped space. The vent clatters loudly to the floor, attracting the Wrecker’s attention immediately, but Lance is already on the move. He swings out of the vent, hanging from the ceiling for a second, before dropping lightly to the ground.
The Wrecker, apparently not unused to be broken in on, just grins at Lance. “Are you another little assassin come to kill me?” he sneers.
“Assassin, yes,” Lance says. “Come to kill you? Nah.” He leans comfortably against the work bench, where the Wrecker was working on some sort of weapon mere minutes ago. The Wrecker crosses his arms, studying Lance.
“Most people who want to work for me use the front door,” the Wrecker says.
“Most people who want to work for you don’t make it back out the front door,” Lance guesses. This guy probably kills half his pool of applicants. You can’t just turn down a criminal and expect them to be all right with it, after all.
“Clever,” says the Wrecker.
“You’ve already seen what I can do,” Lance continues boldly. “I broke into your warehouse. Traveled through it unnoticed. And I’m even talking with you now, yet to have been killed for my insolence. You have to admit I’m smart. And good at persuading people.”
“Perhaps too good,” the Wrecker points out. “You could very well be my enemy. It’s not a tactic I haven’t seen before.”
“Sure, but how many of your enemies come in unarmed?” Lance says, holding up his hands. He left his guns with Keith, which Keith had looked on the verge of strangling him for, but Lance had insisted he knew what he was doing.
To be honest, Lance has no idea what he’s doing. But he’s pretty sure that despite his sharp eye and steady finger, his wits are his strongest weapon. And so far, he seems to be right.
“You’re gutsy, I’ll give you that,” the Wrecker says. “Fine, you’re hired.”
Lance whoops, momentarily forgetting that he’s not actually applying for a job.
“I already have your first mission for you,” the Wrecker continues. He points to the ceiling where Lance appeared, grinning. “Kill your friend.”
Lance’s smile melts off his mouth. The Wrecker’s doubles in size, just as he raises a knife. Lance can’t be sure, but he’s guessing that this killing machine probably has a pretty good aim.
Just then, a shot goes off. Unlucky for Keith, his aim is shit. It’s wide — way too far to the side — but it hits the leg of a table and sends a whole bunch of equipment crashing down, distracting the Wrecker momentarily. In that moment, Keith manages to drop down to the floor and return Lance’s guns to him.
“Told you it was a stupid plan,” he says, and then they’re battling.
Lance already knows that despite his memory loss, many instincts have remained. Plus, he knows basic stuff. He knows how to take apart and clean his guns. He knows how to shoot and how to cook. He knows how to be charming and how to be deadly. He knows how to tie his shoes and how to start a fire.
And somehow, inexplicably, he knows how to fight alongside Keith Kogane, as if he’s been doing it all his life.
They move like water. Without thinking, without communicating — just rushing and flowing, parting seamlessly around obstacles and returning to each other just as easily.
The Wrecker, despite being bigger than stronger than them, and probably able to take on about five guys at once, is evenly matched against the two of them. Not because they’re just that good, but because working together, they’re something else entirely. A team with years of practice.
When Keith darts in with his sword, Lance knows without him having to say anything to adjust his aim, still shooting in order to disorient the enemy, but not shooting anywhere close to Keith, so as not to hurt him.
Lance jumps when Keith slashes low. Keith ducks when Lance moves to shoot over his head. Lance drops to a knee and propels Keith into the air without a word between them, and as Keith flips through the air, sword extended, Lance distracts the Wrecker in a flurry of gunfire. The very next moment, Keith’s sword sinks into a chink in his armor, and the Wrecker falls without even a shout of pain. He’s dead that fast.
The fight lasted only a matter of minutes, and yet it’s the most alive Lance can ever remember feeling. And somehow, of all people, it’s because of Keith.
Just what is he forgetting? How in the world do they work so well together?
Keith almost seems as surprised as Lance, though he does his best to hide it. Maybe he didn’t expect them to work this well together, after however long it’s been. Surely, they must’ve worked together before.
Either that, or this was their first time in a battle side-by-side, and somehow, they both surprised each other. Somehow, their techniques were equipped to make the perfect team.
But Lance schools his expression into one of indifference. By the time Keith looks at him, he’s grinning cockily. “Not bad,” he says. “Although your aim is shit.” Lance looks intentionally at the now decimated table.
“I’d like to see you fight with a sword,” Keith scoffs, but they’re already walking out of the warehouse, no longer crawling through the air ducts, and their bickering feels more familiar than particularly barbing by the time they reach Keith’s hovercycle.
This time, Lance doesn’t feel too terrified as Keith speeds down the empty roads. He has the weirdest, most misplaced feeling that he can almost trust the guy.
--
“You and Keith?” Laya says, smacking her hand against the table in amusement. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“You two almost tore each other apart when the four of us when on that mission,” Avik says. “And somehow you manage to work together without us chaperoning you?”
“Maybe you were just acting out when we were there,” Laya says. “Playing it up to annoy us.”
“Better not have been,” Avik mutters, glaring at Lance through his drink. “We almost died ‘cause of your arguing.”
“We weren’t,” Lance says hastily. “I don’t know how we managed to work together this time. It just happened, I guess.”
“Well, make it just happen more often,” Laya suggests. “A lot of our missions would be easier with a fourth. You know that.”
Lance does know that, now. They always survive their missions, but sometimes it’s a close call.
“Lance!” cries someone that Lance doesn’t recognizes. It’s a girl, her hair long on one side and shaved on the other. She has piercings lining the ear that’s visible, and once she has Lance’s attention, she plants herself right on his lap.
She’s gorgeous, of course. And yet somehow she’s attracted to Lance, has chosen his lap to sit on, grabbed his hand to place it familiarly on her own thigh.
“I don’t see you often enough anymore,” she whines, leaning in close to him. Her breath is hot on his ear, and it makes goosebumps creep up all along his skin. Lance very suddenly wishes he could remember her name.
“My apologies,” Lance manages to mumble. His hand squeezes on her thigh, and he gets the weirdest intrusive thought. That her thigh is too soft. Not muscular enough. But, of course, that’s absurd.
Plus, she’s clearly quite strong. She’s fit, and wearing… well, not much. And she’s sitting in Lance’s lap, her teeth tugging at Lance’s ear, and they’re clearly quite familiar with each other.
“Well,” Avik says, planting his mug on the table. “That’s our queue.”
Both Avik and Laya stand, obviously used to this, and they disappear into the crowd to mingle with the other people they know.
“I thought they’d never leave,” the girl murmurs. Pouty. A flicker of annoyance washes through Lance for no good reason. “We should go back to your place.”
Lance hums his agreement, because she’s clearly right. And like every other instinct he’s retained, he knows very well that he enjoys sex. That it’s probably been too long since he’s gotten some action. So he turns his face toward hers and their lips meet, hot and fierce and wet and wrong, wrong, wrong.
He breaks the kiss way too early. Panting but not for the right reasons. His mind is whirling, his thoughts indistinct and his memory so broken, so tarnished, and he wishes so desperately that he could remember his past, remember why this feels so wrong.
“Sorry,” Lance says, leaning away from her.
The girl doesn’t look amused. “If you’re not in the mood, just say so,” she snaps.
“Sorry,” Lance repeats, and he scoots her gently off his lap and stands. The bar sounds too loud around him, and he doesn’t even bother to find Avik and Laya before leaving. The only person he sees is Keith, knocking back a shot at the bar.
Lance strolls out into the heat of the night, wondering just what the hell is wrong with him.
--
It’s late at night, after a day off where Lance didn’t do much of anything, when there comes a knock at his door. For a moment, Lance thinks, finally. Because he was right. It’s weird to be friends with people who never visit. Who you never see, really, besides during a mission or afterward, when you’re celebrating at a bar.
But when Lance opens the door, it’s neither Avik nor Laya.
It’s Keith, not wearing his mercenary clothes or strapped up with his weapons for once. He just looks like a normal person, wearing normal clothes and a normal jacket, and his expression looks pained when he asks, “Can I come in?”
Lance is tempted to ask how he knew where he lived, but he’s feeling generous (or lonely) enough to just open the door and allow Keith inside.
Keith plops directly onto Lance’s couch, immediately twisting his fingers together in some kind of nervous habit.
“What’s up?” Lance asks. He crosses the room and sits on the arm of the couch, his feet planted on the cushions next to Keith.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Keith warns.
“You need me for another mission,” Lance guesses.
“No,” Keith says. “Well, yes — but not for a couple days. That’s not why I came here.”
Lance resists the urge to roll his eyes, because he’s absolutely convinced that Keith would’ve come to him right before needing to leave for the second time, trying to bargain with Lance and convince him to go on a deadly mission without any extra time to prepare.
“Well then, go ahead,” Lance says. “I don’t think much can surprise me at this point.”
Keith sucks in a breath. Holds it. And then he says in a rush, “I need you to tell me why we hate each other.”
Lance balks. “What?” he says.
“I know this sounds crazy, but I just can’t remember. I mean, I can’t remember anything, really. Except that we hate each other.”
Lance’s vision swims. Alarm bells go off in his head, and some part of him thinks this could be a trick, but a much bigger part of him believes that it’s true. He plants his elbows on his knees, because without the balance he thinks he might faint and fall backwards off the couch.
“Our first mission together,” Lance breaths. “You can’t remember anything before it,” he guesses. “You just remember walking into the bar.”
Keith’s eyes widen. “Did you do this to me?” he whispers, and Lance realizes he must’ve had the same exact thought process as him. The realization that he could only remember one thing, and it was Lance, who was probably at fault for his memory loss.
“No,” Lance says. “I can’t remember anything before then either. And then I caught sight of you, and I remembered your name, and I remembered hating you.”
“Why?” Keith says, sounding desperate. “Why do we hate each other? Why is that all we can remember?”
Lance is almost awed at the fact that Keith believes him. Because if Lance had knocked on Keith’s door, desperate for answers, and Keith had told him that he was in the same situation… Lance isn’t sure whether he would believe him.
But then, he must look as desperate and confused as Keith surely feels. How have they both been here all this time, pretending everything was normal when everything is wrong? How have they been floundering through this life, remembering nothing but one another, and only barely, at that?
Why the two of them, of all people?
“There must be some sort of connection between us,” Lance decides. “Something must’ve happened, just to the two of us. That’s why we can’t remember anything.”
“Maybe we were together when it happened,” Keith guesses. “Maybe that’s why we fight so well together.”
Lance takes a moment to remember their fight, realizing that Keith would’ve been just as confused and bewildered by their ability to work together as he was.
“I wonder why we hate each other,” Keith mutters. And Lance gets exactly why. He can’t think of a single logical reason to hate Keith, other than the fact that it feels like he should. The fact that Keith feels like his rival, someone he despises, despite the fact that he’s yet to do anything to actually annoy or anger Lance.
“Well, we must’ve hated each other for a reason,” Lance says, “but if neither of us can remember it, I guess it doesn’t matter.” And then frowns. “Unless you killed my mother, or something. Not that I can remember who she is, but I’ll be pretty pissed if you did that, on principle.”
“I don’t think I killed your mother,” Keith says.
“I don’t know,” Lance ventures, mostly teasing. “You kill a lot of people.”
“So do you!” Keith protests, and then he realizes that Lance is grinning, teasing him, and he scoffs. Keith sinks back into the couch, slouching down and crossing his arms over his chest. “What do we even do?” he asks. “How can we remember anything?”
Lance slides off the arm of the couch and plops onto the cushions next to Keith, where it’s more comfortable. “Wait, I guess,” Lance says. “I never mentioned anything to Avik and Laya. I can’t decide whether to trust them with that information.”
“That’s probably smart,” Keith says. “I don’t know who to trust either. I don’t think I have any friends.”
They’re silent for a moment. Just sitting in Lance’s apartment, staring at the door across the room. It’s a pretty empty place for someone to live. Barely any personal touches. No books or anything. No decorations.
“You can trust me,” Lance says into the quiet.
“Can I?”
Lance shrugs. “I think the only people we can really trust is each other.”
--
After their momentous discovery, Keith becomes the first real friend Lance thinks he’s ever had. And, unsurprisingly, he stops hating the guy.
Really, there’s nothing to hate about him. And after all this, if their memories come back, Lance isn’t sure whether he’ll be able to hate him again anyway. He has a feeling that it was probably something petty. Some disagreement they must’ve had that they were both too stubborn to relent on. Something that grew and grew between them, until they were constantly fighting, constantly arguing, and apparently hating each other.
Without any memory of their past between them, though, and no real reason to continue their rivalry for the sake of appearances, it fizzles out between them. And what’s left behind in the absence of their hatred is something which just might resemble friendship.
Keith comes by to Lance’s apartment often. At first, he always knocked, but after only a couple days he figured he had a standing invitation, for some reason. Lance would’ve argued if it were anyone else, but something about it being Keith had him holding his tongue. He feels weirdly fond about the guy, probably due to the fact that they’re in the same exact situation.
Sometimes, Lance comes back from a mission only to find Keith lounging on his couch, reading a book that he picked up from the store. He’s always careful to bring his book with him when he leaves, so Lance never has any idea what he’s reading.
Once, Lance came home and Keith was cooking dinner. He shrugged, totally unabashed, and claimed that it was all right that he was using Lance’s food since he was also putting in all the effort. The use of Lance’s ingredients isn’t what threw him, though. It was the fact that Keith was cooking for him at all.
More often than not, though, they return to Lance’s apartment together. They end up splitting most of their missions nowadays anyway. The first time it happened, Lance led Keith back to his apartment because Keith had gotten a nasty scrape across his forehead and Lance had doctored it up for him.
The second time, Keith had just followed him anyway. And now they usually end up together after missions, talking and laughing and even just spending time in the same room, doing different things.
Normally, when Keith’s reading, Lance is writing. Carefully detailing what he did with his day, who the people he met are, what he knows about them.
It’s an odd precaution, sure, but it’s exactly the sort of thing Lance had torn his apartment apart looking for on just his second day here. Anything to fill him in. To get him in the loop. This way, if Lance ever loses his memory again, he’ll know everything that’s happened in the two and a half months of his life that he does remember.
They don’t spend all of their time in Lance’s apartment, though. They’ve popped by Keith’s on occasion, mostly to grab something, but they also spend a lot of their time out and about. Since Keith’s his friend now, and the only person who really gets what Lance is going through, spending time with him is more entertaining than spending time with anyone else.
They’ll end up getting lunch together, or going to the mercenaries’ training center together, or even just taking a walk together. Nowadays, people cheer when Keith walks into O’Falligans too, and Fall has stopped with the almost-flirty comments he used to make toward Lance.
Lance thinks that maybe he was flirting, before.
He thinks that maybe Fall thinks the two of them are dating.
He wonders what ever happened to that girl with the piercings, and who she was, and where she’s gone now. Wonders why she hasn’t approached him since. Wonders if she assumes the same thing that Fall assumes.
Even Avik and Laya have happily welcomed Keith into their group, though the four of them never hang out anywhere other than the bar. Again, Lance is convinced they’re not real friends.
Maybe that’s why he enjoys his missions with Keith so much more. He feels like Keith has his back better than they do.
Also, Keith just seems more real, somehow. The conversations they have, for one thing. Ever since they stopped the hatred act, the amount they have to say to each other seems endless, even without any memories to help bolster their conversations.
They’ll wonder about how this happened to them. They’ll compare the things they know, innately, besides the fact that they were supposed to hate each other. Like how despite the fact that there are no ships on this planet, and Keith’s never even heard anyone talk about going into space, he knows that people do. And Lance realizes he’s right — how else would such an extreme variety of people exist in one place?
They wonder what other planets exist. If they were raised here, or just ended up here. If they came from the same place, which they assume is true, and if they hated each other while they were there or only after they got here. If they even knew each other, back where they came from.
They talk about the things they like to do (“Read,” Keith had said, which wasn’t surprising. “Hang out with you,” Lance had answered, which sounded more revealing than it was. He just likes company, is all. He’s a sociable person) and the things they hate and everything under the sun. Lance is almost always sad to say goodbye at the end of the day, but they’re always together again the next morning, bright and early.
“New assignment,” Keith says, walking into Lance’s apartment. He has a grocery bag on his arm, which he plops onto Lance’s counter — they share most of their groceries these days — and he must’ve picked up the card on his way past the front desk.
“When?” Lance asks.
“Tonight.”
With that, Keith tosses the card onto the living room table for Lance’s examination. It looks the same as usual, with the printed name, location, and crime of the victim. This one’s a guy named Robbbert. Yes, with three ‘b’s. Lance snorts.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he says.
“What?”
“Tell me the most common name you can think of,” Lance says.
“Chad,” Keith answers immediately. “Or Jake. Or… Emily.”
Lance recognizes all of them, of course. Names that would probably come from their home planet. The people here have odd names, sure, but not in a way that seems unfamiliar to Lance. He thinks he’s been used to them for a while.
Even so, Robbbert is stranger than anything else he’s ever heard, simply because it’s so nearly recognizable, and yet butchered so strangely.
“Rob-ba-ba-ba-bert,” Lance exaggerates. “That’s our target.”
Keith grins. He’s cutting up some vegetables on Lance’s cutting board. “I’m sure that’s how it’s pronounced,” Keith says.
Grinning, Lance crosses the room and jumps up onto the counter, almost entirely in Keith’s space, and helps however he can without actually having to move.
They have an early dinner, fuel up Keith’s hovercycle, and then head off, loaded with weapons.
“Rob-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bert’s going down,” Lance shouts into the wind, feeling Keith’s laughter against his chest.
“Stop adding ‘b’s!” he shouts back.
But Lance is determined to annoy Robbbert to death when they get there. He just thinks it’ll be more fun that way.
--
“You didn’t have to make him cry,” Keith says, barely managing to cover his mouth with a yawn. With a three-hour journey by hovercycle to return home — there was an unexpected detour along the way — they’ve decided to book a room at a motel instead of driving well into the early morning, running on fumes and exhaustion.
“I wasn’t trying to,” Lance says. “I guess having a weird name makes you more susceptible to bullying.”
“He probably had a rough childhood,” Keith says.
“And that’s why he murders children these days,” Lance sighs dramatically, making Keith laugh.
With Keith’s hovercycle secured, they make their way into the motel. There’s a girl sitting behind the desk, her head propped on one fist as she reads a book laying open in front of her.
At their approach, she looks up, blowing a bubble with her gum. It pops. “Welcome to the Sleepy Loft Motel,” she drones. “How can I help you?”
“Two rooms, please,” Keith says.
She smacks her gum. “Only got one.”
“Alright,” says Keith. The parking lot was empty. Lance can’t see another sign of life in this motel at all. He thinks maybe the girl doesn’t want to have to key in two different transactions.
Either way, they don’t argue, too tired to care, and the girl takes Lance’s card and swipes it.
“Have a pleasant, sleepy stay,” she deadpans, and then turns the page of her book.
“Charming girl,” Lance says in the elevator.
“That’d be me at a customer service job,” Keith jokes. They both laugh. “I think,” Keith adds.
Their room — 301 — is well kept, despite Lance’s initial wariness of the motel itself. But it smells good and looks clean and, well, there’s really only one problem.
“You like to cuddle?” Lance jokes, staring at the bed. Singular.
“Can’t say I’ve ever done it before,” Keith returns. And it’s hilarious to the two of them, because they both have no idea if they’ve ever done it before, and so the tension breaks.
Lance uses the bathroom first — he has an unfortunate amount of blood on him, because, well, Robbbert murdered kids, what do you expect? — and as it washes off in the shower, he’s surprised that the bubblegum girl didn’t say anything to them.
Neither of them brought an overnight bag, but Lance figures his boxers are clean enough to keep wearing, and he washes his clothes as well as he can before hanging them to dry. The motel even provides toothbrushes and toothpaste, so Lance takes advantage of that as well.
When he emerges, Keith is ready and waiting to take a shower himself. He takes one look at Lance before disappearing quickly into the bathroom, his cheeks pink.
Lance occupies himself by sitting on the bed and flipping through the breakfast menu, which they’ll probably order from in the morning.
He already has a mental list in his head.
Orange juice for Keith, because Keith is weird. Like, he claims it’s weird to start the day without a cup of juice. One time he opened Lance’s fridge, shut it abruptly, and said, “You don’t have any juice?”
Lance had shrugged. “I don’t really drink juice.”
And Keith had just stood there. “What do you drink in the morning?” he’d said. And then, before Lance could answer, and as if this answer in and of itself was preposterous: “Water?”
Since then, Lance has always stocked up of juice. For Keith, the maniac who can’t taste water first thing in the morning. No, it has to be juice.
Lance will get coffee, a drink he enjoys but never makes himself, because it’s too much work, honestly. Also because he generally has more energy than he knows what to do with. But hell, this is practically a vacation, the two of them staying in a motel, so he’ll get coffee if he wants to.
Keith will likely order the pancakes. Or the waffles. Or the French toast. Every time they get breakfast together, Keith has to sit there for a full ten minutes just staring at the options. Always these three options, too, never any of the others. Not oatmeal. Not omelets. Not even a breakfast sandwich.
No, Keith must debate between these three nearly identical breakfast foods and fully imagine himself eating each one in order to decide what he’s in the mood for.
(“Just pick one,” Lance had said, weeks ago. Keith had scoffed.
“I can’t. They’re all good in different ways.”
“How so?” Lance has asked. To him, they were all too similar and all too sweet. But of course, by now he knows that Keith has a sweet tooth to rival a child’s. The juice, of course. One of his three breakfast options. Chocolate, of any and all types. Candy, though he prefers this less than chocolate. Anything with an absurd amount of sugar, really.
As if this was a ridiculous question, Keith’s eyebrows had furrowed. “Not everyone can make French toast right,” he’d said.
“Who can?”
“I can’t remember,” Keith had said breezily. “I’ll know it when I eat it. But some places, you order French toast and it just doesn’t hit the spot.”
“Right,” Lance had said.
“Waffles and pancakes are almost the same, but they’re not.”
“Of course.”
Keith, apparently catching onto the fact that Lance was teasing him, pressed on with a newfound determination. “Pancakes are for dipping in syrup, waffles are for being drizzled. Waffles are better with toppings and whipped cream. Pancakes are better if you’re starving, and if you’re not in the mood for a bit of a crunch.”
“Wow,” Lance had said. “You really have put a lot of thought into this. So, which one will you order?”
Keith’s face had fallen. “I’m not sure yet.”)
Based on Lance’s knowledge of Keith, he’s pretty sure he’s going to end up ordering the pancakes. They ate dinner hours ago and haven’t eaten since, so he’ll likely be starving. Plus, Lance has an inkling that he likes dipping into the syrup rather than drizzling it.
Lance will order a breakfast sandwich of some type. And though Keith will claim he should’ve ordered a different breakfast item at least three times while they’re waiting for their food to be delivered, he’ll end up being happy with his choice once it arrives.
He always is.
Lance is just sitting there, staring at the menu and thinking fondly of Keith, when the door opens and Keith appears in a cloud of steam.
Lance very suddenly realizes why Keith blushed when Lance first exited the bathroom. He hadn’t even really noticed it at the time, but he can feel himself blushing now, and it’s because of Keith. He’s just standing there, dressed only in boxers, likely having washed his clothes like Lance did.
Before either of them can stay like that any longer, staring at each other and feeling the tension and embarrassment rise between them, Keith breaks out of the moment by taking a step toward the bed. “I saw a fuel station further down the road. We can refuel there tomorrow morning.”
“Perfect,” Lance says. “I found a room service menu.” He wiggles it in the air.
“Breakfast in bed,” Keith says happily. He flops onto the bed next to Lance. For a moment, they just sit there. Lance feels that tension rising in him again, because he can’t stop staring at Keith. At his wet hair, or the droplets of water on his body, or the way his hip bones extend far enough that there’s a gap between his boxers and the center of his stomach. A little shadow, big enough to fit Lance’s finger.
And then Keith breaks it again. “I’m glad we lost our memories,” he says decidedly.
A strange, disbelieving grin sneaks onto Lance’s face. “Really?” he says, not entirely able to hide his amusement.
“Yeah,” Keith says simply. “Whatever I forgot, I think it was worth it. Because I don’t think we ever would’ve overcome our differences without forgetting them. And… I’m glad we’re friends. Whatever the cost.”
Lance stares down at him. Keith’s eyes are closed in relaxation. He seemed like this closed-off person when Lance first met him, but he’s really just a blabbermouth. He’ll say the most embarrassing things sometimes. Things that Lance would have to work himself up just to admit in his own mind before he could ever say them out loud.
And Keith just says them the moment they cross his mind. Things that turn Lance’s insides to mush. Things that make Lance grin, shake his head, and thank the universe that somehow, someway, he ended up right here, with Keith.
“Me too,” Lance says softly.
Keith opens his eyes then. Looks at Lance and smiles. It’s funny, because the first time Lance saw him smile, he felt this deep pull of recognition and wondered when he ever would’ve seen it before. Now, he sees it every day.
“We better get to sleep,” Keith says. “We have a long drive tomorrow.”
“After breakfast in bed,” Lance reminds him. Keith leans over and turns off the light on the bedside table. The room is instantly dark, and Keith shifts to get under the covers before turning on his side, facing away from Lance.
And Keith’s just laying there, curled up under the covers as the comforter rises and falls slightly with every one of his breaths.
It’s dark in the room except for this strip of moonlight sneaking in through the curtains, highlighting a chunk of Keith’s hair and his ear and somehow that’s enough.
That’s enough to drive Lance over the edge, over the breaking point, for him to realize that it doesn’t matter what he can’t remember or what he’s forgetting because he feels so strongly about Keith. He thinks about him every day, misses him whenever he’s gone, and is so happy the second he’s back. It’s just so obvious, what he feels and what he hasn’t even bothered to deny, because somehow, it’s never crossed his mind before this moment.
Lance doesn’t even get the chance to overthink it. One moment he’s just sitting there, staring at Keith and the strip of moonlight and the pattern of his breaths. And the next he’s reaching out as if his arm isn’t his own and placing it on Keith’s shoulder, as if Keith didn’t lay down less than a minute ago, as if he definitely isn’t just lying there, still awake, as he only just begins to try to fall asleep.
The second Lance touches him, he stirs. He pushes himself up with his left elbow and turns to face Lance, the moonlight now shining on his eye, on the corner of his lip.
“Lance?” he says. “Is everything okay?”
Every one of Lance’s mental facilities have shut down. He’s not even thinking at this point — his heart is just beating, his lungs breathing, his body acting entirely of its own accord even though his brain’s stopped responding.
Because without a single thought from his mind, he’s leaning over. The strip of moonlight disappears from Keith’s skin because Lance is blocking it. His right hand tilts Keith’s face and then they’re kissing.
It doesn’t seem possible. He should’ve been shoved away by now. But Keith responds immediately, without hesitation, and he pushes himself up enough to grab Lance’s arm and squeeze, holding him there.
“Lance,” he breathes.
“Is this okay?” Lance asks. They’re so close. Lance’s heart is pounding. He wants Keith even closer, wants to hug him as tight as he can and kiss himself into oblivion.
“Yes,” Keith says, and then laughs. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Lance pulls away just enough to look at him. For that strip of moonlight to come back, now lighting up on Keith’s teeth. He’s grinning.
“I don’t know,” Keith says. “It’d sound insane.”
“What?” Lance repeats.
Keith groans, leaning forward and pressing his head against Lance’s shoulder. “I just — I love spending time with you. I thought I was the only one who felt that way, and then you said you agreed.”
“Of course,” Lance says.
“And I thought I was the only one who felt this way about you. And then you kissed me.”
Lance kisses him again, just because he can. “I thought I was taking a risk here,” Lance admits. “Imagine driving those three hours tomorrow if this had gone wrong.”
Keith struggles out of the blankets. Plants himself on Lance’s lap. “I think I’m going to fall madly in love with you,” he says. Because he doesn’t think. He just says. Just like always.
Except Lance is grinning, shaking his head and restraining himself from just kissing Keith throughout the night, because it feels important that he says, without thinking much himself, “I think I already am.”
Why else would he love spending so much time with Keith? Why else would he note all these seemingly insignificant little details about him, like what he might have for breakfast, or how he always chooses rock in rock-paper-scissors, or how he seems so shy until he knows you, is close enough to you, to suddenly become an open book?
How could Lance not be falling in love with Keith when his meticulous notes about his life, originally about his days spent here and the people he’s met and the town and his forgotten bank account and how his job works, has turned almost entirely into a series of notes about Keith? Pages filled up with all the funny little details about him. Things that he’s not willing to forget, things that he wants to be able to remember, in case he ever spontaneously loses his memory again?
He could he not be in love with Keith already?
Keith laughs, the sound light and adorable and right against Lance’s lips, and then they’re kissing again, Lance’s heart pounding in his ears. First a thump, thump, thump. And then a beep, beep, beep.
When Lance opens his eyes, Keith isn’t on his lap. They’re not even in the motel. The walls surrounding Lance are white, and he’s somewhere else, somewhere new, and for a moment he panics, thinking he forgot everything all over again. Of course, then he realizes that he hasn’t — he remembers it all perfectly well — so he allows himself a moment to take stock of the situation.
He’s lying on what’s unmistakably a hospital bed. The beeping is that of a heart monitor, and all sorts of tubes are hooked up into him. If he’s not in a pod, then it’s because he has an injury the pods can’t heal.
And then, moments after thinking that, memories return. Or, they don’t return — they’re just there. Lance is blindsided by the amount he forgot, by the fact that he ever could’ve forgotten in the first place.
Voltron.
His friends — family, really — that close-knit group of people he’d been longing for so desperately. Hunk and Pidge and Shiro, Allura and Coran.
Keith.
God, they’re such fucking idiots.
How did it take them so long?
“Jesus,” Keith mutters, and Lance realizes he’s not alone in the room. He looks over at Keith, and then he can’t help grinning.
“How in the world did we manage to fall in love twice?” Lance jokes, pushing himself into a sitting position. His husband looks beyond grumpy, glaring at the ceiling and no doubt pissed about the ordeal they’ve been through.
The anger will come for Lance, too. But for now, he’s just relieved. He’s so happy. So glad that he remembered, and that Keith is here, and that they’re together. That they remember.
The way they got together wasn’t too dissimilar the first time around. There was their rivalry, of course. Mostly one sided, Lance will admit. There was some jealousy there. A large amount of attraction.
And then space, and the war, and realizing that what Lance felt for Keith wasn’t hate at all — he hated the war, he hated the Galra (well… most of them), and he hated watching his friends get hurt. And Keith… was one of his friends. One of the people he would jump in front of a bullet for without even thinking.
They all grew close, a family of friends bound together by their experiences. Keith broke out of his shell. Somehow, the two of them started hanging out alone on occasion. Moments when everyone else would trail off to bed, but the two of them would stay up to finish the movie. Or times when Keith would be lost in a space mall and everyone would be looking for him, but Lance would find him in a bookstore.
Lance would walk into Keith’s room, would start a conversation by complaining about something else, and hours later he’d still be there, sitting on Keith’s bed, the two of them having drifted through so many topics that neither would be able to trace their way back to the beginning if they tried.
Their first kiss was after a battle, not in a bed. And it was Keith who kissed Lance, not the other way around. Their feelings were obvious at that point, and with no more reason to doubt themselves, they jumped straight into a relationship.
They’re still them, of course. They bicker sometimes. Argue. But Keith softens when Lance puts a hand on his arm, and Lance forgets his argument without fail whenever Keith kisses him. They’re perfect for each other, and that’s why they decided to get married, two and half years ago.
It was a small wedding. Just them and their friends, on this very ship, but it was perfect.
Until, of course, they went to the planet Urlung and gravely offended the king. He was furious, and he sentenced the two of them to an eternity of a false life. A simulation.
It was expertly designed, really. Not even Hunk and Pidge could make a simulation like that. It felt totally real, and even now, it feels as if Lance just left whatever planet that was, rather than something that was simply a mindscape in his own head.
There wasn’t even any time for Allura to negotiate. They’d been unarmed, the meeting intended to be civil, and Lance and Keith had been dragged away from their friends. Lance can remember his own panic — extreme, cloying, desperate — as the device had been placed onto his head.
“You’ll enter the simulation as enemies and with no memories,” the king had boomed. “And you’ll stay there forever. The only way to end the simulation is to remember.” Lance had exchanged one last, terrified glance with Keith. And then he’d woken up, walking on a dirt road and realizing he existed.
It was a brilliant plan, really. To have no memories, no friends that you know of, and not be able to disable the simulation without remembering who you really are.
A brilliant plan for anyone other than the two of them, anyway. Two people who started as rivals in the real world and fell in love despite that. The king didn’t even simulate the added challenge of a war. Really, there was nothing stopping the two of them from falling in love again, from remembering the strongest feeling they’ve ever had.
Lance crawls out of his bed, disconnecting the tubes and wires attached to him and wobbling over to Keith.
“Hey, handsome,” he says.
Keith glares at him, as if he’s the one he’s angry at.
“Grumpy,” Lance whispers, poking Keith’s nose.
“I’m pissed,” Keith says. “How much time did we lose? How did Voltron manage without us?”
“It wasn’t that long,” Lance says, now holding Keith’s hand. Doing damage control. Massaging his fingers and palm and up his wrist. “Three months isn’t forever, and that’s if time is even the same in the simulation.”
“Felt the same,” Keith mutters. And then, abruptly, “Also, you kissed that girl.” He’s glaring at Lance, as if Lance had any idea he was in a committed relationship at the time.
Lance snorts, and Keith glares harder, and that’s when Lance says, “C’mere.”
That’s all it takes. Keith pushes himself up, and then they’re wrapped around each other, kissing like they haven’t seen each other for years, when just moments ago, they were kissing for their second first time in a motel bed. This time, it’s Lance who laughs.
“What?” Keith grumbles.
“It’s just — we’re soulmates,” Lance says. “We’re totally destined to end up together. No matter what.”
“Soulmates aren’t real, Lance,” Keith says.
“Babe,” Lance says, gesturing dramatically between the two of them. “We were rivals twice. Seriously, who gets to fall in love with the same person two times?”
“People who get back with their ex’s,” Keith points out, and Lance just — he loves him so much. He’s ridiculous. And adorable. And their friends are probably halfway through the five stages of grief and they should really go and tell them they’re awake.
So Lance coaxes Keith out of his bed with lots of kisses, and Keith eventually follows just so that they can stand there for a moment, hugging and leaning against one another, finally back home, back with their family.
And then they get dressed. Someone left their clothes here for them, apparently just in case they woke up, and Lance appreciates their team’s faith in them.
It’s a serious matter, and they should probably be rushing down the halls to alert their friends that they’re fine, but as they’re walking hand-in-hand, a memory pops into Lance’s head, and he’s reminding Keith of that time they chased that criminal who was running with chainsaws, and then Keith’s laughing and talking about how popular they were, and how Fall was totally crushing on Lance, and then Lance turns it around and says Keith was crushing on him harder, at which point Keith bursts out with— “You kissed me!”
And then they’re standing on the bridge, surrounding by their gaping friends.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Pidge yells, and then throws some sort of invention to the ground, where it shatters. No doubt she was intending on getting them out on her own. Or perhaps entering the mindscape herself to help them remember.
“Sorry Pidge,” Lance says, but then he has an armful of Pidge, and Shiro is hugging Keith, and all their friends surround them and toss them around like pinballs, hugging them and thanking them and laughing and crying.
Lance realizes he’s crying, too, and he’d be more mad at that king and his unreasonable stunt if he weren’t so happy right now.
“God, tell us all about it,” Pidge says.
“How did you get out?” Hunk adds.
“How did you remember?” Allura demands.
Lance looks at Keith. Grins. Keith rolls his eyes, because Lance was right about one thing — Keith is a total open book, but Lance is still the one with the most access to that privilege. He can still be pretty closed off around the others. When it’s stuff he’s embarrassed about, at least.
“Keith loves juice,” is what Lance says.
“What,” says everyone. Even Keith.
“Keith loves juice, and he can’t ever pick what he wants for breakfast — unless it’s Hunk’s French toast,” he adds, remembering suddenly. “And he’d steal candy from a baby if he got the chance.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“And he always chooses rock and he’s beautiful in the moonlight and we fell in love all over again. We just… remembered. Our love.”
“That’s beautiful,” Allura says, at the same time that Pidge pretends to throw up behind her.
They weren’t gone three months, it turns out, but three weeks is still a pretty long time when you have no idea what’s happening to your friends. Of course, Voltron would have nothing to do with Urlung after that stunt, so they left them high and dry.
And now life’s back to normal. Allura asks them if they need some time to refamiliarize themselves with their lions, but it’s all right there in their memory again. So they’re going to go on a mission with everyone in just two days, and for now they get to relax.
Keith, despite all the good news, is still grumpy.
“What’s wrong?” Lance asks him, once it becomes evident that he’s not just in a mood. He’s almost afraid that Keith was serious about being upset with Lance for kissing that girl, though Lance had been sure he was (mostly) joking.
Keith huffs. “I hated losing you.”
“You didn’t lose me.” They’re laying in Keith’s bed. Keith on his back, and Lance sprawled on top of him, because he came into his room and flopped onto him immediately.
It’s funny, because in the simulation, Keith came to Lance’s apartment every day. But in real life, Lance has almost always gone to Keith’s room. How did so many things switch in that simulation? And yet stay exactly the same?
Keith pouts, and Lance realizes why he hated seeing that girl pout. Because she wasn’t Keith. And it isn’t cute unless it’s Keith doing it.
“I almost did,” Keith says. “I hate that he made us feel that way. That I thought I hated you. That I can be… manipulated, like that.”
“But you can’t,” Lance argues. “You weren’t. He tried his best, with his best technology, and we were stronger than him. We were never in any danger of losing each other.”
Keith’s hand climbs into Lance’s hair. Tugs lightly at the strands. “You think so?”
Lance thinks back to that terrifying moment. With the contraption on his head, his friends yelling at the king, the servants fastening the final restraints. He remembers locking eyes with Keith, who looked horrified, and feeling a burst of determination inside himself.
I won’t lose you, he’d thought. I’ll remember you.
And, with sudden clarity, Lance remembers that very first day. The confusion. The strangers. And Keith — the one person he’d remembered. Sure, that alone hadn’t been enough to break them out of the simulation, but Lance doubts the king even intended for them to recognize each other. Yet they both did, their love too strong, and they fell in love all over again.
Lance laughs, and Keith squeezes him harder, mostly in annoyance.
“What?” he snaps.
“Even from that first day, we remembered each other,” Lance says. “The king programmed the hate, but you should’ve just been a stranger that I hated. Instead, I knew who you were. You knew me.”
“Huh,” Keith says.
“And we fell in love all over again, in entirely new circumstances. We’re soulmates, babe.”
“Shut up,” Keith says, annoyed and yet fond, and Lance presses a kiss to his chin. He knows, in the same way that he knows that Keith would use rock in a game of rock-paper-scissors, or that he’d duck if Lance aimed high, that he’s fine now. That it’s resolved. That they’re soulmates.