Archive of Our Own ^beta

‘WHAT?!’ shrieked Lance with all the indignation of a cat thrown into a tub of water. As his body jerked upright, Keith, who had had his head propped up against his shoulder, scowled as he lost the comfort of his pillow.

‘It’s not a big deal,’ he complained, defensiveness burning at the edges of his words.

‘NOT A BIG DEAL?!’ Lance countered, and Keith winced, extricating himself the rest of the way from his boyfriend’s arms lest he go deaf from the sheer volume and intensity of his exclamations. ‘But you… you’ve never… you’ve never…’

‘And apparently you never learned how to finish a sentence,’ Keith finished, flopping back into the couch cushions and crossing his arms over his chest. ‘There, we’re even.’

‘We are not even,’ Lance shot back, pouting like a toddler that was told he had to share his toys. ‘Back me up on this, ‘Llura.’

‘I’m afraid I have to side with Keith on this one,’ she said apologetically, tucking her legs up next to her on the recliner. Keith thanked whatever powers there may be every day for having at least one sane friend among his group; or at least, one person who wouldn’t take Lance’s side over his just to watch him, and he quotes, ‘blow a gasket’.

‘It isn’t much of a mainstream activity,’ she continued. ‘Plenty of people have never been.’

Lance’s jaw dropped open, and Keith smirked, reaching up to poke it closed, but Lance grabbed his finger just as it made contact, and then the one on the other hand when he tried it again.

‘Of all people, I thought you would be on my side, ‘Llura,’ he huffed.

Keith tried to pull his fingers free, but Lance only held onto them tighter. They exchanged a look, the chequered flags of a challenge hovering between them, and immediately broke into one of their, admittedly, ridiculous games of tug-of-war.

Allura only shrugged in reply, smiling into her mug as she took another sip of cocoa and watched the two of them struggling for dominance. Keith pressed his foot into Lance’s stomach, but the taller boy was undeterred, using his abnormally pointy elbows to stab Keith’s shins into submission.

‘I think it’s nothing short of a miracle that Lance hasn’t forced you to go yet,’ Pidge said from the rug. She didn’t even look up from her laptop, movie thumbnails rolling across the lenses of her glasses as she scanned the streaming site. ‘How about this one?’ she asked Hunk.

The older boy leaned over thoughtfully before shaking his head and the scrolling continued.

‘Yeah, if anything this is your fault, Lance,’ mused Hunk, munching on a peanut-butter cookie.

Well, would you look at that: it seemed Keith’s gaskets had been spared tonight.

‘Look, I’ve been busy, okay!’ Lance snapped and Keith used the distraction to finally wrestle his captive fingers free, yanking Lance back onto the couch on top of him in a confused pile of limbs.

Lance scowled, his face crinkling up in an adorable display of displeasure, and he huffed as he twisted onto his back, pillowing his head in Keith’s lap. Pleased with himself, Keith allowed it, teasing the strands of his boyfriend’s hair between his fingertips as said boyfriend continued to stick out his tongue in a childish show of revenge for his loss.

Just as Keith was finally getting comfy again, settling back into the couch cushions and tuning into Pidge and Allura’s discussion of the feminist benefits of making Barbie at least bisexual, no doubt sparked by the latter’s suggestion of Barbie in the Nutcracker, Lance chose that moment to bolt upright like a corpse returned to life.

‘Holy crow!’ he gasped. ‘I’ve been too busy to take my boyfriend on one of the most cliché dates there is! What kind of boyfriend am I?!’

Keith sighed. Here we go.

‘Lance, it doesn’t matter,’ he said, leaning forward and dropping his chin onto the boy’s shoulder to catch his eye. ‘I don’t care.’

He didn’t really expect it to work – once Lance got an idea in his head, it was almost impossible to counteract the whirlwind to follow. Three months of dating had taught him that sometimes it was better not to try since Lance always ended up getting his way anyway. At least it was never anything harmful; to anyone but himself, that is.

‘But I do,’ Lance whined, turning his full attention on Keith, and oh no; Keith knew that look. Lance’s eyes were glistening with a cocktail of emotions, perfectly balanced in order to achieve optimum results in getting him whatever he wanted. It was the most effective puppy-dog look Keith had ever seen; but then again, that could have been because it was Lance, and Keith was gay and weak.

‘Lance,’ he groaned in frustration, drawing his head back. ‘Everyone’s going home for the holidays in, like, two days. We don’t have time.’

‘Well, actually…’

Keith’s head snapped around, and he levelled a warning glare in Hunk’s direction. The big guy either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

‘We could technically go tonight?’ he suggested. ‘We were only gonna watch the same old trashy Christmas movies anyway.’

Keith hadn’t really been all that excited about watching crappy Christmas movies in the first place, but the alternative that was being proposed didn’t have much potential for anything other than major embarrassment at his expense. Lance already teased him enough; he didn’t want to give him any further ammunition.

But damnit, Keith looked over at his boyfriend and his entire face had lit up brighter than the Christmas tree in the corner (which was saying something, because Hunk and Lance’s mini-tree, though only two feet tall, could rival a radioactive archangel dipped in glitter). This was worse than the puppy-stare. Keith could ignore the puppy-stare if he really tried at it, but when Lance looked like this, it was like trying to deny yourself the sense of smell in a freshly-stocked bakery; to do so would mean to give up breathing altogether.

‘Well,’ Allura said, setting down her mug and uncurling from her spot on the recliner, ‘you know I’m up for it.’

‘What the Hell,’ relented Pidge. ‘All the best-worst movies always get vetoed anyway.’

‘YES!’ cheered Lance, leaping up from the couch and knocking Keith in the back of the head with what had to be one of his razor-sharp elbows, judging by the fact he felt like he’d been stabbed. ‘Do you think the others will want to come? I’m gonna call them!’

‘Seriously, Lance?’ Keith grunted, massaging his wound. ‘You really think everyone’s just gonna drop everything to go ice-skating?’

‘Uh, yeah?’ Lance replied pointedly, cocking his hip in the way he always did when he was getting impatient, which was often when he was around Keith. Keith had started seeing that little cock of the hip as an invitation to mess with his boyfriend, to see how far he could stretch his patience on matters of little importance. Just last week, he’d managed to convince Lance that he believed that the best side of a bagel to butter was the bottom. No cutting. No toasting. Just a plain bagel with a dollop of butter spread over the flat side. It had been hilarious.

Lance just miraculously cared about every little thing so much, and while it was annoying at times, it was also infuriatingly endearing. Here he was, trying to convince Keith that he was some kind of heathen for having never gone ice-skating, and somehow, Keith’s traitorous brain had the audacity to convince him that it was actually cute.

‘Ice-skating,’ lectured Lance with a finger raised in the air as if in an impression of Coran, ‘is an amazing, magical, life-changing activity, and I bet the reason you’re such a grumpy-puss is because –’

‘Grumpy-puss?’ Keith questioned, raising a brow sceptically.

‘—is because,’ Lance went on, narrowing his eyes, ‘you’ve never been before. Well, I won’t stand for it, mullet. Just call me Viktor Nikiforov, because I’m about to sweep you off your feet and turn you into the sexiest bowl of katsudon there ever was.’

‘Literally end me,’ said Keith, dropping his face into his palm. ‘Why are you so obsessed with this anyway?’

Lance was uncharacteristically quiet for a total of 0.5 seconds which immediately aroused Keith’s suspicion, causing him to look up curiously.

‘It’s nothing,’ he blurted. ‘You’re my boyfriend, right? I’m allowed to want to take you on dates. Who are you, the date-police? I think you’re obsessed!’

Keith opened his mouth to reply, eyeing the dusting of red across Lance’s cheeks, but Allura set a hand on his shoulder, squeezing him reassuringly.

‘It won’t be all that bad, Keith. I’ve been skating since I was a little girl and it’s always been a wonderful experience.’ She tipped her head. ‘You trust my judgement, don’t you?’ She fixed him with what Keith liked to call the queen’s stare, daring him to argue with her.

Keith looked at her wearily. ‘Of course, I do. It’s him I don’t trust.’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of his boyfriend.

He fake-gasped. ‘You wound me, Keith.’

‘Actually, ten bucks says you’ll be the one wounding me. You’ve already managed it once tonight.’ He pointed flatly at the back of his head.

Lance grinned and plopped back onto the sofa, planting a kiss on his hair at the site of his injury and then moving to drop one on his cheek which was rapidly growing warmer. Keith wasn’t really one for PDA, but Lance might as well have it tattooed on his forehead.

‘I promise I’ll protect you, babe.’

‘Ew,’ grimaced Pidge at the same time Hunk let out an ‘Awwwww’. ‘Stop being gross,’ she ordered, snapping her laptop closed. ‘Are you gonna let us take your skating virginity or not?’

‘It might as well be me,’ crooned Lance. ‘I already took your –’

Keith acted fast, smacking a hand over his mouth with enough force to send both of them sprawling backwards into a pile on the couch. To his irritation, the idiot was giggling under his palm, little hot puffs of air lighting against his skin.

‘What did I literally just say?!’ thundered Pidge, covering her own ears. Even Hunk and Allura looked uncomfortable, faces twisted in matching grimaces.

‘Mfsorry, couldn’ resist,’ he choked through the hand, no doubt sensing Keith’s mortification even if he couldn’t see his face from his position against Keith’s chest.

‘I will go,’ said Keith slowly, a threat glinting in his eyes, ‘if you agree never to make a joke like that again.’

Lance flinched a little under his glare, which Keith was pretty proud of considering he couldn’t even see it, and he seemed to consider the proposition for a moment. ‘Howf about ‘til New Yearfs?’

Keith’s scowl deepened, but he knew that was probably the best he was gonna get.

‘Deal,’ he grumbled. Lance had the nerve to plant a soft kiss against Keith’s palm just before he removed it, and Keith growled, shaking it out and settling his hand against Lance’s stomach, dismally burying his face in his boyfriend’s hair.

‘What did I just agree to?’ he moaned as Lance started to play with his fingers.

‘Don’t worry, babe,’ Lance cooed, reaching his free hand up to comb through Keith’s bangs. ‘It’s gonna be perfect.’

God help me.

Keith still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten here: bullying; badgering; Lance’s face, lit up like a radioactive Christmas tree, melting all his protests into pathetic puddles of mush? He was sure it was some combination of the three.

Whatever the cause, he was here now, shivering at the entrance to the closest ice-rink and trying to glower his rising anxiety into submission as he asked himself how he always managed to get dragged into these situations. It wasn’t that he didn’t like hanging out with his friends; neither did he have a problem with trying new things. He just hated trying new things in front of Lance.

‘Don’t look so sour, lad!’ sang Coran, slapping him heartily between the shoulder blades and knocking all the breath out of his lungs. ‘You’re going to have a fantastic time, just you wait!’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Keith coughed and gasped. ‘You’re basically a professional.’

‘Was a professional,’ the man emphasised. ‘I’m a bit rusty these days.’

‘Oh, nonsense, Coran,’ smiled Allura. ‘This man taught me everything I know.’

‘Well, I’m your godfather,’ he said, puffing up with pride. ‘It’s my God-given duty to raise you right, and what kind of poor, deprived child has never had the pleasure of –’

‘A-hem,’ came Hunk’s voice from behind Keith, and when Keith turned around to face him, he caught Hunk and Pidge in the middle of pointing emphatically towards him, teeth bared in cautionary grimaces. Despite having obviously been caught in the act, they froze and quickly stowed their hands behind their backs, whistling in a show of nonchalance.

‘Ah, yes, sorry, my boy,’ stammered Coran, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin.

‘Why is the idea I’ve never been ice-skating before so weird to you guys?’ Keith said in irritation. ‘I grew up in foster-home, and before that, I lived in the desert.’

‘Didn’t Shiro ever take you?’ asked Hunk.

Keith winced. ‘Before I moved in with him, most of our time together was spent trying to teach me how not to punch people…’

‘And after?’ Pidge questioned, undeterred.

‘I don’t think Shiro’s ever been ice-skating either.’

‘WHAT?!’

You gotta be kidding me, thought Keith. This was the most headache inducing case of déjà vu he’d ever had.

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ babbled Lance, grabbing Keith by the shoulders and giving him a few urgent shakes. ‘Keith, call him back! I don’t care how early his shift is, this is more important!’

‘Lance,’ he scolded, prying his boyfriend’s hands away and pushing them into his chest, ‘it’s bad enough that you’re forcing me to do this; you don’t need to drag my brother into it too.’

‘Hey, you agreed to this fair and square, Mullet, but… well –' His eyes sparked with a challenge – ‘if you’re feeling chicken…’

‘No,’ Keith retorted with a little too much gusto, hands tightening around Lance’s. ‘We’re doing this.’

‘Good,’ Lance grinned, ‘’cos I already got the tickets. Come on: you need skates.’

Keith let Lance lead him over to the skate-rental, the previous fire quickly fading to be replaced by a cold fear.

Contrary to popular belief, Keith was not, in fact, good at everything he tried (he still had no idea how people got to thinking that) and every time they came across something else that Keith happened to suck at, Lance spent the next week holding it over his head. It was never malicious, and more often than not, it ended with Lance trailing apology kisses up and down his neck (which he didn’t mind so much, he guessed), but despite all that, Keith just really hated the idea of screwing up in front of Lance: of being anything less than the ‘prodigy’ his boyfriend supposedly saw him as.

Keith had never really cared about what people thought of him. Yeah, there was the little problem of him throwing punches at anyone who dared to look at him the wrong way, but he hadn’t done that since he was fifteen, and it was more about asserting himself than anything else; Shiro could say what he liked, but that way of thinking had saved him from a number of beatings while he was growing up.

In reality, Keith had always been quite cocky, almost to the point of indifference. He knew what he was good at, and if anyone tried to imply otherwise, he’d shrug it off as easily as a couple of drops of rain from his jacket.

Then Lance had come along, and that indifference had gone out the window faster than Keith’s textbooks when he’d dropped out of high-school. Keith hadn’t known why at the time, but for some reason, he’d really cared what Lance thought; more so than he’d cared for the thoughts of any of his other new friends. That was where it had all started.

Utter chaos.

They were constantly arguing. Lance always found a way to rope him into some kind of ridiculous competition, and the worst part was that Keith never said no. Why hadn’t he ever said no? Keith wasn’t even that competitive.

But the idea of Lance beating him at anything, of him lording it over him like some kind of Prince Charming with a God-complex: it was enough to boil the blood right in his veins. Keith much preferred it when he was the one who won. It was that look of shock, almost of awe, that Lance never managed to cover up before he saw it. He liked impressing Lance.

It had taken him far too long to figure it out: months of repressed feelings snowballing into shouting matches and pointed insults. Even when he’d finally caught on to his little crush, it had taken him another three months to actually do anything about it.

And man, had he done something…

If there was anything that Keith was good at, it was yelling.

‘Come on, I’m gonna help you tie your laces,’ Lance said, pushing Keith in the direction of the low pleather benches at the edge of the rink.

Keith wrinkled his nose. ‘I know how to tie my own laces, Lance,’ he said as he sat down, looking out over the ice. There were already quite a few couples and families slowly making their way around the rink, smiling and holding hands, completely oblivious to disaster they were about to witness. Keith may be cocky, but he wasn’t an idiot. Humans weren’t meant to travel over ice, so he was under no false pretences that this was going to be easy. He just had to hope that Lance wouldn’t let him fall. Keith had done quite enough falling for that boy over the last year.

Note to self: never say that out loud. Lance would never let it go.

‘Are you sure?’ Lance smirked, a hand on his hip. ‘I’ve never seen you wear anything but boots.’

‘Well, if we’re going by that logic, does that mean you don’t know how not to be annoying?’

‘Oh, ha ha,’ snarked Lance, crouching down and pulling one of said boots off Keith’s foot. ‘Ugh, and apparently you don’t know how to wash your socks either.’

Keith grinned, extending his foot out in front of Lance’s nose. ‘Oh, does it- does it smell bad? Are you sure? Do you want to check again?’

‘Stop! Ew, Keith!’ Lance laughed, batting his leg away. ‘You’re actually the worst!’

‘Me?’ Keith scoffed. ‘I’m not the one who farts in our bed!’

Lance’s eyes widened, and Keith was confused for a moment. He shouldn’t be that surprised by the accusation, considering Keith kicked him in the shins for cutting loose under the sheets at least once a week.

Then he realised what he’d said.

Our bed.

Keith’s chest suddenly felt very tight, his jaw snapping into a hard line and his fingers curling painfully around the lip of the bench. He starting scanning Lance’s face, looking for any sign of discomfort or disgust, but instead, Lance’s smile suddenly widened, almost blinding Keith with its aura of pure, unadulterated excitement.

‘Well, maybe I’m just marking my territory,’ he proposed, crossing his arms over Keith’s knees and leaning up towards him. ‘I’m making sure that you don’t roll over onto my side when I’m not there. That’s my spot, Kogane. Don’t even think about putting your crusty-ass mullet anywhere near it.’

Keith was probably silent for too long, judging by the growing uncertainty in his boyfriend’s eyes and the way his hands were slowly curling with tension over his thighs. Lance was probably starting to think that Keith hadn’t meant it and that it had just been some stupid mistake and that now he’d just embarrassed himself by saying all of those wonderful things to reassure him, but all Keith could do was sit there like piece of wet lettuce because he had meant it, and he’d said it and Lance had smiled.

They’d only been officially dating for three months, but already, Keith’s bed didn’t feel the same without Lance in it. He didn’t like sleeping alone anymore; not when he knew what it felt like to have someone – but not just someone: Lance – pressed up against his back, or draped over his chest, or playing with his hair or his fingers or tracing the lines of his abs. His apartment felt empty without him in it. His days felt longer when they didn’t talk – though those days were becoming basically non-existent lately.

Keith was usually quite slow to come to grips with his feelings, especially ones as new and overwhelming as this one, but somehow, he’d never felt quite so sure of anything as this.

He was in love with Lance.

Now, if only he could just say it.

He could feel it resting on the curl of his tongue as he opened his mouth, three little words that should have been easy to say considering how strongly they resonated with every fibre of his being, but he just couldn’t spit them out.

Lance’s eyes were darting between Keith’s eyes and his uselessly gaping mouth, and he looked more and more anxious with every passing millisecond, which only made Keith feel like more of an emotionally constipated idiot, so he compromised by shutting his mouth and instead, tipping forward to plant a kiss against Lance’s forehead.

Once again, Keith didn’t really do PDA, but he knew how much Lance loved it when he did, and that was reason enough for him to love it too, in those little moments.

‘Sorry, I just…’ he mumbled against Lance’s skin, not really knowing what to say, but knowing it needed to be said. ‘I’d give you the whole bed if you asked me for it.’

When he pulled back to check for a reaction, the nervous butterflies in his stomach – the little vermin had been around so often that it was probably about time he started naming them – were immediately assuaged by the pure joy radiating from his boyfriend, and replaced by the happy kind that filled him whenever he caught Lance gay-zing at him, or whenever the boy did something adorably moronic.

Lance was laughing again. ‘You know I’ll remember that the next time you’re hogging all the covers.’

‘Yeah,’ Keith chuckled weakly, dropping his forehead against Lance’s. ‘I’m gonna regret that one.’

‘Hey, losers!’

Their heads both spun towards the rink-side where Pidge and Hunk were leaning up against the wall.

‘Are you actually gonna get on the ice at some point?’ Pidge shouted over, hands cupped around her mouth.

‘Yeah!’ cheered Hunk, pumping his fist in the air. ‘I wanna see Keith fall on his butt!’

‘Wow, okay, you guys really do suck,’ Lance shot back. ‘Can’t you see we were having a moment here?’

‘The rink closes in like an hour,’ retorted Pidge. ‘Have your moments out on the ice where we can mock you for them!’

She kicked off from the barrier and Hunk quickly followed. Surprisingly, he was the steadier of the two, but Keith supposed that made sense. On the way over, Hunk had explained how he’d been skating with Lance since they first became friends; every winter, Lance had dragged him to the nearest rink whenever the urge to skate hit him, and as time went on, Hunk had come to enjoy skating rather than fear it – ‘It’s ice and blades, Keith! Slippery surfaces and sharp objects combined!!!’

On the contrary, Pidge had only been skating with them once last winter (dragging her away from her laptop had supposedly been hailed as some kind of miracle by the group), and a few times before that with her family.

The real ones to watch were Coran and Allura. Coran had skated professionally for a while in his youth, and Allura had grown up entering (and winning) competitions before eventually deciding that it wasn’t what she wanted to do in the long term, though the general consensus among anyone who had seen her skate was that she totally could have gone all the way to the top if she’d wanted to. Keith caught a glimpse of them now, doing some kind of ridiculously complicated manoeuvre that had the other skaters gaping in awe. All he could think was that, in comparison, it was only going to make him look even more like a hippo having a seizure when he eventually got out there.

‘Shall we see if the shoe fits, Cinderella?’ said Lance, sliding back onto his haunches to slip Keith’s skates on.

‘You’re ridiculous,’ Keith sighed, but let Lance have his fun, watching him ooh and ah when the skates fit ‘just right’, and all the while beating himself up internally for missing what was probably going to be the best chance he was going to get to tell Lance how he felt.

Once he’d finished with Keith’s laces – ‘Ow, Lance! That’s too tight!’ ‘If there’s still blood in your toes, they’re not tight enough!’ – Lance hopped onto the bench beside him to fix his own.

Lance, like Allura, had been skating since he was little, but only with his family rather than competitively. Even so, it turns out he was considered pretty good at it, at least by the rest of the group. Despite his nerves, Keith was actually kind of excited to see Lance skate (and maybe take a little bit of attention away from himself).

‘You ready?’ Lance asked, getting to his feet and holding out a hand.

Keith eyed it for a second, unsure. ‘I guess?’

He took Lance’s hand and was swiftly pulled to his feet. It was an odd sensation, balancing all of his weight on two thin blades. The shoes felt like they were squashing every little curve and bump on his feet. He took a hesitant step. Okay, he could do this. This was no problem.

Then they reached the edge of the rink.

He stared down at the lip between the carpet and the ice, and suddenly, he was less sure of himself than he had ever been.

‘Come on, babe, I’ve got you,’ said Lance, still gripping his hand, ‘or are you too scared?’

Goddamnit, Lance always knew exactly how to get under his skin.

Keith stepped onto the ice, and immediately his foot started sliding forward and his grip subconsciously tightened around his boyfriend’s hand.

‘Hey, hey, chill, dude,’ Lance reassured, then paused suddenly, breaking out into a giggle.

‘Lance, I swear to God if that pun was intentional –’

‘It wasn’t, I promise! I’m not making fun of you. Just grab my arms, see?’

Keith did as he was told, and with a few quick breaths, he brought his other foot onto the rink. He immediately scrambled to get a firmer grasp on his boyfriend, everything beneath him suddenly feeling very unstable.

‘That’s it! Now, just lean forward on your front foot and push off from the grip on your toe.’

Keith hesitated, knowing that if he was already feeling so uncomfortable, setting himself in motion was not going to make it any better, but Lance gave his forearms a quick squeeze and Keith sighed. The things he did for this boy.

He pushed off from the back and slid forward a few shaky inches.

‘Yeah, you got it!’

‘Shut up, Lance,’ Keith gritted out, pushing forward another length.

The boy pouted. ‘Why you gotta be so ruuuuude,’ he sang, and Keith probably would’ve whacked him if he hadn’t been the only thing holding him up at that moment. ‘Don’t you know I’m human tooooooo?’

‘Human? Really?’ Keith said, starting to get a handle on what he was supposed to be doing. ‘I thought you were some kind of spiky spider-hybrid with bones.’

‘Hmmm, I don’t know,’ Lance pondered. ‘How do you know I have bones? Have you ever seen them?’

Keith’s lips curved suggestively. ‘I’ve seen one of them,’ he said in a low voice, eyes heavily lidded, and Lance squeaked.

‘No fair!’ he snipped, his face growing redder by the second. ‘You can’t make jokes like that when I’m not allowed to!’

‘That wasn’t part of the deal,’ Keith reminded him smugly. ‘I’m allowed to torture you all I want.’

Lance’s face fell flat and he narrowed his eyes. ‘I could let go any time, you know. You’d be helpless without me.’

‘Wanna bet?’

What am I doing? Keith mentally berated himself. I would definitely be helpless, stop.

‘Well, if you’re gonna be like that…’ Lance hummed, his fingers starting to loosen from around Keith’s elbows, but despite his monumental lack of confidence in his own abilities, Keith refused to back down.

He kept a straight face as Lance released him, backing up a little bit, but staying within reach, arms outstretched, in case Keith should have any sudden problems; condescending, thoughtful, beautiful jerk.

When Keith didn’t move, just stood there like he was trying to balance on a tightrope, Lance quirked a brow.

‘You know, if you’re doing this to impress me, you don’t have to. I already know you suck.’

‘Oh, eat it, Lance,’ Keith snapped, his cheeks heating yet again in both irritation and embarrassment. It was a cheap shot, bringing up his confession like that, and Lance took special pleasure in doing it every time.

Months of pining and self-resentment had all come to a climax one day, when Keith, having lost another one of their pointless contests, had stormed off rather than face another round of Lance’s unbearable gloating. Lance, being apparently equally as obsessed and frustrated, had stormed right on after him, demanding that Keith tell him what the Hell his problem was. He’d finally spat it all out in a fit of hysteria:

‘I want to impress you, okay!’

Lance looked at him like he’d used a slur.

‘You want to impress me?!’ he squawked. ‘Why?!’

‘Because I like you, you idiot!’ Keith yelled back, his voice turning feral. ‘You stand there with your perfect face and everyone loves you and you’re so infuriating and I just want you to like me, but why do I want you to like me? And why am I trying so hard?!’

Lance was staring at him slack-jawed, unbelievably blue eyes pouring over him and Keith was so frustrated he could just cry.

‘You make me so angry!’ he screamed through gritted teeth, raking his fingers through his hair and resisting the urge to send his boot through the flimsy plaster of the wall. Instead, he laid his forehead against it, trying to breathe through all of the emotions threatening to unpick him one stitch at a time.

There were a few seconds in which Keith thought Lance must have walked away, but then came the words that Keith had only ever dreamed of hearing.

‘I do like you!’ Lance roared. ‘I’ve been trying to impress you!’

‘Then what are we even doing?!’ Keith cried, spinning to glare at the other boy.

‘I don’t know!’

They had stared at each other for a moment, and Keith would always remember how that moment had stretched into an eternity, and how taking that first step forward felt like dragging his feet through quicksand; how each one after that came easier and easier until it was almost like he was gliding across the floor.

He remembered crashing into Lance like waves across the rocks, or maybe more like rocks under the waves, Lance’s arms slipping around him and pulling him close, his lips sliding over Keith’s and filling every part of him that had felt empty mere moments before. It was messy and wet and desperate, and almost angry, but it was everything they were and everything they were yet to be.

Even after three months together, they hadn’t stopped trying to impress each other; Lance seemed to conveniently forget that he was included in that every time he brought up the memory, but Keith figured he just liked making Keith miserable. He hadn’t meant to yell, and if he could have chosen how it happened, that certainly wouldn’t have been his top choice. At least he’d said something though. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t. How much longer would their tentative ‘friendship’ have lasted when it was, unbeknownst to one another, causing both of them so much anguish?

But none of that mattered because he had said it, and now he was here, suffering all the same from Lance’s constant teasing and quips and challenges.

And he wouldn’t change a thing.

Lance was still waiting, so Keith, his chest coiling into tight knots, tentatively pushed forward another step – was it called a step? A slide? – and to his surprise, he didn’t end up face-first on the ice. Well, at least, not for the first second.

Without Lance there to regulate his speed, Keith ended up overextending his front leg, and suddenly it was slipping out from under him. He jolted forward, panic pulsing through him as he grabbed desperately onto Lance’s arms in an attempt to stay on his feet.

‘Ah, Keith!’ Lance yelped. ‘Just let go! You’re gonna –’

Keith’s leg had gone about as far as it could go without his body following, and his other knee gave out under the strain, sending him butt-first into the ice and dragging Lance down on top of him.

Keith could hear Hunk and Pidge laughing from the other side of the rink.

‘Stellar work, boys!’ Pidge yelled over.

‘Ten out of ten!’ supplemented Hunk, wiping tears from his eyes. Allura and Coran were stifling giggles into their hands beside him.

Lance pushed himself up onto his hands and knees from where he was sprawled across Keith’s waist. ‘What did I say?’ he sighed in amusement. ‘Helpless.’

‘Shut up!’ Keith retorted. ‘You let me fall!’

‘Because you’re supposed to just let it happen!’ Lance said, clearly amused by the situation.

‘Why would I just let myself fall?!’ Keith replied in exasperation.

‘Because it’s just easier.’ Lance got back to his feet as easily as if they were standing on solid dirt. ‘The first time’s always scary, but now you know it’s okay, you won’t be scared next time.’

‘I wasn’t scared,’ Keith blatantly lied.

‘Sure, mullet. Come on, let’s try again.’

Keith looked hesitantly at the hand his boyfriend stretched out to him and repressed a shudder under the prickle of stares hitting him from every angle.

‘I don’t think I want to,’ he muttered, so quiet he wasn’t sure Lance had even heard him at first, but when he peered up through his bangs, it was immediately apparent how wrong he’d been. Lance looked absolutely crestfallen, unnaturally so, even for someone as dramatic as him.

‘What?! Keith!’ His voice was tinged with panic. ‘I’m sorry, I was just kidding. Please don’t give up. We only just started!’

Keith regarded him with disbelief for a moment, unsure how to react to his boyfriend’s very real distress.

‘Lance, calm down, it’s fine,’ he assured him. ‘I was just kidding. Is everything okay? You’re acting weirder than usual tonight.’

‘What? Yeah, of course! I’m totally fine!’ Lance said in a pitch three octaves higher than it should have been. ‘Everything’s tip-top peachy-keen lickety-split –’

‘Hey!’ announced Hunk, skating to a stop next to them. ‘How ‘bout I help you up there, buddy,’ he grinned, holding out a hand. Keith noted Pidge coming up behind Lance and giving the boy a particularly pointed look as she poked him in the side, to which Lance responded with a faint glare.

‘Uh, thanks,’ Keith uttered, but his attention was still fixed on Lance. He was starting to get a little concerned. Lance didn’t usually act like this unless he was planning something – he was horrible at keeping secrets. He knew it couldn’t be anything bad if Pidge and Hunk were so obviously covering for him, but that only made his curiosity itch even more. Was everyone in on this? When had they had the time to organise it when they hadn’t even known they were going skating until just over an hour ago? Unless… they’d been planning this the whole time? But Keith’s instincts were telling him that hunch was wrong, and they were usually pretty accurate.

What was going on?

Keith, with Hunk and Lance’s assistance, managed to get to his feet without too much of a struggle. Thankfully, no one seemed to be paying him much attention anymore, and he let out a breath of relief.

Lance seemed to have recovered from his bout of awkwardness and his face was now set with a look of determination; one that Keith knew to be dangerous on occasion.

‘Come on, babe. I’m gonna teach you how to skate if it’s the last thing I do.’

After another forty minutes or so, it was starting to look like that statement might be more accurate than Lance had meant it to be. No matter what tricks or techniques Lance and their friends tried, Keith couldn’t tread more than a few inches of ice on his own before he ended up back on his ass. Keith thought he would be the one the most upset about this, but seeing the frustration in his boyfriend’s expression, his own was dwarfed by a strange feeling of guilt.

‘For quiznack’s sake!’ Lance exclaimed, using the faux-curse they’d all adopted in their first semester for the sake of avoiding Shiro’s disapproving glares. ‘Trust my luck that this is the one and only thing the great Keith Kogane sucks at!’

‘Um, thank… you…?’ Keith replied, not sure if that was supposed to be a compliment, an insult, or something altogether removed from that. He clambered to his feet for probably the twentieth time that night – at least he’d gotten pretty good at that now. ‘I’m trying my best.’

The irritation in Lance’s expression smoothed out a touch on hearing Keith’s defensive tone. ‘No, I know, I know. I’m sorry,’ he sighed, and Keith looked at him with concern.

As time had gone on and it had become clearer and clearer that Keith was never meant to put on a pair of skates, Keith had expected Lance to laugh at him, to gloat and tease and poke fun until Keith wanted to punch his teeth in. Instead, Lance had only gotten increasingly distressed. It was so unlike him, and since he was being so emotionally evasive tonight, Keith didn’t know what to do to make it right other than put his all into being better, into not being the thing that was making Lance look so wrong; so resigned. He just wanted to see the excitement of when they first arrived return to Lance’s face. He didn’t like that his sub-par performance was the reason it had disappeared.

He should be angry, he knew: Lance was acting weird and hiding something from him for sure, but some tiny part of him, buzzing around in the back of his brain and clawing at the walls of his heart was wondering, What if it is my fault?

He tried to shake that feeling away. They’d talked about this, if only a little. Keith was new to relationships and this relationship was still pretty new, even if it sometimes felt like they’d been together longer. He was prone to insecurity, and yeah, he’d make the odd mistake from time to time, like leaving his phone uncharged for three days without warning Lance it was because he’d lost the charger, prompting the boy to burst into his apartment thinking he was being ignored. Keith could be an idiot when it came to these things. He was working on it.

He didn’t feel like he’d done anything wrong here, though. It wasn’t his fault he was a hopeless skater.

But what if it was something else he’d done? What if it was something he’d said?

Keith shook his head, furrowing his brows.

‘Lance, I think I’m done,’ he said at last, deciding to cut his losses before the nervous clamp around his heart slipped and turned it into paste.

Panic took over his boyfriend’s features once more. ‘No!’ Lance protested. ‘I can do this. We can do this!’

‘Lance, it’s not working,’ he complained testily, silently begging him to understand. ‘I’m cold and sore and I just don’t want to do this anymore.’

Lance regarded him for a moment before his face finally sagged in surrender. He let out the most elongated groan Keith had ever heard, sounding a little like a donkey stuck on repeat, and dropped his head into the crook of Keith’s shoulder, almost causing him to topple over yet again. They both would have if Lance, even in his current funk, were not still working to keep them upright.

‘It was supposed to be perfect,’ Lance muffled despairingly into Keith’s coat, and Keith’s sour expression softened, his hand coming up to pet Lance’s hair.

‘I’m going to go take my skates off, but you should keep going. You haven’t really had a chance to actually skate because of me.’

Lance’s head jerked up and his face contorted in outrage.

‘I’m not going to fail you and then immediately desert you! What do you take me for?!’

‘You didn’t fail me, and you’re not deserting me either,’ Keith flared back in exasperation. ‘I’m just going to watch for a while. Just because I’m useless, doesn’t mean no one else should have any fun.’

Lance pouted. ‘But I wanted to have fun with you,’ he whined, and Keith rolled his eyes.

‘You told me you were a pretty good skater, right? Well, prove it. How do I know you’re not exaggerating just like you exaggerate everything else?’ Lance wasn’t the only one who could use taunting to get his way.

Lance’s jaw dropped open.

‘I can’t believe this. My own boyfriend calling me a liar. I am shocked! Horrified!’

‘The real question is, does he know how to shut up?’ quipped Pidge in a drive-by and Lance stuck his tongue out at her as she passed.

‘Okay, mullet,’ Lance grinned, the competitive gleam that Keith lived for sparking in his eyes once more and immediately loosening the clamp a few notches. ‘I’ll bite. You just get yourself comfy and watch the master do his work.’

Lance helped him over to the rink exit, and as soon as he was back on the carpet, Keith immediately felt a million times better, all the tension he didn’t realise he’d been holding suddenly dissipating with the introduction of a solid surface.

It didn’t take him long to change his shoes and make his way back over to the rink-side, crossing his arms over the top of the barrier and leaning forward to spectate his friends. Allura and Coran seemed to be in the middle of teaching Hunk how to do some kind of spin, while at the opposite end of the rink, Pidge was obviously antagonising Lance, judging by the wild and angry manner in which he was gesticulating.

She broke away and sped down the rink to join Keith.

‘What did you say to him?’ Keith asked as she came to a stop.

‘I bet him ten dollars he’d embarrass himself in front of you,’ she said, pleased with herself, ‘which pretty much guarantees that he’ll do something stupid just to try and doubly prove me wrong.’

‘Why are you trying to sabotage him?’

She shrugged. ‘I like the chaos and I needed ten dollars. Besides,’ she said, pushing herself backwards away from the wall, ‘you’re one to talk.’

Keith did try to argue with that, but she did have a point. He wasn’t that bad though, was he? He’d never intentionally sabotaged him, right?

He should have known Pidge’s logic was always flawless.

As she darted off, his eyes found their way back to Lance. He was gathering speed now, sending a wave and a cocky grin in Keith’s direction. Keith lifted his fingers in a half-hearted wave and smiled at his dopy boyfriend, wondering if he should have gone in on that bet too. Keith loved his friends, but they had a nasty habit of getting involved in a lot of unnecessary trouble, and Lance was the cause of about 80% of it (Keith and Pidge, admittedly, were probably responsible for a good portion of the remaining 20). It was sort of a miracle that nothing catastrophic had happened as of yet; but then, as Pidge had implied, there was still time.

Keith’s gaze wandered over Lance’s body, all those pointy angles that Keith loved to poke and tease him for suddenly smoothing out as Lance lifted one foot off the ice, his opposite arm stretching forward as he continued to glide. It was an incredible and instantaneous transformation and Keith could feel his eyes widening as Lance straightened up, fluidly twisted into some kind of backward side-step and flashed Keith a quick grin before launching into a short spin.

Oh shit, he was actually good.

He was beautiful.

Keith caught himself leaning just a little too far over the barrier and immediately straightened up, fingers clutching tight around the rim. This was ridiculous. Lance wasn’t even the best skater in the room – Allura and Coran, of course, trumped everyone in that regard – but somehow, watching his boyfriend smiling and floating across the ice like a swan over water had him swooning just like Hunk every time he laid eyes on a fully-loaded burrito.

It was disgusting. Feelings were disgusting. He didn’t want them anymore.

He caught Pidge taking photos of him on her phone and flipped her a middle-finger.

‘Hey, babe!’ Lance yelled over, performing another flourish and then skating with his ass intentionally propped out in Keith’s direction. ‘Like what you see?’

Oh, that asshole.

‘I don’t know,’ Keith replied, having to make a physical effort not to blurt out the words in a flustered mess. ‘I thought you were supposed to be showing me some moves? Any idea when that’ll start?’

Lance almost went crashing into a father and his small child, but after a deft swerve and a bashful apology, he turned back to Keith, leering like a shark.

‘Oh, I’ll show you a move, mullet!’ he barked, turning a few heads.

Keith felt himself mirroring the smile, but the exhilaration was suddenly eclipsed by an intense flash of, Oh God, Pidge was right. What had he just done?

His boyfriend started to skate down the rink towards him, weaving expertly between the other skaters, most of which seemed to have taken the initiative to stay out of his way by now. He was taking his time and Keith could feel his anticipation growing with every little twirl and glance over the shoulder. He was watching Lance’s legs working, his hips swinging, his arms dancing from side to side. And then Keith’s gaze reached his eyes and his heart jumped into his throat.

Jesus fuck, Lance was going to kiss him.

Keith knew that look better than he knew the passcode to his own phone, but this was the first time he’d seen it barrelling towards him from such a distance. Surely Lance wasn’t that stupid?

Scratch that. Lance was definitely that stupid.

What was he supposed to do? Did he just stay still, or did he move closer to meet him; or did he just say screw it and move out of the way – let Lance’s little trick fail.

But he didn’t want it to fail. Some traitorous, love-struck part of him was a little excited at the idea, because Lance was looking at him like he was the only person in the room and Keith loved those eyes and those lips and those ridiculous pointy angles, and he was slowing down now, saying something to Keith with a look alone, something that had him rooted to the spot and waiting to hear the last word.

Love was like a parasite. It made your palms sweat and your pulse race and your stomach churn as if with sickness, but all of those things were only symptoms. The real way in which it harmed you was by eating up your time. You spent hours thinking about it, worrying about it, trying to figure out how to deal with it, all the while it was only growing stronger. Eventually, you couldn’t even remember what it is to live without it.

Keith was miserably love-sick, and his particular parasite was burrowing into his time too – his reaction-time.

Just as Lance was about to close the gap between them, his lips smiling into the soon-to-be kiss, there came a cry from behind him. A cry that came too late to Keith’s love-stuffed ears.

‘Watch out!’

Looking back, there was actually very little that Keith could recall from the following few minutes.

He remembered a lot of shouting, though trying to make out any specific words was like trying to imagine the sound of a fictional animal, the cries of which had never been described to you.

He also remembered a lot of blood, though more through the sour-sweet taste of it coating the inside of his mouth and blocking his nostrils than the glimpses he’d gotten of it streaked across his gloves.

However, the thing most memorable to him about the whole catastrophe, was lying left side down on the scratchy carpet, choking on his own breaths in an alternation between sobs and hysterical giggles as his friends looked on in panic and confusion.

He’d wished in some vague capacity that he could tell them he was only crying because it hurt, and it only hurt because he couldn’t stop laughing. It hadn’t occurred to him, at the time, that maybe they were more concerned about the laughing itself, but the truth was he’d sobered up considerably by this point, or at least enough that he could finally focus on his own thoughts even through the haze of what was most definitely a concussion.

Lance was knelt at his side, shakily dabbing away the red on Keith’s face, his own nose already plugged up by a messy, blood-spotted wad of tissues, and swiping away the odd tear from Keith’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.

Eventually, Keith stopped wheezing and Lance tilted his head, sad eyes and an anxious smile asking him, ‘What’s so funny, baby?’ as he gently gathered the bangs out of Keith’s vision.

Keith let out a final amused puff and slurred an answer that made his boyfriend’s expression spring from concern, straight into that glorious indignity and betrayal that Keith loved so much.

‘I w’s right,’ he rasped with a feeble grin. ‘Y’owe me… ten doll’rs… loser.’

Things hadn’t stayed funny for long.

‘Shiro, I’m totally fine!’ Keith growled, pushing his brother back by the forehead as he tried for the fifth time in the last half an hour to peer into Keith’s pupils.

Keith still hadn’t figured out who exactly he needed to throttle for calling his brother, but he had a strong suspicion it had been Hunk; the big guy didn’t deal well with blood and had therefore been absent from Keith’s sight for a sufficient amount of time to do the dirty deed.

At least Keith knew he had the staff at the ice-rink to thank for the other half of the dad-squad; although, he supposed they couldn’t have known when they called an ambulance that his brother-in-law would be the one to show up. Maybe this was just the universe getting in its weekly ‘fuck you!’ to Keith. As if this day hadn’t been going bad enough already.

‘Adam, help me out, please!’ he begged when Shiro didn’t relent in his attempts to nurse him into an even worse mood.

‘Tashi, dear,’ said the man, completely ignoring Keith’s pleas, ‘if you’re going to keep doing that, at least do it properly.’ He pulled the penlight from his uniform pocket and handed it to his husband, turning on Keith with a flat stare. ‘If you still think I could possibly take your side after the number of times I’ve had you sat in the back of my ambulance these past few years, then you’d be just as well entering the lottery while that optimism lasts.’

Keith swatted furiously at the penlight as Shiro put it to use. ‘I was only unconscious for, what? Thirty seconds? It’s not a big deal.’

He’d gotten a brief account of events from Coran once they’d determined that Keith was lucid enough to actually understand it.

Long story short, Hunk had smashed into Lance from behind – the result of a failed attempt at the spin he was being taught – Lance had been launched quite suddenly into Keith’s face, and then over the barrier to collapse into a pile on top of him. The cherry on top of their little disaster sundae had come with Keith whacking his head off the bench behind him, knocking him out cold for almost half a minute. In all honesty, they were lucky to have gotten away from it with nothing more than a couple of nosebleeds and split lips; that was, ignoring the concussion, because Keith was half-convinced that if he just ignored it, then maybe everyone else might start to too. No luck with that so far.

‘Oh, so you think you know better than me?’ Adam challenged. ‘I’ll just go email all of my old instructors and tell them they’re out of a job. Turns out, people don’t need training to give out medical advice.’

‘You’re a real jerk, you know?’ grumbled Keith, dropping his head back against the wall – or rather he would have if Adam hadn’t quickly slotted a hand into the gap to cushion the albeit gentle blow.

‘I’m a “jerk” because you make me into one,’ retorted Adam. ‘You think I like having to patch you up? You whine. A lot. And it’s usually your fault that you got hurt in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if your brother only married me for the free healthcare.’

‘Aw, that’s not true,’ smiled Shiro fondly. ‘You also look kind of cute in your glasses.’

‘Thank you, dear,’ Adam responded with a tinge of exasperation, gently easing his palm out from between the wall and Keith’s head and reaching out to take back his penlight. ‘What’s the verdict?’

Shiro hummed, turning back to Keith, his brow furrowed in concern. ‘Are you sure you feel alright? You’re not nauseous?’

‘The only thing making me nauseous is you two,’ Keith harrumphed and Shiro rolled his eyes affectionately.

‘Yeah, he’s okay,’ he stated, ruffling Keith’s hair so ridiculously gently that, in fact, it did little more than lightly feather the top few strands.

‘Enough,’ Keith grated, slapping his brother’s arm away once more. ‘Just… make yourself useful and go look for Lance.’

‘Don’t tell me the great and stoic Keith Kogane actually misses his boyfriend,’ Shiro said, amused.

‘Hell no,’ Keith responded, trying not to choke on the lie as it slipped over his tongue. ‘I just need someone to warn me before I have to deal with his weird version of helicoptering again.’

And it was weird: ever since Keith’s brain had started being able to cobble together a full, cognisant thought again, Lance hadn’t quit hovering over him, and he’d somehow managed to accomplish this all without spending longer than fifteen seconds at his side. He’d kept himself busy performing pointless tasks, like seeking out no less than four plastic cups half-filled with water, fetching enough tissues to build a full-scale replica of the Empire State Building, and, until Adam and his colleague had finally arrived, darting between the rink-side and the outside of the building with the supposed intention of flagging down the ambulance, even though one of the staff was already on it. Worse than all of that though, was that Lance kept flitting over to ask Keith if he was really okay, only to flap away again the minute Keith tried to turn the question back on him. It had really started to piss him off.

‘He’s just worried about you,’ tried Shiro, his face pinched sympathetically and Keith rolled his eyes, wincing as it exacerbated his headache.

Of course Lance was worried about him. Keith knew that; knew it from the little V that appeared between Lance’s brows and the twitchiness in his hands as they fluttered over him, searching for yet more injuries that he thought Keith may have hidden from him. That was all fine: that’s what Keith expected from his boyfriend in a situation like this.

What he didn’t expect was the overall twitchiness, like, for Lance, even being near Keith was the equivalent to shoving his own hand inside a naked flame. He couldn’t figure out how Lance could be both so desperate to look after him and yet also so desperate to be as far away as possible from him. He really did feel like he might have done something wrong now; and what if he had? Again, Keith had never been in a relationship before Lance – he hadn’t even come close to one. He had no idea what he was doing. What if he’d said something while he was all looped up on pain? What if Lance had decided that he’d had enough and was just waiting for the right moment to break the news? What had Keith done?

‘He won’t talk to me,’ Keith muttered despondently, scrunching his eyes shut as pain burst through his skull once more. It was getting harder and harder to think with every passing moment because, when he did, he only ended up making loop-the-loops in his own thoughts, leaving him increasingly frustrated and emotionally exhausted. Between the throbbing in his head, the fussing of his brother and brother-in-law, the bright lights glaring off the ice, the sharp and echoing hum of chatter from the staff and his friends at the rink-side, and his ceaseless worrying over where Lance had gone this time, exactly why he was gone and why he hadn’t come back yet, Keith was starting to feel a little overwhelmed. He wondered if he passed out again, would he wake up next to Lance, the taste of gingerbread-spice and chocolate in his teeth and the credits to some awful holiday movie rolling up the screen? None of this would ever have happened. Everything would be okay. He felt his eyes begin to prickle beneath closed lids. Nothing was okay.

‘Lance, not talking?’ snorted Adam, by the sounds of it, packing away supplies. ‘You sure we don’t need to check his head?’

Keith felt his heart lurch as if a noose were looped tight around it because that was another thing; what if Lance was also hurt and upset and alone wherever the Hell he’d gone off to get away from Keith and what if he was passed out somewhere and no one was helping him and… and… and Keith couldn’t do anything. He’d ruined everything.

He flared with a burst of emotion he didn’t have the energy to control.

‘I don’t know!’ he yelled and the two men flinched backwards in surprise. He felt everyone’s eyes on him all of a sudden and he pulled in a shaky breath, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes as the aching behind them increased, promptly drawing them back again at the flash of pain as they came into contact with the bruising there – idiot.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. With me. I don’t know if it’s him or if it’s – if it’s me: if it’s… s-something that I did or…’

To his horror, he cut himself off with something that sounded suspiciously close to a sob and Shiro swiftly pressed a couple of Lance’s tissue offerings into his tear-spattered palms, making it even harder for Keith to hold the new tears back.

‘Hey, you’re okay, you didn’t do anything,’ his brother said embarrassingly gently, and Keith suddenly felt very small, like a child who’d scraped their knee at the park and then had a meltdown in front of the entire playground community. He supposed the comparison wasn’t far from the truth.

‘I’m not crying,’ he lied pathetically while Adam muttered something to an overly-concerned Shiro about side effects and mood-swings, sliding up onto the bench beside Keith and looping an arm around his shoulders.

‘Maybe, we should think about getting you home,’ Shiro said, squeezing his arm and starting to get to his feet, but Keith shook his head.

‘I fucked it up, Shiro,’ he squeaked, his humiliation only deepening with every word that spilled out. ‘I told you I would when we got together and now, he won’t even look at me.’

‘Stop that,’ frowned Adam, giving him an insistent jostle. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I’m an asshole,’ Keith retorted bitterly, his skin stinging all the way down to his neck where the tears had run cold. ‘I call him names and complain when he wants to do things and I can’t ice-skate. I can’t ice-skate.’ He sucked in a trembling breath. ‘He was so excited and then… his face… and I- I ruined everything. And now, he hates me.’

‘You shut your face, Kogane!’

Keith’s head snapped up and his eyes met Lance, face darkened by a splotched array of bruising to match Keith’s own and marching towards the bench with fire in his eyes.

Before Keith could even sniffle out a word, Lance had dropped to his knees, sliding the last few inches towards Keith, forcing Shiro and Adam to jump out of his way and scooping up his hands, holding them tight. Now that he was close, Keith could see the sadness threatening to quench the flames, the shiny rawness of guilt that made Keith’s heart stutter in empathy.

‘What are you even talking about?’ Lance said with disbelief. ‘You didn’t ruin anything, and even if you did, I wouldn’t hate you; I mean, I don’t hate you. Dios, Keith, how could you think that?’

Relief washed over him at the honesty in Lance’s exclamation, although it left behind the acute stinging of betrayal.

‘Then why were you avoiding me?’ he spat out, working to hold back another sob lest it soften the barb.

Lance’s face crumpled and Keith was distantly aware of Shiro and Adam taking their leave to give them some privacy. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ Lance said, voice breaking so suddenly that Keith felt the cracks in his own heart. ‘I’m so sorry, Keith, I really didn’t mean to. It was obvious you were mad at me and I didn’t want to –'

‘Mad?’ Keith burst, his own hands tightening around Lance’s grip in his fervour. ‘Lance, I was annoyed because you were acting weird and I didn’t know if you were okay! Why the Hell would I be mad at you?!’ His voice was shaking along with his bottom lip because it was very clear now that Lance wasn’t okay, and despite Keith’s current inability to communicate his concern without yelling and/or crying, he wanted nothing more than to fix it.

Lance blinked in surprise, and then his face twisted as if someone had just told him two plus two equals five. ‘You’re not mad?! Keith, I friggin’ head-butted you! You have a concussion because of me!’

‘I was worried about you, you idiot!’ Keith cringed at the realisation he’d insulted him again. ‘It wasn’t your fault! I mean, seriously, Lance! Six months ago you broke into my apartment and filled my favourite gloves with peanut-butter; that, I was mad about, but this?’

Lance was trembling. Keith could feel it all the way from his hands, up his arms and see it in his shoulders all the way up to his glistening lapis irises.

‘You’re really not mad?’ his boyfriend uttered, breath tinged with both a wounding hint of fear and an enticing whisper of hope.

‘About the peanut-butter, yes, always, but this? Never, Lance.’

Lance’s shoulders drooped with what Keith hoped was relief, but then his eyes followed and he let out a struggling, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Keith stared at him, incredulous. ‘Abou- about the peanut-butter?’

‘No, not about the peanut-butter!’ Lance snapped, looking back up at him with exasperated, pleading eyes. ‘About… this!’ he said, gesturing vaguely with an elbow since they still had each other’s hands in a death-grip. ‘Everything! You didn’t even want to come here and I was so obsessed with making it perfect and instead I ended up making you miserable and then hurting you and-’

‘I wasn’t miserable,’ retorted Keith vehemently. ‘And you didn’t hurt me: it was an accident. If you hadn’t crashed into me then I would’ve mashed up my face skating anyway.’ Keith paused at the image, feeling a slightly hysterical giggle bubble up his throat, spilling between his lips. ‘Lance, I suck. I really, really suck.’

Lance looked at him funnily for a moment before his eyes went wide and he finally pulled his hands from Keith’s, reaching up the swipe away the fresh tears now trailing down his cheeks.

‘Hey, hey, don’t cry,’ and he said it so sweetly, so full of anguish that it only made Keith cry more. He didn’t even know why. He was tired and in pain and all he wanted was to curl up in Lance’s arms and take a long, warm nap.

‘I’m sorry I ruined it,’ Keith choked out, resting his cheek in Lance’s warm palm and resting his eyes for just a second. ‘I’m sorry I made you think I was mad and for being a… a “grumpy-puss”. And for always making you feel bad.’

Keith coughed out another sob and Lance sighed in the same way that Allura always did whenever her beloved pet mice made a mess of their food dish.

‘Silly mullet. You didn’t ruin anything,’ he whispered and finally, for the first time in what felt like days but what must have realistically been only a little under two hours, he smiled and it was like the heavens opened up and shed their light upon Keith. ‘I like that you’re a grumpy-puss: you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t. You’re like a tsundere house-cat that scowls and complains but you always give me cuddles when I need them. You never make me feel bad.’ He wrinkles up his face as if the mere notion is ridiculous. ‘I don’t care if you’re the best or worst skater in the world – which you are. The last one I mean. I just care that you came and you tried and we had fun. That’s half the fun of being with you: I get to see your smile every time you enjoy something I forced you to do. Rubbing it in your face is good too, of course, but it’s mostly the smile thing.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You… you did have some fun, didn’t you? I didn’t imagine that?’

‘Yeah, I…’ Keith’s chest went tight like a sponge being wrung out only to bounce back into shape, squeezing out the aches and soaking up instead a tidal wave of warmth and longing because Lance was still smiling and his thumb was running gently back and forth across Keith’s cheekbone and he was looking at him with such open hope and affection and a little bit of embarrassment and Keith didn’t know what he’d done to deserve it all. Lance just somehow always knew exactly what to say, and at this particular moment, in his dazed and frazzled state, it was all a bit too much for Keith’s tenuous self-control to handle.

He surged forward on an impulse, diving in for a kiss, which, of course, was a horrific mistake.

Keith’s entire face came alive with pain as his nose knocked against Lance’s and the two of them exploded apart, hands coming up in a futile attempt to shield themselves, a mocking wall of hindsight.

‘Ah, crap, ow!’ he gasped as he rocked back into the wall, eyes screwed shut against the onslaught and hands dangling uselessly above his face like a pair of broken hovercrafts. He heard a similar string of curses come from Lance and felt a tinge of guilt. ‘Sorry,’ he croaked, ‘that was really stupid.’

Lance actually let out a laugh. ‘Yeah, you are,’ he teased, ‘but that’s why I love you.’

Keith almost choked.

The air around them suddenly went very still and so quiet that if he hadn’t been so focused on those three little words, he might have wondered whether he hadn’t simply gone deaf.

Keith lowered his gaze slowly from the ceiling, as if, by moving too suddenly, he might be startling a wild animal. Eventually, he locked eyes with his boyfriend who’d gone just as rigid as Keith himself.

‘What did you say?’ he uttered, breath catching over the back of his throat.

Lance’s eyes were stretched wide again, a million emotions a second weaving through the shades of blue like a shoal of panicked fish.

‘Shit, wait, no,’ he squeaked. ‘Wait. Just forget I said that.’

‘What?’ said Keith, his heart which had been pounding with exhilaration suddenly halting, burning up like a star set to collapse into a black hole.

Lance hadn’t meant to say it.

He didn’t mean it.

He wanted to take it back.

The panic on Lance’s face suddenly exploded.

‘Wait, no, no!’ he burst, grabbing Keith’s hands again. ‘Shit, no, I didn’t mean – I mean, I do.’

At this rate, Keith’s heart might just give out from the stress. He wasn’t sure he remembered how to breathe.

As if to mock him, Lance himself took a deep breath and looked at Keith with eyes overflowing with warm and dripping affection, squeezing his fingers between their chests. Keith was sure he must be able to feel the thumping there by radiation alone. ‘I do, Keith. I love you. I really, really love you.’

Keith’s eyes started prickling again but his head was pounding and he was starting to become acquainted with that nausea Shiro had been talking about and all he could think was please let this not be some kind of concussion induced hallucination because he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t understand it. ‘You do?’ he whimpered pathetically.

‘Y-yeah,’ breathed Lance, almost as if in awe of himself. ‘Of course I do.’

Keith hesitated because he’d never been one to take people at their word, and while a lot had changed throughout the course of his life, while he’d found people – like Lance, he reminded himself – that he knew that he could trust, some tiny, damaged part of him still demanded reassurance.

‘Then… why’d you try to take it back?’ he asked, trying to push aside his mortification at failing to keep his voice from trembling. Show no weakness, his own mind seemed to be chanting at him, a reflex he’d been struggling to smother over the last few years.

Lance bit his lip, and his eyes darted around agitatedly, and Keith thought, despite his doubts, that it looked more sheepish than it did anxious. ‘Ugh, because, well…’ The words were struggling to burst from the dam at his mouth and with every second, Keith was getting more and more frustrated.

‘Just spit it out,’ he near demanded, his head throbbing at the noise.

Lance didn’t falter a second longer. ‘It was supposed to be perfect!’ he erupted, and Keith felt his own eyes go wide as his fingertips turned white under Lance’s insistent grip. ‘That’s why I was being so weird, okay. As soon as Hunk said we should go ice-skating I knew that it would be the perfect place to tell you because I’ve been wanting to for so long but I wanted it to be perfect, and then it wasn’t perfect, and, I mean, man, it was really the furthest thing from perfect, wasn’t it? And wow, great, now I can’t stop saying perfect and- ’

‘Lance!’ Keith hushed him and Lance’s mouth snapped shut, his eyes watching Keith with nervous anticipation. Keith just needed him to be quiet for a few seconds so that he could have a moment to process.

He meant it. He loved him. Nothing was clearer to him in that moment than that everything Lance had been rambling on about had been true. This whole evening and Lance’s total insistence on it had all been some stupid, elaborate, romantic plot to confess his feelings and Keith couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised sooner because it was so incredibly, unfathomably, and ridiculously Lance. This idiot. His idiot.

‘I don’t want perfect,’ Keith said at last, a wet laugh tripping over the coattails of that blasted last word, his bruised face protesting as it stretched into even the smallest smile. ‘I want you.’

Lance looked at him with such astonishment that Keith barely managed to hold back another giggle, figuring that that probably wouldn’t go down very well with how delicate they were both feeling right now. Lance had offered Keith the reassurance he’d needed, and now Keith was going to do the same by saying the exact words he’d been aching to say for weeks now.

‘I love you too, Lance. So, so much.’

Lance got stuck for a moment, like an old VHS tape that had lost a few frames, but then he broke out in a grin that Keith knew must’ve been hurting because Keith was in near agony with his own rapidly growing smile right now.

The two of them did start to laugh then, together this time, and Keith couldn’t even bring himself to be embarrassed about how childishly giddy it sounded. Maybe it was just the concussion, but he felt like he was floating, the only thing anchoring him being Lance’s warm grip and dazzling euphoria.

Lance squirmed for a few seconds, his shoulders twitching and smile fluctuating, and Keith had to tilt his head in a question before his boyfriend relented with a whine. ‘I really want to kiss you.’

Keith’s smile impossibly widened. ‘Me too.’ It wasn’t a lie: his body was buzzing with nervous energy and he was almost tempted to kiss Lance anyway, painful consequences be damned. Lance had another idea though.

‘Settle for a hug?’ he ventured, his hands slipping from Keith’s and spreading like wingtips. Keith didn’t waste another moment, sliding from the bench and onto his knees in front of Lance and curling his arms around his back. He buried his face in his shoulder, mindful of his nose, as his boyfriend shifted to reciprocate and they lingered there, wrapped in each other’s warmth, breathing in each other’s everything.

‘Love you,’ Lance murmured again, barely audible.

‘Love you too,’ replied Keith, falling deeper into the embrace.

Keith wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but at one point, Adam came over to pat Keith’s back in farewell and Lance’s in congratulations, and eventually Allura came over to break them up, saying that the manager wanted to close up and they should probably get the two of them back home to rest.

Keith found it hard to pull away, at this point almost dozing in Lance’s grip, but he did and he was glad to see Lance’s face again because the look in his eyes had many more healing properties than even that hug.

Lance kissed him on the temple and then helped him messily to his feet, supporting his weight against the drowsiness and dizziness that suddenly assaulted him. His knees were aching now too but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

‘You guuuuuuuuuys,’ Hunk wailed, his own face covered in tears by now too.

‘Was everyone watching us?’ asked Keith, his cheeks warming and his nose aching harder from the rush of blood. Shiro walked over and deposited a couple of pills, no doubt left behind by Adam, into his palm, then gave his shoulder a squeeze to match the expression of pride in his smile. This only served to deepen Keith’s embarrassment.

‘You guys weren’t exactly talking quietly,’ remarked Pidge, crossing her arms, though her smile said she was happy for them, ‘and you were hugging for, like, twenty minutes.’

‘Congratulations on your tearful confessions!’ cheered Coran and the two of them winced.

‘Thanks,’ replied Lance, grip tightening self-consciously around Keith’s waist, and is it bad if Keith was kind of happy that he wasn’t the only one blushing like an idiot?

‘I can’t believe you still told him after all that,’ said Pidge. ‘What happened to “perfect”?’

Lance drooped even further, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. ‘Yeah, well…’

‘Actually,’ Allura interjected, ‘I think it’s quite fitting for the two of them, don’t you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lance said suspiciously, raising a challenging eyebrow.

She smiled fondly. ‘You two have never done things the “right” way; or the easy way,’ she explained. ‘In a way, this was somewhat perfect for you.’

Lance looked like he was about to argue but faltered, one pointed finger hovering in the air between them. He looked back to Keith. ‘You know what? She’s right. We’re a total disaster.’

And while Keith may not have had the courage to say anything at that moment, in front of all of their friends, later, when the two of them are snuggled between the sheets of Keith’s – meaning their – bed, Lance’s fingers running through his hair as he groans his way through waves of definitely more than well-acquainted nausea now, he’ll let out a brief whisper, saying, ‘That’s why I love you. We’re a perfect disaster.’

As far as confessions go, theirs was messy and wet and desperate and almost angry at some points, but it was everything they were and everything they were yet to be.

Perfectly imperfect, and Keith wouldn’t have it any other way.