Lance's family was loud. This was not, by any means, surprising, and Keith actually came to like the noise. Spending two years alone with his mom, who had been essentially a stranger at first, and a cosmic wolf on the back of a space whale had reminded Keith how quiet space really was. Aside from the quiet conversations between him and Krolia and their slow growing bond and the brief flashes of past and future, it had been silent. It was the kind of quiet that Keith used to appreciate and thrive in, but after being in the castle with the other Paladins for so long, the silence almost became stifling.

In Lance's house there was never any silence, even at night when he could hear music coming from Lance's room next door, or Shiro snoring in the bed across the room, or the youngest nephew wailing in the middle of the night from his crib because he's hungry. And during the day there is constant chatter or the younger kids arguing over something or Lance's mother yelling in Spanish from the other room. It's nice, in a weird way; it sounds like the way a home is supposed to sound. He could understand why Lance missed it so much while he was up in space with the rest of them. If Keith had left a home like this behind instead of a lonely shack in the middle of the desert then he would have wanted to go home, too.

When Keith had first stepped into the McClain home, with his mother, space wolf and Shiro in tow, he had wondered how strange it all looked. There was him with a fresh scar on his cheek and knife strapped to his back with a giant blue wolf at his side. There was his tall Galran mother with piercing yellow eyes, purple skin and claws. Then there was Shiro, both figuratively (because of Kerberos) and literally back from the dead, with gray hair and his Galran robotic arm missing. They were surely not a group to be welcomed warmly, but Lance's entire family took them in with open arms, insisting that any friends of Lance's were family to them.

It took a couple weeks to get completely used to being on Earth, in Lance McClain's house no less. Keith was always a restless sleeper, but with the added noise and the unfamiliarity around him, he found himself awake and sitting in the kitchen most nights. It had been about a week into his stay when Lance had ventured down the stairs for water and had, apparently, almost pissed himself when he saw Keith sitting in the dark like a creep. They did talk until the early morning sun began to rise, though, which was nice. Keith hadn't realized how much he missed him.

This became a routine for them after a few nights. Sometimes they would chat at the dining table, or in the living room, and once they even sneaked out to Varadero Beach to sit on the sand and watch as the ocean waves rolled up to their feet. They had sat mostly in silence that night, which was odd because Lance often could carry the conversation well enough for the both of them, but he was almost as silent as Keith.

Keith had noticed Lance's shift in personality a few days into their trip back to Earth. At first he just assumed it was him becoming more mature, but it was less about Lance becoming mature and more about him withdrawing himself from the group and becoming reserved. It reminded Keith a lot of himself after he lost his father, after he lost Shiro, and that unnerved him. Lance wasn't supposed to be quiet and unable to look at anybody -especially Shiro- in the eye. He was social, thrived on communication and affection from other people, and for him to suddenly start pulling himself away from them was a big red flag; a flag that no one on the team seemed to care to notice.

Lance had gotten a little better, a little more chatty after Keith returned, but it wasn't quite the same as before he left. He steered clear from Shiro with his shoulders hunched every time he passed him and he hardly even spoke to Allura anymore. It was strange, but before Keith could even find it in himself to bring it up the right way, they were back on Earth and Lance was surrounded by his family for the first time in over a year. He was happy. But then that night on the beach whatever had been eating at him, tightening Lance's nerves like a bowstring finally snapped.

"You ever think about how small you actually are?" Lance asked, finally, after many minutes of silence.

Keith blinked, staring at the rolling waves for a few drawn out moments as he tried to collect his thoughts. He thought, for a moment, that it was a jab at his height, but then he remembered that he and Lance are the same size now and he wouldn't have tried teasing him in a low murmur like that anyway.

He tore his gaze away from the sea and rose a brow. "What do you mean?"

Lance dug his fingers in the sand and twisted his hands nervously, like his was seconds away from unraveling. "Like, the universe is huge. We knew that, already, but there is so much more out there than we could have imagined. So many planets, civilizations, lives. We're just these tiny specks of people in the grand scheme of things."

Keith paused, his mouth opening and closing. Two years ago, before his mom and before the clone of Shiro, he would have run away from this. He would have said something like "leave the math to Pidge" in an effort to make Lance feel better, but he was different now. Lance had his back the second time Shiro disappeared, died, and when he had to take over as the pilot for the Black Lion for the first time; he could be here for Lance now. He was ready.

"Yeah, I guess so. But we're the tiny specks forming Voltron and saving the entire universe, so that has to mean something," he said, then Lance looked at him with a half smile, a kind of glazed look in his eyes that told Keith he was left unsatisfied. He could recognize that expression now, he'd already seen it once when Lance left his room on the castle ship when he was desperate for some kind of reassurance. Keith had accomplished then, somewhat, but he wanted Lance's expression to change to one full of content confidence, something that told him that he found his place in this world, in the universe.

"Yeah. I guess you're right," Lance said with a shrug, turning his eyes away from him.

"I haven't felt lonely like that since Shiro disappeared," Keith confessed, so suddenly that he surprised himself by his forwardness. He didn't talk about this, especially now that he knew Shiro hadn't simply just disappeared but died, but Lance needed to hear it. Maybe Keith needed to talk about it. "He was my only friend for a long time, then he disappeared, not once, but twice. When the Black Lion chose me I didn't want to lead because I felt like I would be replacing him. It would have been admitting that he was gone and he might not be coming back again. It was scary and it hurt." A rough breath shuddered from his lungs, and he caught Lance looking at him in alarm from the corner of his eye, probably worried that he was going to start crying, but Keith's eyes remained dry.

"He was the one person who never gave up on me and I didn't want to give up on him. I understood that we were in the middle of a war, and that everyone was right in saying that we needed Voltron, but it- I wasn't ready to accept it. You were the one who really helped me move past that," he admitted, his voice soft, almost raspy with the raw honesty. "I wasn't completely okay, but it was enough to be able to try and lead the way Shiro would. Without you I would have led everyone straight to death, and I can't thank you enough for that."

He turned his head, facing the Cuban and took in the look of shock on his face. Keith almost smiled at the sight of it, but he had to keep going so that Lance could understand why he was talking about this at all. "I don't think you really understand what you mean to Voltron. I don't think that the others have really realized it either, but I have. You're the one who brought us together and kept us together. Without you who knows what the universe would look like right now."

Lance's mouth looked like a goldfish's for a moment as he searched for something to say, and the stunned silence would have intimidated Keith a few months ago, but there was some kind of calm that fell over him as he waited for Lance to find a response. This was what Lance needed to hear, he was sure of it; it wouldn't fix everything overnight, but it was a start at the very least.

"I died," Lance croaked out suddenly, his voice sounding like it was strangled free from his throat, as if that wasn't what he meant to say but he needed to. It was like those words had been just scratching below the surface, begging to be released but never given the chance to. "I died," he repeated, as if he needed to hear it aloud again himself.

Keith stared at him in open shock, his breath stilling in his chest as it collapsed in on itself. What? There was no way Lance died. He was here, sitting with him on Varadero Beach on Earth with his family home just a few blocks away. There was no dramatic moment where Allura drew his life back from Red and put it back into his body, there was never even any acknowledgement that it had happened until just now. If he had actually died then wouldn't everybody know?

"What?" he choked out, brows furrowed and jaw clenched, his own fingers curling into the sound for something to ground him. He felt his body tense and go light at the same time, his head spinning as if he had been the one who just admitted that he died in the middle of some battle. He almost had, during the fight at Naxzela, but he didn't. That had shaken him up enough, but Lance was sitting here telling him that his breath had escaped from him and his heart stopped with no pulse.

"I died. Allura- something was going wrong and I pushed her out of the way before she could get hit by whatever it was. It hit me instead and it felt like everything that made me up was being torn apart," he gasped out, eyes distant and far away as if he was reliving his own death over and over again. "It hurt so much, but then there was nothing. Then the next thing I saw was Allura."

"And- and nobody brought it up again?" Keith snapped, unbidden anger filling him; the kind of anger that he hadn't felt for years, the kind that drove him to make impulsive decisions and his vision white out.

"Why would they? I came back, didn't I?"

And the fact that Lance was so dismissive about it, as if his death was something to just be cast aside, brushed under the rug like it was no big deal, really made Keith see everything in a whole new light. The team, the same team that claimed to be like family, had never mentioned Lance's sacrifice or his death again, as if it was nothing important. Was that why Allura had known she could put Shiro's spirit back into the clone's body? Because Lance died?

"You- you died, Lance," he said, a little harsher than he meant to because this was nothing that Lance should be able to just brush off. What happened while Keith was gone with the Blade, with his mother on the back of some space whale and seeing glimpses of the past and future. He wished that he'd seen this moment, or the moment of Lance taking that hit for Allura so that he would be able to prove that he cared.

"I know that, Keith," Lance shot back, eyes narrowed and cheeks reddening in anger. "I can't have fucking nightmares about it every single night and not know that."

"That's why you're not sleeping," Keith said, more to himself than to Lance, because obviously Lance knew why he was not sleeping at night when he used to be so adamant about getting at least eight hours of beauty rest to keep his skin clear and looking his best. The past few days he started getting dark smudges under his eyes and a couple pimples were breaking out on his cheeks and forehead. How had Keith not noticed?

"Yeah, thanks for that, Captain Obvious," Lance scoffed, then began to stand, brushing sand off his pants and hands. "I'm going back to the house."

Keith's hand shot out and gripped Lance's wrist before he could even take a step away from him. He found himself on his knees, arm stretched out and eyes wild as he pleaded silently for Lance to sit back down and to talk to him. But he didn't. He tried to yank his wrist out of Keith's grip with a stubborn cry, his voice wobbling dangerously as he begged for him to let go.

"I almost killed myself," Keith broke out suddenly, watching as Lance went completely still, though he refused to meet his eyes again, "at Naxzela." He heaved out a breath, his chest caving in again now that the words were out there, now that someone else besides Matt knew what he almost did. "I was going to fly into the particle barrier to try and save you all, but Lotor got there just before I hit the barrier. If he'd shown up just a second later…"

Lance's eyes slowly made their way back to him, and Keith's heart leapt in his throat when he saw the shine in his eyes, the tears that were slowly trailing down his cheeks. "Why?"

A huff of laughter, unhumourous and unexpected, tore ragged from his throat as he shook his head. "Why?" he asked, his voice gravelly as if he was the one crying. "You know why. It's because of the same reason that you pushed Allura out of the way. How was I going to let you all die when there was something that I could do?"

"Then you would have died," Lance responded as he collapsed back onto the sand in a heap, his wrist slipping from Keith's hand. He didn't reply to that, knowing that Lance wasn't directing those words to him, not really. "That isn't fair. You- you're important to the team. Did you even think about how that would have hurt us?"

"Did you think about that when you pushed Allura out of the way?" Keith snapped back, though there was no malice in his tone. Lance, of all people now, would understand exactly what was going through his mind when he very nearly flew his ship into the particle barrier. "I wasn't thinking about what would happen after, I was just thinking about what would happen if I didn't do something. I went up into space not expecting to come back. I was going to make sure you all made it back."

Lance shook his head again, his head bent as a sob tore out of him. His shoulders shook with his cries, and Keith reached out and pulled him into a hug, knowing that no other words were necessary. He wasn't the best with words ever, so he was glad that his friend didn't need them now. All he needed was to be held by someone who understood what he was going through, to be comforted and assured that someone was happy that he was still alive and here to hold.

Lance's fingers curled in the back of his shirt, tugging at the fabric as he sobbed into his shoulder, all the pain escaping him in heaving, choked gasps. Keith cupped the back of his head and closed his eyes, just letting him cry onto his shoulder and hold onto him so tightly that it almost hurt. But when his cries finally quieted down and he pulled away after wiping his nose on Keith's shirt just because he could, he managed to give Keith a small, shaky smile.

"Sorry. I- I didn't realize that it was affecting me that much."

"It's okay," Keith said, voice even now and he reached out to squeeze his shoulder. "I want you to know that I'm here if you need to talk. About anything. I mean it."

Lance laughed and nodded, wiping at his eyes with his knuckles as he did his best to compose himself again. "I guess those two years did you good, huh? I don't think you would have ever told me that before you found your mom."

"Yeah, I don't think so either."

Lance laughed again, then dropped his hands back to his sides and looked up at the starry sky. Space looked so different from way down on Earth again, like it was untouchable and just another one of Keith's dreams to get up there. He liked that; he liked the constant mystery of it and the feeling of unattainability.

"I missed you," Lance whispered out, his voice so quiet that Keith almost missed it. But he didn't, and he was so glad that he heard. He turned his gaze away from the stars and smiled at the boy next to him who always looked like summer. He missed him, too. He missed his warmth, his awful jokes that Keith still found himself laughing at, his friendliness, and the easy friendship that had developed between them. When he left, he had never realized how lonely the Blades would really be.

"I missed you, too," he admitted, his voice going as soft as Lance's. When they meet eyes again, both of their gazes are soft and Keith couldn't help but be reminded of the bonding moment they had when he had looked at him with that same soft smile that just curled at the corner of his lips. Hopefully Lance would remember this one, and Keith had a feeling that he would.

It was a couple of days later when Lance's youngest niece, Carina, becomes fascinated with him. Keith, despite popular belief, is actually good with little kids. He grew up around a lot of them when he was being moved from home to home before Shiro adopted him, and he was almost always one of the eldest, so he made it his responsibility to make sure the youngest kids got some kind of attention. He was never good with people his age, but kids always were a soft spot for him.

So, when he caught her staring at him openly at breakfast earlier that morning while sucking at her thumb, he blinked a little dumbly at her before smiling warmly. She giggled then pulled her eyes away from him when her mother, Veronica, demanded that she start eating her food.

Little Carina is the spitting image of all the McClain's, except the hazel eyes that she gets from her father; she's got the cinnamon skin, dark brown hair and the same dimpled smile. Keith was taken with her quite quickly, and Carina must have known because she started hanging around him and his cosmic wolf, who he had named Blue - to fit the memory of how his parents were brought together and maybe a little because deep blue eyes, crinkling at the corners with a smile, were always there, burning in the back of his mind as a reminder.

"Blue!" Carina chirps later the same day Keith caught her staring at him in wonder over breakfast. She trots over to where Blue is curled up next to Keith's feet on the floor, and drops down beside her and buries her chubby fingers in Blue's fur. A warning catches in Keith's throat, but before he could even say anything, he is taken by surprise when Blue huffs long through her nose, a sign of contentment, and lays her head back down on Keith's feet. Not even Keith's own mother had been able to get Blue to warm up to her without a bit of a struggle.

"What?! No fair!" Lance squawks indignantly beside Keith, tearing his eyes away from the Netflix show that they were watching to eye his niece pet Blue happily. "Blue didn't even let me pet her before nearly taking a chunk out of my arm!"

"She did not nearly take a chunk out of your arm," Keith remarks, rolling his eyes as Carina sticks her tongue out at Lance. "She mouthed you. That's just what she does. I have the marks on my own arms to prove it," he continues, gesturing to the fresh and old teeth marks and scratches on his arms from where playing with Blue had gotten a bit too rough.

"Whatever. Blue letting Carina pet her randomly is totally unfair. Everyone else had to prove themselves to her."

"Maybe she's just good with kids," Keith suggests with a shrug, watching as Carina drapes her body across Blue's to plant a kiss between her large ears. Blue hardly even twitched. Okay, that was a little unfair because not even Keith was able to kiss her on the head like that. Who knew a cosmic space wolf that he rescued on the back of a space whale would be so good with little kids. "She must be good with kids."

"You've got the weirdest dog. What's up with you bonding with animals that you have to prove your worthiness to?"

Keith turns with a raised brow. "What are you talking about?"

"Red! Hello! You had to be ejected into space before he accepted you as his Paladin!"

"Oh yeah," Keith muses, having forgotten about that. It felt like so long ago. "But you're his Paladin now. You must have done something that proved yourself to him. He wouldn't have let you in just because Blue locked you out."

"Allura said it's because I accepted you as leader or whatever. I think he was just charmed by my good looks," he says, pushing his hair out of his face with a smirk. "Red's a sucker for a good pick up line, you know?"

Keith looks at him, his expression unamused, though he couldn't help but think it was kind of funny. The thought of Lance flirting with Red the same way he did with the Blue Lion was a very amusing thought, especially after watching his routine during the Coalition performances when Lance was practically doing moves meant for a pole at a strip club. Keith was never going to admit to him how much he enjoyed those performances; Lance's ego didn't need that boost.

"What good looks?" he finally settles on, pleased when he heard the offended noise that escapes from the Cuban beside him.

"Tío Lance is handsome!" Carina argues from the floor, where she was still petting Blue and, apparently, listening in on their banter. "You think so, don't you, Keef?"

Lance snorts next to him, clearly overjoyed that Carina could not pronounce 'Keith' for the life of her, and instead pronounced it as 'Keef'. Keith on the other hand was doing his best to keep his face from going cherry red at being called out, unknowingly by Carina, for thinking that Lance is handsome. He is, of course, anyone with eyes could see that Lance was good looking, but he didn't need to say that out loud.

"Yeah, Keef. Don't you think I'm the most handsome man that you've ever lied your eyes on?" Lance asks dramatically, placing an arm over his forehead, dropping his head onto his shoulders and batting his dark lashes at him. Keith has to fight the blush that threatens to fill his cheeks, and he somehow succeeds.

"I don't know," he begins, somewhat shakily, "Shiro might have you beat there."

Lance falters, his teasing smile falling at the mention of Shiro's name, but it is back just a second later. If Keith hadn't been paying attention, he would have missed the shift in attitude, but he didn't miss it, and he had to wonder what the deal was. Something weird was going on between Lance and Shiro, or at least just with Lance about Shiro. Keith can't figure out what it is though.

"Shiro has everyone beat! C'mon, just give me an inch here!"

"Okay, fine. You have nice eyes," he relents, because that isn't too weird of a compliment, is it? Lance does have nice eyes along with the rest of him, but telling him that he had a nice smile and face and body would be… definitely weird. That would be crossing into territory that Keith is not ready for and it would only serve to make Lance uncomfortable. He was weird with compliments, real compliments and praise, as it was.

Lance blanches and Keith catches the emotion just in time to begin to doubt himself. Maybe that really is a weird thing to say, but he didn't know! The only real human interaction he's had has been with Shiro and the rest with the Paladins, along with his mother. He is completely out of his element here. Keith has had crushes before - if these feelings for Lance can even be classified as such - but he never did anything about them, and he never got close to the boys he had crushes on. That had been part of the reason he steered clear of Lance at the Garrison, though it had been a small reason out of the number of others - he just… didn't do well around cute boys. He got too flustered and embarrassed.

"My eyes?"

"Yeah. I mean- they're nice. Blue," Keith manages to choke out, just managing to keep his voice from cracking embarrassingly. "Was that weird?"

"N-no," Lance replies, though the slight stammer in his voice was suggesting the opposite. Keith's lips turn down into a small frown, his shoulders going tense with discomfort and he's sure that Lance can feel that because his head is still on his shoulder. "It's really not. I just wasn't expecting that from you," Lance continues, getting a better hold of himself this time.

Keith is still not fully convinced but he nods anyways, figuring that Lance wouldn't have any reason to lie to him. If Keith had made him uncomfortable in any way then the Red Paladin would have no problem telling him so. He never has before, about anything.

Lance finally lifts his head off of his shoulder and straightens up, looking back at the television, but there is a glazed over look in his eyes that suggests he's not actually paying attention to it. Keith tenses again, unsure of how to fix this, and nudges at Blue's back to find something to ground himself with. She stirs, but relaxes again when Carina scratches behind her ears. Keith watches the two of them interact for a couple minutes, blinking slowly, until he's jolted out of his trance when Lance speaks up again.

"Yours are nice, too. Your eyes."

Keith blinks at him, too taken aback to stop the flush from overtaking his cheeks from the unexpected compliment. He's heard a number of comments about his eye color, alien being the most common of them, but nice was never a word used for them before. The last person he expected to describe them in such a way was Lance McClain.

"Oh. Um, thanks," he muttered, picking at a loose thread on the hoodie that he'd stolen from Shiro earlier that day. "Shiro said that they turn Galran sometimes."

Lance's attention was back on him suddenly, his eyes wide in interest. "Really? That's so cool!"

Cool isn't really the word Keith would use to describe it, but Lance has always been the one that was most chill with him being Galra; even Shiro needed some time to get used to the fact. When Keith had come back from the Blade of Marmora base, after the trials and he told everyone what he'd learned about his heritage, Lance had been the first one to react.

'So, you're like a furry now?' is what he'd said, and it had been so unexpected and ridiculous that Keith laughed. He still remembers the expression that Lance gave him when he laughed; soft, open and fond. But that moment, however brief and insignificant it seemed to others, was ruined when Allura made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and stormed out of the room. Keith won't ever forget the look Lance gave her retreating back: disappointed, shocked, and angry. The others looked at her in pity, while Lance - the one who was crazy about her - looked furious.

Keith shrugs. "I guess. Shiro said it happened during the fight with the clone. He… I guess the clone's memories are his now, too. It's weird."

The wonderstruck look of interest that Lance was giving him faded in an instant, hunching back in on himself. "You fought it?"

"Yeah?" Keith replies, though it comes out more like a question because what else could he have possibly been doing? Partying? "It tried to kill me. It tried to kill all of us."

"Jesus," Lance gasps out, voice strained, and Keith furrows his brows at him in concern. He had thought that Lance knew this. "Are you okay? Like, mentally?"

The question throws Keith off again, and he was about to answer, but then there was a shuffle down next to his feet and he remembers that they have an audience. Carina is really only paying attention to Blue, but her eyes are flitting between them in curiosity and brows pinched. She may not fully understand what they are talking about, but she doesn't need to hear it.

"Let's go to your room," he insists, stands and Lance complies, though he seems somewhat unsteady on his feet. Blue begins to get up to follow them, but Keith snaps his fingers at her and narrows his eyes. She may not understand things like 'fetch' or 'sit' but she understands important commands like 'stay'.

When they get to Lance's room, Keith shuts the door quietly behind him to ensure no one barges in while they're talking. Even though Lance's family understood what was going on now and why their middle son had disappeared, everyone knew that they were still worried about the future and their son's safety. They didn't need to overhear the kind of horrors any of them have had to face.

"Seriously, Keith, that isn't okay! How- are you and Shiro okay?"

"Shiro and I are fine," Keith assures, honestly. Apparently nothing could disrupt his trust for Shiro, not even when his clone that looked and talked exactly like him tried to kill him. "I understand that it wasn't really him and he gets that, too, even though he's tried apologizing like a billion times. But yeah, I guess that I could be… better after that."

"Is that why you haven't been sleeping?" Lance asks him, sitting down on his best and expression nothing but concerned.

"Yeah. I guess that's part of it," Keith shrugs, having a hard time meeting Lance's eyes. They had so much naked emotion in them that it was overwhelming to see. He's been having nightmares about it, ones that make him wake up crying or screaming and Shiro looking at him, worried and pained from across the darkened room. But he's been having a lot of nightmares recently about a lot of other things.

"Keith," Lance seems to choke out, his voice strangled and weak as if he's the one having to face his demons. Really, he's too empathetic for his own good; so selfless and caring, always putting others above himself.

Keith sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, feeling exposed and vulnerable without that shield around him. Lance has always had that effect on him though, made him want to drop his guard and walls that he surrounds himself with, but at the same time makes him terrified to do so. Something about it, about dropping every single shield and wall for Lance feels like they'd be starting down a road that they can't turn back from.

"Lance, it's not-"

"Don't you dare say that it isn't a big deal!" Lance snaps all of a sudden, standing up so fast that he must have given himself whiplash. He presses his finger against Keith's chest, his eyes no longer shining in concern, but something more wild that made him seem more alive in a way. Keith likes it, the fire that Lance has been hiding within him so carefully. They always do this to each other, let out the best and worst parts of one another and Keith can't get enough of it; he craved the way only Lance could make him feel while he was with the Marmora and in the Quantum Abyss.

"You had to fight your brother! Maybe it wasn't really Shiro, but it looked and sounded just like him! I couldn't possibly imagine having to fight Marco or Luis like that. That's- it hurt us when we realized that he tried to kill us with the castle, but you're closer to him than any of us. He almost killed you and it's my-"

Lance cuts himself off without warning, taking a sharp intake of breath through his nose and steps away from Keith until his knees hit the back of the bed and he collapses onto it again. The anger that had been rising just below Keith's skin eases and retreats nearly in an instant when he realizes how pale and shaken Lance seems. Something else was going on, something other than the fact that he had died.

"Lance, what is going on?" he asks softly, taking steps forward until he can put a hand on his shoulder. He trembles under his touch, and that startles Keith so much that he fears that he hurt him for a moment, but then Lance meets his eyes and he's got tears welling in his own. What had gone wrong while Keith was wrong? Lance shouldn't ever look like the universe is weighing so heavily down on his shoulders.

"I think I need to talk to Shiro," Lance admits, his voice so small that it makes Keith want to wrap him in his arms and protect him from any harm. But he can't. Lance is hurting for reasons unknown to him and there was nothing he could do to take that pain away.

"I think so, too," he finally says, squeezing his shoulder. "But just wait a bit, okay? You need to calm down or you'll say something you don't mean or you'll scare him. He cares about you, too, and he won't want to see you like this."

Lance nods, blinking slowly, and though his eyes are still locked with Keith's, he feels as if he's looking straight through him. He isn't all there, pieces of Lance seem to be missing and Keith has no idea how to get them back. He has to know what happened when he was gone, how much he missed with Lance in particular. Lance was the last person Keith expected to lose himself in this war, but not even he had been untouchable. But maybe that was the problem; someone like Lance wasn't built for war, at least not in his heart. He was too good for it, too selfless, so trusting and kind. He did not deserve to be marred by the horrors of war, but he had been, and now the weight of the universe is weighing him down.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, with Keith standing in front of him and Lance trying to catch his shallow breaths, just bordering on the edge of having a panic attack. Keith wonders, just for a few moments, how many panic attacks Lance has had and how many he had to deal with all on his own. Most of them, if not all, seems like the most probable answer.

"I'm okay," Lance says after a few more minutes, pulling himself away from Keith's hands and wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. He hadn't been crying, but his eyes still look a little wet. "Shiro is in your room, right?"

"He should be," Keith clarifies with a nod, and Lance sucks in his bottom lip to chew nervously before he stands. The lines of his shoulders are tightly drawn, wound back as if he's readying himself for a fight instead of a talk with Shiro; apparently the two are the same to Lance now, and Keith doesn't think it's because the clone of Shiro had tried to kill them all. There was more there, in the lines around Lance's eyes and the stress in his back. "Do you want me to go with you?"

Lance shakes his head, turning to look at him with a faint smile. "I need to do this alone. Thanks though."

"Right."

Then Lance is out the door and heads down the hall. Keith watches as he knocks on the door to the room he and Shiro share, opens it, says something to Shiro that Keith can't hear, then steps in and closes the door behind him with a click. Never once had Keith wanted to be part of a conversation so desperately.

Keith goes back downstairs while Lance talks to Shiro about whatever it is that he needs to get off his chest. He finds Carina and Blue in the same place that they left them, and when he goes to sit back down on the couch, Carina's big hazel eyes are staring up at him in worry.

"Is tío Lance okay?" she asks him, her voice small and sweet. There is something in her raw concern and care that causes Keith's chest to ache. All of Lance's family is like this: caring, selfless and honest, but something about Carina reminds him so much of Lance, more so than the others. He isn't quite sure what it is, but because he sees so much of him in her, her timid question throws him for a loop.

He tries to smile reassuringly at her, but he can't quite manage it because he doesn't know if Lance is okay. Lance, from the looks of it, hasn't really been okay in a while, and he still doesn't know what caused the shift. Maybe it was just the war finally taking a toll on him or the fact that he died was weighing him down. Maybe it was the Lion switch or Keith leaving Voltron for the Blade just when their friendship was at its best. Maybe it was his drifting friendship with Hunk and Pidge or his growing friendship with Allura that was put on hold when Lotor showed up and captured her attention. Maybe it was his homesickness. Or maybe it was everything all at once.

"He's okay. He's just… going through some grown up stuff," he answers, and it's crazy because it's true. What Lance is feeling, the heaviness of the universe upon him, was a grown up thing. It was a grown up thing that only a select few of unlucky souls have to bear and Lance is only a teenager, barely eighteen, and he's dealing with something most adults don't even think about.

Carina pouts at his answer and huffs, crossing her arms. She looks so much like Lance in that moment that he almost laughs. "I hate that answer. No one ever tells me anything!"

"Oh, you don't want to hear about boring grown up things," Keith says, mood improving somewhat as he concentrates on cheering her up. He couldn't cheer Lance up, at least right now, but he could easily handle a little bit of child drama. She still huffs and turns away from him, nose turned up high in the air, and he smiles. "Here, I'll tell you what. I may be able to convince your mamá to give you an extra scoop of ice cream after dinner if you stop pouting. Think you can do that?"

Her pout falls in an instant at the mention of extra ice cream, and she turns to look at him, slack-jawed and eyes wide in wonder. "Can you?" she squeaks, jumping up from the floor until she's on her feet and leaning in close to Keith as if she's about to tell him a secret.

"Are you gonna keep pouting?"

Her lips purse for a moment, as if she wants to put up a fight, but the prospect of an extra scoop of ice cream is too good to risk. "No," she relents, shaking her head. She falls quiet for few moments, but there's something in her expression that tells Keith she's not done speaking, so he waits. "We should make tío Lance something nice to cheer him up! We could- we could bake him something!"

Keith blinks, his heart warming at the idea and for this little girl in front of him. They've only spoken a few words to each other, but Carina is absolutely adorable and endearing. "We may not have enough time to bake him something, at least today. But maybe we can surprise him another day. Do you know what his favorite dessert is?" Keith doubts that she does, but they can always ask Veronica or Rosa.

Carina's face scrunches up and she shakes her head.

"That's fine. Let's go ask Rosa, yeah?"

She nods eagerly and moves aside so that Keith can stand and head into the kitchen, where he last saw Rosa cleaning up from breakfast. As expected, she was still in there, but already starting to prepare lunch. Keith felt a little guilty, knowing that three extra mouths to feed was causing her to work even harder, and he was determined to start helping around the house more in any way he could. "Um, Mrs- I mean, Rosa? Carina had a question for you."

It was still strange calling Lance's mom by her first name, but since the very first day they were in her home, she insisted that any friends of Lance's were family to them and that they call her 'Rosa'.

She turns to face them, a wide grin already on her face at the mention of her granddaughter. "Yes, Carina?" she asks her as she wipes off her hands on a dish towel.

"What's tío Lance's favorite dessert? Keef says he's dealing with grown up things so we wanna cheer him up!"

Keith watches as Rosa's expression tightens somewhat, and she turns to look at him. He nods at her slightly, a silent promise that he will discuss it with her later, or at least tell Lance to talk to her. When she's assured that Keith will fill her in, she looks back at Carina and does her best to look unconcerned about her son, at least in front of her.

"Flan is one of his favorites. Did you want to make that for him?"

"Yeah! But Keef says we don't have enough time today."

"He's right, and we don't have all the ingredients to make it, either." She turns back to Keith. "Would you want to take Carina with you to the market to get the ingredients for it? I'll give you some money and we can all make it tomorrow when Lance goes out surfing."

"That's fine," Keith nods, a little surprised that Rosa trusts him with taking her granddaughter to the store unsupervised, but then again, he's been helping keep her son alive in the middle of a universal war, so there was that. "Do you need me to pick up anything else?"

"I'll make you a list," Rosa nods, smiling appreciatively. "Carina, why don't you go play for a few minutes while I make up this list for Keith."

"Okay," Carina chirps happily, skipping out of the room, clearly excited to help make flan to make her uncle feel better. Rosa waits until she's completely out of the room before gesturing at the dining table for Keith to sit at. Before she sits herself, she grabs a notepad and pen so that she can write everything that he needs to get down.

"What's going on with Lance?"

"He's just… going through some stuff. I'm not trying to keep anything from you; he really won't talk to me about the specifics. He's just dealt with some stuff because of the war and other drama within the team. And I think there's something going on with him and Shiro, but they're talking right now."

Her eyebrows crinkle together as her pen scratches over the notepad, but Keith knows she's listening. When she knows that he's done speaking, she sets the pen down and meets his gaze, her lips turned down in a frown. "What do you mean something is going on between him and Shiro?"

"I'm not really sure myself," Keith admits to her, turning a bit when he sees Blue suddenly teleport into the room. He scratches behind her ears before he speaks again. "We explained what happened to Shiro, but I think Lance may be feeling guilty over something. I'm not sure what, but that's probably what he's talking to him about. I can tell Lance to talk to you if you want."

Rosa shakes her head slowly, breathing out heavy through her nose. "No. Lance doesn't keep things from me, so when he's ready to talk, he will. I just wish he didn't have to go back into this war. I want him to stay home."

Keith's heart clenches in his chest and he looks down at his lap. He can't comfort Rosa with this, he could never possibly understand the pain she's feeling over her son being involved in a war that's bigger than anything anyone could possibly imagine. That's the kind of pain only mothers could understand, and that's the kind of pain that drove his own mother to leave him and his dad all those years ago. He had nothing he could say to her.

"He's doing it to protect you," he finally manages, somehow. It only comes to his mind when he thinks of his own mom and what she told him two years ago when they first started seeing the flashes of the past.

I left to protect the person I most love. You.

"This war… it doesn't just stop in the other galaxies. The Galra will not stop until the entire universe falls under their control. Even though Zarkon is gone doesn't mean that another tyrannical ruler won't take over as emperor. We have to stop it now, and Lance is fighting for Earth; for you."

When this war first started, Keith believed that the mission was the most important thing. In a way he still believes this, but the mission is different for him now. He's not fighting just to fight, he's not fighting to just protect faceless and nameless families on millions of planets. He's fighting with a purpose now; he's fighting because he has something, someone, to fight for. The Galra are fighting for power, for quintessence, but Voltron is fighting to protect what is worth fighting for: family, love and lives. The Galra don't fight for that, they don't see power in those things and that will be their downfall.

"When does it end?"

Never is the first answer that pops into Keith's head, because that's the truth, but he knows that Rosa knows that. People will always fight, races will always crave power and abuse it once they have it, but Lance won't be fighting it forever. Their fight, as the Paladins of now, is almost over. He can feel it in the very core of his being.

"Soon," he tells her instead, this smile reaching his eyes this time. "At least for us. I promise that he'll make it home to you. I'll do whatever I have to do."

"You have a family to make it home to, too," Rosa scolds him, but her eyes are wet and her voice is shaking. "Just make sure that all of you make it home."

Keith nods, but his heart isn't in it. He may have changed through the two years he spent in the Quantum Abyss, but that doesn't mean that his overall goal has changed. He isn't going to slam his ship into any particle barrier any time soon, but that doesn't mean that he won't fight to the death or sacrifice something to make sure the others make it home safe. He has his mother now, and Shiro is back, the rest of his team, and Lance who is closer to him now more than ever, but that also means he has more to lose and more of a reason to make sure they are all safe.

He will keep them all safe, even if he has to die in the process.

That thought, that goal, has never once wavered and it never will.

When Keith returns back to the McClain's house with Carina, Lance is back downstairs and talking to his older brother Marco. When they meet eyes, Lance smiles briefly at him, but Keith can tell that Lance seems lighter; whatever he and Shiro talked about helped, at least somewhat. Comforted by that fact, Keith follows Carina into the kitchen and helps unload all of the groceries that they brought back, much to the appreciation of Rosa.

When Keith walks back out, he thinks about going to sit with Lance and Marco, but he decides against it. Lance seems happy, talking animatedly with his brother and laughing at some inside joke that the two share. Keith doesn't want to take time away from Lance and his family, not when they would be leaving in just the next few months. Lance needs this time to heal, at least as much as he can in the short amount of time they have, and Keith didn't need to be so selfish. Lance and he would talk late at night just like they always did.

Instead, he goes up to his and Shiro's shared bedroom and collapses onto the twin sized bed with a sigh. He feels emotionally drained after everything that he's experienced with Lance the past few days, but he doesn't even know if he can rant to Shiro about it. He has no idea how much Lance has told him and Keith didn't want to accidentally spill something to his brother that Lance didn't want him to know. It wasn't his place to do so.

"Rosa told Krolia and I what you and Carina are wanting to do for Lance," Shiro says from his side of the room, idly scrolling through his tablet. "That's really nice of you both."

Keith shrugs and doesn't even startle when Blue suddenly teleports into the room and falls onto his bed with an ungraceful plop. The bed is hardly big enough for him, but she somehow squeezes herself onto it, which only serves to make him sweaty and uncomfortable all night but he doesn't have the heart to ever shove her off. Besides, he and Lance usually are awake all night talking anyways.

"I guess. It's just flan."

"It means that you're thinking of him. He needs that right now."

Keith aches to know what Lance spoke to Shiro about, but it isn't his business and he wasn't going to ask. If Lance wanted him to know about what was going on then he would tell him. He settles for something that would be less invasive of Lance's privacy, but would at least give him some form of comfort.

"Is he okay? I mean, now that he's talked to you?"

"I wouldn't say that he's exactly happy or the old Lance we know yet, but he's better now," Shiro says after a moment's pause that had Keith nervous. "A lot has happened when we were both gone. Apparently the clone wasn't exactly… kind to him. And he's going through some other stuff."

Keith sighed through his nose and propped himself up on his elbows, looking over at his brother. Shiro had mentioned retiring, for good, the other evening and Keith still didn't know how to address it. He was more comfortable with the thought of leading now, especially with Lance as his trusted right hand, but there was still something eating at him. How was he supposed to be able to lead this team like Shiro did when Lance couldn't tell him what exactly was bothering him?

"Did he tell you about… what happened with Allura?"

Shiro's brows seem to furrow and he looks away from his tablet and to Keith. He seems hesitant, like he doesn't know how to answer, and Keith doesn't understand why. Had more than just Lance dying by saving Allura happen? What else could have possibly happened between the two of them?

"If you're talking about the Omega Shield, then yes. He told me."

Keith nods, wondering what else he could possibly be referring to, but he doesn't ask. If Lance didn't tell him then he was clearly not comfortable with him knowing. That stung just a little bit; he thought that he and Lance were closer than that, but maybe not. Keith had disappeared from the team for a while, and all their previous bonding was probably lost after all that time.

His silence seems to throw Shiro for a loop, and he asks Keith why he was asking. He shrugs again, not really sure where he was wanting this conversation to go. He falls back onto his bed and glances over at Blue, stroking at the soft fur between her shoulder blades. The artificial keyboard pressing on Shiro's tablet resumes and Keith feels like drawing.

He sits up again, ignoring the disgruntled grumble that he gets from Blue, and stands. He sits down at the desk on his side of the room and pulls out a blank piece of paper and a pencil, just doodling in hopes to distract himself. His head is filled with Lance, but not in the way that it usually is. Most of the time he's thinking about their strange rivalry that he didn't even want in the first place or how nice Lance's smile is when he's relaxed and genuinely happy. Now he's just worried about him as his friend.

He just wants the closest person to him, besides Shiro and maybe even Krolia now, to be okay.

Lance had helped him when he was at his lowest after Shiro disappeared for the first time. He had been the main reason he finally accepted himself as Shiro's temporary replacement in the Black Lion and the reason that he was able to lead their team the way that he had managed to. If it hadn't been for Lance, he would have led Voltron straight to death. He would never be able to repay Lance enough for that.

His doodle turns into a moment frozen in time in his head, of Lance staring up at the night sky at the beach and asking him if he ever thought about how small they were. He was dissatisfied with the look in Lance's eyes and his expression in the drawing, not because he didn't do Lance justice, but because it didn't look like the Lance he remembers. This was some kind of empty shell of him. He hates it.

He grits his teeth and balls the piece of paper up and throws it into the trash can beside the desk with more force than was necessary. Blue is at his side in an instant, sensing his distress, and he bends down low until he can bury his face in her fur and sigh. She doesn't move and neither does he for a good few minutes. When he does move, he gets up to go find his mom. Maybe they could go spar outside for a bit like they used to on the space whale to pass time. Shiro lets him go without a word.

He meets Lance in the dining room that night, just like always. Lance is the first one down there this time, two cups of chamomile tea already made and set out on the dining table. He smiles serenely at the sight of it, and he walks over to the table, the only light provided being the little bulb over the stove. He pulls out his chair and sits down in front of him, reaching out to hold the warm mug.

"How'd you know I was even coming downstairs tonight?" he asks, gesturing to the cup of tea with a jerk of his chin.

Lance grins at him, this one reaching his eyes more than his previous ones. Keith, as always, is eternally grateful to Shiro. "You always come down here at two in the morning. I've got your schedule down."

"Mm. Well, I can't complain when you make the tea for me," he responds, then sips at the warm, calming drink. He wasn't really a tea person, he enjoyed coffee more, but it did help them both relax and with enough honey in it, the taste was bearable. And Lance always made it just right.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, just sipping their tea and enjoying each other's company. It was always easy, somehow, with them after they figured themselves out. Whatever their relationship was: rivals, teammates, acquaintances, friends - it was always easy with them. They fell into every shift so easily like the change of seasons. It was the kind of ease that Keith found comfort in, and knew that he would always find it within Lance. He didn't always appreciate change, but whatever change happened with Lance, it was good and he found himself not so scared of it anymore.

"I talked with Shiro earlier," Lance speaks up suddenly, setting his mug down on the table and blinks slowly, almost sleepily. Keith lifts his eyes up to him, making sure that Lance knew he had his full attention. "It was good. He helped me figure some stuff out. Or, at least, start to."

"That's good," Keith smiles, it's small, a barely there curve of his lips, but it's there and he knows Lance can see it. His fingertips trace the writing on the mug, waiting for Lance to continue with whatever it was he wanted to get to by bringing up his talk with Shiro.

"I think I may have fallen in love with Allura," Lance finally says, and it startles Keith so much, for some reason, that he flinches a bit. If Lance notices it, he doesn't mention it. "Or at least the idea of her. There are a lot of things that I admire about her, and at first she was this kind of unattainable creature of beauty, so it was only fun to flirt with her. But then we started getting closer and she became an actual friend, someone to lean on, and she wasn't so unreachable anymore; she became a person. I liked that. I think I loved her."

It hurts to hear, but Keith bears it and sips his tea and listens. He doesn't interrupt, he doesn't storm off, he doesn't even have to bite his tongue to hold himself back from saying words he would regret or mean. He just listens, and lets Lance speak. He's pretty sure that Lance always needed someone to just listen without commenting or tuning him out or turning it into a joke. Keith could do that now.

"Then Lotor showed up and proved that I wasn't anything compared to Allura or him. I have nothing to offer her even with Lotor gone and a psychopath. He… he really hurt her. She loved him, or loves him. I'm not sure. But she isn't ready to open her heart up again, and even when she is, it won't be to me. I've… I'm starting to accept that, and it hurts, but. I don't know. Shiro said that she isn't what I need either."

Keith blinks then looks up to Lance, observes the shadow that falls across his eyes and the slight stubble on his face. He wants to, selfishly, reserve this image of Lance in his brain for as long as he could keep it. He blinks again, as if he was taking a mental picture, then begins to speak.

"You said love in past tense. Do you not feel that way anymore?" he asks curiously, deciding he'd reply to everything else Lance had said after he got this one answer. Depending on what Lance said, it would change Keith's response.

Lance pauses, a strange look coming across his face as if he hadn't realized he'd said that at all. "I- I'm not sure. It's complicated. I've… it's just complicated. I'm not really sure what it is I feel right now."

Keith nods slowly. That answer did complicate things slightly.

"What do you think Shiro meant by telling you what you need?"

Lance shrugs a bit, but he downcasts his eyes and hunches his shoulders in a way that suggests that he has an idea of what Shiro meant, but he just wasn't ready to voice it to himself yet or didn't want Keith to know. Or maybe he didn't know how to explain it. Keith is about to rephrase it or ask something else, but Lance is meeting his eyes again and opening his mouth.

"He said that she may be what I want but not what I need. I don't really understand that though. Why would I want to be with someone that I don't want?"

Keith pauses himself, thinking of how to answer. Shiro was quite a bit older than the both of them and, even then, is wiser beyond his years, so it's a hard thing to answer. He has an idea though; after spending so many years with his brother and listening to his advice, he's bound to have an idea of how his thought process works.

"I think he means both. She is what you want, but not what you need. You have to find someone that is both what you want and what you need."

Lance's eyes linger on him again, flickering over his face before nodding and averting his gaze again. "Yeah. That makes sense."

"It's okay to be hurt, you know?" Keith asks, pushing his empty mug of tea away. "If you really loved her then you're obviously going to hurt. But… Shiro is right. She's not what you need and you deserve to be someone's first choice. You're… you're a good guy, Lance. I know that Allura cares about you and I'm sure that she hates hurting you like this."

Lance huffs out a laugh, but it sounds suspiciously like a sob though his eyes remain dry. His lips twist up into a kind of rueful smile, but behind the hurt glazed in his eyes, there's amusement. "Since when were you all wise? All you did was spend two years on a space whale."

"My mom helped me figure a lot of stuff out," Keith admits, smiling a little sheepishly. "I really needed that time with her, I guess. I was really angry for a long time and hurt, thinking that she'd left just because she didn't want me or my dad. Learning what happened between her and my dad and why she left really helped. I was able to… move on."

"That's good," Lance says, his smile reaching his eyes once again, Allura distanced from his mind now. "I'm happy you found her. Family is super important. I don't know what I would do without mine. Both of them."

Keith knew what Lance meant. "Me too," he says, smiling himself again at the thought of the family that he found within his team and in Shiro and his mom. It still hurt him sometimes to think that he would never see his dad again and that he would never have both of his parents back in his life, but he had one now and that was better than what he used to have.

"So. How'd they meet anyway? Your parents. It's not everyday you make a wife out of an alien."

Keth can't help but snort at that because it's true. His dad had gotten himself a wife after saving an alien from a wrecked ship, protected the Blue Lion with her and set off explosions for her. If that wasn't a ride or die relationship, he didn't know what was. He was glad that they had truly been in love once; it was a comfort.

He goes into the story, explaining how she shot out some other Galran and crash landed into Earth. Her ship had landed in his dad's front yard, and instead of calling the Garrison like a normal person, he brought her in and treated her to health and hid away her wrecked ship. As he nursed her to health, he taught her about Earth and human cultures and she told him about what Galran culture had become and what she was fighting to bring it back to. They protected the Blue Lion together, fell in love slowly and eventually his mom had Keith, who'd she almost named Yorak. He tells Lance about how the new scouts landed on Earth, how his dad got shot in the shoulder, how his mom defeated two or three of them, and how his dad blew up the one ship that almost got away. Then he tells him how his mom had to leave to protect them.

"Wow," Lance breathes when he's done, "your mom is like, a total badass. No wonder your dad fell in love with her."

"Yeah, don't start flirting with my mom, Lance," Keith laughs, though he's joking and he knows that his friend wouldn't actually do something like that. "But yeah, she's pretty cool."

"You both do have horrible hair style choices, though," Lance says, pushing his own mug aside.

"My hair is fine," Keith says, though he's so used to that insult that he hardly even rolls his eyes anymore. He likes the dig at his hair though, it's comfortable and familiar in this completely foreign situation with Lance and in his family home. "It's not even a mullet anymore. It's just long."

Lance hums as if he has to contemplate it, then he crosses his arms and shakes his head while he leans back in his chair. "Nope. Definitely still a mullet."

"Whatever. You're the one that's starting to grow one," Keith shoots back, rolling his eyes though there is no real annoyance behind the movement. This was nice - the bickering. It was familiar and it was what their dynamic always was. It hadn't always been quite so playful, so teasing, but it shifted sometime into their time in space, and it was always a break from everything. It was easy, something teenagers would do, not men who have to fight in a war. It was something that he would never want to lose in his relationship with Lance, no matter what it became.

Lance's hand reaches up to the back of his head and tugs at the longer strands, twisting his mouth and looking entirely too horrified over something that was just hair. "I am not!"

"Uh huh. Totally are. It's all business in the front and party in the back."

"You shut your filthy mouth!" Lance hisses, then shoots up from his chair to look at his hair in one of the mirrors around the house. Keith has to cover his mouth to keep from laughing too hard; his mom is just down the hall and he really doesn't want to wake her. "It's not! It's just- it's getting longer!"

"Lance, that's a mullet. I've had one, I should know," Keith smirks, pulling his hand away from his mouth to enjoy Lance's breakdown over his hair growing out into a mullet. "Just get it cut. We're on Earth now, so it isn't a big deal."

"It isn't a big deal," Lance mocks at him, but he drops his hands and looks over at Keith with a raised brow. "You wanna come? You need to get that hair fixed and you still haven't tried garlic knots which is just a crime."

Keith blinks, his thoughts stunning to a halt. What? Lance wasn't asking him out on a date, was he? No, no, there was no way. Who goes to get their hair cut together on a first date, anyway? Certainly not Lance McClain. Besides, he was still getting over Allura, and not to mention straight, so Keith needed to drop that train of thought before it derailed and left him hurt all over again.

"Sure," he shrugs, then stands to rinse out their tea mugs.

He misses the way that Lance's face drops slightly at the casualness of his answer, as if he'd been expecting more.

"The day after tomorrow will work. I've got something planned to do with my mom."

"Oh, that's fine," Lance says, buying Keith's excuse easily. "I teach Samuel how to surf on Saturdays, remember?"

Oh. That's right. That'll give him and Carina plenty of time to make the flan. Samuel and Lance's surfing lessons can go on for hours. He nods as he finishes rinsing out their mugs and turns to face him, leaning up against the counter as he did so. "Right, I forgot about that. So the day after tomorrow works?"

The smile returns to Lance's face as he nods, and Keith smiles back at him.

"Cool."

Baking the flan was just as much of a nightmare as Keith expected. Flan was not a difficult thing to make, but when you add a five year old into the mix, a cosmic wolf who likes to teleport at random intervals, and a Galran woman who is suddenly interested in baking, things tend to get a bit more complicated.

He is currently on the kitchen floor with Blue sitting on his stomach, and Carina crying in the corner with her finger in her mouth. Everything had been going fine as he melted the sugar until Blue decided to teleport into the kitchen, directly onto his feet and cause him to lose his balance and tip over. In all the chaos the first attempt at melting sugar failed and Carina burned herself on the hot pan when she tried to lift it off the burner.

That is when Krolia shows up, concerned and confused when she sees Keith on the floor with his giant space wolf on top of him and Carina whimpering and sucking at her burnt finger. She tends to Carina's burnt finger with ease as she lifts her and lets it run under some cold water, and Keith eventually manages to free himself from under his overly affectionate wolf.

"What in the Universe are you two trying to do?" Krolia asks him as she lowers Carina back onto her feet and goes to get the band-aids that are kept in the kitchen for situations such as these. Even though Carina isn't bleeding, something about band-aids always comforts little kids. "I thought you would be with Lance surfing today."

"Oh, no," Keith says, shaking his head and is a little embarrassed to hear his mom say that she expects him to be with Lance nearly constantly now. She's not wrong, but it was just a little weird hearing it come from somebody else's mouth. "He takes Samuel surfing on Saturdays and the last time I tried to go with them to help Samuel almost drowned." That was a bit of an exaggeration, but Keith didn't want to go anywhere near the lessons after that.

"So you decided to teach a five year old how to burn sugar instead?" Krolia asks drily, looking over at the ruined batch of melted sugar. What makes her words worse is that there isn't even any hint of teasing in her tone, she's just legitimately confused as to why her son is teaching a human girl how to burn sugar.

"What? No. We were trying to make flan, but then Blue teleported on top of me."

"Flan? What is that?"

"It's a type of Cuban dessert. Lance likes it."

Something weird happens to Krolia's face, and Keith can already hear the questions before they're out of her mouth. "Is this some kind of human courting method? Your father did not do this for me."

Keith blanches and feels his face heat up all the way to the tips of his ears, and Krolia's confusion only grows. "N-no! I'm not courting Lance. He's just been feeling down lately and Carina thought baking him something would be nice."

"Oh. Um, that's… nice of you, Carina," Krolia says to the little girl, still a little awkward around her. Despite his mom not being like most of the Blade when it came to thinking emotions were a weakness, she still wasn't the best at bonding with people, especially young human children that didn't know how to wield a knife. There was just a bit of a cultural gap there, but Carina liked Krolia regardless because of her purple skin and markings. Actually, all of Lance's family was pretty interested in the alien inside their home. Not that Keith could blame them.

"Thank you! Would you like to help?" Carina asks her brightly, and Keith is almost completely sure that his mom is going to politely decline, but she does the exact opposite.

"I saw your father cook for me all the time. I never cared to learn, but. I wish I had," Krolia tells Keith, and he understands what she means. His father is dead, her husband is dead. She left to keep them both safe, and when she finds Keith in space, all he can tell her is that his father won't be there to greet them when they return. They had yet to visit his grave; she said that she wasn't ready and Keith wasn't going to push her.

"This is, uh. This is a little different than anything Dad would ever make," Keith tells her, just to warn her. It wasn't like the steaks his dad would grill or the bacon he would fry up or the occasional pie he would bake. "But I can teach you how to bake that pecan pie he used to really like."

She smiles. It's just the slightest curl of her lips, but it's there and it makes her eyes shine. "I would like that."

He nods and returns her smile, before clearing his throat and taking a step toward the stove again. They didn't have a whole lot of time to get this flan done, and he wanted to make sure they surprised Lance with it. "Mom, can you help Carina blend up some ingredients? I already have them all measured. You just have to pour them in and hit the button on the blender that says 'high'."

"Yes, I can do that," Krolia nods and goes over to the blender with Carina at her side. Keith looks at them for a moment or two as he washes out the pan. His mom is somehow… gentler with Carina as she helps her pour the measured ingredients into the blender. She's motherly in the way she handles these things, and it's a little odd to see, but it's nice. He wonders if his mom would have behaved like that with him when he was younger, but it isn't one of those things he can just ask, so he bites his tongue.

They get the flan in the oven a little later than Keith would have liked, but they would still be able to get it done it time. Lance wouldn't be back for another hour and a half and the flan needed an hour to cook, so it would work out pretty perfectly. Keith could probably help Carina offer some to Lance after he returned and took his shower.

And that plan, for once, went exactly the way it was supposed to go.

They got the flan out of the oven about thirty minutes before Lance returned, and he and Samuel disappeared upstairs to take their showers to get all the salt water out of their hair without even asking what the sweet smell was that was filling up the house. Leave it to Lance to worry more about his skin care routine than the sweet scent that was wafting from the kitchen.

"Carina, while he's in the shower let's bring this to his room, okay?" Keith says to her at the dining table, where he's helping her color in the picture on the card they made for Lance. It was a last minute decision, one that Carina thought of while she was coloring in her coloring book, and Keith wasn't deny her. So, they ended up folding a piece of paper and Keith wrote in the message Carina asked him to before she scribbled out a picture of her, Lance, Keith and Blue out on the beach. It's a messy picture, but Keith knows that Lance will appreciate it.

"Okay!" Carina says brightly as she slides out of her chair, taking the makeshift card with her. Keith stands to cut out a piece of the flan, that his mom already taste tested for them and gave it her seal of approval though she had no idea what it was supposed to taste like. He sets it on a plate and grabs a spoon before following Carina up the stairs to Lance's room.

He's still in the shower when they get there, thankfully enough. "Let's leave it on his desk. He'll come thank us later, okay?" Keith whispers to her as he sets the plate down onto the desk. Carina plops the card down onto it as well, and he sets it up nicely so that Lance will be able to see it as soon as he steps out of the bathroom.

"Do you think he'll like it?"

"I'm sure," Keith assures, keeping his voice soft as he ushers her out of the room and back down the hallway. They pass Shiro on their way down, who gives Keith a knowing smile as he goes down to the guest bathroom. Keith does his best to ignore it. Shiro knowing about his slight… crush on Lance was unfortunate, because despite popular belief, Shiro could be just as much of a shithead big brother as everyone else.

When Keith has Carina settled down in front of the television with Veronica, he disappears back upstairs and goes into the bedroom that he and Shiro share. He's a little nervous, despite himself, and he hopes that Lance will appreciate the gesture. He hadn't planned on signing the card, but Carina urged him to because he helped bake the flan and write the card, so why wouldn't he sign it? He could only hope now that Lance didn't think it was weird for Keith to bake him flan with his niece.

He has a quick texting conversation with Pidge, who is telling him that she and Hunk were finally starting on building Shiro's new arm now that they had a little more time to spare. She and Hunk were incredibly busy over in Texas, where the Garrison was, because they were some of the smartest engineers working on building the new castle. It was a miracle that they found the time to start planning and building Shiro's new arm, which was going to be made from components that were similar to the Altean castleship.

He is in the middle of asking her how Allura and Coran are when his bedroom door opens and Lance pokes his head in with a sheepish smile on his face and a bit of flan sticking to the corner of his mouth. "Hey, man. You busy?"

"Not really. Just texting Pidge about Shiro's new arm. I see that you found the flan."

"Yeah," Lance says as he steps fully inside the room and shuts the door behind him. The card is in his hand, too. "It was pretty good. A little rubbery, actually, but. I don't know. I haven't had flan in years so it was nice. I practically inhaled the whole thing."

"Having my mom as our taste tester probably wasn't the best idea."

"That doesn't matter. Seriously, I just care that you guys made it for me. And I can't believe my little niece is going to be an artist! I mean, look at this picture!" he says, excitement and pride bleeding into his tone as he shoves the card into Keith's face. "She got your mullet perfect. I couldn't be a prouder uncle."

"God, you are the absolute worst," Keith laughs, pushing Lance off of him and gets the card out of his face. "It's not even a mullet anymore!"

"You're still in the denial stage, I get it. But you really need to move onto acceptance. This can't be healthy," Lance snarks back, but Keith doesn't reply, he just rolls his eyes and turns off his phone before tossing it to the side.

"But seriously. Thank you." Lance's tone is back to soft and genuinely thankful. The suddenness of it throws Keith off for a moment, but he recovers quickly and manages a genuine smile in return. It was just flan, but Shiro's words from the day before remind him that it was more than that to Lance. It was reminding him that Carina and Keith were still thinking about him.

"It was Carina's idea," he says, because he's not about to take all the credit, and he feels a little embarrassed over Lance thanking him for this at all. He hadn't been planning on Lance knowing that he was the one who helped with the flan or the card. It just… it wasn't something that Keith did. He didn't do gestures like this that showed he was thinking about somebody. It left him vulnerable.

"Yeah, I know. But you helped her with it," Lance replies, opening the card and showing where Keith wrote down what Carina instructed him to. There's something soft in Lance's tone, something fond and something that Keith had never heard come from him before. He couldn't exactly place his finger on it, but he liked it. He, selfishly, wanted to hear that tone directed at him more often. "I really appreciate that."

"Yeah. I mean. I'm worried about you, too. You know that, right?"

Lance nods again and raises his eyes away from the card to Keith's face. His smile is still there, and so is that piece of flan at the corner of his mouth, but the smile looks a little more strained again. "I know. Sorry I've been acting, like, I don't know. Depressed, I guess? Not myself? Just- a lot of shit happened when you left."

Keith hums softly then reaches out to place a hand on Lance's knee. Lance doesn't flinch away from the touch, he just kind of sighs and his shoulders seem to relax again. Keith keeps his hand there and Lance's breaths stay even. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Lance nods again and his eyes lower away from Keith's face and back down to the card. "Yes. But later, okay? Tonight. We can go back to the beach again. It feels less… stifling there."

Keith understands what Lance means when he says that, so he doesn't push and he doesn't pry. He just rubs his thumb over his knee then moves his hand away to rest at his side again. "Okay. Whatever you need."

Lance raises his eyes back to him again, and his grip tightens on the card, but he doesn't seem upset. He seems happy, more in tune with himself again, and that is the only way that Keith can really explain it. Lance looks like he's a man that's beginning to come to terms with something and accept it in the way that shows he's determined to never let it slip from his grasp. Keith likes that. It fills him with the life that he's missed in him for months now.

"Thanks."

"You have flan on your face."

The beach is peaceful at night. Cuba is a place of noise, but Varadero Beach at three in the morning is a place of peace and quiet. It's a breath of fresh air that Keith didn't realize he needed, and one that Lance had been needing for a long time.

"I already told you that I missed you so you know that. I think what started it was that I didn't realize how much I was going to miss you," Lance started after ten minutes of sitting there in silence together. Keith hadn't been impatient for Lance to start talking, surprisingly enough, and when he did start, it didn't surprise him. It was almost as if nothing shifted.

"I don't… blame you for leaving. I'm glad that you did because you needed to. You found your mom and you, like, became buddies with Kolivan."

"I wouldn't really call us buddies, but sure," Keith laughs, looking up at the moon and tries not to think about how he can feel the heat of Lance's hand against his and his pinky brushing against the side of his hand. He doesn't move his hand away or towards Lance, he just waits and lets his friend move at his own pace. He just invites him, lets him know the touch is welcome, that he wants it, too, if Lance does.

"Well, still. The Marmorites are a great asset and all that, so. Thanks for opening up that door. But, I was never really mad at you for leaving. I wanted to be mad and wanted to think you were being selfish, but you weren't. Or, you were but you needed to be. You had to go and- and find yourself or whatever. You had to be around Galran that understood things you were going through that we couldn't. I understood that. I just missed you a lot and I didn't understand why.

"I didn't get why for a long time. I felt lonely while you were gone, and Allura helped a little bit but it wasn't really the same. Everybody had their little groups. Allura had Coran and Shi- the clone and Lotor so she didn't really need me. Hunk and Pidge are team Punk or whatever, so I never fit in there. I didn't really have anyone except the mice. I guess I didn't realize that- that we were a pair until you left."

Lance clears his throat like he's feeling awkward, but his hand is pressing more confidently against Keith's and his leg has shifted closer so that their thighs are pressed together. Keith, until this moment, never realized how warm Lance is. He's all tan skin and bright blue eyes and a wide smile - he's made of summer. Keith, on the other hand, was pale skin and dark eyes and clipped tones - cold and distant. He never realized how much he craved the warmth Lance has until it was seeping into his skin.

"It was always us, you know? In the beginning we were always bickering and I said that I didn't like you, but that wasn't really true. I was so jealous of you for such a long time. I always thought that you had everything. You were the top of our class, the best pilot of our generation, best friends with Shiro and all the girls in our class wanted you and all the boys wanted to be you. I guess… I guess I wanted both."

Keith pauses then, his breath catching and heart stuttering. He doesn't flinch away from Lance's touch, though, and he doesn't interrupt. He just holds his breath and waits, just like he always had when it came to Lance.

"It was confusing. It is confusing. I tried to hate you but I couldn't. I tried to create this kind of rivalry with you even when I knew I would never be able to measure up. I guess, in a way, I wanted to both prove something to myself and be noticed by you. You were this kind of immeasurable being to me. I thought that you constantly thought you were above me in every way, and I thought so too. I was always trying to catch up to you, to get on your level, that it was surprising when you suddenly fell down to mine."

Keith breaths out and Lance's hand is overlapping his.

"When Shiro disappeared again you became somebody different. You were… weak, vulnerable, really angry at the world. For some reason I always thought you were so aloof, like nothing could knock you down, so when something finally did I… I was kind of amazed," Lance huffs out, like he's laughing. "It was almost funny for a while, but then I saw you really struggling with accepting your role as the new Black Paladin and it wasn't funny anymore. You were suddenly just another person, human. You were missing your family and that… that was something I understood. That was the very first thing that we both could understand completely.

"And then Blue shut me out and Red called out to me. I was in your Lion, taking your place as Shiro's right hand to become yours. You were the leader but you couldn't lead. You were still a one man army and for some reason I was the only one who could make you see what you were doing wrong. You weren't above me anymore - you were my equal. You are the first person that I ever thought of as my complete equal."

Keith looks to the waves and lets his fingers slowly curl into Lance's, and Lance meets him halfway.

Lance sighs out slowly, falling quiet for a while longer, but Keith doesn't push him. He stays quiet and lets his warmth seep into him.

"When you left, suddenly I had no equal. Allura was probably as close as I could get. Or maybe it was just that I thought I saw a lot of you in her so I thought… I thought I could make myself her equal. And I think I might have, for a little while. We came to each other for guidance and pushed each other, gave each other advice. She was my closest friend while you were gone. And then Lotor showed up and he became her equal. I had nothing more to offer. I'm- all I am is just a boy from Cuba. He was a space prince, the Galran Emperor. Allura will need someone like him. Not like me."

"There is nothing wrong with you, Lance," Keith finally speaks up, tearing his eyes away from the ocean and to his face. Lance is not looking at him, but he keeps his eyes on the side of his face. "You aren't just a boy from Cuba. There- there is so much more to you than that. You shouldn't-"

Lance cuts him off when he squeezes Keith's hand and turns to look at him. That fond expression is on his face again, his lips curled up and eyebrows raised just ever so slightly with his eyes soft. The blue in his eyes is darker like this, Keith notes to himself, helplessly.

"To you. I'm more than that to you. I understand that now."

"You're more than that to Allura," Keith points out. Lance is her friend, he's not just a boy from Cuba to her either.

Lance's fond smile remains. "As a friend, sure. But as an equal? Or as a boyfriend? A potential life partner who she's going to rule the remaining Alteans with? No. No, I'm just a boy from Cuba then. I don't understand what it's like to be king to an entire alien race with a culture and customs I haven't lived by or been taught. She needs somebody else. And so do I."

Keith's mouth goes dry and he looks down at their hands. His stomach ties itself in knots and he looks back at Lance, his gaze helpless again and walls completely crumbled around him. They can't go back - there's no going back. "Why me?"

Lance laughs and shrugs a bit, smile never dropping. "I already told you why. We're equals, completely and totally. We need each other. Wouldn't you say so?"

The immediate answer that Keith jumps to is no. He doesn't need anybody. But then he gives it another second of thought, thinks back to the times Lance saved him from himself during the second time Shiro was gone and even before then when he thought he was going to lose his mind to war. He thinks to the warmth and weight of Lance's hand against his, his soft tones and expressions directed at him. He thinks of their bickering and their ever changing dynamic that came as naturally to them as the seasons changing. He thinks of what it would be like to lose all that.

"Yeah," he replies, breathless and cheeks red. "Yeah. I'd say so."

Lance smiles and it continues to reach his eyes, but he looks unsurprised, as if he knew Keith was going to say what he did. Things weren't going to be perfect. Lance was still hurting inside, and all of that wasn't going to be erased just because they were going through their last shift, their last step forward in their relationship with one another. But it would get easier and one piece of Lance was at least mended and returning life into him.

The rest of Lance that was missing would be picked up and breathed back into him with time. They had that time and Keith would be by his side every step of the way as his equal and as his partner.