Note 1: I use Earth time measurements and Altean ones interchangeably because I feel they would use a mashup of both, depending on the context of the /

Note 2: *slams fists repeatedly on the table* SOFT KEITH SOFT KEITH SOFT KEITH

(*belated note 3: went backchanged the OCs name bc my brain is stupid I did a subconscious thing where I gave him a name that already existed in the show who I forgot all about whoops lakdhflakhdf this is what happens when you only watch every episode of vld once lmao)

Blood of the Covenant

When someone knocked this loudly on Lance's door, it usually meant the ship was under attack. With that precedent in mind Lance practically fell out of bed in his haste to answer the knock, tripping and dragging the blanket halfway across the room by the ankles before he managed to disentangle himself, just in time to hit the release on the door.

It slid open to reveal one very distraught Keith.

"What's wrong?" Lance asked immediately. "Are we under attack?" Without answering, Keith proceeded to shove his way into the room and hit the 'close' button behind him, sealing them both inside Lance's room. "Keith, what's going on?" Keith was standing just inside the doorway now, wringing his hands together and looking anywhere in the room except at Lance. It was weird, seeing him all nervous like this. Keith? Nervous? It was beyond weird; it was flat out unnatural.

"I don't know who else to turn to," he finally blurted out. "You can't tell Allura or Coran, okay, and especially not Shiro, not even Hunk or Pidge or I swear to god I'llㅡI just thought since you have such a big family you might know what to doㅡI'm desperate, Lanceㅡ"

"Woah, woah ," Lance reeled. Truth be told, Keith had been acting oddly for weeks now. He'd been isolating himself from the team even more than usual, sleeping in late, sneaking around, and being generally jumpy. It'd been amped up even more over this last week, so this breakdown was not a huge shocker. But the fact that Keith came to Lance for help? No matter how much closer they'd gotten, it would always be a little bit of a surprise when Keith asked anyone for help. Whatever the hell this was, it must be serious. He'd never seen the guy so worked up outside of battle before. "Calm down," he soothed. "You're rambling, Keith, just tell me what you need from me."

Keith pressed his lips together in surprise, taking pause at Lance's choice of words. There'd been a time when Lance's response to this would have been what did you do? It served as a reminder: not only of how much they'd grown, but of why he came to Lance with this in the first place rather than anyone else.

"Follow me," he said, in a voice that brokered no questioning.

So Lance did, all the way down the hall to Keith's bedroom, where Keith glanced skittishly up and down the hall to make sure it was empty before punching in his code, at which point he grabbed Lance's sleeve to pull him swiftly inside and shut the door. All at once Lance understood. His eyes fell on the small alien laying on Keith's bed: a young lizard-like creature with iridescent gold scales, six legs, and a short rounded nose reminiscent of a salamander. The alien waved one of his six arms.

"Niner?" Lance gasped. "What the fuck? Keith, what the fuㅡ"

"Sh-shut up!" Keith hissed, clapping a hand over Lance's mouth. "Don't shout! Yes it's Niner, don't give me that judging look Lance, I couldn't leave him there!"

The initial shockwave having abated enough for Lance to do something other than shout expletives, he pushed Keith's hand away. "I am not judging," he said, overemphasizing every syllable. "You know we all wanted to take him with us. I guess you were the only one stupid enough to actually do it."

"I hate you," Keith grumbled, but there was little vitriol in it. Only defeat. "Niner, you remember Lance, right?"

As Keith spoke in a shockingly soft voice that Lance had never heard him use before, Niner looked into an Altean translatorㅡa black electronic slate that took their spoken words and displayed them on a screen in his native tongue. It may have been the soft lighting in Keith's bedroom, but the more Lance looked, the more it seemed like there was something off about the kid. His scales didn't look quite as gold as the last time they met. Less gold and more... chartreuse.

When the phrase finished translating, Niner broke in a toothy smile. He spoke a few short guttural sentences back into the translator, then turned the screen toward Lance. It read: * How could I forget the Blue Paladin of Voltron? He's the loud one. The very, very loud one.*

What normally would have been a funny jab instead twisted Lance's heart in his chest as he was forced to remember the last time he saw Niner, which was about two terran months ago. The team had liberated a small village on a lunar outpost of a gaseous planet in a faroff system, and the village itself had given them all squicky feelings, totally independent of their Galra occupation. They treated their wounded very strangely there. Those with treatable injuries were revered and given the utmost care until they returned to full health, while those with ailments that were untreatable were outcast and left to fend for themselves. Niner had suffered two broken legs during a previous attempt at rebellion a few years back that healed wrong, leaving him unable to walk without assistance, and never to run. So what would have been a joyous recovery of partial-mobility on Earth was a death sentence on this satellite.

Niner's own family threw him out on the streets, where he'd been living ever since.

Despite his disability and his young age (the equivalent of a human ten year old, Lance guessed), his insider knowledge was pivotal in Team Voltron's retaking of the outpost, and after their victory, Pidge and Hunk and Lance had come together as a unit to try and convince Shiro, Coran, and Allura to bring Niner back with them to live on the castleship. It was either that or condemn him to a lifetime of living on the streets, begging for scraps from a society that undervalued him.

The others had been sympathetic, but held fast that the castleship was no place for a civilian child. They were at the frontlines of an active war, and (as if the universe wanted to prove the point out of spite) they were that very day heading on to another far more dangerous mission. It was no place for a child. Lance understood that…on some level... but it didn't stop him blowing up in Allura's face when she put her foot down and said no. He remembered shouting until he lost his voice, he remembered Hunk eventually dragging him away, and he remembered Allura refusing to speak to him outside a battle setting for the two straight weeks following. He very distinctly remembered NOT bringing Niner with them. He remembered crying about it for several vargas that night.

What he didn't remember was where the fuck Keith had been while all of that drama was unfolding.

"Yes," Keith affirmed to Niner. "The loud one."

Niner replied and it translated: * Good choice.*

"Wait, good choice for what?" Lance asked. It had only just dawned on him they hadn't even gotten to the heart of the problem yet.

After a moment of indecision, Keith crossed the room and plucked Niner's translator from his hands, which elicited a squeak of indignation from him that quickly turned into a wet, wracking cough that had Keith in a brief panic. For a moment Keith just stood there, hovering, not quite knowing whether to touch him and help him or let it work itself out, waiting to see if Niner would start breathing again. Eventually he did, and Keith breathed too.

The look of horror on Lance's face said it all.

"He's sick," Keith broke. "He's really sick and I don't know what to do, I've tried everything, I've wracked all the data the ship's computer has to offer on their race and it's all gibberish to me. I don't know what to do, Lance, he's getting worse every day."

"Okay. First off," Lance started, and snatched the translator out of Keith's hands, "he's not a baby. He may be a kid but he's a kid who helped us take down the Galra on Leinan from the inside out. He should know what we're saying." He passed the translator back to Niner, who thanked him and stuck his forked tongue out at Keith.

"But…" He really wasn't sure he wanted to have this conversation in front of Niner.

"If I'm gonna help you," Lance insisted, "you're gonna have to trust me. Niner, do you know what you're sick with?"

That earned a series of undecided shoulder shrugs from Niner and an eventual translation of: * I've seen some symptoms like mine in others before on Leinan, but only in times of extreme famine.*

After reading that twice, Lance frowned at the translator. "Huh. That's weird. You've been feeding him, right?"

Keith bristled. "Of course I've been feeding him, asshole!"

"Cool your jets, Keith. What has he been eating?"

Forcing himself to take a deep breath, Keith settled his eyes on Niner. "Basically the same stuff we do? And he's been fine for two whole months living on that until a couple quintants ago. It came on so suddenly."

"Have you thought about putting him in the healing pod? I know it's not meant for viruses, but if it's something else it could help."

Of course Keith thought about that. It was literally all he ever thought about these last few days. "It's not calibrated for his species," he sighed, thinking about the all-important 'calibration' of the healing tech to human anatomy which Coran had forced them all to partake in their first week in the castle. They had complained about it at the time but later that very week it had saved Lance's life. Not for the first time he wished he had paid more attention to Coran's winding explanation about the intricacies of that machinery and how it all worked.

"Dang," Lance sighed back. "That's right. Uhhh… okay. It's okay. I got this." He seemed to be talking more to himself now than to Keith or Niner, shuffling back and forth from foot to foot and then crossing the room to rest the back of his hand on Niner's rounded forehead. Then he paused, his face falling. "Wait, what is his normal body temp supposed to be?"

"A little lower than ours," Keith said. "Like eighty-five Fahrenheit."

"Whaㅡ Keith! " Lance recoiled like Niner's scales had burned him, rounding on Keith with wide, frantic eyes. "Then he's burning up!"

Keith threw his hands up. "I know! Why do you think I ran to your room to get you?!"

"You should have used more urgency, oh my god, we need ice immediately, what is this?"

Lance's panic was highly contagious and Keith found his heart racing and his stomach plummeting as Lance snatched a pouch off the side table and shook it at him. "Water," he blurted.

"They drink water right?"

Keith nodded frantically.

"Okay, drink this now! " Lance shouted, shoving the pouch into Niner's weakened paws. "Hang in there, Nine, drink that and think icy thoughts okay?" He was sprinting toward the door now, brushing past a very bewildered Keith. "Think of the snowcaps on Leinan, think of hailstormsㅡI'll be right backㅡ"

And with that he sprinted out of the room.

Which left Keith alone with Ninerㅡsomething which had become Keith's new definition of normalcy over the past eight weeks. He was never alone in this room anymore, he was alone-with-Niner. Despite the ominous cloud of mysterious illness, the kid started giggling to himself the instant Lance was gone. Laughter was a choppy and unfiltered and primal sound coming from his reptilian vocal chords, and he soon cut it out because another cough was starting to come on. Keith frowned and sauntered over to help with the water Lance had spilled all over Niner in his panic. He hated that Niner was always laughing off the things that suckedㅡalthough it explained why he and Lance had got on so swimmingly during the liberation of Leinan.

As Keith was using a t-shirt to soak some of the spilt water off the bedspread, Niner poked him in the shoulder. He looked up to see that Niner had scrolled back up in the translator's history log to point at the previous statement of: * The very, very loud one.*

Keith looked at it, thought about it, then dropped the t-shirt to the floor.

"Shit. I better go after him."

.

.

When Keith caught up to Lance he was in the fourth floor kitchen. Every cupboard in the room had been opened and dug through, and now Lance was standing at the replicator dispenser, holding a five-gallon metal pot up to the spout, and was just about finishing filling it up with ice. Keith slowed as he entered the disaster of a room, his eyes sliding to Pidge and Hunk. They were sitting at the table on the other end of the room, their game of chess momentarily abandoned as they watched Lance's progress with a mix of horror and curiosity. Keith balked at their presence, but continued on to Lance anyway, forcing himself to walk as casually as possible.

"Could you be any less subtle?" he hissed in Lance's ear.

"No time," Lance hissed back, shaking the last few pellets of ice out of the dispenser's nozzle. "You should have come and got me hours ago. No, days ago. Here, take this." He tossed away the hose and and then shoved the freezing pot unceremoniously into Keith's arms, at which point he pulled another empty pot off the counter from its place beside two other full pots of ice, and started filling it.

"Um…" Hunk ventured from his place at the table. He leaned back in his chair, accidentally knocking over Pidge's queen and turning a blind eye as she slyly set it upright again three spaces to the left. "Whatcha doin,' guys?"

"Nothing!" Keith snapped, and Lance glared at him disparagingly.

"Just a little experiment," Lance offered. "With Blue. For science. Keith's helping. Not that we need help!" he added a little manically. "We definitely don't need any more help, don't worry about it." All of this was punctuated with nervous laughter and the steady grinding noise of the replicator combined with the crispy metallic shink-shink-shink of ice settling onto metal.

"Okay," Pidge said slowly, her voice dripping with the sarcasm. "Not worrying. Totally not worrying over here about this extremely worrying thing that's happening right in front of my chess game. Which I'm now winning, by the way. Check, Hunk."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. Right. I saw you move that queen, you little egg."

Pidge wrinkled her nose and pushed the queen back to where it was. "Jeez, since when did you have mom-eyes..."

The second Lance finished filling that fourth pot he balanced it on top of the one already in Keith's hands, then stacked the other two in his own arms and practically ran out of the room. An uncomfortable moment of silence followed between Keith, Hunk, and Pidge. There was a funny look on Pidge's face that told Keith she was coming to a very, intensely wrong conclusion about this encounter, and Hunk looked more confused than Keith had ever seen him. "...Right," Keith said slowly. "Bye." And he bolted after Lance.

.

.

When he got back to his room with his two buckets of ice, he found Lance on the floor with a box of plastic bags and pile of t-shirts from Keith's closet, bagging handfuls of ice and wrapping them at the end with the shirts. There were already two of these makeshift ice packs piled around Niner's shoulders when Keith walked in. "I thought you weren't supposed to use ice to break fevers," Keith said, sitting down cross-legged by Lance to start helping.

"Yeah, on humans. But Niner's closer to a reptile than a human. His body temperature is completely dependent on his surroundings and you had him under a blanket!"

Keith flushed; he felt like an absolute idiot right now. A neglectful, abusive idiot. "I thought that's what you were supposed to do," he muttered in shame. He'd seen it in movies and took it at face value. How was he supposed to know otherwise? His fevers as a kid went largely unnoticed and undiagnosed and he always just waited them out, trudging his way past them through sheer force of will. This was entirely new territory for him, having to actually take care of someone who was sick. Having to actually address it.

"It's okay," Lance said, and softened his tone from scolding to sympathetic. It was obvious Keith had no idea what he was doing, and he almost hurt Niner over it, but he'd been doing his best and that deserved acknowledgement. "Don't sweat it, Red. That's why I'm here, right? So tell me every little detail about his symptoms and we'll get to work curing him."

"I already looked them all up," Keith sighed, and rose to bring the next batch of ice packs over to arrange around the kid on the bed. "There's next to nothing helpful in the database. We have more information on the plantlife on that moon than the actual people that live there, and Niner doesn't remember anything about how they treated this beyond the ceremonial parts of it."

Lance perked up. "Ceremonial?"

"Yeah, they had this ritual they would do when people grew weak during the famine season. We don't need that info though. We need to know what kind of medicine they used."

"Don't be so sure," Lance hummed, rising to his feet and skipping over to sit down next to Niner on the bed, tucking the last of the ice packs beside his thin neck. "Could you tell me about that, Niner?"

Niner squirmed at the addition of yet another ice pack, then spoke into the translator. I hate this, it's so cold. He groaned, squirmed a bit more, and then continued: *There was a meadow at the top of that mountain at the edge of the village. We'd carry them up and lay them down in the field of [ [_]^`|/y. ] when the sun and planet were both at the zenith.*

Humming to himself, Lance took the slate, reading over the description once more. His eyes lingered on the bracketed off phrase which the slate had failed to identify; his rudimentary comprehension of written Altean was enough to know it said something akin to [unable to translate]. He clicked on it, and it provided the written word in Niner's native tongueㅡin yet another alien alphabet of course, this time a wholly unfamiliar one. Why did he even bother to click on it?

"Keith, do you know what this word means?"

Keith didn't even have to look at the slate to know which word Lance meant; he'd been there, done that already. "Yeah, I looked it up. Some kind of purple flower native to the northern hemisphere on Leinan."

"And you didn't think that was important enough to tell me?"

"Of course I think it's important!" Keith snapped. "For god's sake, you haven't given me more than five seconds to talk yet, how am I supposed to tell you anything?"

"Okay. Well. Next time something like this happens, tell me at the beginning, yeah? Then it won't be a problem."

"Well you know about Niner now so if it happens again I'll justㅡ"

"No," Lance interrupted, frustrated and insistent, "no, I mean, next time you pull a stunt like this, tell me right away. You should have let me in on this way back on Leinan." Keith swallowed his response as Lance heaved a long breath through his teeth and then rose from the bed, stretching his arms high in the air and then letting his hands come to rest behind his head. The way he was looking at Keith was simultaneously soft and hard all at once. Like he wanted to yell at him and hug him at the same time. It was disarming. "I know we're not, like, best friends for life or whatever, but I'm on your side, Keith. I always have been. And if you repeat this to anyone later I will deny it outright, but we work infinitely better as a duo than we do solo. So, next time, let me in on your idiotic plan at the very beginning and not as a last resort when it all goes sideways. That said, I'll be back in a bit."

Keith shot to his feet as Lance strolled to the door. "Hang on, you're leaving? Right after that whole 'we work better as a duo' speech?"

"I'm not leaving -leaving," Lance explained. "I'm going to research that flower. Seems like it's the key to all of this, somehow. Meanwhile, you go swindle a thermometer from Coran without letting him know what it's for and then keep Niner's temp down to a reasonable level. Keep him hydrated and try to get him to eat. If it drops too much put that blanket back on him for awhile. Relax," he added, nearly laughing at the betrayal etched on Keith's face. "I won't be long."

Niner, who had been following this conversation raptly with his translator, thanked Lance quickly before he left. Then once he was gone, Niner added: * And you were sooo afraid he was gonna turn us in. If you had told me you were going to ask HIM for help I would have told you not to worry!*

Keith crossed his arms at the snarky words and even snarkier grin. "Like you know the first thing about Lance," he grumbled, but it was a weak and empty comeback and they both knew it.

*I know enough,* Niner said. * And besides, you obviously trust him. Why shouldn't I?*

.

.

Two vargas later, Lance couldn't feel his ass. He was laying face up on the hard tile floor in his favorite rec room with a computer screen two inches from his tired eyesㅡthe logic being that maybe if he looked at the mind-numbing data from a literal different angle, something would finally jump out at him from the pages and pages of flora and fauna and endless chemical recipes.

It was like this that Pidge found him. She wandered in with her nose in a book and tripped straight over his prone body, winding Lance and making him drop the screen onto his face. She caught herself on her hands and knees on the other side of him, then exacted revenge by whacking his arm with the broad side of her book. But Lance was distracted. He'd been so immersed in the abbreviations and equations and graphs and tables that they were swimming before his eyes, even when he looked at Pidge. He mumbled a brief apology and then picked the computer off his chest and went right back to staring at it, trying to squeeze an answer from the information, totally missing the way Pidge's eyes narrowed at him suspiciously.

"Still working on your science fair project?"

"Huh? Oh," he said detachedly. He'd just realized something. Pidge was here. "Hey Pidgey will you come here for a sec and look at this?" Maybe what he needed was a fresh, unbiased set of eyes.

Curiosity piqued, Pidge crawled over and laid next to him, shoulder to shoulder so she could see the text on the screen he was holding over his face. She raked her eyes over it for a moment, then adjusted her glasses. She was baffled. "What the hell am I looking at here?"

"Don't worry about it," he brushed off, then opened one tab to reveal an illustrated cross-section of flower complete with a tinytext sidebar of detail regarding its entire genetic makeup. "I need to know the common factor between this," (here he switched to another tab that harbored hundreds and hundreds of other sub-tabs) "and the rest of these things."

Pidge rolled her head to the side, using her hand to block off the screen and snare his elusive attention span. "When you say don't worry about it, I immediately start worrying about it five hundred percent more. You know that, right? And this is the second time you've said that tonight, so we're looking at an exponential growth rate of two hundred and fifty thousand percent worry."

"Pidge," Lance deadpanned, "first of all, shut up. Second of all please, can you just help a guy out? Please . Pidge, please. Pidgey. It's not Voltron related, I swear, it's something else, just please trust me that it's really important. And. And help. Pidgeotto? Pidgeot?"

"Okay jeez," she grumbled, snatching the computer from him. "But only 'cause you evolved me into a Pidgeot. And you're not off the hook either. I want to know what you and Keith are up to." But for now she let it go, because there was a mysterious puzzle to solve and she was weak at the knees for mysterious puzzles.

In the end it took her less than forty-five doboshes. Once she was finally satisfied that she'd solved it, she tapped Lance on the shoulder (he'd been slowly nodding off for the last ten) and pushed the computer screen back into his hands. "Whatever this plant is," she said, pointing to the cross-section of the alien flower, "there's a specific chemical compound in its spores that it shares in common with most of these other things. Looks like it goes through a daily cycle where it releases it as a gas through these buds here, which is pretty fascinating. Sorta like with plants and their CO2 cycle on Earth. Why do you need to know this?" she finally asked, unable to contain her burning curiosity any longer. "Starting a garden with Keith?"

"Something like that," Lance sighed. "You're a lifesaver, you know that Pidge?"

Pidge growled in outrage as he rolled to a sitting position and ruffled her hair with affection before leaping to his feet. "You still have to tell me what's going on!"

But Lance was already running out of the room. "Raincheck?" he called over his shoulder.

"No way!" she shouted after him. "So help me Lance I will go to Shiro over this if you don't clue me in right now!"

His voice echoed back from the hallway through the empty doorway. "No you won't!"

In the empty rec room, Pidge clenched one fist in defeat. "Dammit," she whispered to herself. "I totally won't."

That smartass knew her too well.

.

.

Hunk was still sitting at the table in the fourth-floor kitchen when Lance skidded in at top speed, nearly knocking over a chair in his haste to get at the replicator. It startled Hunk so bad that his knife slipped and nicked his thumb. He dropped the hand-carved chess piece he was currently smoothing out, caught it at the last second, only to drop it again when Lance's hand clapped him on the shoulder. "Hunk! My man. My main guy. The love of my life."

Picking up the wooden knight to make sure it hadn't sustained any damage, Hunk rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "What do you want, Lance?"

"Okay, ouch."

Hunk merely turned to Lance and rolled his eyes again. "You always call me the love of your life when you want something," he laughed.

"...Noted. Okay yeah so, you understand this dumb replicator way better than I do," he launched, then walked away to begin rummaging through the cupboards (which Hunk had only just finished straightening after Lance's last adventure through this kitchen) for a ceramic bowl. "Can you help me program it to add a specific chemical compound into the food goo?"

"Yeah sure," Hunk said warily as he scraped the chair backwards to let himself up. "What compound?"

Lance held up a printout with a complicated recipe on it, which Hunk took and looked over, then pulled open the wall panel beside the replicator and began to alter its various settings. He got halfway through and then had to stop and furrow his eyebrows nervously at his friend. "Lance, do you realize how close this chemical is to arsenic? Are you making poison?"

"No, no," Lance assured him in a tone that was absurdly casual considering the question he was answering, "it's part of the science experiment Keith and I are doing. Uhmm? It involves gardening? Just… don't worry about it."

Hunk finished fiddling with the dials so he could give Lance his full attention. "That is the second time you've said that to me tonight," he said pointedly, "and it's even less convincing than the first time. But you're my best friend and I trust that, A, you'll tell me eventually, and B, you're not up to anything sketchy."

For the first time all evening, Lance looked unsure of himself. "Um," he squeaked. "Define sketchy?"

That was easy. "Anything Shiro would disapprove of." He took the ceramic bowl from Lance's hands and stuck the nozzle into it, filling it with an extremely deadly version of the Altean goo they all ate to survive. He sure hoped there was a good reason for this.

"It might be a little sketchy by those parameters," Lance said, his voice small and contrite. "I promise it's nothing bad though," he added quickly at the look on Hunk's face. "Can you please keep this a secret? Just for a little while. I promise I'll explain soon, but not yet. I can't yet. And can you save that recipe to the replicator's files for me? I'm gonna need it again."

"Done and done, buddy. Just, please assure me that you and Keith are not gonna be eating this, because I think it goes without saying but you will immediately die."

A bark of laughter escaped Lance's throat as he accepted the bowl back. "We're not gonna eat it," he laughed. "Thanks man. Seriously. I could not have done this without you!" With that, Lance gave him a swift, strong, one-armed hug, then ran from the room as fast as he could manage with a bowl of goo in his hands, leaving Hunk alone to wonder: done what exactly?

.

.

Keith almost jumped out of his skin when his door slid open without a preceding knock to reveal Lance. Since when did he know my passcode? But the confusion of it was eclipsed by the look of triumph on Lance's face and the bowl in his hands, which he held up as he walked in like it was a golden medal of honor. He then offered a shorthand explanation that had Keith's jaw dropping and Niner looking mildly annoyed.

"You're kidding me," Keith said at the end. "So he basically has his species' equivalent of scurvy?"

"Yep," Lance said, and released the bowl into Keith's impatient hands. "Basically." To Lance's surprise, Keith did not pass the food off to Niner but instead climbed into bed next to him and set about helping him eat it.

"We probably won't see results for another twenty-five vargas or so," Lance elaborated, though his train of thought grew a little lost as he drank in the unprecedented sight of Keith Kogane being domestic . It was weird. But like.. in a good way. He'd been so busy ever since the discovery that Keith had spirited Niner aboard the ship that he hadn't had time to think about all that it meant, how much time they must have been spending together, how close they must have gotten. "But as long as we keep adding that chemical into his food he should get better and stay better. He was just lacking one of his basic food groups, that's all."

Lance knew that his role here had been fulfilled, and if there was a cue to leave, Keith's silence as he helped Niner eat was definitely it. But Lance couldn't stop watching. Couldn't stop thinking about the ease with which the two of them understood each other, the silent communication that only came with the deepest understanding of another person, the comfortable familiarity that only came with family. Couldn't stop thinking how much Niner reminded him of his little brother. Soft-spoken but feisty Benito. So by the time Niner was finished eating, Lance was sitting at the foot of Keith's bed, staring off into space in the other direction and desperately trying to think about nothing. He didn't know how long he sat there, but eventually a snore caught his attention.

When he turned to look, his heart twisted in his chest. Sometime in the last half-varga or so Niner had curled up into Keith's side, under his arm, and was now sleeping soundly.

"Could you turn off the light?" Keith asked him, his voice a rumbling whisper in the silent room. "He's a pretty deep sleeper, but I don't wanna chance waking him up. He's barely slept the last two days… You don't have to leave, though," he added even more quietly as Lance slipped across the room to hit the switch and plunge the room into near-darkness.

Only the faint blue lines that ran along the edges of the room lit his way as he went back to the bed, outlining Keith in sterile sapphire crescents, reflecting deep in his eyes. Lance sat back down at the foot of the bed again, this time scooting back to lean against the wall and get a little more comfortable. He stared over at Keith and Niner, unable to help himself, unsure if he was jealous of Niner for being so close to Keith or jealous of Keith for finding something rare and precious out here in the backwater alleys of space that Lance had left behind in hordes on Earth.

"He's really softened you up," Lance laughed quietly. "Hasn't he?"

Keith bit his lip, eyes sliding down to the kid curled into the space between his arm and his ribs. He didn't know what to say. He supposed it was true.

"I guess…" Lance's silhouette was hard to make out in the dark, but the blue light lit most of his face, painting it a warm purple-brown. "I didn't know you guys were friends," he went on. "You didn't help Hunk and Pidge and I when we tried to convince them to bring Niner back with us, so I assumed you didn't care one way or the other. Now that I think about it though, you had a few hours alone with him when you two snuck in to shut down the power to the Galra base, huh?"

Keith blinked. "Yeah," he said. "We… bonded." For once the word didn't make Lance laugh, and for that Keith was grateful. He didn't want to go into details. Didn't want to explain how he and Niner had connected over mutual feelings of abandonment, or explain how saving Niner had been more like saving himself than anything else.

But he found himself spilling some of it anyway. Just some.

"When we met him on the street on Leinan... That was me once, Lance. I couldn't leave him there. I couldn't, but I, I'm so bad at this," he groaned. "I have no clue what I'm doing and I could have killed him. I should never have snuck him aboard. I don't know fuckall about taking care of kids."

For a long moment Lance was silent at the other end of the bed. Then he hummed, and started picking at a spot on his jeans. "I think you're better at it than you think. Listen… When I was younger, I used to babysit my little brother and sister a lot after Mark and Lauraㅡthe oldest onesㅡmoved out. They were four and five years younger than me, so I was always in charge when my parents left. One time it was just me and Benito while my parents took Gabriela to a swim meet. I wasn't supposed to let him play any farther than our street, but his friends were going down to the beach. It wasn't that far, and I wanted to be the cool older brother, y'know? So I let him go. I figured as long as he came back before my parents got home it'd be okay."

Keith followed along as the wistful look on Lance's face morphed into something different. Something a little more complex. A little sadder.

"But about an hour later I got a frantic call from Ben's best friend. Some jerk let his dog off the leash and it attacked my brother, crashing his bike and biting a chunk out of his leg. I had never panicked like that before. I got down there in less than five minutes and carried him all the way back to our house, wrapped it up, called our parents to come home. I thought I was gonna get the lecture of my life for letting him out of my sight. But you know what happened? Ben immediately tried to convince them he snuck out without me knowing. My parents didn't believe him, of course," Lance laughed, the sadness momentarily outrun by amusement. "He was a terrible liar. But they were so proud of me for going straight to them for help even though I knew I'd get in trouble, and of him having my back even though he'd get in trouble, that they didn't punish either of us."

The stray thread on Lance's jeans had turned into a small hole now, and he looked at it blankly, as if he couldn't remember pulling on the thread in the first place.

"I may not have been the best big brother, but I…"

Lance trailed off, his throat closing up. There'd been a point to this story when he started it, there really had, but it had gotten all muddied up along the way. The point was gone, and all that was left was that last trailing sentence, echoing in his head, like a rock down an empty well, fading and fading and finally shattering at the bottom.

"Who am I kidding," he whispered, curling his knees up to his chest and resting his forehead on them tiredly. "You don't want my advice. I'm a terrible brother."

Keith, who'd been listening raptly, stared at Lance in horror as he curled in on himself, not at all understanding the abrupt turn of conversation. "What are you talking about?" he pressed softly.

"I abandoned them," Lance choked. "I'm no better than Niner's family."

"That's insane," Keith said, and he meant it with all his heart. It was utterly absurd, what Lance was saying, and he had to find some way to verbalize that. "You're nothing at all like Niner's family."

The rueful smile on Lance's teary face then as he looked up crinkling the corners of his watery eyes, hit Keith so hard he stopped breathing for a second. How could someone possibly look so flirty and devastated all at once? "You're just saying that 'cause we're friends," Lance grinned, a single tear escaping down his cheek.

"No, I'm not," Keith insisted. "Do you…" He looked away and steeled himself, thinking about Lance's self-proclamation of friendship. "Do you want to come over here?"

Lance blinked, genuinely stunned right out of his sadness. He looked at Niner, then blankly at the empty spot on Keith's other side. "Like, do I want to cuddle?"

Heat crawled on Keith's neck at Lance's bewilderment. "I just thoughtㅡ" Was that weird? Was that not on the table? " You just said we were friends and you're always doing it with Hunk and Pidge when you're feeling down? Stop looking at me like that. You have approximately one second before I retract the offer."

"NO," Lance blurted, "no I'm coming, I want to." And it was true, he was already clambering gracelessly across the bed to flop down at Keith's other side, saving Keith the trouble of figuring out whether he should put his arm around him or behind him or just at his own side by worming his way directly under Keith's arm and laying his head on his shoulder. Keith settled his arm behind Lance's neck, which was dangerously soft and warm. "This is nice," Lance sighed, and he had no business sounding so unfazed by this when he'd almost just given Keith a heart attack. "You should do this more often. It's good for the soul."

It was nice. It was very nice, but Keith would sooner die than admit it.

"You're not a bad brother," he offered instead. Lance snorted but Keith's nostrils flared and he and grabbed Lance by the hair, tugging his head backwards to force him to look Keith in the eye. That stole the scoff right out of his mouth. "You've travelled billions of light years and fought at the frontlines of someone else's war just to keep Earth safe. I know you." He released Lance's hair but Lance didn't move, not right away at least, his eyes like two neutron stars in the dark room, boring into Keith. "Everything you do," Keith murmured, "you do for them. If that doesn't make you a good brother then I don't know what would. Besides, as Shiro says, all of us on this team are brothers too, and I may not have any prior experience to compare with but I happen to think we're good ones."

Just like that, the scoff was back, and Lance was breaking the intense eye-contact.

"Blah. I hate when he says that," he droned. " Hunk's like my brother. But Pidge? A sister, yeah. Kinda. But more like a next door neighbor that spends so much time at your house that she has her own key and hangs out with your mom." (Why did Keith feel like Lance had a neighbor like that in Varadero?) "Shiro," Lance went on, on a roll now and gesturing widely with his hands. "He's like that badass cousin that visits less often than the others, but always brings weird gifts with him to make up for it and takes you for rides on his motorcycle."

A laugh bubbled up in Keith's throat at that, which had Lance grinning in triumph. Making Keith laugh was like winning a marathon.

"Okay, what about Allura?" Keith pressed. He was actually enjoying Lance's rambling for once, and he didn't want him to stop.

"Allura?" Lance said, tapping his chin in thought. "Allura is like… like that one really young coach that hangs out with the team outside of school and lets her faves cut class to practice, because winning nationals is obviously more important than math."

Keith was barely able to contain the laugh this time, but he managed, wary of waking Niner. He was starting to think Lance was trying to make him laugh. "Coran?" he whispered, once he'd gotten control over his voice.

"Easy. Coran's that one uncle. No one seems to know exactly how he's related to you, and yet, no one ever questions his presence at family gatherings."

Okay, now that one was pretty funny, but Keith didn't laugh. Because it'd just dawned on him that there was only one person left for Lance to categorize. There was a long silence where it hung in the air, unspoken, until it was clear Lance wasn't going to offer up the answer on his own.

"What about me?" Keith prompted, tentatively.

Lance tilted his head back to hit Keith with a cryptic look, all the playfulness gone from his face. "I'm still figuring you out, man."

Keith blinked in surprise, leaning toward Lance by another fraction of an inch. "Yeah," he agreed. "I'm still figuring you out, too."

It was the first time they'd ever acknowledged this thing between them, that unspoken thread that had always seemed to tie them together, tripping them up when they strayed too far, hopelessly entangling them when they strayed too close. It was the first time they'd ever voiced the fact that they might mean something different to each other than they did to everyone else on this ship. And strangely, admitting to itㅡhowever vaguelyㅡwas an enormous load off the room. It was like a heavy atmosphere had lifted.

So taken was Keith with the serious look on Lance's face that he didn't even notice when Lance's arm slid across his stomach, his hand coming to rest on his chest. He was focused on the way Lance wasn't pulling away from him, even though his nose was less than three inches from Lance's now, and the fact that his eyelashes were so long and the fact that there was a freckle inside his left iris and the fact that it'd be so easy to just… to just...

"We gotta tell the others," Lance said, and Keith snapped out of it so hard he got internal whiplash.

"What, no," he blurted out, "you said you wouldn't tell!" He immediately regretted it because Niner startled awake on his other side, floundering in a half-awake state until his cloudy eyes fell on Lance and Keith.

"Not all at once," Lance soothed. Niner was rubbing his eyes now and digging his translator out of the covers, but Keith was too far into panic-mode to even think about apologizing for waking him, let alone keeping him from listening in. "Strategically. Pidge first, because she's already hella suspicious and we need to tell her before she starts snooping and brings this whole charade crashing down prematurely. We'll do that tomorrow. Then Hunkㅡ"

"No."

" ㅡthen Hunk, but not until next week once you're back to full health, though." Lance directed this at Niner, who was now following along and looked simultaneously excited and worried. "'Cause I know Hunk's gonna want to hug you senseless. He'll be beside himself. Listen," Lance pressed, turning back to Keith. "You gotta be the one to tell Hunk. He's so bad with secrets. But if it's coming from you, he'll be so honoredㅡsince you never tell anyone anythingㅡthat he wouldn't dream of telling. You gotta make him feel special for knowing. Only then will he keep the secret."

Keith stared at Lance in slack-jawed disbelief. " Wow that is manipulative."

"No it's not," Lance huffed, "it's just smart." He was partially sitting up now, pulling his arm off of Keith in order to put his weight on it, and it was only as he did so that Keith belatedly, very belatedly realized he'd been laying there with his arm around Keith's chest. The blush that overwhelmed him at that was as infuriating as it was retroactive and pointless, since he now wanted to punch Lance more than he wanted to kiss him. If Lance noticed either Keith's embarrassment or fury, he didn't let on. "Once the four of us are on the same page the others will be outnumbered. Can't you see that? If you had just united with us back when we were still on Leinan, we might've overruled their decision in the first place. You might not have ever needed to sneak him aboard. So then, after Pidge and Hunk we'll go for... Coran," he decided thoughtfully, tapping his chin again as he stared off into space. "Yeah, definitely Coran. He's the weak link between Shiro and Allura."

"Lance, please don't," Keith begged. He'd never begged for anything in his life but he was begging now. He'd grovel for this if he had to. "Please, I trusted you."

"So trust me on this too," Lance said, with hurt and offense bleeding into his voice. "What were you planning on doing, Keith? Keeping him cooped up in here forever?"

Guiltily, Keith snuck a look over his shoulder at Niner, who was now butting his way into the conversation. When he held up the backlit slate, Lance burst out laughing. Keith peered at it too and his guilt increased tenfold. * Well, he sneaks me around to do fun stuff during the ship's night cycle. But essentially, yes.*

"Keith, man, you're so hopeless," Lance groaned. "I love you."

The casualty of it was so at odds with Keith's outrage. "This is serious!" he snapped. "So could you at least try to take it seriously?"

A funny look crossed Lance's face then; something drawn and quartered between annoyance, exasperation, impatience, and pity. He sounded completely, scarily serious when he replied, "Did I sound like I was joking?"

Keith was so taken aback at Lance's response that he almost jumped out of his skin when Lance then reached up to brush Keith's flyaway hair from his face, where it had fallen in thick strands in front of his eyes as he bristled and argued. Keith didn't have time to push him away or even react before Lance was done and retreating, sitting up the rest of the way to reappraise him from above.

"I'll come back to check on Niner in the morning, and I'll bring more of that special food. Then, after the morning meeting, we'll pull Pidge aside. Keith, look at me."

But he wouldn't. He couldn't, not when he hated Lance and loved him so much at the same time. It was unbearable. Instead he glared at the wall with a lump in his throat and hissed, "I don't want to do your stupid plan." Unable to hold still any longer, he wriggled out from between Lance and Niner. The bed felt like a prison, suddenly, and his legs were itching to run, his hands to curl into fists, his lip to curl back and reveal his teeth like a caged animal. Lance moved aside pliantly as Keith shoved his way out of the bed. "Lance, I've never had anything like this before, okay?!" How could he make Lance understand without breaking down and pulling his heart of his chest to just show him? He couldn't, of course, so he settled for pacing and rambling. "I mean, you guys are great, and I get that us paladins are like a family, but it's different with Niner." He couldn't look at Niner either as he said this, knowing he was hearing every word, feeling so exposed. But it had to be said. He had to make Lance understand before he ruined the best thing that had ever happened to him. "My real family left me to rot , okay? So I never hadㅡnot with any of my foster families, obviously not my mother, not even my own father ," he spluttered, and that was when he knew he'd officially lost control of this conversation. "He was barely there to begin with and then when he left me too I didn't have anyone ."

"Keith..."

"No, shut up, justㅡ just shut up. If you tell everyone and then Allura tries to drop him off at one of thoseㅡthose horrible refugee orphanage projectsㅡI'm gonna fucking mutiny ."

There was a long silence wherein Keith's pacing finally slowed, until he stopped in the center of the room, still unable to look either of them in the face. "He needs me," Keith whispered, arms curling around his chest. "And I promised him I'd take care of him. Don't fuck this up for us, Lance. Please ."

"Keith, look at me," Lance said, infinitely softer than the first time, and this time Keith did. He was sitting at the edge of the bed now, elbows resting on his knees, the corners of his mouth twitching downward. "I'm not going to let anyone send him away."

He sounded so sure of himself, and sure Keith trusted him, but enough to stake Niner on it? Keith didn't trust anyone that much. He finally looked back at Niner, who was sitting up in bed now and had his yellow eyes locked on Keith, his two foremost arms clenched in the bedspread. Keith crossed over to sit back down at the edge of the bed and reassure him, ignoring Lance for the moment. "Sorry we woke you," Keith said, a little late but better than never. "And sorry if Lance is scaring you with all this 'telling everyone' talk."

*I'm not scared,* Niner barked indignantly, the words flashing in bold on the translator. * You're projecting.*

Keith screwed up his face and slapped the translator to the bed, earning a monosyllabic exclamation from Niner that needed no translation: the universally recognized, "Oi!"

Watching this candid interaction, Lance felt yet another painful twist in his chest. He would literally die before he let these two be separated the way Lance was from his family. "Niner," he pressed, "no one should be scared because you're not going anywhere. I swear on my own future grave, okay? You're one of us now."

"You can't force Allura to let him stay," Keith growled. He knew he was being a pessimist but he was being practical. He was being realistic. Because after all, Allura had a point, which was why he had simply snuck Niner aboard instead of bothering to try and reason with her. Allura wasn't heartless; quite the contrary, actually. She was one of the most empathetic people in the universe. But she was also a general, leading the cavalry down the frontline of a deadly war, and Niner wasㅡin the most technical senseㅡa liability. Not to mention this was her castle. My castle, my rules, she always said. It was usually put forth and a joke, but she had invoked the last living queen card on occasion in total seriousness. Keith put his head in his hands. "She always has the final word."

"No, I can't, but my whole plan centers around convincing everyone else first." He put his hands on his knees and rose from the bed, tucking his hands in his pockets as he moved to stand in front of Keith, tilting his head like a puppy. "Pidge and Hunk already adore Niner, and once they know he's here we can all gang up on the others. Coran will be easy. He's soft-hearted, like you. And Shiroㅡ"

Keith closed his eyes, sinking his face even farther into his hands. "He's going to be so disappointed in me."

"Maybe," Lance agreed softly, and his voice was closer than before, "but only because you broke orders. Not because of which orders you broke. Dude, come on . Shiro is a walking saint, and more to the point, he loves you the exact same way you love Niner. Do you seriously think for even one second that he'd send Niner away if you told him what you just told me?"

Squeezing his eyes shut even tighter, Keith tried to focus. Tried to hang onto his anger. But it was slipping, along with his stubbornness. That didn't really sound like something Shiro would do.

"Yeah," Lance chuckled, "exactly. And you know Allura finds it so terribly hard to disagree with Shiro."

Shit.

Keith threw his head back, letting a long groan of frustration escape his throat. "I hate it when you're right."

"I'm always right," Lance beamed, as pleased as he always was when he convinced Keith to see to reason. It was a special talent of his that had taken years to perfect. "Besides," he went on, "it's not like Niner's totally defenseless just because he needs a cane to walk. He's going to be an incredible asset to us. He may not be a combat veteran but he could give Pidge a serious run for her money with computers in a few years, judging by what we saw on Leinan." He gave Niner, who had gone sparkle-eyed and thunderstruck at Lance's praise, an exaggerated wink. "Once Pidge and Hunk are in on this you'll be up to your ears in high tech alien mobility gear. You'll probably run faster than Keith by the time they're done with you." As he spoke, Keith rolled his head, running his hands over his face and through his hair, and finally letting them fall to his sides. "So, what do you think?"

"Fine," Keith said, and if Lance wasn't mistaken he sounded a little relieved at having finally given in. "Yeah. Let's do it."

"'Atta boy," Lance grinned. "I'll see you two first thing in the morning then. Get some sleep, okay Nine?" He gave Niner an affectionate pat on the head, like he was a dog, then offered Keith a quick two-fingered salute. (Even though he felt like the rollercoaster of emotion they'd been through together this evening called for something more like a hug, he knew better than to push it with Keith.) But as he walked through the door Keith caught him by the arm. At first Lance was sure he was about to get yelled at for the 'atta boy' thing, but then he turned, and saw the look on Keith's face.

"Thank you," Keith breathed, still holding Lance's arm. The shift from the dark room to the bright hallway had his pupils dilating into pinpoints. His hair was tangled, his t-shirt rumpled from laying in the bed, and dark lines of exhaustion from days of unrest were etched beneath his eyes like cracks in a windshield. Simply put, he was a mess. And yet, Lance could count the number of times on one hand that he'd seen Keith look as happy as he did right now. He was glowingㅡ radiant ㅡand the raw, unfiltered gratitude on his face shot Lance's heart straight through with an arrow.

He grinned back weakly, utterly failing to hide the arrow. The blood from the wound spilled straight into his voice, staining it every shade of red that had ever existed. "I won't let you down."

Keith's eyebrows furrowed, his face softening even further. "I know," he said with total confidence.

"Keith," Lance said slowly, a little shaken by the strength of Keith's trust in him. "That thing you said about your dad and not ever having a realㅡ"

"Forget it," Keith interrupted, feeling foolish and self-conscious about his outburst now that it was over and done with. He'd never mentioned his father to anyone but Shiro. "I was just worked up, it's not important."

"Jeez, let a guy finish," Lance droned. "Just because we didn't all sprout from the same family tree doesn't make us any less of one! Only like, half of my family on Earth is even related by blood. The rest of them were just picked up along the way."

"Yeah yeah," Keith sighed, "I get it."

Lance blinked down at him fondly. "Do you, though? Because what I'm trying to say is that if your mom left you and your dad left you and we didn't, doesn't that make us your real family?"

Now Keith's mouth was hanging open, and his eyebrows were furrowed so deeply that Lance had to wonder if he'd said something wrong. But then, without warning, he yanked Lance down by the collar to press a quick kiss onto his cheek. Niner shouted something at them from inside the room at that point, something that was clearly teasing even if they couldn't understand it and showed he'd been eavesdropping all the while.

Keith ignored him. "I will also deny this later," he muttered, quietly enough so only Lance would hear, "but, for the record, I think we work better as a duo too."

Lance was stunnedㅡcatatonic, evenㅡbut when Keith turned around to disappear into his room Lance caught him by the wrist and pulled him back into the hall, pressing the ' close' button on the door in the process. Keith looked at him, then the button, then him again, stepping backward on instinct as Lance stepped forward, and let out a sharp gasp of surprise as his back struck the door. "Wh- what are you doing?"

"Um…" Lance paused, one hand resting on the door beside Keith's head, the other resting on the door by Keith's hip. All at once he ripped his arms away, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and feeling his face light on fire as he hastily backpedaled. "I was trying to kiss you, but you look confused and kinda terrified. So, maybe not."

Keith grabbed the front of his shirt as he backed up. "Hang on, you just surprised me, that's all." He was more than surprised; he was reeling. But it helped to see that Lance looked even more flustered than he felt. "I thought… You said you were still figuring me out."

Lance's eyes slid down to Keith's hand where he still had a fistful of Lance's shirt, then back up to Keith again. Carefully. "I lied," he said. "I've had you figured out for a long time." He laughed nervously, but it didn't reach his eyes. His hand was on Keith's wrist now, his thumb brushing his palm as he gently disentangled Keith's hand from his shirtㅡhe didn't even realize how tightly he'd been holding onto it until then.

"Oh," Keith breathed, and his breath was coming in shallow now. He didn't need to hold onto Lance's shirt anymore anyway because Lance was no longer backing up. "And what if I told you I lied too?"

There was a flare in Lance's eyes then, one that Keith had seen ten thousand times, every day, all the way back to the very first time they met. A spark of challenge. Ever since the beginning, Keith had always seen their 'rivalry' as this enormous chasm between them, as Lance pushing him away, distancing himself. But in this moment, in the chilled silver corridor outside his bedroom, Keith finally saw that unspoken challenge for what it really was. An invitation.

(And besides, Keith had never been able to turn down a challenge from Lance, anyway.)

A soft flutter of appreciation puffed against Keith's face as he reached around the back of Lance's neck and pulled him across the last few inches to kiss him. Lance immediately released his other hand, grabbing Keith's face with both hands and tilting his head back, stepping forward until Keith was almost tripping backward and had to wrap his arms around Lance's back just to keep himself from falling.

Lance was a soft kisser. It was slow and searching, and Keith wanted to be searched, wanted the tongue that slid between his teeth and the thumb brushing along the artery on his neck, lingering there as Lance came back at his lips again and again, nose pressing insistently into his cheek. Surely Lance felt how out of control his heartrate was. But he leaned into the touch. He wanted him to know, for once.

By the time Lance pulled back to press their foreheads together, eyes drinking in the flush of pink that had creeped onto Keith's cheeks, Keith was breathing heavily. Although, he didn't feel the oxygen was actually making it into his bloodstream.

"I'll see you at daybreak," Keith managed to say, albeit a little hoarsely. "Don't be late."

With that, he opened the door, only to find Niner standing right on the other side and eavesdropping, leaning on his cane. Lance had to fight back a laugh as Keith huffed and puffed and started to shove Niner unceremoniously back toward the bed. The door slid shut and then Lance was alone in the hallway, staring at the closed steel door in abstract wonder. After a few seconds, when it was clear Keith wasn't coming back, Lance sighed wistfully and leaned his forehead on the cold metal, still in disbelief of everything that had transpired this evening. Then he started giggling. Then, finally, he allowed himself a silent victory whoop, which entailed an excited jump and a fist pump into the air. But as he jumped he turnedㅡ

ㅡand saw Pidge standing there at the end of the hall, gaping at him in sheer undisguised horror. Upon seeing her he flinched so hard he actually tripped and fell into the opposite wall before righting himself.

"How long have you been standing there!" he hissed.

That only doubled Pidge's horror. "I don't know!" she hissed back. "A few seconds? Gross , how long were you kissing that you even have to ask me that?! I was coming to interrogate you guys but I guess I don't haㅡwait." She paused, then threw her hands palm-up in frustration. "Wait, what the hell is going on, this can't be the secret, Lance, that doesn't even make sense! How many secrets do you have!"

"Just the two!" Lance practically cried. "I'll tell you the other one tomorrow Pidge, but please god don't mention this to anyone."

"How am I supposed to just not wake everyone up and tell them right now immediately?"

"Because we're best friends for life and you love me," Lance whined.

Pidge crossed her arms. "That's reaching, don't you think?"

"Pidge!"

"Okay jeez, fine, but only because I feel bad for you." Fondness and amusement were starting to override the horror and disgust she'd felt at being forced to witness that gross PDA, and besides, Lance looked so frantic right now she'd be a monster for dragging this out. "I can't even make fun of you for this," she groaned, "not after that disgustingly sappy sigh you did when he left. God. You're in love." She smirked at him knowingly.

And she knew she was right because Lance didn't even try to deny it.

.

.

*I don't want to get back in bed,* Niner complained, pushing back on Keith with the forearm that wasn't currently leaning on his cane, using his other good arm to shove the translator in Keith's face, so close that it blinded him and he could barely even read it. *I need to stretch. I feel better already!*

Keith rolled his eyes but stopped pushing. "You can't possibly feel better already, you only ate that food once and it was only two vargas ago." But as he felt Niner's forehead, he knew the kid wasn't bluffing. The fever had already begun to subside. "Fine," he relented. "You can stretch for ten doboshes, but then it's right back to sleep."

*Deal. So. Why did Lance close the door?*

Apparently 'suggestive eyebrow waggle' was a facial cue that carried across species, because it was one of Niner's favorites, and he'd taken to using it these last two months whenever Keith talked about Lance. It was infuriating, now more than ever. And yet, what was there to lose from being honest with him? Niner had always been totally honest with Keith.

"He wanted to kiss me," Keith admitted, but Niner frowned at his translator, and then pointed out the [unable to translate] that popped up every now and again. "Oh," he said. He was not totally prepared for explaining this, but he was trapped into the conversation now. "It's, uh… one of those human things. Like, a physical thing we do. You touch your mouths together, to, you know, like, when two people… ugh."

*Oh my god, you're blushing so hard,* Niner laughed. * It's a romantic thing, right? I knew it I knew it I knew itㅡ*

"Shut up," Keith grumbled, but it was laced with the utmost affection. "Stretching time is over, back into bed you little hooligan."

*It hasn't even been two doboshes yet,* Niner complained, but in truth he was fairly exhausted just from the brief excursion across the room, so he reluctantly did as he was told. As he climbed in Keith went to the closet to dig out his own pajamas, dimming the lights as he went and gathering up all the half-melted ice packs from their places on the bed and floor to dump them into the pots. Niner watched him with sleepy eyes, thinking about everything Lance had said. Thinking about Keith's outburst.

"Keith?" he said. It was hard for him to wrap his vocal chords and forked tongue around human consonants, but he had been getting better. Keith's name was difficult, though, the 'k' and the 'th.' Once Keith had looked up from the ice buckets, Niner held up the slate and spoke. * Do you really think Lance's plan will work?*

"Yeah," Keith said. "I do. Are you worried that it won't?"

*No,* Niner quickly replied. *Not at all. I'm just excited to spend more time with your [ [_]^`|/y. ].*

Keith frowned at the [unable to translate]. It was always a struggle when one of their words didn't cross over; sometimes it was simply a word that didn't exist, like with the flower, other times it was cultural, like with the kiss. "What's this?" he asked, pointing out to Niner that the word he'd used hadn't translated.

Niner looked at the screen and frowned as well. How sad was it that they had no word for this in English? He beckoned Keith over to sit by him on the bed, then scrolled back up in his translator's history, revealing the log of Keith and Lance's conversation by the door, which he had been unabashedly eavesdropping on. He smiled contritely at Keith's unimpressed glare, then pointed to the words Lance himself had used. *Doesn't that make us your real family?*

"Gkri'ickta," Niner repeated, slowly this time. If he could learn a few words in English, Keith could be assed to learn a few in his language too. *It's like the word family, but with much stronger connotations. A family of your own devising.*

"Hmm. Krickta," Keith repeated, at which point Niner burst out laughing at his hilarious pronunciation. "Shut up," Keith laughed, "I only have one tongue, unlike you."

*Poor Lance,* Niner lamented dramatically, and Keith grabbed a pillow and whacked him with it, momentarily forgetting all about the kid's illness. Niner only laughed harder.

"I knew I shouldn't have told you that," Keith grumbled. "Anyway, we actually do have a word for that in English. A phrase actually," he corrected. " The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. It means the bonds of brotherhood that you create for yourself are stronger than the ones you were born with."

Niner's giggling finally petered out, and he rolled onto his side to look at Keith fondly. *I guess some experiences are universal,* he said.

Keith smiled back, mulling over the word in his mind, tucking it away in the safest of places. A family of your own devising. "Yeah," he agreed. "I guess they are."