Lance exchange 2018: For queen-gr on Tumblr, I hope you enjoy!!!

Title: Four Times Keith and Lance Were Quite Obviously in A Relationship and No One Noticed and the One Time They Were Finally Obvious About It and Everyone Is Surprised for Some Reason.

Summary: So, Keith and Lance have been in a romantic relationship for a while now, before Keith stabbed Iverson in the eye in fact, a couple of years now. They were quite open about their relationship too, or, well, they thought they were quite open about it, but clearly that was not the case, because no one on team Voltron seemed to be getting the message.

It's not like they tried to hide it or anything.

I – Pidge

"Wow, thanks everybody!" Lance said as he smiled at the others, and Pidge couldn't help but smirk in pride for her actions, after all, she did fight most of the forces in the castle, something that she was quite happy to describe, and she took pride in the joy that came from Lance and Hunk's smile and the surprise that comes from Keith and Allura, and the proud eyes that Shiro and Coran were sending her way.

They all accepted her, for what she could do.

(Maybe it's time to tell them…)

Lance took another scoop of the food goo, apparently healing one hundred times faster than the normal rate in an alien contraption makes you pretty hungry, but he decided to use it as a point it at Keith instead, a smirk forming on his face and a twinkle in his eyes; two warning signs she had picked up on in the last couple of months, so she braced herself for what was to come out of his mouth in the next five seconds.

God give her hope.

"Sound's like the mice did more than you though, Keith," he made it sound like an off handed comment, a passing joke, as if he hadn't spent the last couple of minutes thinking about how to say it to give it the proper outcome he was looking for, and did it get the right reaction; Keith was now frowning, looking way too much into the words, and there seemed to be a glint of hurt, or something else, she had yet to learn to read him properly after all, in his eyes.

"I punched Sendak!" Keith argued, and he looked pretty offended by Lance's words, so Pidge made a mental note not to make it out that he never does anything, as that seems lie something that hits him too close to home.

If Matt were here, he would have called her out for being a people watcher by this point, but he's not here so she was going to get away with it as much as she liked.

"Yeah, apparently after I emerged from a coma and shot his arm off!" Lance retorted, taking a bite of the food goo, and Pidge frowned. She was the one to take Sendak's arm off. She goes to open her mouth, to argue with Lance about what actually happened because he clearly didn't listen to them properly, but she's stopped unintentionally by Keith.

"We had a bonding moment! I cradled you in my arms!" Keith countered, and Pidge knows what he's referring to: the Gayesttm moment she's ever seen in her life (and she lives with Matt Holt, a fucking bisexual disaster, which only shows the amount of gayness that the scene radiated). Lance's legs had given out on the way to the infirmity, so Keith decided to pick him up bridal style, which started an argument between the two of them about who would be the princess in the relationship (something that made no sense to her as their relationship was more of a rivalry if Lance's words were anything to go by), something that they both wanted to be, which confused her a lot at the time and even the later confirmation that Lance had a concussion didn't help with it, but Keith managed to end the argument with 'I'm the pretty little princess, and you're the handsome prince charming'. At the time, it didn't make any sense, not that it made any more sense a day later, but with how defensive Keith was about the bonding moment now, she could finally see what he was going on about.

After all, Keith all but said that he liked Lance to his face, in the gayest way possible, the only thing missing was the rainbows.

"Nope. Don't remember, didn't happen." There was a look of shock on Keith's face, not that she blamed him. Pidge didn't think that Lance even knew he was bisexual yet (it was so obvious it actually hurt, he acted so much like Matt, how he hadn't figured it out yet was a wonder), so he was probably repressing it all like the idiot he was. "What happened to Sendak?" Lance asked, and Pidge wanted to sigh.

There were so many negatives of being the only girl in space, and she didn't know how much longer she would deal with pretending to not see any of this happening like a guy, like Matt, would. Guys never noticed anything that wasn't shoved right in front of their faces, she thought as she watched Lance and Keith walking away, Lance still going on about how he doesn't remember anything that Keith was describing and Keith muttering about making him remember, and Pidge can only hope he doesn't hit Lance's head too hard when they get to the training room, because that's surely where they're going if Keith had something to prove and Lance had something to challenge.

Right?

II – Shiro

Shiro would be the first person to admit that he wanted to protect Keith from the universe.

It all starts when he first meets the kid when doing a presentation at his school for the Garrison, the small black haired grump who sat in the back of the class and pretended that he wasn't interested in whatever Shiro had to say like any other kid in that class, and yet he still approached Shiro after class, hands tangled in the hems of his shirt as he asked if someone like him, someone who's been stuck in the system for far too long to hope for anything and someone who's been known for their violence and disobedience, could still get into the Garrison. Shiro had only smiled and said that he'll make sure of it.

And that he did, he protected him when the kid got in arguments that he could have avoided, got injuries from not picking the right battles. In the years that Shiro has known him, he has seen more scrapes, scratches, and bruises, and the occasionally broken bone on this kid more than any other kid he had come across, and he tried his best to clean every one of them.

But, in all the time he's known this kid, he thought that, when romance came into the question, he'll power through it with a natural talent that he had with everything else that he put his mind to, so imagine Shiro's surprise when he realised that the kid was pining.

And, boy was he obvious with it, if the glare that he was sending to Lance's back while he flirted with Nyma showed anything. He stood quietly next to Shiro with his arms crossed and a frown on his face while Rolo went on about the equipment that was needed for their ship, and it would only make Shiro smile slightly at the attitude.

He's not sure if he recommends Keith to get in a relationship with the Blue Paladin, for several reasons really. Not only was there the fact that Lance was most probably straight, but there was the supposed 'rivalry' they had and then there was the wonder of how that would affect Voltron, which was probably the most important thing right now, because as much as he wanted to put the person who was practically his little brother first, there was always the bigger picture to think about.

Lance seemed to be a player as well, judging the way that he was flirting with anything that moved, and he didn't want Keith to suffer through that, he didn't deserve that.

(Not that he was saying that Lance was a bad person or anything, god no. Lance and Keith suited each other very well, almost too well at times, but Lance was still immature, and Keith was still impulsive and who knows what that could lead to if they got in a romantic and probably sexual relationship.)

(Had Keith had the talk yet? Oh god, Shiro hoped that he had the talk. He was far too young to give the talk to someone else.)

When Rolo flies off for a test flight, and then a couple of minutes later Lance radio's in with the fact that he was chained to a tree and the rebels have taken the Blue, Keith lets out a growl, almost animalistic really, and storms off towards the ship that held the Blue Lion, they all do, and as the asteroid field come closer, Shiro lets Keith loose, knowing that it's something like this that he needed right now, something challenging that required all of his focus to calm down slightly, and he hears it in his voice later when he talks to Lance on the coms, when he makes a joke that he would often do to Shiro when they're wrapping up a phone call and he didn't want to say a sappy goodbye.

He misses those times.

How much he would give to go back to those times too, except, there was always the bigger picture to think about.

(Keith would make a good replacement for him, wouldn't he? If he was more mature, more understanding of how the universe worked, he could take over from Shiro if anything was ever to happen. The bigger picture was always something to think about, after all.)

They drop off the Blue Lion in her hanger, and then Keith offers to pick up Lance from the tree that he's managed to get himself chained too. Shiro lets him, and while it takes longer than Shiro thought it would, but he doesn't mind because when the pair come back, Lance is a brighter red than the Red Lion, Keith walks a step behind with a satisfied smirk, so instead of moaning for how long it took for them to get back to the Castleship, Shiro wonders what Keith said to make Lance react like that.

Not that it mattered too much, they had more important things to worry about. The bigger picture was still there, after all.

III – Hunk

Despite the short amount of time Hunk had known Lance, he feels as if he has known him all life.

They first met at a convention held by the Galaxy Garrison a couple of months before they were set to start studying under them. It was supposed to be a welcome evening that you brought your parents along to, to prove to them that it was nothing like the rumour said about it being entirely military and to show off how elitist it all was. Looking back, Hunk should have looked deeper than all the bright and colourful displays were and the fake smiles that the professors put on for show, but fifteen-year-old him had been impressed by the cross-section of one of the engines and that small little Cuban boy who had turned up by himself, so sue him.

But, when he first meets Lance and finds out that he travelled halfway across the world by himself to study here, he gets this urge just to hold him close and never let him out of his sight. Of course, that wouldn't be allowed since he did have to go back to Cuba for a couple of months before the new school year actually started, so instead, they exchanged email addresses and say they'll contact each other.

And, well, something between the two of them just clicks, like the last puzzle piece falling to place, as emails turns into DMing on Instagram which turns into snapping each other which turns into face time, and, before they know it, they're buddies, best friends, brothers from another mother, if you will. When the email comes from the Garrison about roommates, they both respond instantly, both putting down each other's name in the email faster than the gravitational acceleration constant of 9.8 m/s2, and both smiling when they got the same email not even a day later confirming the fact that the pair would be sharing a room when they got the Galaxy Garrison.

Even after they came into the Garrison, they grew closer and closer as friends, now to the point that admitting their embarrassing childhood stories and secrets they've never told anyone. So, it was not a surprise to either of them when Lance knew exactly how to comfort Hunk when he has his panic attack at the idea of entering a flight simulation the next week, or how Hunk knows exactly what to say to Lance when he self-esteem hits a new low when his English is the only reason as to why he didn't get into the classes he wanted.

He didn't think that they could get closer to each other than they were at the Garrison, but, after the first time they form Voltron together, he surprises himself, and learns more about Lance than he ever thought he would.

Well, being inside his best friend's headspace does that, apparently.

If he thought that Lance was easy to read before, now it was like mindreading, able to almost instantly know what Lance was planning, what he about to say, what he was about to do. It was good in battle, when they didn't have the time to doubt the other's intentions and to explain their next actions.

It was not good however, when it was just training, and he notices that Lance misses his shot again because he was staring at the back of Keith's neck with the same glint in his eyes as the glint when he looked at Jenny in maths when they did group work, or how he used to talk about Shiro before the Kerberos mission was announced as a failure. As much as Hunk has missed that look, he hasn't seen that look since Lance stopped talking about Shiro and decided to moan about Keith being his 'rival' in the Garrison, but now was seriously not the time to do this, their arses were being handed to them by robots made to fight Altean children, but all Lance wanted to do was send gooey eyes at Keith, who seems to be completely oblivious to all of this.

It was frustrating, to say the least.

This hadn't even been the first time that this had happened, no, this was a regular occurrence, so much so that Hunk should probably confront his friend about his feeling towards Keith. But, instead of doing what was probably the more sensible option, he held back, and watched from afar as the Blue Paladin showed off in front of the Red Paladin but instead fall short of his goal of impressing him, and then proceeding to get offended when Keith pointed out what Lance had done wrong, and then Keith would smile (and it was a pretty affectionate smile as well, but Hunk already knew that Keith knew about his feelings for Lance, especially after how much he moaned about the 'bonding moment', there was no way that he didn't know after that) when he showed Lance how to do it correctly, which just ended in Lance pouting and Keith chuckling about the outcome as they left the training deck together, group training done for the day.

He held back with Pidge and Shiro as they watched the pair walk off together, and then placed a bet with them that Keith and Lance wouldn't get together until after the war, until after they get back Earth, something that Pidge seemed to heavily disagree with, saying that she gives it a couple of months, while Shiro sighs and says a year and a half, though, he seemed to doubt himself, not that Hunk blamed him.

It wouldn't be possible for them to get together for a long time at least, not until Lance comes to what will be a daunting realisation for him that he is very much bisexual. Honestly, Hunk doesn't know how he hasn't noticed it so far, no only is he very open about his admiration for the male gender, but he was a complete and utter disaster on legs, the worst Hunk had ever seen. Surely that would clue him in on the fact that he was not as heterosexual as he first thought.

But no, he was oblivious to anything and everything, which honestly didn't surprise Hunk.

Hunk may have only known Lance for a short number of years, but he could read him like it was the back of his hand, and if one thing was obvious, he was the biggest bisexual being Hunk had ever had the pleasure to know and he had the biggest crush on the Red Paladin ever.

Pidge was so going to lose this bet, that much was true in his mind.

IV – Allura

Allura found that leading missions from above in the Castleship and partaking on missions on the ground are two very different things.

She's used to being in the Castleship with Coran and a few other Paladins while they watched the Paladins that had been chosen for the mission from above, not quite as relaxed as they want to be, but not as much on standby as they probably should be, and much calmer than the first time they started doing their separate missions, the ones that always ended in disaster because of something that they couldn't have foreseen, back then during the early days of Voltron. Now though, now they were prepared for anything that opposed them, be it space pirates to ambush attacks from the Galra, they were ready, well, the Paladins were at least.

Allura herself, not so much, which of course was the entire reason why she had followed Lance and Keith into the Blue Lion and stood a little behind the Blue Paladin as he introduced the trio to the leader of the latest planet they had come across, Planet Yaggbarr, home to the Halibatians, a species that Lance said reminded him of a 'Care Bear', but less caring and no 'weird stomachs', not that she knew what any of that meant.

They were not native to the planet, no, their native planet was Halibati, but had instead immigrated there after the Galra had attacked and destroyed their home world. While they had moved in deca-pheobs ago now, they were still having some problems with building up their city and trading with some of the local planets due to not having enough resources, which is why they had sent Lance and Keith, and now Allura, planet side while the rest of the Paladins stayed up on the Castleship negotiating with the other planets in the solar system, trying to get a trade deal for the Halibatians, and coming up with some blueprints for technology that they would use to communicate using the resources that they would have on their planet, something that both Hunk and Pidge found challenging but fun.

Shiro had said that this would be a great first mission for her, as there was a low chance of something going wrong. Or, well, that's what he said in front of the other Paladins when he was assigning roles. It was just before they left the ship in Blue that he admitted the real reason as to why she was going planet side, and it was one that made her giggle at the memory of it.

"As much as Lance and Keith know when to focus on a mission, they're going to be down there for a couple of days and, well, I don't think they could go a couple of days before they cause a scene or something. Hopefully, by sending you down with them, they'll behave. You won't have to do anything, Lance should have all the talking covered, just lend a hand if he needs it, and stop any fighting that breaks out between them," Shiro had sounded exasperated, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and it reminds Allura of when he came back from a mission with those two, with the Black Paladin at the end of his patience and the other two silent but sending the other knowing looks.

Allura had agreed with Shiro, because even in the Blue Lion just doboshes after taking off from the Castleship, there was a thick tension in the air with small comments thrown between the two of them, which could only make her sigh and shake her head.

'It was only a couple days,' she thought as she stood next to Keith, and listened to Lance explain to the leader that they were here to help them, much to their pleasure. While Allura had been lost in her thoughts, it seems that the leader of the Halibatians, Lord Carlshilon as he was known to his people, a light brown in colour and coming up to the middle of Lance's torso, tall compared to lots of his species, had started to plan a feast for the next evening, as it was far too late in the day to have one now, and rooms for the trio for the next couple of nights.

"You and your mate are going to be sharing bed in one room, and the Princess will have one next door, for I'm sure you'd want your privacy," he smiled knowingly, which confused Allura slightly, as he carried on walking down the corridor before stopping at some doors, the Paladins and Allura looking between them.

"Mates?" Keith asked, and the Lord turned and smiled brightly.

"Yes, two people who mean the most to each other, even to death, and promise not to be anyone else's," he replied, and goes on to say more but the telepad he was holding lit up. Looking at it before frowning, he muttered something about having to go somewhere, something about a sudden trial for a misgiving that needed his attention straight away, and left them at their rooms to rest. There was a couple of ticks of silence for them to fully comprehend what had just happened, before Lance spoke up and broke it.

"Wait, they think we're married?!" Lance's voice had gone up a at least an octave, and there's a slight red tint on Keith's face which caused him to look away from Allura's side glance.

"We should talk to someone, tell them there's been a misunderstanding," Allura mused, looking down each side of the corridor, waiting for someone to walk down so they can talk to them.

"Uh," – Keith shared a look with Lance, and he nodded in an unspoken agreement – "Actually, Allura, me and Lance are fine with sharing a bed," Keith said Allura sends an uncertain look his way, her jaw tightening in doubt.

"I-I don't think that Shiro-"

"Who cares what Shiro will think! We're not going to do anything that we'll regret Allura, and anyway, Keith should feel honoured to share a bed wit- Ouch! C'mon man, that hurt!" Lance yelped as Keith slapped the back of Lance's head, before turning to Allura and sighing.

"Look, we're not doing to anything, and if something comes up…" Keith paused, and stole another stare at Lance, who then quickly blushed and turned his head away while muttering under his breath, "We'll keep it down." He said finally.

Allura sighed, but then nodded, and left the pair outside while she entered her own room, thinking about the maturity of them finally being able to share a bed without raising a fuss, before looking around the room allocated to her for the duration of her stay.

It was nothing impressive, a simple room with a bathroom attached, but as she sat on the bed before laying back on it, she could help but relax into the soft material, and she felt the smooth fabric under her hands while sighing.

She almost nods off right there and then, but then there's a shout that has her sitting up.

"Ah, ahh… Fu-fuck, Lance!" Standing up, she moved to the wall that separates her and the Paladins, ready to yell at them for fighting, but by the time she gets the wall it's already quiet. Frowning, she pressed her ear against the cold wall, hearing soft panting, followed by a low but long groan, before silence filled her ear.

A minute or two passes before she huffed, before getting back into the soft bed. Of course, they get into a fistfight the moment her back is turned.

Typical.

1 – Klance

When Allura walked into the dining room for their evening meal (the Paladins call this dinner or even tea, but they have so many words that it becomes so unnecessary, where lots had the same meaning but lots of words on their own had multiple meanings, which raised the question: why do they even need all those words?) where Pidge, Shiro and Hunk were already waiting, there was one thing that stood out like a sore thumb.

Pidge was annoyed.

No, Pidge was more than annoyed, she was beyond simple anger, she was seething, and it could only make Hunk grin widely and Shiro smile knowingly.

"I told you! I said that you would have lost the bet with Lance and Keith getting together by today!" Hunk crowed, and Allura was just confused as she joined them at the table, taking a seat next to Shiro and across to poor Pidge.

"You guys had a… bet about Lance and Keith?" she asked, and Shiro nodded, and Pidge only wordlessly moaned as she let her head hit the table hard, much to Hunk's enjoyment, if the muffled giggle he let out when he placed the food on the table was anything to go by.

"Yeah, Pidge here was waaay too optimistic about the pair of them. She actually thought that they would be together by now!" he didn't try and stop his joy this time, letting out a hearty chuckle that Shiro joined in with. Allura frowned, initially not understanding where the Paladins were coming from, but now that she thought more about it, the Red and Blue Paladin did have some amazing chemistry, but that didn't explain why they would get together, something that she raised to the others, because they argued a lot and, maybe because of that, they weren't suited for one other?

"Dude! Have you seen them together!? Lance can't keep his eyes off of Keith, and Keith always seems so sad when Lance leaves the room. They have to be soulmates or something, the arguments are nothing, in fact, it's like they're married already," Hunk gushed as he joined them at the table, and his words got another laugh out of Shiro, who nodded his head along with what Hunk was saying.

"Exactly!" Pidge shouted, standing up, not that it added much on her height, "They surely must have noticed the other's staring by now, the air is so think with their sexual tension that we could use it as a weapon against the Galra!" Pidge slammed her hand against the table for added effect, but it only made Hunk sigh and Shiro roll his eyes. Grumbling, she sat back down, reach for her food but instead of eating it she picked at it, muttering about how easy it would have been to use sexual tension as a weapon against Zarkon and how it would require less effort than Voltron did, and how Voltron would have achieved their goal of universal peace by now if she could just think of a way to weaponize it.

"Yeah, well, while I haven't known Lance as long as I have known Keith, even I can see how much of a mess the pair of them are. Who knows what is going through their mind, Keith still probably thinks that Lance is straight." Shiro responded, with a mirth in his voice that Allura hasn't seen from him, at least, not for a long time. She's missed it.

"Yeah, not going lie, I think that Lance probably still thinks that he's straight," Hunk responded, which caused the room to go silent for a moment, before laughter filled the air, and it was loud enough for none of them to hear the door open and the subject pair walk into the room.

"Ugh, you guys started without us again," Lance moaned, but there was a smile on his face, and Keith sighed next to him, all signs that Lance was not upset with them being there before. The pair was walking towards the table towards their normal seats, but before they could reach them, they were stopped in their tracks by Pidge's very sudden shout, where she stood back up again, slamming her hands against the table that it made the platter jump.

"You guys are holding hands!" she screamed, pointing between the pair. Allura followed her pointing, and sure enough, in the gap between the two Paladins, their hands were interlinked.

"Yeah…?" Keith hesitatingly asked, looking between the group at the table as Pidge cheered, and Hunk groaned loudly, this time being the one to hit his head on the table. Shiro, however, was not one to give up.

"So, to clarify," he started, looking between Lance and Keith, who looked back with utter confusion, "You two are in a relationship?" Shiro asked, wagging his eyebrows in a way that made no sense to Allura but made Keith's entire face very red, blushing, she believed it was called.

"Yeah?" Lance answered, but the upturn in his voice made him almost question his answer, and the look of utter loss shared between the pair was ignored in favour for Pidge's even louder and higher scream and now Shiro and Hunk's groan of mutual loss.

"What are we missing?" Keith asked as he sat down at his regular space, Lance following him quickly, their hands not leaving one another.

"We all had a bet to see when you guys would finally pull your heads out of your butts and get together." Hunk said hardheartedly, and Keith and Lance quickly shared a look of alarm.

"When do you guys think that we… got together?" Keith asked, hesitation slowing the sentence down. The other Paladins exchanged looks, before Shiro shrugged.

"Eh, pretty recently, but I guess you two were too shy to tell us," he responded, picking up his pack of water and taking a long suck while Lance and Keith exchanged another look (it was rather adorable how they were able to communicate without words). There was about a dobosh of silence as everyone began to dig into their food.

Allura was about to do the same, the food did look much better than some of the things that Coran had cooked up in the past (her father was one of the only brave souls to try it, and it was one of the things that proved true love in her eyes as she watched him swallow every mouthful without a wince) but then Shiro's last comment had caused a tug on her curiosity.

"When did you two get together then?" she asked, smiling at the small blush that had appeared on Lance's face at the question as she took a mouthful. Ah yes, so much better than what Coran would be able to make.

"Well, we got together about a week before Keith left the Garrison, so about two years now," Lance said nonchalantly, keeping his eyes down at his meal as he scoped up a sporkful and took a bite.

"What?" a look of shock was shared between the Paladins, and even Allura felt her eyes widen at the new information.

They had been together the entire time?!

"How didn't you guys know? We haven't exactly been hiding it!" Keith exclaimed, and Lance nodded along with what Keith, his long-term boyfriend, was saying.

"Lance flirts with the aliens we come across!" Pidge raised, as if this was evidence that the pair wasn't in a relationship, and maybe on their home planet, it would have been.

"Lance would flirt with a lamppost, he can't help it. He actually does that when he's drunk."

"Hey, c'mon! Was that necessary?"

"What about your Bonding Moment?" Hunk asked, pointing his spork at the pair of them, and Allura smiled when Keith huffed and Lance full on turned away from his boyfriend.

"Didn't happen! I've said this already!"

"Ignore him, he just gets really embarrassed it when I carry him like that."

The bickering continued between the five of them, a mixture of groaning, laughing and shouting, like what would happen at any of the shared meals with the Paladins, and Allura smiled as the conversation seemed to now go in Lance's direction, his words becoming louder and bolder while a permanent red tint had resided on the Red Paladin's face, and it reminded her of that mission she went on with the pair of them, but, now that her mind was on the subject, and she looked back at the night with the new information, she grew bright red herself and had to excuse herself from the rest of the dinner, or tea, or whatever this meal was called to them, with the excuse that someone needed to inform Coran of the seemingly new development.

(Of course, he already knew, but she had quickly come to the decision that she would much rather not find out how he had known about the relationship if that knowing looking in his eyes meant anything.)