shining like the stars

32

Sleeping didn't seem to be an option, Lance realized, after lying awake on his back for a solid few hours. He climbed wearily out of bed – Keith didn't stir, curled upon his side and facing the wall, not even touching him – and pulled on his shirt and pants.

Every time he closed his eyes he was spinning out again in near pitch-black, cockpit and forward screens dark, the only light coming from the paladin suit itself. It made him dizzy and sick to his stomach, and even the exhaustion of the last two days rolled into one didn't mean he was able to nod off.

No one else was up and about. He stopped by the kitchens and grabbed something to drink, and then decided that since he was up he might as well scrub out the cockpit of the blue lion; except by the time he got to the flight bay with a bucket of warm sudsy water and a handful of rags a weird, hard feeling had built up in his throat and was making it difficult to breathe, so he sat down on the floor next to the bucket and put his hand in his hair.

It was almost a little like the feeling he'd tucked away and purposely ignored when he had discovered that his hero and now leader was also an alpha. Lance didn't like this feeling at all.

The sound of the doors to the blue lion's flight bay opening made him open his eyes, then raise his head from his hand. "Lance?" Shiro's voice called. "What are you doing up? It's the middle of the night, you should be racked out like everyone else."

Lance leaned back on one arm, half-turned in place as Shiro crossed the flight bay's floor in an easy stride. "What are you doing up?" Lance asked instead, avoiding Shiro's questions completely.

"Can't sleep," Shiro said honestly. "Too keyed up still. What are you doing?"

"I was gonna clean my lion," Lance said, arm loosely on his bent knee. "But now I'm just ..." he shrugged and didn't finish the thought.

"Want some help?" Shiro asked, offering Lance his hand. After a moment, Lance nodded his head and let Shiro help pull him to his feet.

#

It wasn't really as bad as Pidge had made it out to be, but it was a bit difficult to clean the cramped cockpit area especially with two people wiggling around inside. Lance worked in silence, occasionally glancing over at Shiro, who was quiet as well.

After a while – Lance couldn't really judge the passage of time without checking his chrono every so often – Shiro sighed and sat back on his heels. "Has Keith talked to you?" he asked, dropping the rag back into the bucket they had dragged with them.

Lance looked up. "What, about you?"

Shiro seemed surprised by his response. "Yeah?"

Lance shrugged loosely. "Not really, I guess? I mean, I kinda knew that he was gonna go after you like that getting in to this thing with him, so it's kind of unspoken." Lance frowned. "We should really discuss it in depth at some point. That boy needs help with his communication skills."

When he glanced over at Shiro, Shiro wasn't looking at him but he was smiling. "That's an understatement," he said, amused. "But, that's not quite what I was referring to."

"Oh." Lance dropped a dirty rag into the bucket and stretched his arms out in front of himself, then climbed into the pilot's chair and stretched his arms. "Then what is he supposed to talk to me about?"

Shiro shook his head. "He said he wanted to talk to you first. It's really nothing important." Lance folded his arms and thought about this, while Shiro cleaned up the rest of the rags, and then said, "an alpha hurt you, and I don't want to do the same."

This was not something Lance expected Shiro to say, at all, and he cocked his head and half-turned in his seat. "What?" he said, clearly not processing this as he looked over at Shiro.