shining like the stars

47

Shiro got up first, which was expected. "I'm going with Pidge and Hunk and the Princess," he announced, as if his wiggling out from between Lance and Keith and stomping around the room and pretending to make a load of noise out of nothing hadn't woken the other two paladins in his bed.

Lance did not bother to lift his head from the pillow, instead raising a hand in the air with a thumbs-up acknowledgment.

"Seriously? Neither of you want to go?"

Keith groaned something into his arm that wasn't decipherable by human standards, and Lance said, "go away. Sleeping."

Shiro shrugged and let himself out of the room, clearly deciding it wasn't worth the fight. Keith groaned again and rolled his face on his arm, trying to block out the natural light that was cutting through the large window set toward the baths. After a moment, Lance lifted his head and, certain that Shiro was definitely gone, leaned over and poked Keith in the side. "Hey," Lance said. "You awake?"

"-king kill you if you touch me again," Keith growled into his arm. Lance, who had very little self-preservation instincts when it came to the other paladins, poked Keith's exposed side again, under his arm, and Keith flailed his arm out, smacking at Lance blindly (and accurately), so that Lance yelped and rolled away. "What, what?" Keith said, lifting his head. "What the fuck is it, I wanna fucking sleep!"

Lance, only an arm's length away, said, "are you still in heat?"

Keith glared at Lance. "If you want to fuck me that badly, just say so," he said after a moment, grumbling. "I can sleep right through your tiny dick-"

"My dick is not tiny!"

"It is compared to Shiro's." Keith retorted. Lance couldn't argue with that and fumed for a second.

"Yeah, well, so's yours!"

"I know, we're about the same size." Keith didn't even seem put out by that, he yawned again and rubbed a hand over his face. "Are you done throwing a fit? Can I sleep? I'm going back to sleep."

Lance sat up, and smacked Keith on the shoulder. "Are you still in heat?" he demanded, and Keith groaned in annoyance and smacked back at Lance.

"I don't know, are you?"

"Keith, I'm trying to be serious here!" Lance flattened both of his hands against the bedding. "You let an alpha fuck you without protection while you're in heat."

"And?" Keith buried his face back into the pillow.

"And? And? You could be fucking pregnant, what the hell is 'and'?" Lance shoved Keith in the shoulder, enough so that Keith rolled up on his side and squinted at Lance. "Does this not worry you at all? I've been thinking about it all night!"

"You're really noisy," Keith said, and covered his mouth when he yawned.

Lance looked like the top of his head was going to come off. "Keith!"

"I'm still in heat," Keith said, and rubbed the back of his hand over his nose. "Stick your nose in my ass and check for yourself if you don't believe me."

"You are such an asshole. I was really worried!" Lance folded his arms and pouted, and Keith groaned into his pillow and lifted his head. He glared at Lance, then groaned a second time and sat up slowly on his knees.

"Fuck, and now I'm awake," he grunted. "If you were gonna throw this fit why did you wait for Shiro to leave?"

"Because I don't know how he'd react if he thought he'd knocked you up," Lance poked Keith in the chest with one finger. "I don't know how the two of you managed to get through any of the health requirements in the garrison. Did you flunk your sex ed course and just didn't want to say anything?"

Keith leaned in and squinted at Lance. "Huh," he said, and Lance put his hand out to stop Keith in his tracks. It wasn't enough, and Keith grabbed him by the back of the neck, hand flattening atop the still-healing claim mark on the back of his neck.

"Keith!" Lance yelped, as Keith ran his tongue over the somewhat-faded bite mark on his shoulder, then bit the rough skin there tenderly. Lance jerked and tried to shove him away, but that didn't quite work out the way he'd planned and Keith kept his hand curled tight over the back of Lance's neck. "What the fuck, man!"

"It was healing," Keith murmured, and sat back, letting Lance go slowly. "It won't stay, not like an alpha's mark. I have to refresh it." Lance covered the fresh wound with his hand and smeared some droplets of blood on his skin, frowning.

"I wanna mark you," he said. "It's only fair."

Without a word Keith tilted his head to one side, leaving his neck completely vulnerable. Lance wet his lips and leaned forward, catching Keith's shoulder and pulling him in at the same time. He wasn't exactly sure where the best place to bite was, and in the end decided that low on Keith's neck, in a spot that would be covered by the large collar of that ridiculous cropped jacket he liked to wear.

Keith made an obscene noise when Lance bit him, and that caused him to jerk in surprise. Keith put his hand over the fresh bite mark as soon as Lance yanked himself away, and then ran his fingers through the blood that had welled up, and wiped it over his lips, before licking his fingers clean. "S-sorry," Lance said, wiping his hand over the back of his mouth, eyes wide at the mark he had left on Keith's skin.

Keith didn't answer right away, staring at Lance and breathing heavily, fingers still resting lightly on his lips. Lance kept looking at his fingers there, and his lips, and his eyes darted from Keith's face back to his lips a few times, before something internal switched over from "we're still fighting" to "fuck it." Lance grabbed Keith's wrist and yanked his hand away from his mouth so that he could kiss him.

"You know," Keith said later, kicking some of the fluid-soaked covers off the futon and away, "I do know that Shiro could've knocked me up. I'm not stupid."

"I never can tell for certain," Lance said, laying on his back beside Keith, and using the edge of one of the blankets to wipe his mouth. "Sometimes you are really stupid. Most of the time, actually. Ow! Don't kick my head, jerk!"

"Oh, was that your head?" Keith stared at the ceiling, his head pillowed on his arm as he kicked blindly at Lance again, but without much power behind it. "Sorry, I thought it was a pillow. It has the same amount of fluff in it."

"I – ooh," Lance said, and then crossed his arms. "I really fucking hate you."

"Yeah, I hate you too," Keith said, and ran his fingers over the fresh bite on his neck fondly.

"Is Lance going to wear clothes again at any point in the next day and a half?" Hunk asked as he put down the crate he was carrying just inside the door of the room. "Because – and I just want you to know this because I think it's important – his clothes are still in my room."

"I was wondering where they were," Shiro said absently, putting the crate he was carrying next to Hunk's. "That explains a lot."

Pidge, walking behind them and carrying a junked patrol robot about three times larger than the drone she had adopted a few weeks prior, said, "once I get this one working I'm going to call it Spover."

"Spover?" Allura asked.

She hefted the round, featureless drone over her head. "Yeah! Like, Super Rover! Spover!"

"Maybe you could just call it Spot," Hunk suggested. "That doesn't sound stupid."

Pidge glared at him, the half-constructed robot drone still held perilously above her head. "Just for that, I'm definitely calling it Spover."

Allura had been wearing a thoughtful face. "I think spover is some kind of fungus. Or possibly genital disease." Hunk suppressed a snort at that, opening the far door that faced the baths.

"Fucking hell," Pidge said. "Don't tell Lance."

"Language," Shiro said absently, as he poked through the crate of odds and ends.

"Quiznak," Pidge said, and rolled her eyes.