shining like the stars

74

Despite his best efforts at staying asleep, Keith cracked open his eyes when he felt Lance slip out of the bunk. His eyes were gummy, so he rubbed one palm against his eye socket and propped himself up in the bed, squinting in the dim light of his room. Lance was moving quietly; he had pulled open one of the wall panels and was frowning because all the clothes held within were fitted for Keith, not him. "...Lance?" Keith asked, and punctuated his question with a yawn.

Since the overhead light wasn't on, the closet panel had a soft inner glow as well, the same soft teal the Alteans seemed to favor as mood lighting. Lance started, and shoved the panel closed, cutting off the additional glow and effectively masking his expression from Keith, who had finally focused on him. "Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to wake you." He didn't move away from the wall, his tone quiet. "Is Shiro still asleep?"

Shiro, at Keith's back, was tucked tight between him and the wall. His breathing hadn't changed, and while he had gone to sleep with one arm curled securely around Keith's waist, at some point he had tucked it against his body, between them. Keith nodded his head and then wondered if Lance could see it. "He's still asleep."

"Good," Lance said. "I'm going ... for a run. You can go back to sleep."

Keith yawned again, then shifted under the covers. "I'll come with you," he said, and sat all the way up.

"You don't have to," Lance said, surprised. "It's still early, go back to sleep."

Keith stretched his arms over his head to crack his back, and then started to slide out from under the covers. "A run like a great way to clear my head," he said. "Were you gonna use the track in the training room?"

Lance was standing where he had stopped, against the wall, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. After a long moment he sighed, and folded his arms. "I'm not going for a run," he said. "I don't know why I even said that."

Keith, sitting on the side of the bed, cocked his head and squinted at Lance. Either he wasn't awake enough to really follow, or Lance wasn't making much sense to him. "...what?" he said finally.

"It doesn't matter," Lance said. He touched the wall panel again and yanked out one of Keith's black tee shirts, pulling it on over his head in a hurried motion. "I'll see you at breakfast." It was impossible to slam the door to his quarters, given the nature of the sliding doors, but it wasn't hard to imagine the door slam as it swished closed behind Lance. Keith blinked a few times, still sitting on the edge of the mattress, and entirely unsure of what just happened.

He looked over his shoulder at Shiro, sleeping on his side and prosthetic hand curled against his face, the other tucked against his chest, and a frown creased his face as he looked back to the door.

#

By the time he'd put on pants and a tee shirt himself, Lance was nowhere to be found. Keith was resolved not to be worried, because who knew what was bothering Lance — but something made him keep looking anyway. It was early, when he read off the time on the chrono it was only a few hours since they'd all squeezed in to Keith's bunk to sleep. Had Lance even slept at all?

The ship was quiet now, everyone trying to catch some rest on the off-chance that the warning alarms would go off any moment. The galley was empty, the common area, the bridge ... the lights were on in the training room, which Keith found odd if Lance wasn't going to go for a run, so he stopped in the open doorway to see what was going on.

Lance was not in the training room, either, but it was in use. The smaller, dark-haired Altean was fighting one of the gladiator bots with two short blades. He'd been at it for a while, judging by the half a dozen downed bots that littered the staging area. Keith stood in the open doorway and watched him fight, grudgingly impressed.