I'm Yours And You're Mine

Part 3

Lance ran out of his lion as soon as he arrived in the castle. He was carrying Keith, as he had passed out again.

"Where have you been?" Shiro asked. Lance kept running. "Lance? Lance!" Shiro shouted, more worried than before.

A Galra fleet had attacked their lions and Keith had been knocked around, he had hit his head in the midst of the battle. The red lion had to fly on its own, and Lance fought off the Galra so they wouldn't attacked further.

He burst into the healing pod room, opened a pod, got the armor off of Keith, and placed him in the pod. Before it closed, Lance left a little kiss on his forehead. Then the pod closed, and he finally slumped against it in defeat. He immediately wondered when Keith would get out, feeling flooded with guilt.

To pass the time, he leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. There wasn't much to look at, but it was just so large and empty that Lance could get lost in his thoughts. It would be boring in other situations, but in this one, Lance took comfort in its simplicity. It wasn't anything hard to process, it was just there, and that was it. Lance spaced out, the exhaustion had finally caught up to him.

The other paladins stopped in the doorway to check in on him, but they remained silent. They pieced together what happened, so they knew that Keith was hurt, and that Lance had been involved in some way, but that was all. Eventually, Shiro was pushed to go and talk to Lance.

Shiro sat cross-legged next to the Cuban boy splayed out on the floor beneath the healing pod that contained Keith. "How're you holding up?" he placed a warm hand on Lance's shoulder. Lance stayed silent. "You know he'll be okay, right?"

"I let him get hurt," he said softly. The cool metal floor contrasted with the warmth from his back. Lance didn't really want to talk now, but it was nice that Shiro was sitting with him. He stared at the ceiling, face like stone to hide his emotions.

Despite that, Shiro could tell that Lance was beating himself up in his head, and there wasn't really a way he could stop that. Instead, he was going to distract him from these feelings of guilt.

"I'm gonna tell you a story. I think it'll help," he said. Lance nodded, void of emotion.

"When I was around your age I—" Lance interrupted him with an exaggerated sigh.

"— I'm not gonna give you that old person lecture, if that's what you're thinking," Shiro said. Lance shot him a critical look. Shiro held his hands up as if he were giving up, and that caused them both to laugh.

"Anyway, when I was around your age... no, I was younger than you. I think I was like 16, either way, I was stupid. Stupid enough to think I was straight." He smiled when Lance snorted. "I was young and trying to figure out who I was. I had this one friend that always tried to hook me up with these girls— apparently there was quite a few that liked me— but I always turned down the dates. This guy was persistent though—I think they were paying him or something— so this one time, one time, I decide, 'you know what, why not.' and accept one of the dates." Shiro glanced down at Lance, he noticed that some of the tension had leaked away from Lance. "This girl, she was really sweet, but not my type.  And, when I say sweet, I mean really timid and too scared to present her own opinion because she wanted to come off as nice. We set a day, and went to this trendy outdoor restaurant,

"This restaurant was pretty full, considering it was a must for anyone visiting the city, and that meant there was going to be plenty of people around. Since it was all trendy and shit, there were high tables with those tall chairs, and an abundance of flowering bushes and hanging plants. This was the year that the city had beehives on every corner of every block to prevent the extinction of the bees, so now there's a bunch of bees buzzing around and pollinating the plants in this restaurant. We sat down to eat, and once we were served and started eating, a flower fell into this girl's hair. It would've been cute if this huge bee hadn't come over and landed in that flower. She didn't notice, but I sure did. I don't know what to do, so I just stared at the bee with fear, like what do you do in this situation? Anyone would freak out if they found out there was this huge bee on their head." He held up his two fingers for a scale of how big this bee was. "It was around this size." Lance's eyes widened. "No joke."