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Sunlight feels so good. Lance missed it. It’s really such a nice way to wake up. Warm sunbeams on your bare skin, a gentle brightening of the room; God, it even makes the room smell better… it sucks so bad that his room in the castle doesn’t have any windows. He’s so glad to finally be getting some now.
Lance shoots awake in a panic.
He should not be feeling sunlight on his skin right now.
He takes a half second to wake up fully, taking in the clean white sheets tangled around his hips, the sterile boringness of the room, the giant window with a sparkly view.
Oh, right. They stopped on what was essentially a Vegas planet yesterday to get a specific part for one of the castle’s reactors, and then he, Hunk, and Pidge convinced Shiro to let them hit the casinos for a bit.
The rest of the night is a blur.
“What the fuck did I do last night?” Lance mumbles, shifting around to stretch a bit. His hip bumps into a lump in the bed — a person-sized lump — and the movement makes him suddenly aware of a soreness in his rear.
His face heats up.
Oh.
That’s what he was doing last night.
Makes sense, he supposes. Drunk Lance is either extremely affectionate or extremely horny, so it was really only a matter of time. He rubs his eyes, then drags his hand down his face. Fuck. He’s gonna have a helluva time explaining this one to the team.
Fuck!
With a renewed panic, he throws himself out of the bed, tripping out of the sheets and looking around desperately for his clothes. Fuck fuck fuck! He is supposed to be on the castle right now!
He finally manages to locate his boxers, yanking them up his legs as he checks his watch. 5:13. Okay, not ideal, but no one’s usually awake before seven, so if he grabs some coffee or something on his way in he should be able to make it without making anyone suspicious —
“Lance, please shut the fuck up,” mumbles a grouchy voice, tinged with sleep, and Lance’s heart drops to his throat.
“Keith?!”
Keith drags himself upright, black hair a rat’s nest around his head, and glares heavily, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“What part of shut the fuck up do you not understand, God, it’s like your voice is actively bashing into my head —”
Lance registers the exact second Keith awakes fully, because his eyes widen and he yelps, yanking the sheets up his chest.
“Oh my God!”
“Oh, drop the fucking sheet,” Lance snaps, face flaming. “It’s obviously not something I haven’t seen before.”
Keith thankfully does let go of the sheet, using his hands to yank on his hair instead.
“Fuck,” he says, turning panicked eyes to Lance. “Oh, we fucked up, we fucked up good —”
“Why, thank you, Keith, that’s oh so lovely to hear from you in this situation —”
“Fuck, we gotta call Shiro —”
Lance abandons his search for pants and lunges towards Keith, yanking the comm out of his hands and throwing it randomly behind him.
“Are you cracked in the fucking head,” he hisses.
“My comm!” Keith cries. He throws off the sheets and stumbles in vague direction Lance threw it, ass fucking naked.
“Put some goddamn pants on!” Lance shouts, whipping a pillow at Keith’s chest and frantically looking away, pretending his did not just get and eyeful and that said eyeful was not an objectively kind of a nice one.
“Piss off,” Keith snaps, face red, but dutifully locates his pants and puts them on before continuing. “I’m calling Shiro now.”
Resisting the urge to tackle the thick-headed dumbass to the ground, Lance forces himself to stay where he is.
“Do you want to be lectured for three straight days?” he demands.
That makes Keith pause. “It won’t be that long.”
“Sure, but then what? He’s going to be mad, Keith. Or at least disappointed. And you know we’ll be assigned the most boring missions possible until he forgets about it, and who knows how long that will take?”
Keith hesitates a moment, then sighs, giving up on his search for his comm and flopping back on the bed.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, face muffled in a pillow. “This sucks. And my head hurts.”
Lance reaches out, pressing his hand to Keith’s forehead — it’s definitely a little hot. Keith groans, wrapping his hand around Lance’s wrist and holding tightly.
“God, your fingers are freezing. Do not move them.”
Despite the situation, Lance smiles, brushing his fingers carefully through Keith’s fringe.
“Let me go. I have painkillers and peppermint oil in my jacket pocket, it should help.”
“Mmf. Fine.”
As soon as Lance’s hand is relinquished, he pulls away, hunting around the mess on the floor for his clothes. He finds his jeans first, but can’t find his shirt — only Keith’s black one, and a white shirt with some text on it.
“Keith?” he calls, pulling it on and tilting his head down to read it. “Why has my shirt been replaced with one that reads ‘SEAT RESERVED FOR DILFS’ with an arrow pointing to my face?”
Keith props himself up his elbows, squints at the shirt, and then winces.
“I may have,” he says reluctantly, “the faintest memory of throwing up on your shirt. So. I imagine you replaced it.”
Lance pouts. “Aw, man. I liked that shirt.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. You are getting me a new shirt that I can wear without getting mocked, though.”
“Noted. What’s the ETA on that advil, by the way?”
“Coming, Mr. Impatience,” Lance mumbles, finally locating his jacket. (Thankfully Keith didn’t throw up on that, or Lance would have to kill him.) He digs around in his pockets, finding the peppermint oil where it usually is, but not the advil. He flips his other pockets inside out, and thankfully the bottle comes tumbling out, along with two slips of paper. He hands to pills to Keith, along with a bottle of water and the oil, and then reads the papers curiously.
His eyes widen.
“Keith,” he says, voice strained, “I have some very good news, and then some very bad news.”
“Good news first,” Keith says immediately.
Predictable.
Lance hands Keith the smaller slip of paper. Keith squints again, harder this time, bringing the paper close to his face.
Lance rolls his eyes.
“Coran had reading glasses made for you, you know. Months ago. How many times have I told them to bring them with you places?”
“I don’t need them,” Keith insists, paper perhaps an inch from his face. “I’m just — hungover.”
“Okay, dumbass.”
It takes Keith a second to read it — really, Lance might start carting around his glasses for him — and then his eyes get just as wide as Lance were.
“That’s a lot of zeros,” he says quietly.
Lance snorts. “Sure is. Apparently we’re very good at card games when we’re drunk. Or very lucky at one game.”
“Apparently,” Keith agrees. He looks back down at the paper, whistling. “You’re gonna have a hard time finding bad news bad enough to beat this, I think.”
Lance grimaces. He glances down at the bigger, fancier paper, then hands it to Keith.
“I really don’t think so.”
This paper is a lot easier for him to read — it would be hard for him to miss the giant ‘CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE’ printed in bold at the top of it.
“Oh, shit,” he says weakly. He glances at Lance’s hands. “I guess that explains why you’re wearing my dad’s ring.”
Lance stares at his left hand in horror, where, on his fourth finger, shines a red stone inlaid in heavy gold — Keith’s father’s ring, that he’s never once taken off his pinky in all the time Lance has known him.
“Fuck!” Lance exclaims, immediately taking it off to give back to Keith. He knows how much that ring means to him.
Only — the ring isn’t coming off.
“I can’t get it off,” Lance says, looking at Keith in a panic. Keith looks back, just as freaked.
“It’s stuck?”
“No, it’s not — it’s not tight, I can move it and my fingers are narrow, but it’s not coming off!”
“How is that even possible?”
Lance pulls on the ring until it hurts, twisting it every which way and shaking his hand roughly. “I don’t know!”
“Here, just — stop freaking out,” Keith orders. Lance freezes, heart pounding. Keith slowly reaches over and wraps his left hand around Lance’s wrist, right hand on the ring. Lance has a sudden, vivid memory of their hands in the exact same position, stood in front of an alien with bright pink hair and dressed like fuckin’ Elvis, because of course they were, only in the memory Keith is sliding the ring on instead of trying to pull it off.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Keith says, finally giving up after pulling hard enough to make Lance wince. “It must be the marriage ritual in this place, or something. Alien magic, I dunno.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Lance says, snatching back their marriage certificate — their fucking marriage certificate, dear God — and reading it over carefully.
“Here!” Lance points out a tiny block of text near to corner, then reads aloud for Keith’s benefit. “Klent City State 347th Union Office.”
Keith sighs in relief. “Oh, thank God. We’ll just explain the situation to them, and boom. Annulment. Problem over, we rush back to the castle before anyone else wakes up, and then we never speak of this again. Perfect.”
Lance nods, swallowing around the sudden bile in his throat. “Yeah. Perfect. Get dressed, Mullet. We have a divorce to attend.”
Keith snorts, rolling back off the bed and digging around for his dumbass go-go boots and jacket.
Once he looks away, Lance allows himself a pained wince, pressing his fingers to his eyes and scrunching his shoulders up to his ears.
“Lance? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Lance says, pulling his hands away and straightening himself out. “Just — I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Keith, obviously, does not do that, because he is incapable of following instructions. He presses his hand to Lance’s forehead in a mirror of what Lance did earlier.
“You hungover, too?”
Lance shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. I don’t get hungover.”
Keith raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously,” Lance insists. “I drink lots of water when I drink, and besides that, I never really have enough alcohol to get hungover in the first place. I am essentially a toothbrush bristle, Keith. I get drunk off, like, two drinks.”
Keith snorts. “You had a lot more than two drinks last night, if I’m remembering correctly.”
Lance flushes. Keith is remembering correctly. Lance hadn’t even intended to drink last night — he wanted to have fun and be sober — but he’d gotten bored watching Hunk and Pidge demolish the slot machines, and he didn’t feel like helping Shiro and Allura supervise Coran, so he went to go find and bother Keith. Unfortunately, he found Keith leaning close to some guy, laughing brightly, his hand on Keith’s bicep, and he’d tipped back an entire line of shots before he could convince himself not to be a dumbass.
Not that Keith needs to know that. Not that it even means anything.
“I got bored,” Lance says instead, which isn’t even technically a lie. “But, no. I’m not hungover. I’m just — um, it was a big night last night. Lots of light and sound. I’m a little overwhelmed and oversensitive.”
“Oh.”
“Mhm.”
A minute later, something is being placed on his head. Lance looks up in surprise at Keith, who just smiles sheepishly.
“No idea why there is a sparkly pink ball cap with my clothes, but you need it more than me.”
Lance laughs brightly. “Oh, I remember this one! You remember when we were first running away from everyone else? Hunk was on our tail at some point, so I decided to steal your hair band and shoot him with it to distract him. Then you were moping about your hair in your eyes, though, and you grabbed the hat right off some dude’s head.”
Keith’s jaw drops. “I did not.”
“You really did, dude,” Lance says, grinning. “Clean off his damn head. Then you walked off like it was nothing.”
Keith shakes his head at himself, snorting. “Whoops. Sorry, Random Alien Dude.” He pauses for a minute, checking his watch. “Hey, we still have a little over an hour before everyone else gets up. Do you think we can grab some food on the way? I’m starving.”
“Shocking,” Lance says drily, but makes no argument. He could go for some shitty fast food too, honestly. They make their way out of the hotel, both of them wincing at the brightness when they finally make it outside, and head to the nearest brightly lit sign that offers grease and salt.
“Good thing we’re billionaires now,” Keith teases. “We wouldn’t be able to afford this otherwise, because your drunk ass was losing at every game we played.”
“I was not!” Lance says indignantly, but Keith pays him no heed.
“You were so. You only started winning when I was blowing on the dice.” He smiles smugly, poking Lance in the cheek. “You suck at poker, dude.”
Lance huffs, reaching over and stealing one of Keith’s fries as revenge.
“Hey! Paws off! You have your own!”
“You’re being a dick, and you upchucked on my favourite shirt last night,” Lance points out. “I deserve at least half of your fries.”
Keith inclines his head. “Yeah, alright, fair. But if it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t find my boxers and these pants are tight as hell, so I promise I am also suffering.”
Lance eyes, without his permission, glance down at the front of Keith’s pants. He flushes.
“That does make me feel better.”
Because Keith is suffering. That’s why.
…Whatever.
“Hey, by the way,” Keith says, swallowing his last bite of food. “How come you’re limping?”
Lance could smack him. Honestly.
“Why do you think, dumbass?” he snaps. “I’m not…used to this kind of thing. Or whatever.”
It takes a moment for Keith to clue in, but when he does, his eyes go wide and he freezes in his tracks.
“Please tell me I did not just take your fucking virginity.”
He looks so genuinely horrified that Lance can’t help himself, so he rears back and punches Keith in the arm as hard as he can.
“Ow!”
“I don’t buy into that shit, so don’t flatter yourself,” Lance says harshly. “It’s the most dumbass idea I’ve ever heard. So what last night was my first time? It doesn’t — don’t be an idiot about it.”
Keith glares at him for a moment, rubbing his arm — in hindsight Lance could have probably held back a little, he’s definitely going to bruise — but then sighs.
“Yeah, sorry,” he relents. His face turns slightly teasing. “I just — I guess I just didn’t expect that from you, Loverboy.”
Lance scowls. “It makes perfect sense! I bet your first time was some rushed and unsatisfying bullshit on a random couch in an unsupervised room.”
That makes Keith frown, looking at Lance strangely. “There’s no possible way you know that.”
“Of course I know that, because it was the fucking Garrison, man. That’s what everyone did. I have no interest in that garbage. I want it slow and on a nice bed or I don’t want it at all.” He flushes up to his ears, realising what he said. “Or — I did want that. Whatever.”
Keith is quiet for a long time as they walk, and the tension is so thick that Lance almost considers giving up and calling Shiro despite his whole tantrum earlier.
“I hope it was like that,” Keith says quietly.
Lance thinks back to all he can remember last night — it’s not much, but he does remember it, remembers them clumsy and drunk and laughing and affectionate. He remembers how Keith had kissed him softly, pressed him gently into the mattress, how the skin of his hands had been rough under his gloves, tangled with Lance’s beside his head. He remembers how Lance’s ring — Keith’s ring, Keith’s ring, they’re not really married — had glittered in the dim light of the room, how the same soft glow had been reflected in Keith’s indigo eyes. He remembers feeling so loved his chest hurt with it.
But Keith doesn’t remember — ‘I hope it was like that’, he’d said. He doesn’t know.
And it doesn’t matter, anyway.
“I don’t remember,” Lance lies. The words burn his mouth.
Both of them are quiet. Bitterly, Lance wonders if their relationship is ever going to be the same, or if everything they’ve ever built is ruined. If Lance ruined everything. Fuck, and he and Keith worked so hard, too. They both put so much fucking effort into their relationship. And Lance cherishes it — he really does. He likes having someone who’s just as competitive as him, grinning at him as they train, teasing and taunting as they spar. He likes having someone to look just as lost and confused with when Hunk and Pidge start talking tech. He likes having someone who will strike goofy superhero poses behind Shiro’s back whenever the man says something particularly Captain-America-ish. He likes having someone sit carefully next to him on the observation deck on bad nights, asking him to tell stories of his family to ease the hurt.
He likes being Keith’s friend. He hates that he ruined it with his stupid, stupid feelings. He should’ve just let Keith flirt with the alien dude. He should’ve stuck with Hunk and Pidge. Hell, he should’ve let Hunk bust out the Drunk Lance Backpack Leash —
He startles when a warm hand grabs his, tangling their fingers together.
“Keith?”
“Alien marriage magic,” Keith says, looking straight ahead.
“Huh?“
“I keep getting — urges,” Keith explains. His cheeks are red. “I keep wanting to — touch you, or whatever. It must be the bonding magic.”
Lance swallows roughly, looking away. He should really pull away. He’s only making things worse for himself. He should let go, maybe even sidestep away.
Instead he tightens his grip, and steps even closer.
“Must be.”
Lance can’t bring himself to look at Keith for the rest of their walk. There’s no point in making things even harder for himself, after all. Eventually Keith is going to let go, and they’re going to get their wrongful marriage rightfully annulled, and Lance is going to give back his ring — not his fucking ring, God, why has he become so possessive over it already? It’s only been one night, and barely! — and they’re both going to go home and pretend this never happened. Just like Keith said.
Except it did happen.
And Lance won’t forget it.
“We’re here,” Keith says quietly, jutting his chin at a flashing neon sign.
“Real tasteful of us,” Lance mutters as he looks at it. Keith snorts.
“Practically a destination wedding,” he agrees. Despite himself, Lance smiles.
Keith lets go of his hand to push open the doors. Lance does a very good job of not crying about it, which is excellent. Point to Lance for that one.
“Hello, there,” greets a woman, smiling kindly. “Come to get married?”
Lance winces. He wonders how he looks at Keith for her to assume that.
He’s taking back that mental point he just gave himself. He does not deserve it.
“Uh, opposite, actually,” Keith says. He clears his throat, embarrassed. “We got drunk and hitched last night? And now my dad’s ring is stuck on his finger. So. We were wondering if you could fix that.”
The woman looks a strange mix of pitying and amused. “Yes, that would be the bonding spell. Interesting that it worked on you both, if you were as inebriated as you say.”
Lance furrowed his eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing important,” she says, waving a dismissing hand. “If you wish to annul your union, I can do that for you.”
“That would be great,” Keith says.
Lance says nothing.
“Alright, then. Hold out your hands and close your eyes.”
Both of them do. Lance feels something ticklish and breezy wrap around his hands, and something glows brightly enough that he can feel it even with his eyes closed.
“Now, all magic bonds work on two things: consent, and desire. The breaking of those bonds is very similar. Both of you must envision your ties together, specifically those of marital union, and then use your desire to be unmarried to envision those ties broken.”
Lance squeezes his eyes shut tighter, trying to envision his bond with Keith. He’s not one hundred percent sure what that means, so instead he tries to picture Keith, just as he is. He thinks of sly smiles showing the barest peek of crooked incisors, of a strong hand on the small of his back when Lance gets overwhelmed, of a gravelly voice whispering ‘I bet they’re waiting for you, Lance, and when you come back to them it’s going to be great,’ of the scent of pine and sandalwood, somehow, even in space. And then he envisions Keith’s panicked face when he woke up, when he saw that it was Lance that he spent the night with. He envisions the steadiness in Keith’s voice as he asked the woman for their annulment.
The glow burns brightly, strong enough to hurt his eyes through his eyelids, and then there’s nothing.
“Did it work?”
“If you both followed the instructions, yes.”
Lance opens his eyes, glancing over at Keith’s expectant face. He swallows the lump in his throat, and forced himself to wrap his fingers around his ring — not his fucking ring — and pull.
It doesn’t move.
“It’s still stuck,” Lance says desperately. He pulls harder on the ring, more and more panicked by the second.
“Shit, Lance, don’t hurt yourself —”
“I’m — I’m pulling, and I followed to instructions, I envisioned the broken bonds —”
“Both of you followed instructions?” the woman interrupts.
“Just as you explained,” Keith says. “Our bond, and then envisioned it breaking.”
She raises her eyebrow. “Hm. That’s strange. I’ve never seen the ritual fail for two willing parties before.”
“Fuck,” Keith whispers, dragging his hand down his face. “This is bad. Did it maybe not work because we’re human? Well, I’m half-human, but still.”
“We’re a largely tourist-oriented planet,” the woman explains. “Most people who come to this office are not native here. There is no reason your species should have affected the spell.”
“Yeah, I get that, but humans have never been to space before, so maybe —”
“It’s my fault,” Lance blurts. He shrinks back at their questioning looks. He looks down at his hands, twisting his ring — fuck — around his finger.
“Lance?“ Keith asks quietly.
“I don’t want to get divorced,” Lance admits. He’s ashamed to feel tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not fair, I’ll try to ignore it, but —” He looks down at his feet, voice small. “I don’t want to get divorced.”
“Oh, thank God,” Keith says, and before Lance can even process, Keith strides towards him, cradling his face in his hands, and kisses him soundly.
“Wha —” Lance mumbles against chapped lips, confused and scared and unable to shake the hurt built in his chest quite yet. “You —?”
“So long,” Keith whispers, pulling away and then pressing back in again like he can’t help himself. “I — I’ve loved you for so long, Lance.”
Lance feels the tears leak finally from his eyes, dripping onto Keith’s cheeks. “Really?”
Keith pulls away for real this time, resting his forehead against Lance’s and laughing softly. “You have no fucking idea. You’re just — you are everything I’ve ever wanted. When I woke up this morning and saw my ring on your finger I thought I was still dreaming.”
Lance’s hands loosen their grip on Keith’s shirt, resting open-palmed on his chest. “But you wanted the annulment.”
“I wanted you to be happy,” Keith corrects. “I want you to be happy. Ideally with me, but — you were so panicked, this morning. I don’t want you to be tied down with someone you don’t want.”
“I want,” Lance says quickly. “I have — I love you, too. Always. Since the Garrison, probably.”
Keith grins. “Even when we were rivals?”
“We’re still rivals, Mullet. If you think I’m going to stop kicking your ass just because you’re my husband then you’re solely mistaken — oh my God. You’re my husband.”
“Yeah, hopefully.”
“No, Keith —” Lance pulls away slightly, so he can look up at Keith with the appropriate amount of panic. “What are we going to tell the team?”
But instead of freaking out like Lance expects, Keith is totally calm. Amused, even. He slides his hand down from Lance’s face to his hand, pulling it up to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss just below his knuckles, right above his — his! — ring.
“That I went to space Vegas and married the love of my life,” he says. He shifts slightly, turning Lance’s hand to press a kiss to his wrist.
“That I gave him the ring that I got from my father and he got from his grandfather and I’m happy I did.” He pulls up Lance’s sleeve, kissing the middle of his forearm.
“That I don’t regret it for anything, and would do it again in a second.” Three kisses, slowly, one after the other, up his bicep.
“That I look at him and every day is brighter. That even drunk me looked into those gorgeous brown eyes and couldn’t think of anything but being with him forever.” A lingering kiss to his shoulder, then a trail of them to his neck, where Lance can feel him smirk.
“That I got hitched and then spent an amazing night after doing more than just kissi—”
“Okay,” Lance interrupts, pressing his hand over Keith’s mouth and going red. Keith presses a kiss to his palm, eyes sparking in amusement. “I got it, Gomez. We’re telling them the truth. Maybe cool it a little.”
“For now,” Keith agrees, muffled.
Lance shakes, pulling his hand back and looking away. After a second or too he rolls his eyes at himself — why the hell is he holding back? — and presses a another long, lingering kiss to Keith’s lips.
“Ditto, by the way. With — all that mushy shit.”
Keith snorts. “Poet, you are.”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, shut the fuck up.”
That makes Keith laugh outright, pressing their lips together one last time before pulling away. He turns toward the officiant woman, who thankfully looks amused.
“Uh, sorry for wasting your time.”
“All is well,” she says, smiling slyly. “That was the most entertainment I’ve had in a long time. Enjoy your day, boys.”
Smiling like fools, they duck out of the office, giggling as they stumble back in the direction of the castle.
“Shiro is going to give us so many chores,” Lance says brightly.
“So many,” Keith agrees.
“And Hunk and Pidge are going to tease us for eternity.”
“Mhm.”
“Allura too, probably.”
“Most likely.”
“Coran’ll be on our side, though.”
Keith stops, wrapping his arms around Lance’s waist and dipping him before kissing him again.
“You’re a sappy loser,” Lance informs him.
“You love me so much you couldn’t even pretend to want a divorce,” Keith shoots back.
Lance sighs happily. “Not even a little.”
And God, is he ever grateful for that.