Lance is lying on his back, the perfect pillow for Keith, nestled against his side, and BleepBloop, wedged between them. He's got his tail wrapped around the Altean's waist. They’re on a blanket under a tree, the warmth of the early afternoon a balm against their skin. After the unpleasant morning, Keith’s glad to spend some time curled up with his chosen mate. Just lie here and inhale Lance’s scent, soak up his warmth, absorb the rhythm of his breathing. They match breath for breath, primary heartbeat to heartbeat.
Despite his content, Keith can’t quite find sleep. He’s restful, sleepy, but there’s too much going on inside his head. He can’t help but think of Thace’s words, the notes on his test results.
“Perfect Health.”
The problem with perfect health? It means Keith has to consider his responsibilities and weigh them against what he really and truly wants.
Part of him doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction. All these people standing around wondering when he’s gonna push one out. They’re probably all milling about on Altea right now, gossiping about how he’s going to come back pregnant. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve Lance, they don’t deserve him, and they definitely won’t deserve his kits. Because obviously his kits will be perfect and beautiful and theirs, and therefore unworthy of anyone else.
Additionally, he doesn’t want to become a breeder. He has other things he still wants to do. He doesn’t want to sit around inside a castle and push out kits. Some of his species seem content with that life (probably because they’re just fucking nuts), but Keith is a warrior, and a leader (he’s trying), and someday he’d like to be an explorer. He still has dreams of a big life. The idea of his sex suddenly become a restraint bothers him.
But... He has responsibilities, both to his people and Lance’s. He doesn’t really care about elevating himself in Galra society. His friends within the Blade of Marmora and his family are enough for him. All the same, he wants to contribute to his race, be it because of Zarkon’s brainwashing or his own personal desires. Plus, he kind of needs to provide Lance an heir. It’s literally his only purpose, politically speaking.
“Perfect Health.”
What perfect health means is that his excuse is gone. Time to spread his legs!- Or so he’d think, except Lance is perfectly content to wait. Lance isn't even nineteen, and he's only just barely approaching twenty. Insanely young to be parents, even if that’s the expectation. They could absolutely wait if they wanted to…
And Keith definitely wanted to. But with that one phrase, “Perfect Health” , he can’t help but wonder.
He’s in this bad spot where no matter what he does, someone will end up mad at him. Possibly Alfor, which would be extremely inconvenient. Possibly Lance, which would break his heart. Possibly himself, which would just be par for the course at this point.
He taps Lance on the shoulder, waits for his eyes to flutter open. “I’m going to go find Shiro. Will you be alright on your own?”
Lance nods, humming an affirmative, already falling back asleep. Keith presses their lips together, Lance’s response sleepy but nonetheless sweet for it. “I love you.”
The Altean hums again, smiling his way back into a doze. That’s another thing: Lance really is sweet, and he’s been desperate to make Keith happy since before he even arrived on Altea. Bond or no bond, he feels like he owes Lance something. Which is stupid and not rational since Lance doesn’t want fuck all from him except support and affection, but Keith has a few anxieties when it comes to family.
After giving BleepBloop a goodbye pat, Keith heads out. Once he’s arrived at the compound, it takes him a minute to find Shiro. He’s in the yard, training some new recruits. “Hey, Keith. How’s it going?”
“So-so. You?”
“Well enough.” Shiro frowns. “What’s bothering you- Watch your footing, Klai. A good breeze would knock you over!”
“Thace says I’m well enough for a kit this first season. And I have to have at least two before too long.”
“And you don’t want any. I don’t blame you.”
“What? Yes I do!” Keith stares wide-eyed at his littermate? “You don’t?”
“How can I?” Shiro retorts, turning on him. “For that matter, how can you ?!”
Keith can’t believe he’s hearing this. He’s always assumed his kind, warm-hearted brother wanted that. “Why wouldn’t I want that?”
“Keith, you grew up alone ! How can you possibly risk leaving your kits to that same fate! How can you invite that kind of suffering on innocent life?”
“I- I would be a good parent. I’d make sure my kits would be provided for. Why should my not having had a family impede me from building one of my own?”
The found siblings gape at one another, disbelief written on both of their faces. It’s never occurred to either of them that they might have different goals in life. They’ve always been of a singular mind. Peace is a good option; the empire is stretched thin and vulnerable; Altean food is fucking nasty.
It never occurred to Keith that Shiro, who has so much to offer and so much natural talent as a mentor and leader, wouldn’t want to pass on his genes, nurture someone that’s his own flesh and blood. It never occurred to Shiro that Keith, damaged, neglected, traded like a commodity, would still want to start a family of his own.
Shiro sighs, runs fingers through the silver hair on top of his head. “You really want kits?”
Keith nods, ears wilted, tail limp. He eyes his littermate carefully, trying to figure out how to appease him. Stupid kit instincts.
“Okay. Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. I’m sorry.” Shiro rubs the top of Keith’s head. “But if that’s what you really want, I’m not the right person to talk to.”
“Yeah, I guess not.” Keith sighs, turning back to the sparring newcomers. “I’ll talk to my mother. I planned to anyway, since she and I both have that disorder.”
He can feel needles and aches in his bones again, prominent in his shoulders, knees, and hips.
“Good idea.” Shiro smiles. “So, what do you think? They any good?”
“They’re good for soldiers. They’ve got a lot to learn if they want to be Blades.”
“I agree. The potential is there, but the refinement is not. Speaking of which, I know you’ve been trying to keep a low profile because of your age, but you and Lance should come to training tomorrow morning. You say he’s improved, and I want to see that, and I want to see his supposed marksmanship. I also know that you haven’t been challenged in a while, so I want to see how much you’ve regressed.”
“Good idea. I could use a bit of conditioning, and a bit of exercise, to be honest. I’ve been very lazy since coming home.”
“I know. Rumor has it a pair of princes have been lounging about down in a certain village, grossing everyone out with their affections.”
“Oh, fuck off! The sun feels nice, alright?!”
“What about the rain?”
Keith’s ears twitch, betraying his embarrassment. But he smiles. “Yeah. That too.”
“Aw, you lovesick idiot. Go say hi to your mother!” Shiro shoves him away, but it’s more playful than anything else.
Of course, Keith has to push back, so Shiro has to push back, so Keith has to try and tackle him, so-
Lance sighs, glancing at the datapad propped up in the windowsill, setting BleepBloop on his shoulder. While he waits for his father to pick up the call, he looks over a recipe someone handed him while he was folding up the nap blanket. It seems simple enough. Chop up some stuff, throw it in a pot, cook it over a fire. Said pot was already outside, boiling bones to make the broth.
He’s cooked before, actually, making a hobby of it as a way to spend more time with Hunk, Rosetta, and Shay. That said, he’s never done it on his own. Well, he’s seen what a finished stew is supposed to look like, and it’s about time he and Keith stopped freeloading off the neighbors, so… fuck it. He might as well try.
"Here you go." Lance hands BleepBloop a small beanpod, which the primate bites, then throws across the room. "Guess you only eat meat, huh? Wait a tick, and I'll give you some, okay?" The primate chitters, clearly annoyed at his stupidity, but he's easily appeased by a head scratch.
While he waits for his father to bother answering, Lance begins by chopping some meat wrapped in leaves and covered in spices. It’s the same color as bits of meat still stuck to the bones cooking outside. Taking a luxite knife, Lance does as he’s seen the locals do, slicing the meat up along with the leaves right on top of the dining table. Picking off a piece of leaf, he hands a small chunk to BleepBloop, almost certain Keith would kick his ass for feeding it to him.
“Lance.” It’s his father, dressed in pajamas, watching him from the screen of his datapad. It’s later in the quintant back home, already after dark. “How is Daibazaal?”
“Very different, and the people don’t like me much, but I like it here.”
“You’ve been out in the village?”
“Yes. Keith has a den.” Lance scoops up the meat and leaves, dumping them in a stone bowl. He starts on a basket of vegetables and tubers, starting by using a mortar and pestle to mash up some plump, violet fruits with soft insides and a thin skin. “...He has friends here.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad for that. Have you seen the imperial family at all?”
“No, which is probably fortunate, given that Keith and I have been wandering all over the place like a pair of tourists, flaunting that he’s only just now growing up.”
A moment's pause, then, “Lance, what was the one major thing I told you to do?”
“Have sex with Keith?”
“Lance.”
“Stay safe," he grumbles. There’s silence in the wake of their heads butting together. “When did you last hear from Allura?”
“Just a few vargas ago. She informed me that Romelle no longer recognizes her.”
“What are we going to do? Where do we go from here?”
“Nothing. Nowhere.”
Lance’s heart stops. “How can you say that? She- Wasn’t she your friend? Don’t you care about her and Allura?”
“Son, it took me a centaphoeb and a half to piece Romelle’s brain back together. We’re lucky she’s with us at all.” Seeing the look on Lance's face, Alfor remembers he sometimes needs to be more gentle with his bleeding heart of his son.
“There’s nothing more I can do for her, Lance. I’ve tried everything. If something new becomes available, I’ll be more than tempted to arrange treatment myself, but the truth is… It’s cruel to keep forcing Romelle through all these experimental treatments. They can be traumatic and invasive, and half the time, there’s a decline in her condition, and almost never any improvement at all.”
Lance recognizes the truth in his father’s words, but it still hurts. Romelle is one of his few friends. BleepBloop smears a tear over his cheek before it can fall onto the vegetables he’s chopping. “What am I gonna tell Allura?”
“Nothing. You don’t have to tell her anything. I am going to tell her that there’s nothing left to try right now, but that I will be refocusing my efforts to find a new solution.”
“You’re going to lie to her?”
“Your sister deserves that, don’t you think?” Alfor murmurs, watching his son prepare food like a commoner.
“I don’t understand.”
“One day, you’ll have children of your own, and you’ll learn. I know I haven’t exactly been a good father, but I’ve never been indifferent to your pain. Either of you. The kindest thing I can do for Allura is lie.”
Lance nods, staring at the pile of vegetables before him. He can feel the sharp downturn of his mouth. “There’s really nothing I can do?”
“There’s nothing anyone can do.” The king sighs. “It’s a hard lesson for people like us, Lance: Some things are out of our control.”
Chuckling, Lance scoops all the vegetables into the large stone bowl. “Yeah. I think Keith’s catching on.”
“To what, that you’re a control freak?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s known that since the Frost Ball at the very latest.”
Grunting his reluctant agreement, Lance grabs his datapad, sets it outside by the stew pot so he can keep talking to his father while he babysits the stew. BleepBloop steals a lump of meat and runs off with it. Checking the paper recipe, Lance casually dumps all the ingredients in.
“What the quiznak are you doing?”
As per the recipe, Lance pours in a leather satchel full of grain. “Locals got tired of me freeloading, so today I am making stew. I’ve never made it before, so they gave me a recipe. On paper… I’ve never touched paper before.”
“I have, a few times. Pretty neat, right?” Alfor smiles.
“Yeah. It’s like… soft. But also not? Anyway, I told our neighbor when they came by with the ingredients that I’m willing to learn how to do other stuff if they’re willing to teach me. I don’t have anything against labor.”
“Be careful. You are not the people, Lance. You are separate from them.” Easy for his aloof, antisocial father to say.
“I know.” He does know. He also knows that his desperate need for community is in direct opposition with his responsibilities. “Keith has a lot of friends here, or at least friendly neighbors. I think he was kind of adopted by the locals.”
“If the locals are friendly with him, you need to establish yourself as a prominent figure within the community.” There’s a fine line between friendly and friends, and they both know it. Lance knows he’s already been far too friendly with Thace, a man who just handed him his newborn within seconds of meeting. Alfor doesn’t need to know about that.
“You mean be neighborly? I’ll be neighborly, and you learn some less… aggressive vocabulary, okay?” Lance shifts the fire beneath the pot, sliding some of the burning logs into the stone oven on the other side of the oblong fire pit, gradually bringing the stew from a boil to a simmer.
A young adult half-Galra comes up, carrying a stone bowl full of dough. They have brightly colored skin, including a prehensile appendage on top of their head. “Mind if I borrow that extra fire?”
Lance shakes his head. “Go for it. I’ll speak to you later, Father. Please say hello to Dad for me.”
“Of course. Have a good evening, Lance.”
“You too.” Lance lets his father do the hanging up. It’s so weird, having an actual conversation with his father. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to it. Or Galra society. “Okay, I gotta ask you a rude question.”
The unfamiliar Galra looks up, somewhat amused. “Go ahead.”
“What pronouns do you use?”
“She/her. Name’s Ezor. Galra gender identity killing you yet?”
“Driving me insane,” Lance admits.
“Just guess, and if it bothers someone, they’ll correct you. It’s how we all get by.” The woman smiles, working the dough in her hands into small balls, wrapping them in leaves, sticking two at a time on the stones by the fire. “Thanks for letting me borrow your fire. I didn’t feel like making one.”
“I’d never made one before. Good to know it’s worth borrowing.”
Lance looks up from stirring the stew. It’s almost dark, there’s a growing chill in the air, and Keith isn’t back yet. He decides not to worry about it, instead assuming he’s with his brother.
Keith’s actually with his mother, having taken plenty of time earlier to horse around with his brother and some of his old friends. The Blade of Marmora, Emperor Zarkon’s private army, has been his family since he came to the mountain. He’d actually wanted to fully join the Blades after his first season, and sometimes he misses the community. They don’t treat him any differently, except to tease him about the ribbon braided into his hair.
It doesn’t bother him, but he does wonder how he might have ended up if he hadn’t been married to Lance.
He also wonders how he might have ended up if he hadn’t finally found his mother, who’s a truly wonderful combination of fierce and gentle. For example, scolding him for lying about and acting a fool instead of keeping himself well-conditioned, then promptly giving him a hug and a hot cup of tea.
“So. I never see you anymore unless you’re having problems.” Krolia sits back in her chair, smirk crossing her face. Keith glares, riling easily at his mother's unfair but completely accurate observation. “Come on, kitten. I can tell something’s bothering you.”
Hating how easily he softens, Keith spills. “I don’t know if I should get pregnant or not.”
Krolia lifts an eyebrow, staring at her young son. “Are you healthy enough?”
" Perfect Health."
"Yes."
“Are you happy with your relationship with Lance? Are you ready to take that next step?”
“Yes.” He’s frustrated with the number of choices that have been taken away from him, but none of that is Lance’s fault. In fact, Lance is going out of his way to give him as many choices as possible.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I… Someone will end up unhappy. If I decide not to, Alfor will be even more annoying and Lance will be sad, even though he’s pretending he won’t care. If I do have a kit, then I’ll be mad at myself."
"Why?"
"Because then I'll have just gone and done what everyone else wanted!"
"And?" Keith balks at his mother's insight. "There's always an 'and', Keith."
And-” Keith gulps. “And then that’s all I’ll be good for.”
“All you’ll be good for?” Krolia frowns. “How in the cosmos did you arrive at that conclusion?”
“That’s all anybody wants from me. To the Empire, I’m a breeder. To the Alteans, I’m a breeder at best, a novelty at worst. I want- I want to be other things, Mom. I know I’m worth more than that.”
“Am I a breeder?” Krolia asks quietly, fixing her son with a hard stare. Keith sinks down in his seat, appropriately abashed. “Is Thace a breeder? We are all what we make ourselves, Keith. You can be a breeder, if that’s what you allow yourself to be. Or you can be a father, a warrior, an explorer, a future king- Whatever you want to be, that is what you make yourself. What do you want to be, Keith?”
“I… I don’t know. I- More. I want to be more.”
“Do you want to be a father? Do you want kits of your own?”
“...Yes. I want that. A lot.”
“If you become a father, sooner or later you will give everyone the satisfaction of seeing you bear Lance's children. It is up to you if that is your only great achievement. If you want to be a father and something 'more', what will you do to make those things happen?”
“...I don’t know.”
“Then that’s where you should start. You have time, kitten. You're young enough yet.”
Krolia stands, rubs her kit behind the ears. He’s so very nearly grown, and she barely got any time with him. Beneath her gaze, a spasm crawls down his legs, up his back, over his shoulders. “Do you have a shot with you, kitten?”
“Yeah. Can I-”
“Come on.” Krolia leads her hurting son over to the bed, helps him into it. Keith curls up, tail curled tight to his body. Giving him the injection into the port on his arm, Krolia climbs up next to him, settles her warmth next to his. “Rest. Then you can go home to Lance.”
Keith whimpers, curling tighter as pain wracks his body. He nods, settling in against his mother. His muscles stay tense, unwilling to make himself more vulnerable in his condition.
“Just rest, kitten. I’ve got you. I’ll keep you safe.” Krolia strokes her baby’s hair, missing all the decaphoebs behind them, all the ones she didn’t have. “Momma’s here.”
Her son is blessed, privileged with medical care that she never had, but Krolia is loath to see her kit in pain. Galra are forever devoted to their own young, even after they grow up. Her love for Keith will remain strong even after instinct has faded. Knowing that he is her only kit, he’s even more precious. Her greatest achievement in life is her son.
“It's late," Keith whispers some time later, gazing at the darkness outside. He looks tired, pain even he can't resist sapping his strength.
"It is. Do you want to stay here, or go home?" Krolia already knows the answer, but it's a small choice she can offer her entangled son.
"I should go. I've been missing Lance since I left. Which is super freaky."
"It'll pass." Krolia watches her son play with the end of his braid. "You really do love him, don't you."
Not a question. A statement. A surrender.
"I do. He's earned it, Mom. We both worked hard to be friends, and now we're working hard for this. But he was the one who reached out first. I was content to hate him forever."
"I'm still content to hate him forever." Krolia sighs. "But I'll tolerate him, since you're so fond."
"Thanks, Momma." Keith kisses his mother's cheek, heads for home. He's got a lot to talk about, and a husband who happens to really enjoy that exact thing.
Lance is lucky he's cute. Or maybe it's Keith that's lucky. Who the fuck even knows at this point?