Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Katie groans into the pages of the book smooshed against her face.

Allura turns the page of her own book. “Katie, I really don’t know how to help you,” she looks up from her book, “It’s just not within my realm of knowledge.”

“Why is it so hard? It’s just numbers!” her voice is muffled by the book.

“But you haven’t done it before and you have limited resources. Keep in mind, the rocket scientists have, uh… computers, yes?”

Katie looks up from her book, “Yes but they still had to do the math themselves first! The computers just make it faster! Which is amazing regardless! Do you know how many calculations they can do in an hour?”

“More than I can in a lifetime, probably,” Allura sighs good-naturedly. “Katie, I’m all for you doing this… project of yours, but maybe you need to lessen the scope? I just don’t think we have the resources here. I don’t think most high schools do. NASA itself is only a few months old, after all.”

Katie leans back in her chair, “I know. But I still wanna try.”

“I wish you the best of luck, then,” Allura shuts her book and rises from her chair, “I have to get going. See you tomorrow?”

“Same as usual. Ooh, are you gonna bring those cookies your uncle made?” Katie cheers up, shoving her own book into her bag.

“Yes! He’s making fresh ones tonight.”

“Wonderful, I can’t wait! Make sure to thank him for me,” Katie picks up her backpack and moves around the table, hurrying to leave the school library with her friend.

Romelle blinks at the newspaper waving around in Katie’s hand, “What’s got you so excited today?”

Katie slaps the newspaper onto their lunch table and smacks her hand against the newsprint, “There’s gonna be a special edition covering the NASA launch in two weeks! The first launch! Exclusive pictures!”

Allura pries the document from under Katie’s hand and skims the article. “October 11th. Sounds like the following Monday will be an interesting school day.”

Katie plants herself in her seat, eyes sparkling, “You think so?”

“There’s definitely a possibility.”

“Hmm, yeah I think Mr. Iverson would want to bring it up,” Romelle adds, referring to their calculus teacher.

“Ooh, I sure hope so!” Katie grins.

“Isn’t Mr. Iverson ex-military?” Allura wonders aloud.

Romelle nods, “I think so. Might be why he’s so interested in the space program.”

Katie folds her arms on the table, “Do you think I could ask Mr. Iverson for help figuring out the calculations?”

“Why would he be teaching high school calculus if he knew how to calculate the fine-tunings of rockets? He’d be at NASA right now if that were the case,” Allura counters.

“Touché.”

“Couldn’t Matt help you?” Romelle asks.

Katie shakes her head, “Nope. He’s more into chemistry. Though he did say I could call him if I needed help figuring out the fuel. I hope that’s not necessary; I don’t want to take too much time away from his college studies.”

Romelle rolls her eyes, “You know he wouldn’t mind though.”

“Right,” Allura nods, retrieving a paper bag from her backpack. “But I know my uncle would mind if we don’t eat the cookies he made for us.”

“Ooh, what kind?”

Katie crosses her fingers, “Please say peanut butter.”

Allura grins knowingly, “I knew you’d want that. Peanut butter thumbprint cookies,” she announces, “just for us!”

Katie scratches mindlessly at her attempted sketch of a rocket on the back of her calculus quiz. She’s no artist; she’s trying to keep herself occupied while waiting for the rest of the class to finish up. She slumps in her seat, hand drawing lazy loop-de-loops for smoke below the engines.

She glances at the clock.

Seven minutes left.

She sighs and starts doodling a hypothetical astronaut next to the rocket, wishing Allura or Romelle were in her class period so they could commiserate the pains of success through facial expressions.

Mr. Iverson announces that there’s five minutes left.

Katie stares at the back of his head while he returns to his desk. She starts a crude attempt at drawing the moon.

“Pencils down, pass your quizzes forward,” Mr. Iverson says.

Finally. Katie shuffles her paper with the ones from behind her and hands them off to the dark haired guy in front of her. He’d finished early too. She likes sitting behind him because he’s quiet. And still. Last year she sat behind someone who kicked at her desk constantly. Not that she doesn’t have any ticks of her own, but at least they’re not annoying or—

“I’ll have these graded by the end of the week,” Mr. Iverson slides the stack of papers into a drawer. “Now about today’s lesson…”

—disruptive. Katie rests her hand in her chin and watches her teacher start drawing out a diagram on the chalkboard. When he turns around to discuss it, her eyes widen.

Mr. Iverson has drawn a rocket, with a number of lines and angles marked out around it.

“Since this past weekend was the first official NASA launch, I thought you all might find it interesting to talk about some of the basic calculus involved in flight. A good amount of this particular question has its roots in trigonometry, so it should be somewhat familiar,” Mr. Iverson explains. “Any volunteers?”

Naturally, the horror of doing calculations in front of the entire class acts like concrete on her classmates. It’s a situation that Katie would normally jump on, eager to flex her mind on something new, but today, it’s a bit out of her league, and she’s curious. Mr. Iverson wouldn’t put the question up if he didn’t know the answer, so she’s determined to pay attention—it could prove helpful.

Mr. Iverson chuckles at the lack of volunteers, “That’s what I thought,” he comments. “Keith,” Mr. Iverson points the chalk in his hand at the boy sitting in front of Katie, “Why don’t you try your hand at it?”

Well this is interesting.

She may have only been in class with him for a little over a month, but compared to her other classmates, she knows relatively little about him. He’s quiet, he’s in an advanced math class, and if she paid more attention to the school gossip, she’d know more about his supposed poor reputation beyond his apparent status as a greaser, but so far he seems to be perfectly pleasant, if a little surly some mornings. It is first period, after all.

Keith seems surprised that Mr. Iverson called on him, but gets up to take the chalk from him anyway. Katie watches with interest as Keith wordlessly starts adding more lines and calculations to the diagram.

It’s her turn to be surprised when Keith starts talking, explaining each step as he works through the equations, and she scribbles down notes, curiosity igniting. Where did Keith learn to do that equation? Does he know others? Could he know about what she needs for her rockets? Would he even tell her if she asks him? She’ll ask him anyway.

Later. She finishes copying down the additions to Mr. Iverson’s drawing as Keith returns to his seat, and tries not to stare holes into the back of his head for the rest of class.

Katie shrugs her backpack into a more comfortable position, her eyes searching the flood of students exiting the highschool. She’s standing where students usually park their motorcycles, if they drive one, waiting for Keith to leave the building.

She may not know much about him, but she at least knows he’s one of the few students who rides a motorcycle.

Some students call them greasers.

Katie cares less about that and more about the equations Keith knows. Or she thinks he knows. Hopes.

She waits a bit longer, resolving to leave if she doesn’t see him in the next ten minutes; she can always ask him in class tomorrow.

After another minute or two she finally spots her elusive classmate and hurries over to him.

“Keith!” she calls, just loud enough to get his attention, “We’re in Iverson’s first period calculus together. I sit behind you. Can I ask you something?”

Keith looks at her, a little confused that she’d approach him, “Uh, Katie, right? What do you need?”

She nods, “That’s me,” Katie answers, falling into step with him, “I’m curious about that equation from class today, the one on the board.”

“What about it?” Keith’s brows furrow.

“Are you familiar with that sort of thing? Math for aeronautics? That equation didn’t seem all that difficult for you.”

“I guess? Why is that important?” Keith asks, moving to unlock his motorcycle.

“I’m building a rocket. Not like the big ones, but like fireworks, a little. Except I’m hung up on the math and you did that equation in class today so easily! So I thought to ask you if you knew anything else? Could you help me?” Katie asks, trying not to sound overeager.

One hand on his bike’s handlebar, Keith levels a flat gaze at her, “I’m not the right person for that.”

Katie frowns, “I disagree, I think you’re the only person I know that might be.”

Keith swings a leg over his motorcycle. “No,” he answers, before starting the engine and leaving the parking lot.

Disappointing.

Annoyed, Katie watches him go, and turns to head home.

Chapter Text

Keith raises a hand, poised to knock on the door in front of him. Katie’s door. The door to the Holt’s house. A girl’s house.

He shuffles his feet and runs a hand through his hair, trying to dispel the awkward energy seizing him.

A few weeks ago Katie had approached him after school asking about an equation from their shared calculus class, and he’d silently cursed Mr. Iverson for the umpteenth time that day. He just wants to do well enough to get into flight school. No, no no no, here, Keith, do this equation in front of the class so now every one of your peers knows you know aeronautics mathematics and now the girl who sits behind you shows up after school asking about it.

I’m not the right person for that.

Could he? Yes, technically. But he shouldn’t—doesn’t want to, either. He’s the mind-your-own-business sort. Furthermore his so-called reputation isn’t all that glitters (though not by his volition). Someone like Katie Holt shouldn’t be hanging around Keith Kogane.

He’d told her no and left. But, curse his luck, she’d tracked him down at lunch the next day. Sat right down next to him, and her mere presence had turned Hunk and Lance against him.

So he’d relented, and agreed to meet with Katie after school in the library before he went to work at his uncle’s shop.

Or, at least until the school janitor got tired of kicking them out at four o’clock all week, and the pair of them had stood around by his bike trying to think of what to do. He hadn’t dared to hope that she’d let him go, no. She’d tracked him down at lunch. So of course she’d think of an alternative.

Neither option was favorable, in his mind. Rumors. He tried his best to avoid them; there were enough already. If anyone saw them at the diner it’d be inevitable. He’d opted for the latter option, reasoning that he could at least grab some things from home before going to her place, thereby making it so that the only evidence of his being there would be his bike.

So Keith knocks on the door of the Holt’s house.

The sound of rapid footsteps on stairs is muffled through the door, which upon opening reveals Mrs. Holt, Katie appearing behind her, beat to the door by her mother by seconds.

“Hello, Mrs. Holt, Katie,” Keith greets, praying that he’s deemed presentable enough to at the very least be sent away without much embarrassment. Mr. Holt, he knows, works at the machine shop in town. There’s no way Mrs. Holt, at least, would be unaware of him.

He’s almost certain that Katie’s been blinded by numbers and formulae to the point that it makes her gracious enough to ignore anything she may have overheard.

“Oh, Keith!” Mrs. Holt smiles, stepping aside, “Katie’s been all excitement since she came home. Do come inside.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Holt,” Keith responds, mustering up a grateful smile of his own.

What did Katie tell them?

Katie breaks free of whatever restraints of formality had been holding her in place the moment the door shuts behind him. Gleefully, she grabs hold of his wrist and pulls him through the house to the back deck, ignoring her mother calling after them to offer them lemonade and cookies.

“Ta-da!” she cheers, arms open wide to gesture at a two foot tall metal cylinder with a cone on top and fins attached to the sides. “This is Rover, prototype C,” she explains, moving to haul it off of the table strewn with notebooks and pencils and whatnot, “Hopefully, getting the calculations figured out will enable me to finalize the design specs.”

“Have you launched any yet?” Keith asks, following her lead and taking a seat at the table. He sets his backpack down, fishing out his well-worn aeronautics book.

Katie shakes her head, her ponytail swaying as she flips through the pages of a notebook, “No, I’m saving that for last. I’ll need to work on fuel formulas.”

Keith nods, opening up to the point where they left off last, working through the topics with her for the next hour and a half, their only interruption coming in the form of the promised lemonade and cookies from Mrs. Holt.

“Same time tomorrow?” Katie asks once they finish for the day, while Keith is helping her shuffle all the papers into some semblance of order.

“Yeah, I’m not busy,” Keith affirms, slipping his book back into his bag.

“Excellent,” Katie grins. “Here, I’ll walk you to the door,” she adds, leading him back inside.

“Oh, is Keith leaving?” Mrs. Holt asks, poking her head out of the kitchen when they pass by.

“Uh, yes ma’am. Thanks for having me,” Keith responds.

“Of course! Katie’s obsessed with her rocket project, so I’m glad she’s able to make more progress now. Have a good evening, okay!”

Keith manages another awkward thank you while Katie unlocks the front door for him, and after friendly goodbyes he heads to work at the auto shop on his motorcycle, still a little bewildered by the Holt’s pleasantness.

And so Keith’s newfound routine repeats for the next few weeks. He eases into it, eventually deciding after the first week of meeting Katie at her house that it benefits them both more if he drives Katie to her place after school, his concerns about rumors cast aside.

He gets used to it.

It’s… nice.

And who could blame him? Katie’s easy for him to talk to. She’s not loud and active like his other friends, nor is she particularly fussy like some girls he knows. And if she knows anything of the stupid things people like to say about him, she doesn’t show it.

Usually.

“Romelle told me she heard you got in a fight this weekend,” she says one mid-October day. A fresh layer of autumn leaves coats the Holt’s backyard, a few dusting the deck around their feet, blown in by the wind. The NASA launch Katie had been excited about when they first started these rocket-math meetings is more than a week past, now.

Keith stops his hand in the middle of an equation, internally cursing.

Stupid, stupid.

He’d called her and told her he’d had an extra shift at work after school on Monday. He’d been bluffing, trying to buy himself extra time to let the bruises heal.

“What’d she hear?” he asks dryly, continuing the equation on his page. He doesn’t want to have to be the one to tell her.

“I don’t know, you got in a fight, Keith! That’s—” her face screws up, “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m fine.”

Great job, idiot.

“Well there’s that. But Keith… you’re my friend. What happened?”

Friend? Geez. Now I feel worse.

“Look, Katie…” Keith starts, and sets down his pencil, quelling the unexpected mood boost injected by her use of the word friend. “I don’t have a flawless reputation, but I’m not a delinquent—”

“I’m not saying you are!” Katie counters, “I’m just concerned.”

Keith bites back a flinch. Not because of her, though. It’s his fault, if only by association. “Some guys were saying… unsavory things about you because you leave school with me. All I did was straighten out some rumors. No harm done. In fact, harm undone,” he says pointedly.

“But you’re bruised,” Katie frowns, apparently ignoring the rest of that statement.

Keith curses internally. Evidently James hit harder than he’d thought.

“Harm rerouted to minimize effects,” he amends, “No big deal.”

Katie fixes him with a hard stare for a long moment, but evidently decides to let it go as she turns back to her notes in silence.

The rest of the afternoon passes uneventfully.

Chapter Text

When early November rolls around, Keith and Katie find themselves forced to take the rocket project indoors, away from the cold chill of autumn creeping in. Katie’s papers lie scattered across the Holt’s coffee table, Keith’s aeronautics book half-buried underneath, its last few pages visible between sheets of notes. Katie is always quick to dash upstairs to change into a sweater when they get inside, while Keith folds his leather jacket over the arm of the couch and scoops up a fresh mug of hot apple cider set out by Mrs. Holt.

As reluctant as he had been when Katie first approached him about the equation from class over a month ago, Keith finds that he’s comfortable with his new routine. He’d even accepted Katie’s notion that they had become friends, because, well… at this point, what else would they be? Certainly not strangers bound by mathematics. Quiet conversations between topics from his book, jokes on the back of his motorcycle while he goes a little too fast, sitting on her back porch to chat for a little while longer before he goes to work, the inevitable “what do you want to do after highschool” discussions.

Fighter pilot.

My dad, I guess. What about you?

She never pushes him for more info than he's willing to give. Most people in town knew his dad had gone down in WWII anyway, and his mother was still a sensitive subject. Regardless, it’s a little thing that he’s grateful for.

Likewise, he never asks her why rockets, of all things, had become her passion project. He gets the impression that while her friends and family all support the endeavor, it’s not a positive topic among their peers. And it’s not like he has room to judge, anyway.

Who makes it a career goal to do the same job that killed your father?

Katie never asks.

The only time she’d gotten nosey was when he got into a fight with James. He thought he’d gotten her to drop the subject for good until a few days later, when she’d gotten up to grab something from her kitchen, and returned to the deck with a pair of cupcakes.

So… cupcakes?

Oh, uh, thanks. It’s no big deal, though, really.

Suffice to say, that’s what broke him. Being around Katie is nice, yes, but more than that, he enjoys it—though he keeps that admission to himself. So he lets his walls down a little, looks forward to working on the rocket with Katie, with a cup of seasonally appropriate fruit juice in hand. Finds himself catching her eye in the hallway at school with a smile, and fighting James again in the ballpark dugout when he comes back for round two. He avoids a hit to the face that time, though.

They’re friends.

Another early November day comes and goes, and as Keith helps clean up and put his book away Katie chatters about some of the next steps of her project.

“...but that’s not for a while yet,” she says, shuffling papers together. “I think I’ll have all the numbers sorted out in a few days. After that, I’ll need to figure out fuel. I’m not sure what components to use yet, but hopefully when Matt comes home for Thanksgiving he’ll be able to help me out with that.”

A few days, she said.

“You said he’s a chemistry major?” Keith asks, fumbling to retrieve the detail from memory so he still seems like he’s following along.

A few days. In all likelihood that means that she’ll move on to the next part of her project and won’t need his help anymore. Which is fine. It makes sense. He knew their after school sessions would end sooner or later. Initially he’d hoped sooner, but now…

Now he’s not so sure he wants it to end.

The Holt family is nice. Mrs. Holt is always friendly, insists on having snacks for them and gives them plenty of space to work. Mr. Holt, while understandably a little skeptical of him at first, had been quick to warm up to Keith, and poked his head outside on the deck or into the living room from time to time to see how they were doing. He’d been the one to make the parts for Katie’s rocket.

And Katie…

Well, Katie is Katie. She’s comfortable to be around, and easy to talk to, something that’s rare for Keith to find in someone. Her passion is infectious, and her smiles equally so. And they’re friends—she’d been the first to say it. There isn’t any reason to think she’d suddenly drop all contact with him.

So why is the thought of their rocket math sessions ending so… uncomfortable?

Keith chalks it up as a disruption to a routine he’d grown accustomed to. He’d been slightly disgruntled by the change in the beginning too, hadn’t he?

Not that it really matters.

He helps Katie finish tidying up and waves goodbye before mounting his motorcycle and driving to work.

Oddly enough, work is where he has an idea that ends up helping Katie, and gives him a reason to continue to see her outside of school.

“Moonshine,” Keith says, keeping his voice low. He and Katie are standing in her backyard with her rocket, measuring distances for some final calculations. He’d taken the opportunity of being out of earshot of her parents to explain his idea to her.

It certainly got her attention.

She looks at him wide-eyed, “Moonshine?” she whispers, almost incredulous. “Keith, where would I even get that? Not to mention what if I got caught with it?”

“But would it work, is what I’m asking,” Keith counters. “Say the rest wasn’t a concern. Would it work?”

“Well, yes, I think. It’s basically liquid fire. It’d need some other components to burn the way I need, but yes, in theory, it would work.”

“What about the other components, can you get those?”

“Yes, they’re all fairly normal things. But moonshine? Seriously, Keith, how did you even come up with that?” Katie asks carefully.

“Well,” Keith crosses his arms, “let’s just say I know a guy who knows a guy.”

“You—no way,” Katie looks at him in disbelief.

Keith chuckles, “Yes way. I’ll ask about it tonight.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea? What if we get caught?” Katie worries, biting her lip nervously. “What do I tell my parents?”

“Tell them whatever you want. If they can trust you with building a rocket in their yard I think they’ll understand. Label the jars as rocket fuel and hide them in the shed if you’re that concerned,” Keith shrugs, “And relax, we’ll be fine.”

“Well… okay. I trust you,” Katie relents.

Well that certainly gives him a warm fuzzy feeling.

With Katie’s acceptance of his offer, Keith is glad to inform her the following afternoon that they’re good to go, and the two make plans to go pick up the “liquid propellant,” as Katie had code-named it, that Friday.

So, after giving Mrs. Holt the excuse of going to the hardware store, which they do go to, and not just to legitimize the bluff—Katie needs some metal scraps and some other odds and ends—they hit the road. Keith revs up the motorcycle and peels out onto the street, with Katie latched onto his waist in her green skirt and saddle shoes, zipped up in his leather jacket to ward off the November chill as they drive out past the edge of town.

Keith turns off the road at a small gas station and auto body shop that’s all too familiar to him, the purple text of Marmora Fuel just about etched into his memory. He takes Katie inside, briefly introducing her to his uncle Kolivan before slipping out through the back door and down to a small footpath through the trees. Leaves turned crisp by the cold crunch underfoot as he leads her back to a cabin with a shed near a small stream. With smoke trailing from the chimney and warm hued lights in the windows, it looks perfectly cozy.

Keith marches right up to the door and knocks, but doesn’t stop to wait, and pushes it open.

“Regris!” he calls, “We’re here!”

“Took you long enough, kid!” retorts a raspy voice. Regris pops his head over the edge of the loft and swings around to slide down the ladder, his black boots hitting the wood floor with a solid thud. He looks to be a few years older than Keith, and taller, with dark hair and dark blue eyes just a few shades lighter than Keith’s. She wonders if they’re related.

“This the girl you’ve been talking about?” Regris asks, glancing at Katie as he maneuvers around them to the door. She notes that his jacket is similar to Keith’s, making her suddenly hyper aware that she’s wearing it, not him.

“Regris,” Keith chides.

Regris chuckles good-naturedly, “It’s whatever. Let’s go,” he says, and leads her and Keith over to the shed and unlocks it. To her surprise he then unlocks a cellar door in the floor of the shed and takes them down the ladder underneath, into an old room not much bigger than the shed above them. It looks like it might’ve been a root cellar at one point, and is mostly bare, save for an old cider apple press and the large contraption likely used to produce the… ah… liquid propellant. The mason jars stacked against the walls appear to be the product itself.

“Welcome to Marmora’s Cavern,” Regris announces with a flourish, earning himself an elbow in the side from Keith.

“That’s not what it’s called,” he says flatly.

Katie stifles a giggle with her hand at the boys’ antics. “Well, whatever it’s called, we’re here for its contents,” she says, stuffing her hands into the pockets of Keith’s jacket.

“You don’t pull punches, do ya?” Regris comments, turning toward the jars along the wall, “I’m guessing you drove, Keith?”

“Yeah,” Keith answers, reaching to take Katie’s backpack from her once she finishes shrugging it off. He unzips it and she watches him set it on the floor by Regris while the two of them fit jars inside.

“Can probably fit more but since you’re on the bike… three seems okay,” Regris comments, staring into the bag.

“Easier to carry that way, it’s fine,” Keith muses, tugging the zipper shut.

“How are we gonna get that outside without breaking them?” Katie asks. Keith’s bag was too small, so she’d brought hers instead, though the concern of pure alcohol in glass jars on the back of a motorcycle possibly breaking and spilling in her bag had made her think twice.

Regris stands and hefts the bag into Keith’s arms, “You climb up and Keith will pass it on to you.”

“I’m wearing a skirt,” she says dryly.

Both boys look from her face, to her skirt, to the bag in Keith’s hands, blinking as the realization of the implication in her words dawns on them, red blooming up to their ears.

“Right! Well, um, Keith and I will go stand over here,” Regris quickly amends, sidestepping to the opposite end of the room, “Because I have to go last so I can lock the internal mechanism, and we’ll need Keith to get the bag up.”

Keith backsteps with him, adjusting his hold on the bag, “Additionally, we’ll face the wall.”

“Isn’t that exce—” Regris starts, only to be silenced by a glare from Keith. “Right, also, facing the wall,” he adds, turning around with Keith.

Katie has to stop trying to eat her fist in an attempt not to laugh so she can respond, “Alright, I’ll holler when I get up there.”

And so Keith and Regris stand with their eyes glued to the dirt wall of the cellar while Katie makes her way up the ladder, her footsteps gradually fading.

“You’ve got it bad, you know,” Regris whispers.

“Got what bad?” Keith counters.

One of Regris’ characteristic sly smiles creeps across his face, “Nevermind.”

Keith rolls his eyes, “Whatever.”

Not really though. He doesn’t like that look.

“Okay, I’m up!” Katie calls.

Keith and Regris make quick work of the ladder, and before long he and Katie are slipping back into the shop through the back door. Kolivan hands him and Katie each a cold bottle of coca-cola, which they cheer their thanks for before stepping through the front door. Keith motions for Katie to follow him to an old bench, where they can drink the sodas before getting back on the road.

“You said you knew a guy who knew a guy,” Katie says after a few sips.

“I may have been stretching the truth a little.”

“This is where you work, right?”

Keith nods, “And live.”

“So… are you… part of ‘the guys’?”

Keith snorts, “Only by technicality. It’s a family business, of sorts, that goes back to prohibition. We keep it on the down low, mostly. You have to know a guy who knows a guy though.”

“And Regris?”

“He’s my cousin, Mom’s side. Uncle Kolivan too. Regris' Dad, Ulaz, is my other uncle.”

Katie takes another sip of her soda.

He can almost see the questions in her mind, her inquisitive nature intense under whatever seal she has holding them back out of… some sentiment he isn’t quite sure of. Something like respect, but softer.

“Mom didn’t take it well when dad died,” Keith supplies, quietly. He pulls one knee to his chest with the arm holding his soda bottle, “She danced in the moonlight a little too long.”

He feels her fingers find his other hand, gentle against the back of his palm.

“You miss them?” she says softly, though it’s not really a question.

“Yeah.”

He tips back his soda bottle and finishes it off, prompting her to do the same, and they toss their bottles in the trash before climbing onto his motorcycle. Her hands snake around his waist as he kicks off, and her warmth against his back somehow seems closer than before.

Their routine changes again, after that early November drive. Keith still gives her a ride to her house after school lets out, but he only sticks around for a few days each week, since all he’s really needed for now is company. With winter on the doorstep more people are bringing their cars in for snow tires, so he’s needed at the shop more anyway. On the weekends he drives into town with another jar or two of moonshine for Katie’s rockets, and afterwards he takes her out to his uncle Ulaz’s farm east of town to launch her prototype rockets with her newest fuel mixture.

“You know Keith,” Katie says one late November day, “I haven’t said it much, but I’m really glad I’ve gotten to work on this with you.” She pauses to blow warm air on her cold fingers before returning her hands to the task of rewiring her remote launcher. “Allura, Romelle, and my family have all been supportive, but outside of them, you’re really the only person who… gets it. Most people at school think it’s nerdy.”

It’s a chilly post-Thanksgiving Saturday, and the two of them are seated on the back hatch of Kolivan’s ‘51 Chevrolet Bel Air that Keith had swapped for his motorcycle when they’d started to get the first snowfall. A thin dusting of white coats the cornfield stubble, and Katie’s Rover E No. 4 stands out like a small metal chimney out in the middle of it.

“Well,” Keith puffs a breath of fog into the air, “you did track me down relentlessly asking about calculus equations,” he says with a soft chuckle, earning him an eyeroll from Katie, “but you know what? I like it. It’s good to actually do something with all that math besides wait for the tests for flight school, and if the rocket scientist is fun to be around, I’m not gonna complain,” he smiles, “So I guess I’m glad too.”

“Fixed it,” Katie mumbles, and Keith offers her a hand when she slips down off the car to reset the remote. “So I’m fun to be around?” she asks playfully, kneeling to reconnect the mechanisms.

“You’re easy to talk to,” Keith explains, watching her feed wires back into the box and fit them into place.

“Thanks, I guess?” Katie laughs a little. She holds the device up to her eye, trying to push one of the wires into place with cold fingers, and grumbles in frustration.

“I just can’t get these in right,” she laments, pulling her hand back to warm her fingertips again.

“Here, let me,” Keith offers quietly, crouching down opposite her. He tugs his leather gloves off and trades them for the device in her hands, letting her instruct him on where to connect the wires while she warms her fingers up with his too-large gloves.

When she’s satisfied with his handiwork, he closes the clasp on the casing and returns it to its place on the ground.

“Now we need to hook up the other end and it’ll be good to go,” Katie says, unfolding her legs to get up.

“It’s the little ignition connector, right? The blue one?” Keith asks, standing up and brushing snow off his knees.

“Yes, but I—”

“It’s okay, I got it. You get your hands warmed up,” he says, turning to walk out to the makeshift launchpad.

When he returns a minute or two later Katie’s smiling, leaning against the back of the Bel Air with her hands tucked into her jacket.

“You ready?” he asks, picking up the remote.

Katie nods, “Thank you.”

Keith hands her the remote with a smile, “Don’t mention it.”

Katie sets the timer on the rocket, giving them enough time to run around to the other side of the car to watch it go up, and if Keith notices that she huddles a little closer to him than usual, well, he doesn’t mention it.

They pack up after running across the field to retrieve the fallen rocket, and Keith drives back to her house while Katie surfs the radio stations trying to find anything other than Christmas music. He helps carry her stuff around to the Holt’s back deck, and before he leaves she remembers his gloves, carefully tugging them off, folding them, and tucking them into his jacket pocket. He gives her a smile and a wave, and leaves through the side gate.

The following Friday is one of the days Keith gives her a ride home before going to work at the shop early. It’s not any different from any other day that week, with the single exception that all week long his gloves have been burning a hole in his pocket in the form of a question. So when Katie steps out of the car and into the fresh layer of snow on the ground, shutting the door behind her, Keith does the same, almost scrambling to get out. It’s silly, it’s not like she’s going to disappear in the second or two it would normally take. But he does it anyway.

“Katie, wait,” he calls, stepping out and around the side of the car with a hand on the hood, the engine underneath still running, “I wanted to ask you something.”

She stops and turns, her skirt and ponytail catching in the wind, “Yeah, what is it?”

“Would you—Do you want to go to the Winter Formal? With me.” He swallows hard, feeling half stupid, “I know, it’s soon, but I remembered when you were complaining about the girls in your class, that you’d said you’d never been, and I thought, maybe—”

“Keith,” Katie cuts off his rambling, (Why is he rambling? That’s usually her thing—) and takes a few steps back toward the car with a gentle smile, “Yes.”

“Wait, really?”

Katie laughs, “Yes, really. I’d love to.”

The creak of the Holt’s front door draws their attention to the house.

“Katie, are you coming in? It’s cold out,” Mrs. Holt calls. She can’t see them in the driveway from the porch.

“Yeah, in a minute!” Katie responds over her shoulder. She turns back to Keith and brushes windblown hair out of her face, “I should head in. See you tomorrow, right? We can… sort out the details then.”

Keith nods, a small grin pulling at his lips, “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

Katie smiles again, and Keith peels his hand off the hood of the Bel Air, moving back around to the door he’d left open while Katie hops up the steps to her porch. She pauses on the landing to wave at him, which he returns while getting in the car. The door shuts with a solid thunk behind him.

Regris teases him for the dorky smile on his face when he arrives at the shop for work.

Keith doesn’t mind.

On the night of the Winter Formal Keith arrives at the Holt’s to pick Katie up, and finds himself swept inside by her watery-eyed parents for pictures and a warm yet firmly worded mention of curfew by her father. He’d worked the afternoon shift every day that week, and hadn’t seen them since before asking Katie to the dance, so their enthusiasm allays his fears that some stroke of misfortune might suddenly turn their opinion of him.

“Are parents… usually like that?” Keith asks on the way to the venue. All the attention had been a slight bit overwhelming for him. Kolivan’s always had somewhat of a hands-off approach with him, more like a mentor than a parent.

Katie hums, “Yeah, a little bit. They did the same thing when Matt went to prom.”

The late autumn sun begins to set behind the snow covered trees by the time they arrive.

The Winter Formal itself is… nice. Neither one of them is much for socializing, but that’s just as well. They keep to themselves and dance a few dances, laughing when they stumble over each others’ feet, chatting between dances about each other, and joking about some of the other students’ not-so-stellar outfits.

Afterwards they go to Coran’s diner for a late dinner and shakes, and Katie steals nearly half of Keith’s fries. She giggles mischievously the first few times he catches her taking them, but after a while he pretends not to notice when his fries go missing.

“It’s a little over an hour until ten,” Keith notes, after the last of his fries mysteriously disappears, “do you want to go for a drive?”

Katie’s eyes light up as she drains the rest of her milkshake, “Yes!”

Grinning, Keith thumbs through his wallet to pay for their food, “I know a place I think you’ll like.”

They take the backroads with the radio on and the windows rolled down, the cool night air whistling past. Katie sticks her arm out the window, making waves with her hand in the glow of the moon high overhead. When her hand gets cold and she pulls it back inside, he reaches into the center console for his gloves—the same gloves that had driven him to ask her to the dance—and insists that she put them on. She laughs when he takes the curves fast, and Keith can’t help but glance at her with a smile from time to time, as if checking to make sure she’s real.

Eventually Keith slows the car and pulls off onto a side road that barely qualifies as a dirt path, driving through a small wooded area until it spits them out onto a slope overlooking the town, all lit up with street lights and holiday decorations. The lake at the north end of town reflects the moon, and the snow blanketing the ground glistens like stardust.

Keith shifts the car into park and crosses his arms over the steering wheel, “What do you think?”

“Keith this is beautiful,” Katie whispers, eyes wide, drinking in the sight. “I didn’t know a spot like this existed.”

“I found it this summer while cruising around on my motorcycle. I don’t think it gets used much,” Keith muses.

Katie grins at him, “It’s our secret spot, then.”

He raises an eyebrow, “Secret, huh?”

Katie hums, “It’s just us up here,” she says softly, looking back out over the town.

Keith nods in silent agreement, and the two of them are silent for a moment, enjoying the view.

“Hey Keith?” Katie asks quietly, pushing away from the window to lean over the center console, towards him.

“Hmm?” Keith turns to face her, freezing as he notices the way the moonlight spills through the windshield and onto her face, her golden-amber eyes shining in the half-light.

Katie bites her lip with a smile, eyes flicking between the floorboards and his face for a split second, “Kiss me?”

In the half-second it takes for her to ask that question, every thought and feeling that had confused him over the past few weeks snaps into place, realization dawning on him.

Oh.

He smiles, “Of course.”

And he leans down to kiss her, something tender that drags everything to the surface in a rush. Dumb smiles tug at their lips as they pull away, dispelling whatever nervous energy had been there seconds before.

“Katie,” Keith mumbles, pressing another, gentle kiss to her forehead, “I love you.”

She leans into his touch, her arms looping around his neck to land a kiss over her own on his cheek, her breath tickling his ear as she whispers “I love you too.”

Chapter Text

Katie flicks the lights off and shuffles over to the TV in her fuzzy socks, reflections from the fireplace dancing on the wood floors as she flops into one of the oversized bean bag chairs and leans over to scratch Kosmo behind the ears.

She looks over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps, and buries her chin in the thick wool of her green sweater—a gift from Keith—with a smile, “What movie did you pick?”

Keith steps over his dog to put the disc into the blu-ray player before joining her on the bean bag chairs and wrapping an arm clad in his soft red turtleneck around her shoulders, “October Sky, haven’t seen it in a while.”

Chapter Text

“It looks a little like you’ve got a halo of fire,” Katie muses, arranging bright red maple leaves on the grass around Keith’s head.

Keith smiles, looking up at her, “Maybe that’s because an angel gave it to me.”

Her face turns the same color as the leaves around his head, and he reaches up to pull her in for a kiss.

Chapter Text

“Here, see if this doesn’t make it feel better,” Keith says, setting down a mug of hot apple cider on Katie’s nightstand before hauling himself up on the foot of the bed. Kosmo appears alongside him in a blue flash and moves to curl up next to her with his chin across her lap.

Katie smiles at the two of them and buries a hand into Kosmo’s fur, “Thanks Keith. But really though, it’s just a bad cold. Though,” she pauses, yawning, “I won’t argue against being doted on.”

Chapter Text

A flash of distant lightning draws Katie's attention from her book to the rain-spattered full-length windows looking out into the woods, draped in the fiery hues of fall. The fog blanketing the ground tells her it's cold outside, and she takes a happy sip of hot cocoa, contentedly cocooned in warmth. With Keith to her back, wrapped around her and asleep, and Kosmo's large, fluffy head dozing on her lap, the autumn chill is hard pressed to reach her.

Chapter Text

"Cover your ears," is the last thing Keith says before the homemade air cannon he'd dug out of his dad's old shed chucks a pumpkin about 200 yards into the desert, hitting the ground in an explosion of orange chunks. In a flash of blue, Kosmo disappears from view, reappearing as a bright blip in the distance before returning to them and dropping a mouthful of crushed pumpkin at their feet.

"Good boy Kosmo," Pidge coos, reaching down to rub the cosmic wolf's ears, "Keith, how about we really revive this and build a brand new one next year? Bigger and better," she suggests, eliciting a broad grin from her husband.

Chapter Text

Katie slides over on the log bench, closing the distance between herself and Keith, and pulls her knees to her chest while soaking in warmth from the towering bonfire. He smells like smoke and wood and sweat and dust, having spent the past twelve hours helping to build the massive bonfire in front of them, but she doesn't mind--it makes him feel closer, closer than he has been for a while, out running missions with the Blade, until finally some overlap had brought them together on a tiny rebel planet.

"I've missed you," he says quietly, not looking away from the fire at first, but when he does, a silent heartbeat later, he looks at her with a soft smile, the kind that makes her insides squirm as if trying to spill out of her in the form of all the stupid confessions she's pushed back, and she wonders if maybe she should let them.

Chapter Text

"Oh! Keith, pull over, quick!" Pidge exclaims, jolting upright in her seat to snatch her camera from her bag one mid-October night as the two of them are driving home from dinner, "Look, the moon's rising, a harvest moon! I want to take a picture."

Keith, momentarily alarmed by her sudden outburst after a few miles of her sleepily watching the world go by out the window, does as asked and puts the car in park on the side of the highway with the hazards on, allowing Pidge to push the sunroof back and stand up through it.

"Beautiful!" Pidge coos, snapping photos of the orange hued celestial body as Keith pops up through the sunroof behind her, an arm around her middle to keep her balanced, and while he agrees with her statement, his eyes are on the celestial body standing beside him.

Chapter Text

"Hey, Lance, have you seen Pidge around?" Keith asks, poking his head into the lab. "Allura's trying to find her for their project," he explains.

Lance looks up from the bottle of pinky-purple fluid in his hands, "Uh, I think she's in the library, last I heard."

Keith nods, "What're you making?"

"Oh, this?" Lance asks, holding up the bottle, "Emotion pulse potion homework. Which reminds me!" he exclaims, a sly grin creeping across his face, "You still haven't cashed in on that bet you lost. Come test this for me. Shouldn't take long, I just need to make sure it doesn't turn the subject purple." Keith's the perfect subject for this one, Lance thinks. The guy's about as emotional as a log, so the potion's effect, which compels the subject to admit a buried emotion (sometimes making it a good substitute for truth serums) shouldn't be an issue.

Keith rolls his eyes, but detaches himself from the doorframe, "You have the antidote?"

Lance pats the textbook on his lab table, "Recipe's right here."

"Alright," Keith relents, taking the offered liquid, "Drain it or just a sip?"

"Drink the whole thing," Lance confirms, reaching for a pencil across the table to take notes if need be.

Keith does as asked and sets the bottle down, "Now what?"

"Well you're not turning colors so that's a good sign," Lance notes, steepling his fingers, "How do you feel?"

"Fine," Keith responds, shifting his weight to his other foot.

"Awesome. I'll get the antidote made up, you can hang out here or I'll come find you when it's done."

"I'll head out," Keith says, and blinks. "I need to go talk to Pidge."

"See you later, then," Lance calls, picking up the bottle to clean it.

Wait.

Keith had been looking for Pidge for Allura when he walked in.

He needed to talk to Pidge when he left.

Half a second later Lance is out the door, chasing after his classmate in a mad sprint.

"Juniberries?" Pidge asks skeptically, raising an eyebrow at Lance. She'd gone looking for Keith after noticing he'd been rather absent for the past week, only to be intercepted by a slightly-more-nervous-than-usual Lance, which seems to have become a recurring theme this week as well.

It could just be midterms coming up, keeping everyone busy and on edge.

Or something's up.

She isn't sure.

"Right!" Lance chirps, "Juniberries! Keith and I both need 'em for some projects. Gotta head out this weekend to find them."

"I have some dried ones, if you need to borrow a few," she offers. It won't set her back much.

Lance shakes his head, "No no no, it's fine. The uh, recipe calls for fresh ones, so we need to go out and get them. No big deal."

Yes, big deal. WAY big deal.

Lance cracks a smile, trying to set Pidge at ease. Internally everything is on fire.

He'd forgotten to get fresh juniberries for the emotion pulse potion antidote, and of course! Just his luck, the seemingly emotionally infallible Keith is actually susceptible to his stupid potion when he does not, in fact, have an antidote. He counts his lucky stars that somehow the potion had made Keith forget about the antidote, else he'd be under fire (possibly literally due to Keith's spell focus!) from his classmate big time.

At the same time it's a curse, because while for the most part, Keith doesn't display any symptoms, whenever Pidge is around and they aren't in class, it's like the man's magnetized to her. Lance is at his wit's end trying to keep him away from her with haphazard excuses all week. He doesn't know whatever it is Keith apparently needs to tell Pidge, Lance hasn't managed to pry it out of him, but whatever it is, he'd rather it not be said because of a potion. It wouldn't be fair. And as much as the two of them quarrel, they are friends.

So that weekend on their free day, Lance finds himself dragging a rightfully annoyed and confused Keith around the forest near their academy searching for the juniberry plants that Keith definitely doesn't need for any projects of his making, and Lance refuses to admit his mistake.

Maybe he ought to have drank the potion instead. Ha!

Between the two of them, Lance manages to get enough of the fuchsia colored berry and they book it back to the labs where he brews up the antidote and forces a still very confused Keith to drink it.

"So, how do you feel?" Lance asks, trying to hide the nervous edge in his voice, "Got any plans later?"

"Fine, and no," Keith responds. "By the way, do you mind if I keep one of these?" he asks, gesturing to the leftover juniberry flowers, "Could be useful."

Lance lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, "Cool, cool. And yeah, go ahead, I don't need them. Do you want to go grab dinner with the others? We missed lunch."

Keith shrugs, "Sure."

"Awesome, let's go!" Lance grins, turning on his heel to hide a sigh of relief. He's going to need to treat himself to an extra-long spa night tonight.

Lance has to stop from momentary shock while perusing the library a few days after the potion fiasco when he sees Keith and Pidge in the library.

Keith and Pidge sitting at a table in the library studying together is normal.

Pidge wearing a juniberry flower in her hair is decidedly not.

The only ones she said she had were dried.

Keith had taken one of the extras from their weekend juniberry-hunt.

In a panic, Lance rushes to find the book he'd used for the potion on the shelves and thumbs through it, looking for the right page. He skims it, terrified he may have missed something.

Lance stares at the words on the page in disbelief.

Somehow in a very strange twist of fate he'd ended up playing anti-wingman, only for it to work out anyway. He chuckles quietly to himself at the irony.

Not to jump the gun, but this would make for a fantastic best-man speech.

Chapter Text

"Pidge, would you please change him back?" Keith implores, gesturing with exasperation at the slightly too-large black cat at his feet, "How did this even happen in the first place?"

Pidge stifles a giggle behind her hand, the emerald hummingbird sitting in her hair fighting for balance, "I told you, Kosmo interrupted. He teleported inside and spooked Greenie before I could stop the spell being cast."

Keith sighs, shaking his head, "You're lucky I love you," he says, both to his girlfriend and the wolf-turned-cat at his feet, glowing greenish-blue as Pidge magicks him back to normal.

Chapter Text

Keith coughs, black smoke spilling from his lips as his lady trails her fingers in runic patterns across his skin, the sensation cold compared to the cursed heat torching his insides. One by one the cuts and gashes are sealed, their tiny flames doused and replaced by the sinewy green markings left by her magic.

"I wish you were not quite so reckless, you know," she says softly, taking away her soothing touch as she moves to sit on his other side, the Marquess' golden eyes somber on his face.

Chapter Text

Pidge bites back a grimace at the slick sensation of scented oils running out of her hair and dripping down her face and neck while she shuffles in place, draped in layers of fluttery fabric with a fragile, leafy orb-like artifact cradled in her hands, and blinks her eyes open to see Keith receiving the same treatment, a sphere of glassy flame in his hands and his face twisted in discomfort, but when he manages to get his eyes open, he meets her gaze and the two of them share an awkward chuckle at their predicament.

The Paladins had arrived on the planet two days prior to rout some troublesome Galra ships, and the citizens had been adamant that they throw a ceremony in celebration; it just so happens that said ceremony involves a ritual featuring individuals tied to the planet's most prized elements of fire and life, so she and Keith find themselves roped into participating in the main event, decked out from head to toe in ceremonial garb and standing atop a stone dais facing each other, waiting for their cue to unite the artifacts in their hands.

"Is it just me, or does this feel like some kind of weird foreshadowing?" she asks, eliciting a deep exhale from him and a soft, maybe with a smile.

Chapter Text

"Hey Katie? Can you bring an extra bowl when you come outside? We've got pumpkin guts galore out here," Keith asks from the back door, Stevie Wonder's Superstition trickling in from his dad's old radio on the deck where he and Brandy are carving pumpkins for Halloween.

"Be right there!" she calls, snatching up a kitchen towel before retrieving a bowl from the cabinet and turning to the table where her five-year-old is happily rolling cookie dough into balls, "Rowan let's get you cleaned up and go see Daddy and Brandy, 'kay?" she says, wiping off his hands when he nods eagerly before taking him outside.

Katie barely gets two feet out the back door when Brandy runs up and dumps a handful of pumpkin goop into the bowl, "Mommy, you gotta see my pumpkin! Come on!" she says, and flashes a wild grin before rushing to climb back onto Keith's lap to show off the most fearsome looking jack-o-lantern ever carved by an eight-year-old girl (with help from her dad), though Katie can't help but smile.

Chapter Text

Pidge holds her breath, mentally cursing as she strains her eyes into the murk of the swamp, waiting for the strange blue cluster of lights that had been flickering around in the dark, nearer, then farther, back and forth--she'd been trying to follow them, hoping they might lead her back to the rest of the Paladins, or maybe the Blades, and aren't some kind of alien will-o'-the-wisp (a thought that sends shivers down her spine).

"There," she whispers, catching a glimpse of the sparking blue glimmer some thirty yards off, and she flashes the green Voltron V on her cuirass in response once again, just as the blue flickers farther away... and then suddenly right in front of her, causing her to blink at the bright flash, but when she opens her eyes she sees... Kosmo?

The space wolf barks happily at her, and as she reaches down to give him an appreciative head pat she hears Keith's distant shout of "Kosmo! What'd you find?" a split second before blue sparks envelop her and she finds herself teleported right on top of a very surprised Keith, knocking them both into the muck to the sound of Kosmo's excited barking.

Chapter Text

"What are you doing?" Katie asks, biting back the laughter bubbling up in her chest at the ticklish feeling of Keith's pen tracing lines on her cheeks, her head in his lap.

"You'll see in a moment," he assures, indigo eyes flicking to hers for a moment with a playful smirk that makes her blush.

When he finishes and caps the pen, Keith reaches across the couch for her phone and snaps a photo of her face to show her the constellations he'd drawn on her cheeks by connecting her freckles, "I like stargazing," he says, bending down to kiss her on the cheek.

Chapter Text

Keith licks his dry lips, nervous with his torch held aloft, casting dim illumination into the infinite dark of the forest around him, "Who's there?"

Leaves rustle in a breeze he does not feel, and he spins around, nearly extinguishing his torch in the motion, coming face to face with a young woman with long brown hair dressed in a gown of dark green that seems to blend into the forest floor.

"You should not be here," she says darkly, but the momentary scowl lifts and her expression changes, curiosity glowing in her amber eyes, "But you intrigue me, human. Come, I wish to show you something," she adds, gesturing with a hand at the mossy earth at their feet, which erupts into a pool of light before she takes his hand and steps into it.

Chapter Text

Pidge wipes her eyes with the heels of her palms, finally taking their pressure off her eyelids after crying herself dry, her throat choked up from sobs, and gathers up what little strength of will she has left today, bringing her eyes at last to view the sprawl of the memorial asteroid for a second time, and the numbered marker in the ground before her.

Despite the success of the battle overall, Naxcella had gone so, so wrong; in the half-moment following the release of the crushing gravity fields triggered by the explosion of Haggar’s ship, the Paladin’s screams had shifted in their purpose, and she had only been different in that she felt it first, having been the most connected—they were the arms, the sword and shield—and she had screamed and cried and howled as if losing a limb, because she was, but of her heart, and the anguish and the heartbreak she felt in that instant had been beyond her comprehension.

She’s tired of losing the people she cares about, and after finally, finally, finding Matt, the universe, as if deeming her cursed, had taken its equal dues because she had dared to allow herself some affection for another person, and in doing so Keith had died and unknowingly taken her heart with him.

Chapter Text

Something wet slips underneath Katie's boot as she treks through the woods. She freezes, careful not to slip, and stops to investigate; it hasn't rained all week. Crouching among the underbrush with her foxfire lantern, she spots a pool of blood coating the crushed autumn leaves. It's fresh.

She holds her lantern up higher, and its pale green glow reflects off a messy trail of dark puddles winding in a staggering line into the trees. She dips two fingers in the pool at her feet, and it glows purple in reaction to her magic. Neither man nor beast.

Katie frowns and stands back up. She hasn't seen any hunters come by lately, but there isn't much else it could be at this time of year, not here. She wipes her hand clean and begins to follow the trail of blood, which alarmingly grows in volume quite rapidly. At least she can be sure she's moving in the right direction.

She follows the bloody trail a short distance until she reaches the old half-buried log where she usually goes to find mushrooms. She steps around the boulder that had long ago uprooted the tree, and as she rounds the far side a blade flashes to her throat from below. Her breath hitches and she stares at the purplish sword hovering dangerously close to her neck, eyes tracing its length down to its owner.

A young man quite probably not much older than herself, with eyes as dark as the steel of his blade, glares up at her from the ground, his breathing labored.

"Who are you?" he barks, sword quivering in his grip.

Katie ignores the question, her eyes darting from his face to his chest as he inhales shakily, and then to the shredded, blood-soaked shirt clinging to his middle where a dozen or so cuts and slashes bite deep into his skin. It looks like he'd been in a fight with something. In a start she blinks, connecting the dots.

"Stars above, you're bleeding!" she exclaims, the only coherent thought her brain is able to muster at the realization that he is the reason for the trail of blood.

He seems taken aback and drops the sword a few inches, enough for her to take that as a cue to act, so she grabs the blade with her magic and pushes it away. Her hands dive into her satchel for the bandage spell she keeps prepared, just in case, and arranges it over the stranger's injuries to seal them temporarily. It should buy them enough time for her to drag him back to her cottage.

"I'm... not sure what you did, but thank you, I think?" the stranger's brows furrow, "but you haven't answered my question."

Katie shakes her head, "No time, that spell will wear off in minutes with the way you're bleeding. I’ll take you back to my cottage," she explains quickly, positioning herself to help him to his feet.

"Uh, okay—" he starts, but cuts himself off with a hiss of pain when he tries to sit up.

"Leave anything you can here, I'll come get it later. I'm going to have to drag you back, I think," Katie says hurriedly, shuffling around to loop her arms under his.

"My legs work just fine, you know!"

"You're nearly in half, don't argue," she snaps back, hauling herself upright as the stranger slices the straps of his bag and unclasps his cloak, allowing her to maneuver more easily. She catches a glimpse of some emblem on the cloak pin but ignores it in favor of positioning herself to hoist the stranger to a more travel-friendly position. She manages a steady pace despite the his added weight, and with the foxfire lantern floating ahead to light the way they make it back before the bandage spell weakens, but only just.

Katie eases her new guest onto the floor by the hearth and rushes to collect washrags and water, sprinting back in time to see her spell fade, the magic bindings coming undone and spilling the stranger's blood onto her floorboards as the wounds reopen. He howls a flurry of curses through grit teeth, back arched in pain, and quickly Katie makes signs for a numbing spell to help.

Healing is not her specialty, and she worries her lip while she cleans the wounds and applies a salve around them. Sweat beads on the stranger’s forehead, and she can tell that despite her spell, he’s still in discomfort.

“My name’s Katie, by the way,” she offers, glancing at him to see his attention focus on her, “I’m the Forest Warden for this area.”

He stares at her for a moment while she traces a finger around the smaller wounds to seal them shut, and she can feel his oddly intense gaze on her while she works. She wonders if he needs another numbing spell.

“I’m Keith,” he says, suddenly.

Katie nods, beginning to bandage his wounds, “Where from?”

Keith hums, “South of here, I think. The Marmoran coast.”

Ah, that explains the blood. Dragons. “You’re far from home, then.”

“Mother sent me to seek aid from Altea. The Galra Empire threatens war,” Keith replies, “Unfortunately it seems I’ve been followed.”

“Wait,” Katie looks at him skeptically, remembering the flash of his cloak pin in the light of her lantern, “are you—”

“The Marmoran Prince?” Keith raises an eyebrow, “Yes.”

Katie ties off the bandage around his middle and sits back, fixing him with a look of disbelief. She’d been out gathering root vegetables and instead had returned with a (significantly bloodied) dragon prince. And with the way he’s injured? He won’t be going anywhere much for at least a week.

At least he’s got pretty eyes.

Chapter Text

Katie coughs, rubbing a sleeve across her goggles to wipe off the soot, and blinks owlishly through the cleared lenses, "That did not go how I expected it would."

Keith, to his credit, contains his laughter as he steps around the smoking engine prototype on the floor, drawing Katie's eyes away from the failed experiment and up to his face.

"You'll get it next time," he assures, and she beams up at him, and at that he does fail to contain himself, and reaches out to wipe the soot off her lips with his thumb, surprising her with a kiss, "you always do."

Chapter Text

"Does Kosmo ever go off on his own? For hunting or anything?" Katie asks, cutting the hunk of cheese in her hand into a slice each for her and Keith, and hands one to him, sitting on the log beside her.

"Yeah, sometimes. I don't really restrict him; he sticks around and I feed him if he looks hungry, but he wanders off from time to time, presumably to hunt," Keith answers, arranging the cheese slice on his sandwich, "Why?"

"Some people in town have been talking about a monster in the forest leaving half-eaten game around every now and then, but I have a feeling it's just Kosmo. Sounds like that's true," she chuckles.

A smile tugging at his lips, Keith looks from her to the oversized magical wolf lounging in the sunlit grass near Keith's cabin, "Kosmo, is that true? Are you scaring the villagers?"

Kosmo whuffs wolfishly and rolls over in the grass, his yellow eyes staring up at them.

Keith rolls his eyes, "Right, a wolf's got to have his secrets," but he grins and tears a chunk off the chicken breast they'd been using as sandwich meat and throws it over to Kosmo, who snaps it up happily before resuming his afternoon lounging.

Chapter Text

There's a perfectly reasonable, totally logical explanation for how Pidge finds herself flying through the air shortly after narrowly avoiding being mugged in a back alley one late October night--but at the moment her brain is fried with shock as a masked stranger clad in black and purple sets her down gently on a rooftop, her legs turning into jelly by the second.

The stranger, noticing her disorientation, curses and helps ease her into a sitting position before tearing the mask off his face, "Hey, look at me, take deep breaths," he urges, and at that her eyes snap into focus on him; the urban legend, vigilante, what-have-you rumored to be flitting around the city at night for the better part of a year she's been trying to track down for a month and a half, Blade.

"I didn't know you were hot." The words slip out before she can stop herself and her eyes widen as blush colors Blade's face and she trips over awkward apologies in a vain attempt to smooth over her embarrassment.

Chapter Text

"We really shouldn't be out here," Keith whispers, lying alongside Pidge underneath a large fern-like plant, the only sort of cover they had been able to find when he'd spotted the perimeter patrols, and they'd promptly scrambled to avoid detection.

"I'd really appreciate it if all five moons would go away," Pidge hisses under her breath, "seriously, what are the chances that they would all be full on the night we do recon?"

"Something stupid, probably," Keith mutters, "but hey, could be worse. At least we're here together," he adds, leaning towards Pidge to press a quick kiss to her cheek.

Chapter Text

“Matt used to tell me all kinds of ghost stories about this place,” Katie comments, following her fellow Garrison-skeptic along the dry bed of an ephemeral stream at the base of a desert gorge ten miles west of the base.

“You’re not scared, are you?” Keith calls back, a hint of teasing in his voice as he casts his flashlight along the ground looking for… something.

“No,” she chirps, hopping over a stone, “I just think it’s ironic that maybe there’s actually something out here, just not quite like in the stories. Something mysterious,” she explains, stopping to stand a little awed alongside Keith at the mouth of a cave aglow with ancient markings.

“Yeah, maybe,” Keith replies, his tone full of dry irony, devoid of the wonder one might expect upon seeing the cave; to him, this is a familiar sight.

Chapter Text

“They went into the haunted house?” Keith asks, draining the last bits of his cherry slushie from his cup as Katie nods beside him, mouth full of cotton candy.

“Ten bucks says Lance runs out screaming first,” Keith remarks, frowning at his empty cup before stealing a tuft of Katie’s cotton candy.

She pouts up at him before a devious grin drifts across her face, “Hunk will be out long before Lance, or you kiss me.”

“Maybe Lance is braver than I give him credit for. But if not,” Keith shrugs, and sends her a cheeky side-eye, “maybe I kiss you anyway?”

Chapter Text

“Pidge…” Hunk starts, to which he receives a curious hum of acknowledgement, and continues with, “Why are you carving that pumpkin upside down?”

Pidge looks between Hunk and the pumpkin in her hands, before grinning and flipping it over before tapping Keith on the shoulder, to which he responds by wordlessly leaning over in his chair enough for her to slip the pumpkin over his head.

Arms gesturing at her pumpkin-adorned boyfriend, she giggles, “Ta-da! He’s the headless horseman now!”

Chapter Text

“You did not,” Matt sputters upon opening his door to Keith and Katie decked out in their over the top Monsters & Mana costumes for Matt’s halloween party—and costume contest.

“Oh, we did!” Katie grins smugly, eyeing her brother’s comparatively weak attempt at a vampire costume with a scoff before turning to Keith, “I think we’re gonna win.”

“Didn’t doubt it for a second,” Keith smiles, waving the glowing sword Katie had built for him in Matt’s face as he follows his girlfriend inside.

Chapter Text

"Good boy, Kosmo," Keith says, reaching to pet the space wolf who'd just popped into their living room in a flash of blue, the handle of a candy bucket clamped between his jaws--he'd just returned from answering the latest ring of the doorbell, a plan Keith and Katie had concocted to give kids a lighthearted scare and save them from letting the drafty October chill into the house.

Katie snakes a hand into the bucket when Kosmo sets it down on the ground between them, stealing a piece of candy, but not without Keith's notice, "What?" she feigns innocence at the playfully dubious looks he's giving her, "We bought it."

Keith's expression changes to a smirk, "You'd better share then."

Chapter Text

Katie hums contentedly into a blanket as Keith wraps it around her shoulders, careful not to make her spill the hot cocoa in her hands, “You’re the best,” she mumbles sleepily, her voice barely audible over the patter of rain on the windows.

“I try,” Keith smiles, pulling his legs up onto the window seat alongside her before sneaking a hand under her blanket cocoon to weave their fingers together.

“Have I told you how much I love you?” she asks, head lolling onto his shoulder.

“Every day,” Keith mumbles into her hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead, “but once more can’t hurt.”

Chapter Text

When the Empire fell, they say it was Voltron who laid claim to the victory with the Coalition at their back, having brought down the Emperor and all his power.

But it was you two at the front, wasn’t it? You who stood in that room with that man so far fallen from grace, revived through dark arts by his once lover, a warped reflection of your own relationship.

The sword that landed the final blow. The shield that endured against the onslaught.

The invisible crown of your victory.

The red running down your arms.

Is it heavy yet?

“Nightmares?” Katie asks, waking to find Keith seated on the floor with his back to the closet door, hands wrapped around the cool metal of the sword across his knees.

His eyes drift up to her face, “Yeah.”

Quietly, she slips out of bed, taking the blanket with her to sit by him as she wraps its warmth around them, her fingers finding their way into his hair, “We’ll be okay.”