Work Text:
Lance was an affectionate person. That was a given, and a very hard-to-miss fact about him, not that he could ever hide it. It was obvious in the way he treated those he loved, like his family back on Earth, or the way he talked to people and made them feel comfortable when it seemed like they weren't.
Most of all, Lance was the touchy-feely type of affectionate, and that is something you would have to be incredibly oblivious to ignore. He was always hugging Hunk and ruffling Pidge's hair, or slinging an arm over Shiro when he subjected the poor guy to his jokes. Lance would always be needling Coran and doing some unhinged attack on the guy to see if he could catch him off guard or dancing with the Altean to old dances. Even Allura could not counterattack his physical affection, giving into his pesterings to do her hair (not that Allura gave much fight on that since she secretly enjoyed it) and she could never manage to push away his grand gestures as he tried one of his sad attempts at flirting (her and Shiro really were such poor souls when it came to Lance’s exuberance).
And so you would expect that, in the relationship Lance had with Keith, he would be the clingier one. Really, it was an obvious conclusion.
Well it's not Keith and Lance if they didn’t have the element of surprise integrated into their very way of love.
₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊
"You're insanely clingy, it's giving me a stroke," Lance mentioned as they played foosball in the (giant) gameroom the castle had. It had been a momentous day for Lance when he had stumbled on the room, indeed.
Keith cocked his head to the side in confusion. "I'm not clingy?" he stated as he twisted one of the handles to kick the ball and score another point. He looked up at Lance with a grin, feeling proud to have scored three times in a row despite just learning how to play. Lance may be better because of more experience, but Keith had always been a fast learner.
Lance gave a playful groan. Curse his boyfriend for being so fucking good at everything, honestly . Placing the ball back in the middle, he responded with an unamused rise of his eyebrow, "I was literally trying to take a piss the other day, and you followed me into the bathroom to tell me about a dream you had!"
Keith rolled his eyes at the other boy, pausing his turn to look up and rival the unamused look with his own, before turning back to the game with a huff.
"That was love and affection, you nitwit."
Keith scored again, with the full intent of spiteing Lance. Love or not, they were always rivals at heart, which was endearing, if not resembling petty little kids. Lance threw his hands and stuck his tongue out at the mullet-wearing menace he decided to hold all his love for, before decidedly stomping away to a beanbag at the front of the room where the team played some Altean version of Mario Kart— though that stopped playing it as much when Pidge managed to get the Earth version on the Altean database and activate it on the screen after the Altean one got too many incidents of excessive raging that resulted in violent ends (Pidge declares to be 100% innocent).
Keith chuckled at the childish behaviour, finding it cute, as he let go of the handles and walked away from the foosball to join the sulking boyfriend of his. Lance’s arms were crossed, legs tucked in, with a furious pout on his face when Keith sat down, but it was gone the moment Keith shoved his legs down and laid his head on the boy’s lap, smirking at the surprised yelp he received.
Lance huffed, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, gorgeous fucking smile is a force of evil . Keith smiled wider, laughing lightly when Lance’s breath hitched.
In the silence that followed, Keith simply closed his eyes and drowned in the feeling of Lance and the sound of his steady breathing as said boy played with his hair. After a while, Lance spoke up, responding to Keith’s earlier statement.
"Love and affection my ass, by the way. That was sabotage. You took the damn toilet paper with you when you left,"
Keith coughed before dissolving into a peal of laughter that left him breathless. “God, you’re so dramatic,” he choked out, catching his breath
“Well, I’m not wrong no,w am I now! I had to hold it in because I was scavenging the cupboards below the sink for another roll. You’re lucky Shiro reminded us to stock up, you devil’s mullet-wearing hellspawn!” Lance declares with a poke to Keith’s nose.
Keith opened his eyes, glaring at Lance as he muttered out “ not a mullet, it’s just long.”
“Excuses,” Lance stated, waving it off.
Sitting up, Keith tackled the Blue Paladin off the bean bag and caught him off guard, grinning at the shout of surprise that was let out. They tumbled on the floor, Lance unable to hold in his laughs as Keith tickled as a tactic to render him helpless.
“ FOUL PLAY, KEITH YOU FUCKING CHEATER,” Lance cried in-between laughs, tears forming at the corner of his eyes from laughing. Keith just tickled harder, both of them rolling on the floor, constantly trying to one-up the other like always. Only this time, there was an underlying adoration and fondness that hadn’t been there when they started out as Paladins and teammates.
It wasn’t long before the two became too tired to continue antagonising each other lovingly. They slowed, catching their breaths and wiping tears still in their eyes from laughing so hard. They were –unsurprisingly– still on the floor, with Keith on top of Lance, straddling his boyfriend as they stared at each other, still smiling, still feeling a hum of energy that never disappeared since they first crossed paths.
“You never said you had a problem with me being clingy,” Keith said softly, still looking into hues of blue below him, feeling as if he was floating. He felt so light.
“Why would I? I think it’s cute,” Lance said breathlessly, for the same reason as his boyfriend, though he wasn’t floating, no, he was in a high, feeling a rush as he was swept by the raging purple in those eyes he loved.
“Then?”
“It was a surprise, I suppose. I was always an affectionate person. I thought I’d be the clingy one,” Lance mused in response. Keith smirked at him, eyes glinting as he said,
“Well, no one said you weren’t. You’re still ridiculously clingy.”
Lance scoffed at that.
“Ironic coming from you, hun.”
Keith smiled slyly as he leaned in, breath ghosting over his lover’s lips, leaving just the barest of spaces so he could mutter out,
“ Well, I have to one-up you somehow, don’t I, Sharpshooter?”
And before Lance could respond with a remark of his own, Keith closed the gap, bringing their lips together and fitting them like pieces of a puzzle that could be worn or chipped, but always fitting perfectly nonetheless.
And when Lance mumbled out a soft, puffed out “ You’re lucky I love you, Samurai ,” and clinged on, Keith simply grinned against the other’s lips and clinged tighter.
₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊
Lance was clingier than anyone on the team; that was, objectively, true. But between him and Keith, in their own bubble that only they could ever see, that they only had the key to, Keith was always the clingiest.