Chapter Text
"Keeeeith. This is the cutest shit I've ever seen, dude."
Lance smiled adoringly at the tiny green t-shirt he held — on the front was a gator with a word bubble that read 'Later' — before he turned it around to show Keith.
"Lance," — the laughter was clear in Keith's voice — "I bought that shirt, I know what it looks like. Besides, how long have we been folding this little boy's clothes? And you still manage to pick out at least three items that are the cutest shit you've ever seen every laundry night."
"The. Cutest. Shit. I've. Ever. Seen." Each word was clipped, and Lance was doing his best not to smile as he pseudo-glared at his husband over the mound of laundry piled on their bed.
Keith refused to meet his gaze, and instead picked a new item out of the pile to fold. Lance watched him pause as he gazed down at the orange shirt. Even though Lance couldn't see the front of it, he knew it belonged to their daughter, and that it was adorned with a sequence-covered cat face.
Keith's eyes lifted slowly to meet his as a slow smirk pulled at his lips. "Do you think the clothes ever stop being cute?"
He was trying to tease, but Lance wasn't fooled. He knew Keith thought these clothes were adorable as well. Maybe even more so, given how upset Keith got whenever the kids outgrew a size and they had to pack away the clothes that no longer fit.
"Absolutely never."
"Not even when they become smelly teenagers?"
"Won't happen with us around, babe."
Keith chuckled at that, likely thinking of the plethora of soaps and skin care products Lance kept stocked in their bathrooms. With all the kids' clothes folded, Lance scooped up all the little socks — they never bothered pairing them — and tossed them back into the laundry basket before moving it onto a nearby chair. Then he beelined for Keith and tumbled with his unsuspecting husband onto their bed.
"Have I told you how much I love you today?" he whispered into Keith's hair, which was currently pulled up into a messy bun, a look that Lance particularly enjoyed.
Keith ducked his face into Lance's neck and pressed a kiss there. "I brought you flowers earlier and as thanks I only got a quick kiss on my nose. What is it about me folding laundry with you that always gets you all sappy?"
"Is sappy the right word?" Lance asked, eyes hooded and grin turned sinful as he slid a hand into the waistband of the back of Keith's pants.
He was rewarded with an equally playful grin and a soft growl from Keith as Keith rolled the two of them so that he could settle himself on top of Lance before lowering his head to meet Lance's lips in a kiss.
"I do love my flowers," Lance whispered. "I'm sorry you didn't think I —"
Keith kissed him again, cutting off his apology before saying, "I'm just teasing you, Lance. I could tell that you loved them. Plus, I know I sprung them on you when you were in the middle of cooking dinner."
Lance laughed as he said, "Cooking dinner and trying to figure out fourth grade social studies homework."
Keith smiled in return. "Better you than me."
"No, babe, listen — I'm pretty sure I'm failing a history project meant for a nine year old."
"I told you to let her figure it out herself."
"She gives me those puppy dog eyes, Keith. Puppy dog eyes. You've seen them!" He did his best to give Keith his own puppy dog eyes, but the jerk only laughed harder and shook his head — immune to the puppy dog eyes of everyone in the house after so many years of exposure to Lance's.
Lance grinned, hands moving to Keith's hips as he relaxed into their sheets and basked in the sound of his husband's laughter. There had been a time when he hadn't been sure they were going to get here — to the wedding vows, and the mortgage, and the kids — even though it had been all he'd ever wanted as soon as he'd laid eyes on Keith Kogane.
"I love you," Lance stated plainly. No smirking. No follow-up quip. No teasing. Just honest seriousness on his face as he watched Keith's pretty purple eyes shine back at him with the same amount of love and fondness.
"Love you back," Keith whispered as he rolled them so that he could pull Lance on top of him. But as his back hit the mattress, he immediately jerked forward with a pained expression.
Lance bit back a chuckle as his fingers searched under the sheets where Keith remained arched away from the mattress. He released a small noise of triumph as his hands finally closed around two rocks.
"Whoa, wait a second." Keith twisted his neck so that he could watch Lance place the rocks on one of their bedside tables. "Is that paint on those rocks?"
"What? No way, you're seeing things," Lance responded, unable to keep the grin off his face as he moved to straddle Keith's lap and pull his attention back to him.
Keith eyed him, not believing a word of it. "Did you actually pammph—"
Lance had discovered long ago that kissing was always the most effective way to distract Keith.
He could tell the technique was working its magic right now as well, since he could feel Keith melt beneath him before Keith's fingers trailed up his sides, pulling his shirt up as they went. Lance broke the kiss only to allow Keith the freedom to pull his shirt over his head, and then he dove back down to meet Keith's lips once again.
It had been an especially stressful week full of work emergencies, and sick kid doctor visits, and barely any space to breath, let alone time to get his hands up his husband's shirt like he was doing now. Lance hit one of Keith's ticklish spots just to listen to him make that cute noise that happens when he's trying not laugh. Of course, it also resulted in Keith trying to squirm away while glaring at him, even though the glare was hard to pull off when Keith knew Lance thought the whole thing was adorable. Lance pulled him back in to kiss his pout away, and smiled when he felt Keith smile into it.
His next mission included removing all these pesky clothes from his husband. He pulled back to go after Keith's shirt, but paused when he caught the way Keith's eyebrows knit together as he stared past Lance and up towards their ceiling instead.
"Lance, what is that?"
Lance sat upright in Keith's lap and then dipped his head back to stare up at the ceiling himself. The sight he was met with… well, he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing.
"Um…"
"Up, up, up."
Keith pushed at Lance until he toppled off his lap, and then pulled him off the bed with him, hands holding onto him tightly as he moved them both away from what appeared to be a hole in their ceiling. A hole that was growing progressively larger by the second.
"Keith?" Lance whispered, as if afraid to startle the growing black hole. He felt Keith's arms tighten their hold around him and he intertwined his fingers in with one of Keith's hands.
"I — I don't know," Keith whispered back. "It's not the house."
And it wasn't. It wasn't as if their bedroom ceiling was giving out. The boxes in the attic weren't about to fall on them. In fact, it didn't even look like their attic. It looked like they were looking up into —
"It looks like space?" Keith asked.
Lance nodded, eyes still trained on the otherworldly phenomenon happening in their bedroom. Now that it was larger, there was a white rim to the circle that appeared to be crackling with some sort of current. But the center was still a picture perfect view of a purplish sky dotted with stars. If Keith wasn't right here staring at the same thing, he was certain he'd think he was hallucinating.
"Lance," Keith said urgently, and as his fingers tightened around Lance's, that's when Lance felt it too — Keith was being pulled away from him.
Keith was being pulled away from him.
"No, wait!" Lance yelled, no longer worried about keeping his voice down for the kids. Keith's goddamn feet were already off the floor. Something — some sort of reverse gravity or something — was lifting Keith off the ground and up towards the hole. "Keith, hold on!" He had no idea why the hole was only trying to suck up Keith, but he did know there was no way he was letting go of his husband's hand. Not with the way he could see fear in those purple eyes as Keith's other hand scrambled from Lance's waist to his shoulders as his feet flew higher in the air. Lance looked around desperately before shifting as much weight as he could down toward his feet, and freeing one of his hands to reach for their bedroom doorknob. It took all his strength to move them the few extra inches he needed, but he finally wrapped his long fingers around the makeshift anchor and held on tight.
Then he turned back to Keith, and despite the presence of a swirly space hole that was currently trying to abduct him — Keith's feet were now closer to the ceiling than the ground — Keith still managed to send him a small grin for coming up with an idea.
"I'm not letting go of you!" Lance yelled over the crackling noises that were steadily increasing in volume.
Keith’s eyes widened in surprise — and fear — a moment later, though, as his feet were jerked even closer to the hole, and his fingers almost slid out of Lance’s grasp. Lance heard himself begin to swear as whatever was pulling Keith grew stronger.
"Lance," Keith said solemnly, eyes trained on Lance as he realized before Lance what was inevitably going to happen next, "I love you."
Lance's eyes widened in alarm. "No, Keith! Wait!"
Keith's fingers were slipping further away until Lance was left with only straining fingertips trying desperately to keep their hold on Keith's fingers.
"No!"
All of his weight fell back against their bedroom door as Keith was pulled completely from his grasp and sucked up into the space hole. Lance jumped back to his feet and rushed towards the center of the room to scream back up into the hole, which remained open and crackling despite having already taken what it had apparently wanted.
"Keith! Keith!"
He screamed Keith's name towards the blackness over and over as panic filled him. His heart was pounding hard enough to hurt his chest, making his breaths labored, and he distinctly felt like he was losing all sensation in his arms and fingers. His feet remained planted on the ground, there was absolutely zero pull to try to steal him away as well, which now only fueled his frustrated tears as he screamed Keith's name one more time.
Then his eyes widened and hope sprang in his chest, because his most recent plea seemed to work.
There was definitely someone with messy black hair spiraling down the hole towards him.
"Keith!" He was so filled with relief that he didn't even mind when Keith slammed into him and knocked them both to the ground. He wrapped his arms tight around Keith where they landed and glared up at the crackling breach. It shrunk in size at a much faster pace than it had opened, and before Lance could even blink, it was gone, leaving their ceiling completely unmarred and the room in silence except for their labored breathing.
"Ow," Keith grunted on top of him.
"Please tell me you're okay, Keith." Lance's voice was hoarse and his breaths were still coming out too fast, but he squeezed his eyes shut again and refused to release Keith, even though Keith was currently trying to push himself up. "Ay por dios, I'm pretty fucking sure my heart stopped back there."
"Lance?"
Lance's eyes popped open at the pure confusion he could hear in Keith's voice. Even when he leaned his face back, he couldn't get a good look at Keith's face with the way his head was ducked down, black bangs hiding most of it from Lance's view. It was only then that he realized his fingers weren't pressing into the back of Keith's soft sleep shirt, but a strange textured fabric that didn't end where a shirt normally would. Lance let his hands wander farther down Keith's back until they ran appreciatively over Keith's backside, and — damn — this really hugged the beautiful curves his husband possessed back there.
If the entire point of the black swirly hole had been a wardrobe change, Lance was pretty sure there were easier ways to go about getting his husband into a sexy bodysuit.
"What are you doing?" The confusion was still present in Keith's tone, but there was definitely an element of shock now as well that was pretty perfectly timed with the hands that were currently groping his ass. Keith's hands pressed against Lance's chest again, and this time he managed to push himself up and off the other so that he could stand.
Lance sat up from the floor but didn't move further as he gaped now that he had a complete view of Keith in all his glory in this outfit. Holy shit. He noted that the weird pressure he'd felt pressing into his chest a moment before had apparently been some sort of chest plate. The rest of the suit just clung to broad shoulders and a narrow waist and —
"Lance, where are we?" Keith demanded.
Keith's eyes darted around the room, and he even spun around towards where their bathroom door was located. Lance was Keith's butt's number one fan (a fact he liked to point out to their friends until Keith would cover his mouth and try to drag him away), but he'd never seen it wrapped in something so …tight. It was …distracting, especially given that he was currently sitting practically eye level with the sight.
"Lance." Keith turned back and squatted in front of him, concern covering his face as he stared at Lance's slightly dazed expression. "Are you alright? Where's your shirt? You – you guys — Voltron was on Naxzela. I thought you weren't going to… make it. I almost —"
Keith cut off what he was about to say, and sat himself back down on the ground in front of where Lance was still seated. It was then that Lance forced himself to stop trailing his eyes over the lines of this suit and focus on how very distressed Keith appeared to be. And, right — he'd just been sucked into a black hole and then spit back out — so he had every right to be distraught, and maybe not make a lot of sense with whatever he had just said (Lance had been…distracted). Lance shuddered a bit as the panic and terror he'd felt only moments ago rolled over him once more.
"Come here," Lance murmured as he wrapped his arms around Keith again and pulled him in close. He let the fingers of one hand run through Keith's hair — it was down now, all that flying around must've knocked out his hair tie. A tremor ran through Keith's shoulders, leading Lance to squeeze him a little tighter, and only when Keith relaxed against him did Lance speak again. "That was the scariest shit I've ever seen."
Keith stiffened in his arms. "You weren't there, h-how did you see it?"
Now it was Lances turn to be slightly alarmed. "What do you mean, how did I see it? Baby, I was right here trying to hold onto you."
"Baby?"
The return of the confusion and shock in Keith's tone sent a cold chill through Lance. Keith leaned away from his chest then, and Lance's mouth fell open in shock when he got a good look at those purple eyes.
This was not his Keith.
"You were in Voltron," Keith insisted, and Lance was pretty sure Keith was beginning to panic as well. "You were in Voltron with everyone else, galaxies away from Haggar's ship. You weren't there to see me almost — you weren't there."
Keith stood again and looked around the room, and Lance slowly followed this time, forcing himself up on shaky legs. He grabbed his shirt from where it'd been previously tossed to the end of the bed and pulled it over his head.
"Lance, where are we?"
Keith wasn't making any sense, and Lance's frustrated tears were returning, because this was not — and if this was not, then where —
"Where is my Keith?" he growled, scrubbing tears away with the back of his hand. "What have you done with him?" His chest hurt again and he absent-mindedly lifted a hand to rub over the pain.
"Kolivan, come in." Keith's voice was shaking slightly as he fiddled with some buttons on the sleeve of his outfit. He repeated the phrase a few times, before he switched it up. "Shiro, come in, please."
"Shiro?" Lance questioned. "You know Shiro?"
Instead of answering, Keith only glanced at him before he began furiously pushing buttons on the sleeve again.
Lance reached out and grabbed that wrist to get his attention. "Look, I don't care, okay? I don't care who you are or how you know Shiro. I just want to know where Keith is."
Keith's eyes flashed anger as he yanked his wrist away from Lance. "I am Keith."
"My Keith. Where the hell is my husband?"
The anger drained from Keith's expression just as quickly as it had appeared. "Husband?"
"Where is he?" Lance growled.
Keith glanced at his sleeve, which was apparently not giving him what he wanted, then glanced at the ceiling, before meeting Lance's eyes again.
"I think he" — a defeated sigh left Keith — "I think we switched places."
"Like some Freaky Friday bullshit?"
Keith's brow furrowed and the familiarity of that confused pout — the way his lips also pursed and shifted to one side — riled up the pain in Lance's chest once again.
"I don't know? Does this happen in this reality on Fridays?"
"Never mind." Lance waved a hand in the air quickly and pushed on. "What do you mean this reality?"
Keith still looked slightly confused by Lance's earlier movie reference, but continued despite it. "We found out a while back that there are multiple realities. We even visited another one, but we were only able to do so because we transferred into it while inside Voltron. But, we didn't switch one version of ourselves out for another. I don't… understand this."
Wide, frustrated eyes met Lance's, and Lance resisted the urge to pull this strange Keith back into his arms.
"You keep saying Voltron, explain to me what that is."
Keith looked hesitant and Lance watched him slowly glance around the room once more, pausing when he found the wall above Lance's dresser. He walked slowly towards it and stopped when he was close enough to see details — Lance had covered the wall with framed family photos.
"Who are they?" Keith asked, pointing to a photo of both kids sitting together at the top of the playground slide.
"Nuh uh," Lance said, his tone hard. He wasn't sharing — especially details about his children, who were much heavier sleepers than Lance had previously given them credit for — until he and this other Keith had some sort of plan in place to get his Keith back here. "Voltron?"
Keith took another moment to look over the photos before he began talking again, although he kept his back to Lance as he spoke. "Okay, see, there are five sentient robot lions and each one requires a pilot, called a paladin, and the lions can join together to form something called Voltron. Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the universe, and we're currently in the middle of a war against Zarkon, an alien who has terrorized the universe for the past ten thousand years."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Keith asked, turning to face Lance again and let his eyes roam over his expression. "That's it? You live in" — Keith waved a hand back towards the photos — "some domestic fairy tale land and that's all you've got to say about lions and aliens and a space war?"
"Dude, you fell outta a black sparkly hole in my ceiling, which also thieved my husband away. I'll take your robot lion story. Just tell me you have, like, a lion in your pocket or something?"
"No, the lions are huge."
Lance groaned as his fingers slid anxiously through his hair. "I meant, like, a way to call the lions? Summon Voltron?"
"Well," Keith said, and Lance's spirits sunk again at that defeatist tone of voice. "I mean, I activated the distress signal in this suit already. But, uh, this isn't paladin armor, or related to Voltron. And, the Marmoran distress signals aren't typically… answered."
"Great, so we need Voltron and you're not even a paladin." His words were meant to sting the universe in general, but he felt immediate guilt when he saw Keith visibly flinch as he heard them. "Hey, I'm sorry," Lance said, softly. He waited for Keith to meet his eyes again before he continued. "I'm just really upset and… this is a mess."
"It is," Keith said slowly, giving Lance no other acknowledgement of the apology. "Lotor just said he wanted to talk to us. I should be there. Not here. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. How am I supposed to help from here?"
Lance spotted Keith's thumb rubbing against his fisted hand, and again had to refrain from pulling Keith into a comforting hug. Instead, he slumped down on the edge of the bed, his legs finally giving out as he listened to the frustrated tone from the only one out of the two of them who had any experience with this sort of thing. He let his head fall into his hands and took a few moments to run through everything Keith had told him so far in his head.
"Would my Keith have landed in a safe place?" he asked a few moments later, lifting his head up to stare at this Keith again.
He watched Keith fight back what would've surely been a grimace, before he slowly began to speak. "Well, I had stolen a Galran ship and —"
"Don't – don't. Just stop," Lance interrupted quickly and threw a hand in the air. "If you're not going to say something that's going to make me feel better, I don't want to hear it."
"Okay," Keith said.
When it was clear Keith had nothing to add to the story about the ship he'd stolen, Lance rubbed at that painful spot on his chest again.
"Alright, listen, you two switched places somehow, so there has to be a way to switch back, right?" He stared so intently at Keith that Keith's only option was to nod in return. "And even though you've done this sort of thing before — kinda — obviously you didn't land here with the right tools. So, maybe you're not supposed to do anything? Maybe we have to rely on the Voltron group on the other side to figure this out and do the switch back?"
Keith didn't look so sure.
"What?" Lance demanded.
"Mission over individual," Keith said what sounded like a mantra with a small shrug. "We just dealt a huge blow to Zarkon. And Lotor stopped Haggar's attack on Naxzela and Voltron. Now Lotor wants to talk, so —"
"What are you trying to say?" Lance pushed himself to stand again, leaving him to frown down at Keith.
"This won't be — shouldn't be the top of their priority list right now."
Lance glared. "Are you kidding? If your Lance has anything to say about this, getting you back will be on the top of Voltron's fucking priority list right now."
"My Lance?"