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The Atlas senior staff party was winding down, the room almost empty, which was why Shiro was sitting with Pidge and Hunk at a table along the wall, and also why he had allowed Pidge to top off his glass of nunvill. She’d been sticking to soda as long as the elder Holts were in the room out of some misplaced sense of propriety — Sam, at least, wouldn’t have cared if his war hero daughter broke into the champagne — but now she pulled out a bottle of something Shiro didn’t recognize.
“Courtesy of Matt,” she explained as she poured small glasses of the fizzy, rose-colored liquid for herself and Hunk. It reminded Shiro of a drink they’d been served on a diplomatic visit to Blaxi, which had certainly tasted better than his current beverage.
“Aw, and you left me drinking nunvill?” he teased.
“You were already drinking it,” Hunk pointed out. “Which means your tastebuds are too fried to appreciate Kiltan cider right now.”
Shiro took a whiff of his glass and felt his sinuses burn. “Okay, you may have a point.”
“Cheers,” Pidge said, clinking her glass with theirs, then took a sip. “Oh god, my tastebuds are not fried enough to appreciate Kiltan cider right now.”
Shiro looked mournfully into his almost-empty glass. Nunvill was actually pretty good, once you stopped tasting it.
“And they’re both just so— bendy, you know?” he said. He wasn’t sure when exactly he’d started talking about Keith and Lance, but he’d go with it. “It’s unfair. It’s a personal attack.”
“Shiro,” Pidge said, long-suffering, “there are two people you need to have this conversation with and neither of them are at this table.”
“Seriously, have you seen Keith fight?” Shiro continued undeterred, waving his glass. “He’s like… I can’t even find words. Poetry. He’s poetry. It’s like he doesn’t have bones. Unreal.”
Hunk snorted. “Do you hear yourself? Pidge, we have to get Shiro drunk more often. This is great.”
“Says you,” Pidge retorted. She was listing sideways into Hunk’s shoulder. “You didn’t have to listen to him moping about them the whole way back to Earth. No alcohol required, just angst.”
“And Lance gets riled up so easily, and he flushes all over, and it’s just so cute. And weirdly hot. I bet he’d flush ever prettier if I—” Shiro’s mouth snapped shut. “I should not drink any more of this. Wow. Sorry, guys.”
“Don't apologize,” Hunk laughed. “This is hilarious.”
“You’re hopeless,” Pidge said philosophically. “Go tell them all this. We already know how you feel.”
“Yeah, why don’t you?” Hunk asked.
“I can’t say anything,” Shiro replied immediately. “I can’t— it can’t be me doing the asking. I’m their superior officer.”
“But we’re all Paladins of Voltron. Doesn’t that trump stupid military hierarchies?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him for months,” Pidge sighed. “Nobody feels subordinate, Shiro. Sub-or-din-ate. That’s a fun word.”
Hunk plucked her glass from her fingers and downed the remaining contents himself.
“Hey!”
“You’ve descended to overprerner— overpronuncing words. Dang it, now I’m doing it.”
“Shiro’s going on about his pathetic crushes again, but I don’t see you stealing his drink,” Pidge pouted.
“I don’t regularly swap spit with Shiro.”
Shiro lifted his hands in a clear ‘keep me out of it’ gesture. Pidge nabbed Hunk’s cider, downed it, then set the empty glass back in his fingers with a self-satisfied, “Ha.”
Hunk, looking a little startled and a lot turned on, leaned in to kiss her. Shiro politely averted his eyes.
After a few moments, he cleared his throat.
“Anyway,” he said loudly.
The two across from him finally broke apart, but that only brought Pidge’s attention back to Shiro.
“Anyway,” she echoed, like she hadn’t just conversationally detoured to make out with her boyfriend, “I don’t see why you don’t just tell Keith and Lance you want in their pants.” The serious effect she was obviously aiming for was ruined somewhat by the way her hair stuck up from Hunk’s fingers in it.
Shiro scoffed. “I’m not going to just go up to them and say, ‘Hey, I love you both and I want you naked in my bed, can we do that?’ No way.”
“Why not?” Hunk asked.
“Yeah, Shiro, why not?”
Keith. That was Keith’s voice.
“Keith?”
Shiro’s brain was running a little behind. He blamed the nunvill.
“I was gonna say, ‘guess who Kolivan let go early,’” Lance said, standing behind Keith in the doorway, “but I think this conversation might be more important.”
“Look, it’s the legendary flush!” Hunk cried, nudging Pidge with a complete lack of subtlety.
Keith and Lance were both here. Standing in the doorway not ten feet away. And apparently, they’d heard Shiro talking about getting them in bed. Lance was, indeed, turning an unfairly attractive shade of red.
“Um,” Shiro said. “I… really don’t know what to say. You, uh, you heard all that?”
“That you love us?” Keith said, at the same time as Lance said, “That you want us naked?” and then Keith swatted Lance’s shoulder without looking.
“Focus on the important part.”
“I am!”
“To be fair,” Hunk said with a sage nod, “they’re both important parts.”
“Shiro.” Keith stalked forward. There wasn’t another word for it; it was definitely a stalk. He came to a stop right next to Shiro and leaned one hand on the table by his elbow, leaning in with his dark hair and intense eyes and toned shoulders and wow, Shiro was dumbstruck once again by just how hot Keith was. The Blade uniform was such a good look.
“Yeah?” Shiro said faintly, when he remembered that he was supposed to answer.
“I told you I loved you months ago. I thought you forgot in all the clone stuff.”
Shiro stared up into those piercing violet eyes, feeling his heart pound at the look of wonder dawning on Keith’s face. “Never. I just didn't know if… if you meant it like this. I love you, Keith.”
With a tremble in his voice, Keith said, “I have been waiting for you.”
Then he shoved the chair back and straddled Shiro’s lap.
“Keith?” Shiro asked, startled.
“Are you going to kiss me sometime this century? This is a yes, if you haven't figured that out yet.”
Keith wanted to kiss him. Keith. Wanted to kiss Shiro.
He was in Shiro’s lap.
“Yeah, getting that picture,” Shiro replied. He settled his hands on Keith's thighs and squeezed them, smiling helplessly. “If you want me to kiss you, you're gonna have to bend down. Wow, you have nice quads.” He could feel his face heat as those words registered. “Um. Sorry. Fair warning, though: I’ve been drinking nunvill. Kissing me might not taste so great.”
Keith snorted. “Like I’d let that stop me.”
Then he was leaning in, and Shiro’s world contracted into the shrinking space between their mouths.
“Yeah, get it!” Hunk whooped, and their first kiss ended up full of muffled laughter.
“Oh my god, you taste foul,” Keith said after a moment. “Nunvill is a curse. No, that didn’t mean stop; come back here, I’m not done yet.”
Shiro was happy to oblige. After another few moments, though, he paused again.
“Keith,” he murmured against Keith’s lips, “someone’s missing.”
“You’re right.”
They separated — slowly, a bit reluctantly, because Shiro didn’t want to stop kissing Keith, but he also wanted to kiss Lance and that couldn’t happen when Lance was still over by the door.
“Lance?” Shiro called.
“Yeah?” Lance squeaked in reply.
“I did say both.”
“Get over here,” Keith ordered, though the way his eyes flicked uncertainly between Lance and Shiro belied his firm tone. “I’ve been waiting to kiss you, too.”
“Oh.” Another squeak. Lance was deep red in the face and wearing a disbelieving expression, but he gamely made his way toward them. “Wow. I mean, hope springs eternal, but I, uh, really didn’t expect this.”
“How?” Pidge asked incredulously. “How did you not see this coming? You’re all so painfully obvious.”
Keith shifted so he was sitting on only one of Shiro’s legs, leaving the other free for Lance, though Lance remained standing just out of arm’s reach.
“We’ve only talked about it ten thousand times, Lance,” Keith said. “It shouldn’t be a surprise.”
“That was different!” Lance cried. “That was, I don’t know, dudes talking about their crushes, that wasn’t— one, all those conversations were about Shiro, not about you, and two, that was wishful thinking, not Shiro actually saying he wanted us. I mean, you, sure, but me? ” He paused, hunching in on himself with a look like he was afraid to believe any of this was real. “You want to kiss me, too, Keith?”
Keith squirmed. “That’s what I said.”
Shiro reached out his hand. “Come here? Please?”
“I— yeah, okay.” Lance uncurled and stepped forward, placing his hand slowly into Shiro’s. Shiro smiled at him, trying to give his most reassuring smile but probably looking a bit lascivious, too, because Lance was delightfully red in the face and there was something about it that did something to Shiro and he really couldn’t help it.
He drew Lance’s hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the ridge of his knuckles.
“Pidge, help, they’re adorable.”
“Shut up, Hunk, I’m having a moment,” Lance retorted. Shiro smiled against the back of Lance’s hand.
“Sit down,” he murmured.
Lance shivered and complied, settling on Shiro’s other knee. Keith immediately reached for him.
“My turn.”
“I didn’t even kiss him yet!” Shiro protested, but Keith was already drawing Lance in with a hand on his jaw, and Lance, still looking gobsmacked, went easily. Their lips met right in front of Shiro. Lance’s pretty blue eyes closed. Keith made a very enticing sound. Their hands, aside from the one Shiro was still holding, went to each other’s faces, dug into hair, held each other close while their mouths moved together, all right there on Shiro’s lap.
Shiro groaned. “You guys are killing me.”
Keith moaned, then wrenched himself back and pushed Lance toward Shiro.
“Uh, hi,” Lance said when he fetched up against Shiro’s shoulder, wide-eyed and short of breath. After a second, he unsubtly groped one pectoral muscle.
“Hi, yourself.” Shiro grinned. His arm circled Lance’s waist so very perfectly, and Keith was a warm weight on his other leg, watching them with bright eyes, and with the glow of nunvill around him, he couldn’t think of anything nicer than just sitting here and staring at these two attractive, amazing, very dear people in his lap. Who both wanted to kiss him. And each other.
Okay, there was one thing that could be nicer.
“Fair warning, nunvill, et cetera,” Shiro said, tipping up toward Lance’s mouth, “but I’m—”
Lance cut him off with a kiss. A very enthusiastic kiss. Lance was handsy and eager. Keith wrapped his arms around the both of them and laid kisses on their shoulders as Lance tried to climb inside Shiro’s mouth in the most pleasant way possible.
“Oh, god,” Lance said after a few moments, “you’re gonna Stockholm me into liking the taste of nunvill, what the heck.”
“I’m very glad for you all,” Pidge announced, “but if anyone’s clothes start coming off, I’m leaving.”
Shiro flipped his middle finger up, then wormed it under the back of Keith’s shirt. Pidge threw her hands in the air, grabbed a guffawing Hunk by the arm, and stomped away from the table.
“Seriously, though, Shiro,” Lance said, “I love you, but you have to go gargle something. You taste like feet.”
“You really do,” Keith added. “It's bad.”
Shiro smothered his laugh in Lance’s shoulder. “Love you, too.”