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“Can I ask you about one of your earthlings’ tradition?”
Keith glanced to his side where Allura was leaning on the wall with a water pouch in her hand. She was looking back at him with clear and honest curiosity radiating from her eyes. Her white locks were glued to her forehead after a heavy sparring they just had, but even sweaty and exhausted she held herself like a princess.
Keith… not so much, as he was sitting down and desperately trying to catch a breath of sweet air for his burning, aching lungs. To be honest, Allura majorly kicked his butt and he was glad Lance wasn’t here to see it.
“Go on.” He murmured between long inhales and exhales, turning to his own water pouch and trying to put the straw in its rightful place. But when it was just near the plastic (or at least it looked like plastic) opening, it bent and didn’t cut through the material.
Great. His trembling hands didn’t help him either in this suddenly difficult maneuver.
Keith brought the pouch closer to his eyes and tried to poke the hole with the now curved straw, but it was still too hard to point it in the perfect place. Come on, he was just thirsty and wanted few sips of the water to soothe his tired throat muscles.
“Why do people interlock their lips together? Does it have a higher meaning or…”
And Keith one more time missed and accidently cut a hole next to the small, silver dot he was supposed to pierce.
“W-what?” Oh, shit, did he actually stammer while responding?
But who could blame him? Did Allura just ask him about… kissing? Well, it had to be kissing. In what other way would someone… interlock their lips with someone else’s ones? The only other option could be CPR, but Keith had a dark feeling she wasn’t asking about it.
Allura turned to him, drinking slowly the water and lifting her eyebrow.
“You know, when one person put their lips on the other’s ones and…”
“I got it, I got it!” Keith shook his head, trying to stop the princess from talking more. He was sure that now his cheeks were ablaze from embarrassment and not due to the exhaustion. Unfortunately. “You don’t have to explain it further. I know what you’re taking about!”
Oh boy, he did expect everything from today. He had expected for Lance and Hunk to make goo throwing competition to see who could actually throw it farther. He expected for Coran to clean the floor so good that Keith had actually slipped on it. He expected for Pidge to fall asleep during breakfast and put her face in her plate accidentally due to her state. He expected for Shiro to take care of the mess Lance and Hunk had made. He even expected for Allura to ask him for a small sparring (which she did). He didn’t expect thought to be asked to describe kissing to someone.
This question literally turned his world upside down. Not in the nice way. And it almost made him cringe.
Because come on! Why she had asked him about it and not Lance!? He definitely had more knowledge in that field – unless his bragging was all for naught (which could also be true).
Just why him?
“Sooo…” Allura’s voice was soft and delicate, yet curious when she extended that one word as she sat next to him. Even the way she kept her legs close to her chest looked magnificent and elegant. “Will you explain it to me?”
It was happening. Keith was about to explain kissing to his alien friend. If this wasn’t one of the weirdest thing he had done in his life (except, of course, for fighting dangerous aliens by piloting a giant lion to save and free the whole universe), then he didn’t know what could beat it.
At this moment he gave up, put the straw in the hole he had accidentally made and took a sip.
“Well, the thing you are asking about, or at least I think you are asking about, is called a kiss…” Or a CPR, but he left the side comment for himself. Allura could ask what a CPR was and it would take a whole afternoon for him to explain it and unfortunately probably demonstrate. And he wasn’t keen on demonstrating it.
“A kiss…” She parroted the word after him, putting her hand near her chin and nodding to herself. Maybe she was memorizing it for further purposes. Who could know in the end? “Does this kiss thing have a higher purpose?”
“Usually it is a sign of affection.” Gosh, could his throat get tighter? He could feel the fire in his cheeks and somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Red laughing at him and his failed attempts at being a walking dictionary. He never had signed himself for that job! “Like… when you really, really like someone you kiss them to show them your true feelings.” Was it right? Keith wasn’t sure. He never had kissed anyone in his entire life.
Allura furrowed her eyebrows in very concerned way. It actually looked like she tried to remember something.
“Does it mean that only people who really, really like each other are doing this kiss thing?” She turned to him still with this field of wrinkles between her eyebrows.
“Kiss is also a verb.” Keith commented. He wasn’t sure if he could live through Allura one more time calling kiss a this kiss thing. Man, it was… scary. “And to answer your question – no. Sometimes you just kiss someone to show that you care about them not in the romantic way, but then you usually do it on other places. Like on forehead or cheek. Families and friends do it pretty often… or at least I think they do.”
He had a vague memory of his mom kissing his forehead goodnight, but it was long time ago and now the only thing left was a fuzzy feeling somewhere at the back of his mind, hidden under layers of old and dusty memories.
“You never kissed anyone?” Keith asked instead when Allura wasn’t responding for quite some time. This kind of troubled look didn’t want to leave her face either.
She glanced at him and crossed her wrists, hugging her legs close to herself.
“No, I don’t think so. On Altea we never… kissed each other.” She said, but very unsteadily, like she tasted the word on her tongue. “When we wanted to show our respect and real feelings we would touch each other’s heart.”
“Wait, like literally?”
Allura chuckled, probably amused by the surprised look on Keith’s face.
“No, doofus, by our mental bond. This was… is the sign of deep trust between our people.” She corrected herself with a fond smile, resting her head on her knees and looking at the training room’s wall in front of them, but Keith had a feeling she was staring at the world stretching far away behind those walls.
“Sounds…” Painful? Weird? “Nice…”
Allura giggled and turned to him, putting the straw back in her mouth.
“You should try doing it during your mental training.”
“How about no.” Touching someone’s heart didn’t sound like a great idea. Touching Lance’s heart sounded like a terrible idea even. He might get some of Lance’s germs on himself by it. No, thank you.
Allura chuckled one more time and the wrinkles on her forehead softened for a second or two, but quickly returned doubled in size.
“How does it feel then? How does kissing someone feel?”
At that Keith felt his blush returning tenfold, ruling over his burning skin on the cheeks. He hoped he didn’t have to explain the blood rush to her.
“Well… you know… I’m… to be honest…” Ah, fuck it. “I’m actually not the best person to describe it.” He said, reaching with his hand to the back of his head and scratching nervously the skin there.
“Why?” She blinked, but unfortunately didn’t back away from her question. Damn.
“I’ve never kissed anyone.” He glanced away for a moment. “I never had this special someone special for me to kiss them.”
Allura hummed gently under her nose and looked away, but didn’t comment his lack of experience (for what he was glad). And Keith spoke the honest truth. He never was interested in anyone. His love life was more deserted and dry than Ténéré desert. And he kind of felt comfortable with it.
Till this moment, that is.
Princess sighed and then stood up, crushing the pouch in her hands and brushing sweat away from her neck.
“Well thank you for answering my questions then, Keith. It was a very… fruitful lesson for me.” She turned to him, smiling in gratitude.
“No problem.” Keith muttered back, even though all his organs were twisting in discomfort and screaming for some release from this tension – for example kicking some robot could do the trick and loosen up his muscles and mind.
Allura turned around, but before she was even able to make another step, she was looking back one more time.
“Mind answering one more question for me… I promise it will be the last one.” She glanced to her side hesitantly.
Something in the way she averted his gaze wasn’t too good in Keith’s opinion, but he didn’t want to dig too much into it. It was just a bad feeling. Only that. And he definitely hoped nothing more than it.
“Knock yourself out.”
At the statement she tilted her head, but quickly returned to the reality with a small shake of it.
“Are you supposed to cry during kissing?” Then like she said something she shouldn’t have, Allura quickly shook her head with hands flying to her earring with which she played for a bit. “Or… no… bad question. What I meant is that… kissing should feel good, right?”
Keith was… totally taken aback by this question and it took him few second to grasp the idea – the concept or the real meaning of words spoken by the princess, even though she stood a meter or less away from him.
Swallowing was suddenly much harder than he remembered it to be.
“Yes, I mean, if both side are okay with it, then kissing should feel good.” Every spoken word now felt like a ton of bricks slipping away from his mind and crumbling to the floor with dull sound echoing in his brain. “I think no one should be crying while kissing. Maybe only from happiness.”
Allura nodded, frowning and looking away both in the same time. Her lips moved – formed a uncertain, thin line – and then opened. However no sound left her mouth, before she closed it one more time.
She looked… lost.
And then it came to Keith’s mind that it was unusual for Allura or Coran to ask them questions about Earth and its traditions without some kind of base – usually it was one of the paladins mentioning or doing something in front of the Alteans, which was new and uncommon for them.
So did it mean that someone spoke with Allura about kissing?
Did it mean that she saw someone kissing?
“Did you…” Keith swallowed hard. He could simply drop this topic and live with his (not) normal life from now on, not really knowing what Allura had seen or heard. But there was something worrying him in her behavior and somehow he knew he would return to thinking about it during nights. “Did you see someone… kissing?”
Allura turned to him with wide eyes and half-opened mouth, only to quickly avert his gaze one more time. Guilty on the point. She brushed her arm comfortingly, still looking anywhere but at him.
This was distressing.
Keith could wait. Well, he was reckless and rash. He knew that sometimes he was doing things without thinking first (he was still better than Lance in this matter), but now he knew he could wait for just few more seconds, minutes, hours.
However when Allura turned to him with a focused and decided look he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know the truth or not.
“Do you promise to not spill it to anyone else on this ship?”
If looks could kill, then Allura could easily get rid of the entire Galra empire just by staring at them with such ferocity and hardness that it almost made Keith want to shiver. This gaze promised pain (a lot of it) and devastation in case of breaking the vow.
Keith wasn’t keen on knowing the pain hidden behind this look. He quickly nodded.
Allura sighed and moved to sit back next to Keith once again.
“To be honest it was bugging me for some time…” She started, but stopped and began to play with the crushed water pouch still in her grasp, smoothening the bent corners. “And I wasn’t sure who I should ask about it, but the real story is…” Allura took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts probably. “Few days ago I was going back to my room in the middle of the night. Like it’s normal, right? I woke up to check if everything with the ship and its course was alright. So it was already late when I was going back to sleep. Well, even late for us Alteans, because it was almost the middle of the night as I said earlier…”
Keith for the first time in his life heard Allura so lost that she was jumping back and forward, probably not even conscious of it. She was always speaking with dignity in the respectful and steady voice. Not she seemed like a totally different person.
“And…” Keith nudged, trying to redirect the princess to the right tracks.
“And I heard someone talking with someone else around the corner. And they both sounded rushed and kind of… I don’t know, angry or sad, or maybe both, so I totally didn’t want to interrupt them, so I hid from them. But then suddenly it all became quiet. And I got scared thinking that maybe they had hurt each other somehow, so I peeked around the corner...” Her voice became quieter. “…And then I saw them kissing…”
“Who?” Keith asked, feeling suddenly as his heart skipped a beat.
Allura glanced at him warily and then slowly hugged her legs close to her chest. In this moment she looked like a lost child, not a mighty princess – a leader of one side in an intergalactic war.
Her answer was whispered so quietly that he had to lean closer to hear it, but it still shook Keith inside.
“Shiro and Pidge. And you said that kissing should feel good, but they looked… they looked pretty sad. And I… I think Pidge was crying too…”
What?