Just as Keith guessed, Allura had began jumping into conclusion the same quintant. Conclusions that were very much correct, and formed beads of sweat at my temples.

"Are you crossing the boundary, Lance?" my sister asked me as we stepped as quietly as possible into the castle again.

I whirled around, my eyebrows raised in shock, and I made an offended sound that sounded like a strangled crow. "What?! How could you accuse me for such a thing? I was playing perfectly by the rules, and you just can't handle how good I have become! Wow, I thought better of you, Allura." I felt the droplets slither down to my cheeks, and it took me everything to not wipe them off.

Allura looked startled by my words, and she raised her hands defensively. "Relax, Lance, I was not accusing. Just wondering. Can't blame me to." Her eyes narrowed, as if trying to search deep within me, for any trace of lie. So I turned around, starting to walk through the corridors and to my room.

"Accusiiiinnngg", I yelled, only breathing out when I reached the door to my room.

۝ ۝ ۝

I had to play the searcher for three quintants before I was safe to hide again. By the third quintant, I was hoping that Allura's suspicion was fading away a little, and sure enough it did. She gave me no questioning look when we ran out to the garden, and she started counting with no dispute. I started running immediately. It felt like I was flying through the woods, and my feet leaped over the very familiar route, even if I had only ran here three times.

The cave was lit up today too, and I flew in, my breathing uneven from all the running.

"Guess who's he.... OH MY VOLTRON, YOU'RE BLEEDING!"

Keith rolled his eyes as he sat and opened up a metallic box beside him, rummaging through the content and picking up what he needed. A cotton wad, and a transparent bottle with a transparent liquid inside. A piece of his suit on the middle of his underarm had been ripped apart, and I had a clear view of the gash that had been formed and was releasing an awful amount of blood down the rest of his arm. The smokey smell from the fire had no power to overpower the metallic smell his wound was giving, and I wrinkled my nose.

"What happened to your arm... Oh mighty Quiznack, there is so much blood~"

"It's nothing, Lance", he muttered as he ripped apart his suit a little more to get more access to the injury, and he took the wad and poured some liquid on the soft object, and immediately dabbed the little piece of cotton onto the gash, no even wincing. He must have done this a thousands of times.

"That doesn't look like nothing", I argued, stepping forward and sitting down beside him, trying not to glance down at the blood, instead keeping my eyes on his non-moving face, wondering if it hurt him at all.

He didn't say anything, only gritting his teeth when he pressed the wad harder against his arm, but other than that, his expression stayed the same.

"Can I do something?" I wailed, feeling uncomfortable just watching him patch up himself like that. But what could I do? I had zero experiences with how to handle injuries, because there was always someone doing it for me. It could be just a little bruise, and I would immediately be pushed to the infirmary to get a ten minutes long treatment for just that little bruise. Sometimes I would even be asked to go into one of the healing pods, and I had to decline everytime, swatting the crazy suggestion away instantly.

"Waiting for me to finish is the best thing you can do", Keith mumbled, throwing the wad to the side when he was done, probing the box with his free hand again, and fishing up a bundle of bandage, rolling it free and tying it around his arm.

This was really not what I had expected would happen after me returning after three quintants. Oh well.

"How... How did this... happen?" I asked slowly, suddenly afraid that I could aggravate him if I talked too much or too fast. I had no idea how irritated he was, especially not when hurt. He could be holding back all explosive manners and anything could trigger him to let it out.

"Those damn Duflax's", he spat, tying the bandage faster and harder. I glanced down in worry, afraid that he was trying it too firmly, and he would stop his blood from flowing at all. "I was unlucky enough to bump into one and before I had time to attack it, it bit me." His jaw tightened when he tied a little too hard.

My eyebrows shot up. "Duflax's? But they're no way near this cave. If I remember right, they're maybe two and a half kilometers from here, towards the mountains! What where you doing all the way there?"

Keith drilled his gaze into mine, stopping briefly with wrapping his arm.

The answer clicked in my mind. "Oh. The unmentioned mission. I get it."

"Glad that we're on the same page", he mutter rather sarcastically, and continued to take care of the damage. I tried not to get affected by his astringency, but my ego was just that big, and my pride bigger, so despite the situation, I huffed and crossed my arms, turning away and looking forward instead, treating him with my silence.

I would never admit it to him, but the taciturnity was slowly killing me, and I knew that I would break the silence too soon. I knew my behaviour was ridiculous, and I knew Keith had every right to be snappish when a wound like that had appeared on his arm - I should have given him credit for how he was handling it. I was already feeling dizzy just looking at that cut -, still, I couldn't help my attitude.

"My tone upset you", Keith stated beside me, and I froze, and started to panic.

My head spun to the side, an angered surprise on my face. "I'm not upset! I'm just... not very comfortable with the sight of blood, that's all!" A white lie, after all, but I knew the whole truth couldn't go unseen by him.

"Hm", he chuckled, a short and grimly one, and he tied one last round of bandage before tucking the end of it between one of the past ones, stretching out his arms experimentally, but quickly pulling it back when it must have hurt. "I don't remember looking like an intoxicated fish meant being uncomfortable." The grin he shot me was almost enough to make me flop around the cave like an intoxicated fish. Almost.

"I don't remember a fish ever being able to get intoxicated. Get your logic right!" I hated that he could skim all the lies off of me and see the truth so clearly. I hated that I gave him admission to - if I had a bigger will, would this have gone differently? I also hated how I barely tried to cover up the truth, and how easily I let myself pour my emotions out. But most of all I hated how amusingly irritating he could get.

"I think you just started a new possibility", he said in an undertone, grin still present, eyes flinting perilously, making all my stubbornness unravel into feeble whispers. He clenched an unclenched his hand, as if testing if it still worked, and if it was to use. I sat completely still, looking away again, in an attempt to gather my thoughts.

I felt his hard stare on my profile, but I refused to surrender to him, and also because my thoughts wasn't collected enough to face him again.

"Do I make you angry?" he asked me softly, with the same tenderness when he pushed the knife against my throat the first quintant we met, and it confused me once again. I was dying to know what he was thinking, and maybe he was doing the same with me.

"Right now, yes", I snarled, still not looking at him. "Just give me a few ticks to calm down."

His laugh surprised me, and I couldn't help but to go against my own weak will and look at him. His laugh was short-lived, and glum, and it didn't quite reach his eyes, but the sound amazed me still. I felt like it would be one of those very rare kinds, something that I would try to obtain, but would only get it on occasional moments when I least expected it, always not even intending on hearing it.

"I wouldn't say that you're angry, actually", he mused, stretching out his fingers one by one before bringing them back into a fist again and then repeating the gesture. "More baffled. You're not trying to calm down, you're trying to collect your thoughts." He raised his eyebrow as if to ask if he was right.

How in the name of King Groggery the infirm... Okay, that can't be natural. Does Galra have superpowers unknown by us other confused creatures? Was Keith perhaps a mindreader that could poke into my mind and pick up every thought I assumed I kept in a secret place? Did he hear what I just thought? And what I thought after that?

Keith chortled, and I didn't know what was flabbergasting me the most; the laugh or his strange ability to know what I was thinking.

"Don't worry, I'm not a teaser. That's the maximum of taunting I will attain. I won't make you feel more uncomfortable", he reassured, but my muscles was still tense, and I let out a ragged exhale, now taken aback by a completely brand new reason. Maybe he would just proceed with bewildering me until my jaw just fell off completely.

"You..." I pointed a threatening finger at him, but nothing came out.

"You, were gonna show me what a friend is", Keith reminded with the corner of his mouth turned upwards. "Might want to cool your head down before you start."

"You malformed flan-bil-diplor", I finally said, my eyes contracting into small slits as I glared at him, trying to emit as much hatred as I could, furious that he had such a power over me.,

My chest was moving quickly, and I balled my hands into fists, breathing superficially. I was more angry with myself than him, because I let him overpower me in such a way, and he didn't even seem to mind that he did.

Keith remained silent though, probably giving me time to get my pride in place again, but the smirk playing on his lip made the situation a little bit harder. I quickly tried to build the moat around my mind so it wouldn't be as easy for him to reach out for my thoughts.

"Well...", I finally said, or more like breathed out. "First step in this prospective friendship, to get to know each other, of course. It's easier to tolerate you if I know you better."

"Easier to keep your thoughts in check too then, I suppose." I knew he was referring to earlier conversations, and it made my blood boil.

"Hey, wipe your mouth...", I said and stretched out my arms to point at the corner of his mouth, that stayed up. My indexfinger was dangerously close to his face "...there's still a tiny bit of bullshit on your lips..."

It happened so fast; he moved, and the next second my wrist was in his functional hand, held by a death grip, and I stilled, horrified by the sudden action. His grin remained but his gaze got piercing. The heat his eyes held was nothing compared to the burning mark his hand left on my exposed skin, and he probably wasn't even aware of it. The smokey smell could be from the fire besides us or the invisible mark on my wrist.

"Heh, how funny. Are you always this amusing, or was today an special occasion?" There was something harsher implied into his words, something I didn't want to find out. I imagined how my skin frizzled under his touch, and I threw a jittery look at my hand, hoping that he could sense that he was frying my wrist with his bare hand.

Luckily, he let go, and I let out my breathe through my nose, bringing my hand back to me as I started to massage the spot his hand was on, biting my lip and blinking furiously at him.

His smile had vanished, for a reason I couldn't know, and he looked down at his hand in wonder, his lips moving slightly but nothing coming out of his mouth. At least, nothing I could hear. When he wasn't looking, I took my time to study his face more carefully, seeing that he looked very wan today, probably from the blood-loss, and my contrition grew remarkably fast. This guy had just been bitten by a Duflax, for crying out loud, and here I decided it was time to behave like a jerk. I wanted to flick my own head but the shock from earlier events was paralyzing me, so I couldn't do anything more than to just gawk at him.

"So... back to the prospective friendship", he uttered lowly. "I feel like you should be the first one to say something about yourself, since, you know, I told you so many things the other day, even when I shouldn't have."

"Y-yeah...", I stuttered but my mind was too absent to produce more words for me to say.

"What's your favorite color, Lance?"

The easy question caught me off guard, and I blinked again. "What?"

"I'm asking you questions, just like you did with me. What's your favorite color?"

My lips felt chapped, and I shivered over nothing. "B... B-blue..." I couldn't deny it now; I was his rag doll, and everytime he spoke, he seemed to pull the strings that was attached to my body.

"Morning or night person?" Keith leaned in closer to me, and I wanted to believe that the closeness - which weren't even that close (I knew he kept his distance) - didn't affect my body in certain ways, but I was no good liar, especially not to myself.

"Um... I don't know. I sleep a lot, but I'm still quite tired early in the night. So... my answer is... sleep?"

He smiled. "Hm, okay then... What could you give a thirty minutes long presentation on with absolutely no preparation?"

I didn't hesitate to answer: "Porbably why you shouldn't pour in milk first when making cereal and my very low self esteem."

Keith's eyes twinkled in wonderment, probably trying to ignore the last part for awkward purposes. "Would you still be my friend if I said that I poured the milk first?"

I wrinkled my nose and grimaced. "I might have to contemplate on that."

He chuckled softly. "How do you even know about cereal? I believe that Altea hasn't established something like that yet."

"My human friends brings me some whenever they visit us. They're quite the explorers, always traveling and stuff. They brought a lot of cereal from Earth, as their breakfast, but since they offered me some one quintant I can't help but to plunder them of it nowadays. It's amazing, really, and I always get milk from my cow Kaltenecker. And eventually I developed an opinion about the ways of eating cereal. I may not now enough about it to, but still it feels awfully right to pour the milk first. "

I inhaled sharply after my rambling, hoping that any of that made some sense.

He still smiled, all the wonderment withdrawn.

I cleared my throat. "I suppose you had a lot of cereal on Earth?"

His eyes dulled for a moment, but he held the smile. "Not really. I preferred sandwiches."

Relief washed over me, glad that he didn't go all gloomy on me. "Oh, yeah. Sandwich. I've heard about that. Never tried it, tho."

"Where'd you get a cow from, anyways?" Keith asked me.

"From the space mall. I visited this earth store and the owner got so overly happy that I bought something that he gave me his cow, saying it was included. But I must say, when my humans friends taught me to milk it, I was quite repelled by it. Allura and Coran still can't handle it. They're absolutely horrified of Kaltenecker."

He sniggered at my words, moving his fingers again, as if his arm was going numb from not moving for so long. "Cows can be horrifying creatures, I can agree." And from there on, we started our very long discussion about cows.

۝ ۝ ۝

I didn't know how much time had passed when we finally put an end to our conversation; it all started with cows, which led us to more milk, which linked to milkshakes, and eventually brought us to pancakes. I tried to picture a food like that inside my head, but all I could come up with was something that resembled a light, mashed, moldy buttcheek. It didn't seem as anything appetizing to me, so I stuck with cereal.

The last traces of our laughter faded away - maybe it was the dim light that made us so jaunty and relaxed, or maybe it was the conversation itself that could be hard to see as anything rather dismal - and I knew I had to ask it, no matter how much I didn't want to.

I sighed. "Well then, my personal time tracker, how many doboshes has it been since I came?"

Keith's smile slowly evaporated when he heard my question, and his eyes dimmed with pother, his gaze absent for a second, like he just started to realize what situation he was in. The lines in his forehead deepened.

"Oh", he uttered hesitantly. "I... I didn't... keep track of the time..." He tore his eyes away from me and stared at his hands like he was trying to solve an arduous question, and looked frustrated when he failed.

The allegation struck me with awe, and for a moment, my words I had planned to say halted to a stop before jumping out of my mouth. They usually came as an army, all ready to dive into war. But it was if Keith's words were some kind of commando, coercing them to pause.

The blood loss. He must have forgotten to count because of the blood loss. There's no other reason behind.

"Oh", I echoed at last, fumbling for any sentence to use, but nothing came.

Keith's mien immediately hardened, and his face looked carved out of stone, freezed into a frown.

"You should be going now", he said and I sighed long inside my head, regretting I brought up the subject in the first place. "I'm sorry for keeping you here for an amount of time I missed to keep track on."

This time, the allegation angered me. "No no no. Nope, nuh-uh. There is no apologizing! I really don't..."

"Lance." The austerity in his voice was strong enough to make me falter, and my mouth hung loose, my words evaporated. "There's no time for that. We don't know for how long you've been here. You need to go."

You need to go. I bit down on my tongue. I hated that our rendezvous was so short lasted - or, it felt short for me, but maybe it was protracted for him - and I hated the plight we were in. Allura had already started to let go of her suspicions, and I couldn't misuse that asset like this. Traces of her dubiety could easily be awoken, and I knew that if I stayed here any longer, we would start off from where we left off. I didn't need any more holdbacks whenever I tried to visit Keith.

"I don't want to go yet", I whined grudgingly, but I started to stand up nevertheless. "It's so boring in the castle." It's fun being here.

"Don't let your insistence cloud your better judgment", Keith muttered bitterly, not looking at me. "Think of the consequences."

Right in this moment, the consequences seemed meaningless to me, almost not convincing enough for me to leave, but I knew that he would insists, and that my presence wasn't requested by him anymore. It was kind of ironic, in a way, that Keith cared more for the ramifications than I did, and no matter what they were, it had nothing to do with him. He wouldn't get affected by any of that. Maybe he just found this as a reason for whisking me away, and he couldn't care less about whether I got shit for visiting him or not.

"Next time, I'm responsible for the questions", I said as I slowly backed away, once again hoping that he would stop me in the last minute.

He didn't say anything, and didn't look up at me, even as I left.

۝ ۝ ۝

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