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Cool fingers press lightly into his skin, yanking him from sleep. A hand shakes his shoulder. He clings stubbornly to the last dredges of unconsciousness, desperately trying to ignore the disturbance.
“Keith. Keith. Keith, baby. Get up.”
Unfortunately, this disturbance cannot be ignored.
G-d, Keith fucking hates Halloween.
“What, Lance,” he groans, flailing around blindly for a pillow and smacking it over his head. Lance waits a second, allowing naive hope to bloom in Keith’s unmoving chest, before wrenching the pillow away. Keith opens his eyes just to glare at him. “It’s one in the afternoon!”
Lance’s smile is bright and beautiful. It’s too early for that kind of shit. Keith can’t tear his eyes away.
“I changed my mind about tonight.”
Keith blinks. “…Really?”
That’s…unusual. Lance loves Halloween. Keith has been grumbling about it for decades, but his husband has never swayed, dragging Keith gleefully to pumpkin patches and Target and various thrift stores to prepare for a night of handing out candy to demanding children and teenagers alike. Keith carves a stupid pumpkin every single year. He flies up to the roof to overdecorate and Lance’s fathoming. He dumps overpriced and overpackaged candy into a stupid novelty bucket. He refrains from tearing the doorbell off the doorframe in flinging it into space. He caves, essentially, to every single one of Lance’s whims.
He used to make entire nations cower by baring his teeth. What has become of him, truly.
“I don’t. Actually. Detest this stupid holiday down to my bones,” Keith admits hesitantly, dragging himself so he’s sitting upright. “I mean, well. I do. It’s dumb and cheesy and stupid. But. You love it, so.” He is suddenly sick to his stomach, realizing that all his grumbling might have actually dimmed Lance’s adoration for Halloween, his love for all the silly traditions. As much as he’d rather not have Twilight wannabes and plucky princesses stomping all around his house all night, he will endure it for the way Lance bounces with excitement every ring of the doorbell. He has for over half a century. He thought Lance knew that.
But thankfully there is no heaviness Keith can find in Lance’s expression, no sadness dropping his shoulders. His brown eyes sparkle with the same flash of mischief they usually do; if anything they glow a little brighter, shine a little more golden in the late afternoon sun.
“Oh, please,” he says warmly, flicking the bridge of Keith’s nose. Keith’s affection, however masked, is noted. Keith lets out a sigh of relief. “If the entirety of the western world up and forgot Halloween had any meaning then you would be smug for the next two centuries, you scrooge.”
Keith inclines his head. This is true. “Then why don’t you want to hand out candy this year?”
Too energetic to be still any longer, Lance brushes his knuckles against Keith’s cheek and gets to his feet, spinning towards the window and resting dramatically upon the frame.
“Well,” he says, hand brandished theatrically on his hip, “you know how Pidge can change her appearance for tricks?”
Understanding dawns on Keith. He groans, loudly, falling back onto the mattress and throwing the duvet over his face.
“No, Lance.”
His husband isn’t deterred in the slightest. “Yes!”
“I refuse. Pidge will refuse!”
“Think of Hana! You know Shiro has her dressed as a fat baby pumpkin. You know it, Keith. Think of how cute that will be.”
That will be cute. This is true. But, as Lance so often likes to point out, they live in the age of technology. Keith is sure he will get a slew of pictures of his niece in a pumpkin costume in the next few hours.
“I’m going back to sleep. Good night.”
“Sun’s high in the sky, Count von Count.” Lance yanks the blanket from Keith grip. His smile is wide and victorious when Keith looks at him, because he knows damn well the only reason he could pull back that blanket was because Keith let him.
He knows he’s won. Keith hisses at him.
“Come on,” Lance coaxes, leaning down to kiss Keith gently. “Don’t think of it as us trick or treating. Think of it as…stealing candy from babies! We’re taking the opportunity from some kid, no? Making less to go around?”
“That’s a horrible way to put it,” Keith grumps, even though it isn’t and it’s actually really funny and Keith is furious at himself for the laugh he chokes down. “This is so stupid. We can buy our own candy, Lance.”
“But trick or treat candy has —”
“Do not say there’s magic in it.”
“—magic in it,” Lance finishes, snickering. “And lots of it.”
He shrieks as Keith lunges forward, jabbing him in the ribs until he’s breathless with laughter and protest and pinning his wrists to the mattress. He struggles against Keith’s hold, uselessly, because Keith’s grip is stronger than iron shackles and he’s too weak from giggles to put up a fight. Keith rolls his eyes at his own smile at the sound.
“That is such a dumbass reason,” he says, exasperated.
“It’s real, though,” Lance insists. “The act of freely giving a possession —”
“—imbues it with the power of good will, yeah, yeah, I know.” He leans down and bites the tongue Lance has stuck out on him, smiling slightly at how quickly the witch relents, how quickly he melts into him. Affection bleeds from him in full, Keith finds. Sometimes so potently it changes the weight of the air.
“We can gather everyone up and look like a whole crew,” Lance mumbles against his lips. “Hana in her little pumpkin. Pidge can probably pull off a ten year old without even shifting. Allura and Hunk technically haven’t aged past their teens.”
“Allura is five thousand years old,” Keith grumbles. “At least. She’s an empress. She’s too dignified for this bullshit. She houses Ra.”
“She’ll think this whole thing is funny and you know it.”
Keith sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kisses Lance one last time before sitting up, letting his husband wiggle out of his hold and buzz around their bedroom to get ready. He draws a line through the air, pulling back the fabric of space with sparks of electric grin, and digs around the little pocket for a moment. It becomes quickly apparent as he extracts two intricately made, exaggerated costumes of a cartoon witch and vampire, that this has been the plan for a while and his husband had no doubts about Keith’s begrudging acceptance.
“I have more costumes for everyone else,” Lance says excitedly. “They’re stereotypical and gaudy and horrible. They took me hours. I can’t wait.”
“You’re a goober,” Keith says fondly. Lance beams back at him. “Let’s go get some stupid candy.”