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autisticlancemcclain · 7 months

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i want it to last forever (all the magic and fun at sea) -- beachisode zine fic!

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The screech of the comm knocks Keith out of his laser focus. He barely manages to dodge the blow from the Gladiator, aimed for his face, throwing himself to the side at the last second. He calls out for the simulation to end as the comm buzzes and crackles with static, wincing at the feedback. By the time it settles into something that doesn’t hurt to hear, he’s gulped down three water pouches and sips slowly on his fourth, catching his breath.

“No it’s — my — Pidge, let go, it’s my turn!”

“Nuh-uh! You get to announce all the time! I want to!”

“I’m just better at it!”

“Liar! Let — Hunk, I am going to taze you!”

The sound of their squabbling makes him snort. He won’t be hearing any announcement for a while if they’re like this, so instead of waiting around for instructions he just scoops up his comm, tugs on a shirt, and heads to the bridge.

As expected, the sounds of scuffling only escalate. Keith can’t tell for sure, but he’s reasonably certain that Hunk and Pidge have graduated to actively trying to claw the intercom mic away from each other. He thinks he even heard the buzzing of Pidge’s bayard, as threatened previously.

As he’s walking past the kitchen, he hears static again, and then a clunk followed by brisk footsteps. Hunk and Pidge’s whining quickly follows.

“Aw, Coran, no fair!”

“C’mon, you always let Allura announce stuff! We never get a turn!”

Seconds later, another voice fills the radio waves, prim and proper and positively dripping with smug satisfaction:

“All paladins please report to the bridge, we’re receiving a foreign call.”

Keith snorts. Hunk and Pidge should have known it was a lost cause. There are only two people on this ship who Coran blatantly favouritizes, and it is neither of them.

He sees the exact scene he expects to see when he walks into the bridge — Hunk and Pidge sulking in their chairs, scowling at the Princess and each other, and Allura sticking her tongue out at them behind Coran’s back. As Allura mentioned, a calling code flashes up on the screen, dialling into their non-emergency line.

Keith walks over to his own chair and sits down, pulling up the number to look at its diagnostics.

“You smell like a gym bag,” Pidge complains, wrinkling her nose at him. Keith considers throwing his sweat-soaked shirt at her just to hear her scream. She turns to Shiro, who has just walked into the bridge. “Shiro, make him change.”

“Do not even think about it,” Shiro says immediately, looking at where Keith has his hands curled around the hem of his shirt. He rolls his eyes and makes a show of letting go. “And Pidge, stop being dramatic. He’s not even sitting anywhere near you.”

At once, Pidge in Keith are allied again, if only to look at each other and roll their eyes as hard as they can as Shiro watches, hoping to make him as exasperated as possible. Judging by the weight of his sigh, it works.

They smirk at each other. Success.

“So what’s this call?” Shiro asks, sitting in his own chair. He presses a button on his dash and the ringing noise accompanying the flashing notification mute.

“We were hoping one of you would know,” Coran says. “The call came in ten doboshes ago. It’s not a recorded number, and it’s encrypted, so none of us know where it’s from. The closest star we can triangulate to it is BX-SD78R3.”

All three present humans stare at the advisor blankly. He holds up a finger, ruffling through some papers until he finds a folded one, unfolding the thing like a map and staring at it intensely, forehead creasing as he tries to decipher the rudimentary Altean characters.

“Ah. The Road Work Ahead Star.”

“Ohhh, okay,” Hunk says. His understanding is echoed in the rest of the paladin’s expressions. “I know that one.”

A couple years ago, now, Lance got fed up with all intergalactically recognised names for stars and systems. He was not the only one. Try as they might, none of them were capable of memorizing thousands of strings of alphanumeric codes, especially not when they were translated into Terran characters. Hunk helpfully described it as hearing the letters but only static happening in his brain. The codes simply didn’t /mean/ anything, the way that words did. The whole thing was just a mess, and it made it hard for the team to strategise, because the Alteans would name a star or system, and the humans would shrug helplessly at them until they pulled out a map or pointed out the nearest planet they recognised.

Lance, of course, was the first to handle the problem. He spent weeks writing out a list renaming every single star or system to something the humans could understand, with their intergalactic names right next to them so everyone could translate. Many of the names were relevant, and made sense — names like Arus for the Arusian planet, Space Mall Moon for the space mall moon, on and on — but many systems simply weren’t occupied, or didn’t have an easily determined name, so Lance just named them after random pop culture things.

Whatever works, honestly.

“Did they send a message?” Pidge asks, clicking through the lines of code of the encryptions.

“Nothing. It’s just a call.”

Hunk hums, squinting at the calling code like it will turn into answers at his behest. “Do we think it’s Galra?”

“It’s a possibility,” Allura agrees. “If it were a call to our emergency line, then answering it would be worth the risk — many planets are just hearing of us and do not know our proposed safety measures. Besides, that line has all of Pidge’s anti-Empire tracking and encryption software. This line not so much. If we connect it and it’s an Empire infiltration, then we’ll get tracked, and we’ll have to prepare for an ambush.”

Keith whistles. “High odds.”

“Yes. So we’ll have to come to a decision, then. I sent the mice after Lance, he should be here any —”

“I’m here! I’m here! I’m not late!” As if summoned, Lance comes barrelling into the bridge, soaking wet, nearly braining himself on the ground as he slips on water and fails to catch himself since the mice are cradled carefully in his hands. Undeterred, he scrambles back to his feet and slides into his chair, grinning sheepishly at everyone else. “Sorry! I was swimming laps and my comm was in my clothes. Plus the castle signal is iffy in there. I didn’t know there was a meeting until the mice came to get me. Thanks, by the way.” He turns the full power of his beam towards Allura, who visibly softens, raised eyebrow turning into something more amused than annoyed. “Anyways. I’m here now. What are we doing?” He turns to his screen and notices the flashing call code. “Oh, hey, that’s Plaxum’s area code!”

Before anyone can stop him, strangled shouts ringing through the bridge, he slams his hand down on a button on his dash.

Keith hears Shiro’s loud “FUCK!” from behind him, which usually would make him gasp really loud and shout something about virgin ears, just to irritate his brother, but his lungs are currently occupied with the breath he is holding in them, waiting as the call flashes twice and connects.

Luckily, the face that comes into focus is not a smirking Galran officer.

Unluckily, Lance is right — the jellyfish-hat-clad face of a grinning mermaid, blue-skinned and bright eyed. Plaxum.

Lance has mentioned her once or twice in passing. He’s mentioned that he keeps in contact with a lot of people from the planets in their alliance, the mermaid planet included. He had not mentioned that he is in contact with Plaxum so often that he has her area code memorized.

Something gross and bitter churns in Keith’s stomach.

“Lance!” Plaxum — and Keith has never met her, but Lance has made it pretty clear who this person is — shouts, loud enough that it’s clear even through the long-distance static.

“Plax!” Lance shouts back. His beam has gotten ten times brighter, if at all possible. “How are you?”

“Lance,” Shiro interrupts before they get lost in their conversation, “maybe ask what’s going on, kiddo. We didn’t recognize the calling code, we thought it might have been Empire. Scared us when you answered.”

The brightness in Lance’s brown eyes dim considerably. Despite Keith’s distaste for it before, as horrible as that is, he’s sad to see it go.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean — sorry, guys, I should’ve checked. I didn’t think.”

“All good, lad,” Coran assures, clapping him on the shoulder. “You did think, after all. You recognised the calling code. Next time let us in on it, but your judgement was sound.”

As he always does, Coran has said the perfect right thing, some of the guilt vanishes from Lance’s expression. He smiles at the advisor before turning his gaze back to the mermaid.

“Why did you call the Voltron line? You usually just call me.”

“‘Cause you lost your comm again, dummy,” Plaxum explains patiently. “You stopped answering after your last mission. I called to make sure you were alive. And because I needed to ask you something.”

Lance huffs, matching her playfulness. “Right, let me just ask Zarkon to hold off on attempting to blow me up so I don’t keep losing comms to laser fire.”

“It would be grandly appreciated, thank you.”

“Uh huh,” Lance snorts. “Anyways. Is that the only reason you called? You said there was another reason.”

“Oh yeah!” Plaxum shifts her gaze slightly, pupil-less eyes looking at all the team members. “You are all cordially invited to the Ice Break Festival!”

Lance gasps in delight. Keith is relieved to see he’s not the only one who has no idea what’s going on.

“I thought your planet was completely covered in ice,” Hunk asks carefully.

“For most of the year! But for one small portion, we are close enough to the sun that the heat skyrockets. Enough of the ice melts that we can swim to the surface, and that our plants can receive the sunlight they need to keep alive during the rest of the year.”

“And beaches?” Lance asks hopefully.

“Dozens,” Plaxum replies with a grin. “Actually, the Great Heat hits pretty suddenly, so it melts much of the ice around the shallowest parts of the oceans in the first day, pulling the ice sheet away from the beaches. The water is freezing, but the air is nice and hot. We’ve never had land-dwellers on our planet before, so I don’t know how it would be, but you’re welcome to come a day early and try, if you like.”

Lance is not the only one to immediately turn pleading eyes towards Shiro. Allura has joined in on Lance’s wistful retelling of sitting by the beach on numerous occasions, having many of them on Altea. Hunk grew up on a surfboard as much as Lance did. Pidge has fond memories of visiting the Lake Michigan beaches with her family.

Keith has never been to a proper beach before. But there was this tepid little man-made lake in a provincial park in Arizona. It was hours away from the Garrison. But once a year, every summer like clockwork, Shiro and Adam would drag him out to it, kicking and screaming usually. As much as the water smelt stale and the picturesque sand was replaced with uniform grey rocks, he has fond memories of that, too.

“I’d like that,” Keith says quietly, among the sounds of his friends’ shameless begging.

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

Keith shrugs. “Vacation’s a vacation.”

Shiro doesn’t need anymore convincing (his softie ass never needed it from the beginning, honestly). “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow,” he says.

The team erupts into cheers.

———

Lance is practically buzzing from excitement. He’d taken off as soon as Plaxum had hung up yesterday afternoon, hollering something about getting everything packed. He’d been nothing more than a blur from then until late in the evening, rushing from the kitchen to the storage rooms to his own room and to everyone else’s room, too, making sandwiches for lunch and gathering towels and even digging around with Allura to find swimsuits for everyone. He’d spent forty minutes lamenting about sunscreen and how Alteans never invented it and how they were all going to get melanoma before Pidge had snapped and stomped off to go invent some. The whole thing had been very amusing, until Lance had marched into Keith’s room and starting bossing him around (“You can’t wear your boots to the beach, Keith! It’s the beach!”).

As the castle approaches the blindingly white sandy beaches of the usual icy tundra, Lance’s excitement builds in the air, and soon everyone is grinning, clutched onto their towels and beach bags and coolers and pails and volleyballs (or the Altean equivalent, at least.) By the time the castle just barely touches the ground, the anticipation is so great it feels like a balloon blown so wide and stretched so thin it’s a hair’s breadth away from exploding. Keith isn’t sure if he’s even breathing.

The second the ramp extends to the ground, they’re racing out the door, screaming with pure excitement.

“It smells like the ocean!” Lance cries. He’s legitimately jumping up and down in excitement.

“I am going to have such a good nap,” Shiro sighs.

“There are seagulls,” Pidge says gleefully. Keith considers telling her how much she looks like an unhinged toddler, especially with the giant hat Lance “Mother Hen” McClain made her wear, but reconsiders when he notices she is the one holding the pointy beach umbrella.

“Yeah, I’m fighting the urge to call her one too,” Hunk whispers to him.

Keith snorts. He follows the rest of the team down to the waves, carefully committing all the new sensations to memory in his head: the smell of the seawater, the burning sand beneath his bare feet, the weight of seven beach chairs in his arms, the wind whipping his hair all over his face. His favourite feeling of all is the tangible joy in the air, the almost sweet relief of a sunny, well-deserved break, where for once they are all sure that nothing is going to go wrong. It’s a naive assumption, and they’re smarter than it, but they leave their bayards in the bottom of the bags anyway, keeping their heads turned to the sun.

Coran picks them a nice spot to set down their things — close enough to the water that no one will lose sight of any swimmers, but far enough that no one will get wet. They’re pretty close to some rock and cave formations too, which will be a nice shelter from the sun as they say stretches on. Fun to explore, too.

The second everything is set down and settled, everyone gets right to whatever activity they’re looking forward to most. Shiro fluffs out his towel, has Keith slap some sunscreen on his back, then passes the fuck out on the sand. Allura curls up next to him, adjusting her floppy pink hat, sliding on her comically oversized sunglasses, and cracking open her book. Coran, Hunk, and Pidge bust out the pails and shovels and the blueprints they drew up last night to start building their sand replica of the castle. Lance straps a pair of dorky, bug-eyed glasses to his face and turns to Keith, sticking out his hand. On reflex Keith grabs it, curling his fingers into long, thin ones. It’s not the first time he and Lance have held hands (that was once a punishment of Shiro’s; something he would force them to do when their arguing got on his last nerve), but it’s the first time Keith feels his naked palm, rough and calloused all over, press against Lance’s soft and smooth one, no leather between them.

“Come find shells with me!”

Keith couldn’t even dream of saying no.

He follows as Lance pulls him into the water, stumbling after him as he sprints. Lance yanks him into the waves faster than he can process, and he’s up to his knees before the cold sets in, and it startles him so badly he laughs, loud and sudden.

They dive into the next big wave, and Keith forgets to hold his breath, coming up sputtering and coughing. Lance cackles, splashing water at him while he chokes because he is the worst. Keith is so painfully endeared that it’s actually humiliating, and to redeem himself he tackles him into the waves, revelling in his shrieking laughter and his later complaint of saltwater up his nose.

At some point, at what Keith imagines is Allura’s insistence, everyone else joins them in the waves. They immediately descend into a game of chicken. Pidge scampers up Hunk’s shoulders like the little rat that she is (Keith makes sure he’s out of biting range when he says that, and unfortunately does not expect a clump of sand to the head), Allura gleefully throws Shiro on hers, and Lance doesn’t even ask before climbing up Keith’s hip and settling behind his head like a particularly aggravating monkey (something Keith is happy to tell him) thighs bracketing his head and ankles crossed at his abdomen.

Keith goes so violently red that he’s genuinely kind of shocked that he can turn that colour.

“Squeeze any tighter, Lance, and Keefers over there is going to evaporate the entire ocean,” Pidge says drily.

Keith does not wait for her to get situated on Hunk’s shoulders, or for Coran — who’s refereeing — to tell them go. He charges.

Despite his brain relaying a constant stream of Oh God Lance’s thighs are wrapped around your head holy shit he’s sitting on your shoulders and he’s barely dressed his fucking legs are so long why are they so long does he have to be this attractive is that even possible what the fuck is the deal with that, he manages to put his full attention into going absolutely ham. He charges, dodges, leaps and bounds, intent on being the winning team of this ridiculous but admittedly fun game.

Obviously, considering who they’re up against, Keith and Lance are the first ones out. One mighty shove from Allura sends them careening towards the icy waves, shrieking at the top of their lungs.

With Lance’s calves a healthy distance away from Keith’s face, however, he regains his ability to function, and as such he thinks they accept their loss with grace. (Wherein Keith means they complain immediately about the game being rigged and dramatically profess how they are going to ditch everyone’s cheating asses. All in good fun.)

“C’mon, Keith,” Lance says, somehow finding their hands linked again, “let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

They run away to their friends’ teasing booing, sprinting to the sand and ducking past the rocks and out of sight, giggling to themselves.

“Oh, hey, look!” Lance points to a small pool of water surrounded by the same beige-ish rock of the rest of the caves. “A grotto!” He bounds over to it leaving Keith to quickly follow, sliding in as soon as he’s close enough. A sigh leaks out of him as he settles in, water up to his neck. “Oh, God, it’s sun warmed.” He turns to face Keith, flashing a smile. “Come in.”

Helpless to disobey and well aware that Lance could be full of shit, pranking him, Keith does. To his peasant surprise, however, it’s warm, but not hot, like bedsheets on a cold morning. Keith can actively feel the stress leeching out of his body as he leans against the rock.

“God, that’s nice.”

Keith hadn’t realised he’d closed his eyes, but he opens them again when he doesn’t hear Lance’s response, and quickly behinds to panic when he doesn’t see him.

“Lance?” he shouts, making no effort to hide his fear. “Lance? Where the fuck are you?”

Heart pounding, he pushes off the edge of the little pool, craning his neck over to the side, but he doesn’t see a mop of brown curls or a flash of white teeth or a long, flailing limb.

“Lance? Lance, answer me! La —”

“— I can’t believe they have these shells here, too, I mean —”

“Oh my God,” Keith chokes out to himself, hand pressed to his chest as Lance swims out from around the bend, eyes trained on his cupped hands. “Oh my God, I am going to smack you. Come here.”

“Huh?” Lance looks up from his shell, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He quickly understands when he reads the tenseness of Keith’s shoulders, the naked relief in his face. “Oh.” He smiles apologetically. “My bad. Saw something shiny.”

If it weren’t for the wobble in his voice, evident of choked back laughter, Keith would believe his apology. Instead, he glares at him, splashing him with an endless barrage of water until he pleads for mercy.

“Stop, stop, okay! I’m sorry for real!” He curls a hand around Keith’s wrist, squeezing, pulling it towards him so Keith can’t use it. His grin is wide and so so breathtaking. Keith can’t help his own smile in return.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Lance whispers when the water settles again. His grin has softened into something small, buttery and sweet. “Plax was telling me about this place. I couldn’t wait to bring you. It’s been all I was thinking about since we got the call.”

The horrible thing that had settled in his chest, that he had largely ignored since they touched down this morning, begins to dissipate. As Lance links their hands together, floating over next to him, it dissipates entirely.

“Thanks for bringing me,” Keith whispers back. He squeezes Lance’s hand, and he squeezes back, and the sound of their friends laughter echoes over the waves, and he’s warm and settled and happy, and everything is so, unbelievably good.

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