#lance thought you could only cook like this for like. special event days

[discordiansamba]

@a-deadly-lullaby replied to your post “Keith comes from a time before the war, raised in...”:

Hunk would either thrive at or take over Vrepit Sal's

​Hunk prepares a five hour lecture for Sal about THIS being why Galran culinary cuisine is so disrespected. Where are the herbs? the seasonings? Have you ever even so much as GLANCED at Dywl the Intrepid's cookbook? THE foundational textbook of Galra cuisine? This sad sorry mush tells him you have not!

#a-deadly-lullaby #oops! all galra au #hunk introducing his fellow Galra to some REAL cooking #pidge is delighted. she never knew food could taste this good #lance thought you could only cook like this for like. special event days #shiro got used to good food on Earth but he didn't know the Galra could cook like that too #keith: ...okay. I never really cared that much about food but I'm even I'm kind of aghast at the implications here

[fenristheorem]

Hi! can i ask you lance with a very motherly s/o? thank you

 You're my first ask! Thank you so much @marytheredqueen!

I was originally planning on posting headcanons in a few days regarding Lance and how growing up as an orphan effected him and his relationships in the long-term, so I'll add in headcanons about how growing up without his mother specifically effected him as well 😊

~Headcanons under the cut because these are long as always~

Growing up without a mother:

Oh boy

This is major ouch factor

Almost too much to explain

I said ‘almost’, not ‘it is’

And bear with me, really, because this is SO LONG

Lance and Valkyon were born in a volcano; hatched from dragon eggs and then lived in a nearby village until the time they decided to leave (based on what Lance said in Origins episode 26). There’s very little detail about the specific events, but it’s known that Lance was able to charm a lot of people at a very young age with his strength and self-confidence. It’s also known that he learned about and practiced his dragon powers beginning at a very young age while Valk never participated. It’s unknown if they told the villagers where they were from, how they were found and if they could even talk when they were taken in, but it seems that the villagers never knew about their heritage

Lance was raised by this village, everyone took part in teaching and caring for him and his brother. They knew everyone, played with all the kids, learned lessons from everyone. It was well known that they were orphans, but nobody thought ‘well, they’re not my kids so I won’t worry about them’. Lance and Valk literally had a village to raise them. They learned a lot of general things because of this, from people working all different types of jobs, so therefore Lance is well-versed (roughly because it’s a distant memory, but it’s still there) in a lot of general aspects of life. He’s pretty self-sufficient.

However, he had a village to raise him, and while everyone took care of him, nobody was his mother figure.

At first Lance wasn’t entirely sure why other kids had a mother and why he didn’t. Were him and his brother abandoned? He found it very endearing, but overall strange, that one specific male and female took care of certain kids when the whole village could raise them all together, like with him and his brother. Over time, he learned social constructs better and began to understand more that his case was a special one.

Lance realized then that he and his brother could have had the same things the other kids had. He could have had an actual home instead of floating between houses, he could have had an actual adult to cook meals for him each night, who would learn his specific tastes over time and treat him as a major priority. He began to learn that he could have had a mature figure to rely on when he felt sad, scared, overwhelmed or lost. Everything that he was providing for Valk, he could have had as well, with someone who had more knowledge about life and their heritage. In a way, Lance felt a bit lost. He had to think of everything when he was growing up, because while he did have the villagers to teach him lots of basics, he never had one specific adult that he could really connect to and ask all his really important questions to.

Lance began to realize what he’d been missing. He watched the interactions between child and mother more, and saw how safe and happy the kids looked, and then realized that he would never feel the safe, warm embrace of a mother who would love him unconditionally and without question.

And then he realized that his relationship with the villagers, while nice, could never truly fulfill his biological need to have a mother

Suddenly he had a painful hole in his chest every day

But he kept moving on, because he had been fine so far without

He was sad and disappointed by the fact that he would never experience having a mother, but he realized that he at least had the villagers to give him the basic skills in life. It wasn’t the same, but it could have been worse.

So he grew more, watched out for Valk and worked hard for every scrap of reward he gained in life. He came from humble beginnings.

But one day he felt a bit different, and by the end of the week he realized he had specific abilities that none of the other villagers seemed to have.

He decided to practice with these abilities, learn how they work, as he must have gained them from his heritage and, therefore, they’re the only part of his parents that he’ll possibly ever know. He kept it a secret, realizing that his powers could be used in many ways, hoping to someday surprise the villagers and defend them in their darkest hours; to show them that something good became of him because they helped him.

And then he learned about what his heritage is

Talking to a village elder, he realized that his powers aligned perfectly with the legendary dragons, so he inquired about what happened to them. Realizing their noble downfall, he learned the first thing about his mother and his people that would stay with him forever. He now aspired to make them proud, even if they weren’t with him.

Lance took to harsh training after that. Staying up late into the night, practicing all that he’s learned about basic life skills, but also alchemy, spells, rituals, and his abilities. He never told anyone his heritage, and he urged Valk to keep it a secret, too; you never know what dangers could lurk around two young, inexperienced dragons if the world knew about their heritage. However, Lance still practiced heavily, and the first time he managed a successful transformation into his dragon form, while messy and very tiring, he felt as thought some part of him was right. He finally felt closer to his family. But the effects of not having a mother would always stick with him

Time passed. Lance and Valkyon found the Guard of El, and Lance found a very comfortable position as Chief of the Obsidian Guard. He was one of the leader’s right-hand-men, nearly indestructible, the greatest warrior in the guard and the protector of the good and innocent. He was proud of himself, Valk was proud for him, he had everything, could have any woman, everyone loved him. It was the village but better, because he could uphold and defend what his family, his people, his mother had sacrificed themselves for.

And then reality hit him hard

He discovered a horrible truth; him and his brother weren’t the last surviving dragons, and the guard was hunting them down

Now beemoov never specifies anything of how Lance found out, why there were surviving dragons when allegedly all of them sacrificed to create Eldarya, etc. but I have a headcanon of my own on how he found out (and frankly his whole past in general). It deviates a bit from canon but at least it’s a nearly full backstory (I’ll write about it if anyone requests it)

So when Lance found out this truth he never felt more grateful that he decided to keep his heritage a secret. And he pressed Valk to keep it a secret even more, in fear that his brother may not take him seriously.

This discovery turned Lance around. Suddenly he was feeling sick to his stomach. He felt blind. Were his people angry at him for defending the people who live within the realm they created? Possibly. After all, they all fought each other. He felt lonely again; and he didn’t have his mother to guide or hold him in this time of fear.

Lance began to realize that he was looking through rose colored glasses. He began to realize that few people acknowledged the dragons’ sacrifice anymore, and instead the point of the guard was to shove their nose in others’ problems, problems that hurt each other after the dragons sacrificed to keep them safe, and the guard seemed to use violence at times as a solution to these already-violent issues.

Ok, I’ve been deviating from the original idea of growing up without a mother, but I promise this is important.

Lance felt disrespected at this realization; for his people, for his parents. How dare they destroy each other when the dragons sacrificed themselves to avoid that?

How dare he help them in that by acting for the guard?

Suddenly his mother’s sacrifice seemed worthless

Suddenly he grew up without a mother for nothing

Suddenly he was no longer noble, like his people, because he was helping to hurt the people the dragons died for

His whole life - screwed up from the beginning and left lonely and scared with so much responsibility - was for absolutely nothing.

He couldn’t stay there anymore, and he couldn’t look at himself anymore

He faked his death, and decided that the crystal had to be dealt with, and so the long, lonely road driven by hurt, loneliness and a desire for revenge began, because certainly the fairies of Eldarya no longer deserved the precious gift of life from the dragons. They did nothing but hurt each other, so why did they deserve it now?

And he wasn’t afraid to die in this quest if it guaranteed his success, because after helping the fairies in their destruction, he didn’t deserve the gift of life from the dragons, his people, his mother, either.

And then it got worse

Instead of succeeding, he took away the last of his family that he had

Suddenly he realized how much the gift of life is worth

Suddenly the hole in his heart, opened first long ago when he realized he would never have a mother, re-opened from the ice that froze it over for his sake

He realizes now, that just because he felt he had a valid point, he ended up worse than the fairies of Eldarya. None of them killed their own family in their own ambitions, none of them sought to destroy Eldarya. They fought to protect their families and people, like him, but they didn’t kill their own family

He resigns, numb from shock that he could ever do such a thing on impulse, and allows himself to be taken prisoner

He asks only one thing - he wants to help bury his brother. Maybe it will provide closure and begin the path to some sort of change from what just happened

No? Well... it’s not like he deserves that honor anyways

The take-away from this whole spiel is that Lance grew up with a tragic past and it all snowballed into a lashing out of anger and disappointment upon realizing one fact, and this could have been very different if he had a mother. He would have had a closer relationship with others, he would have known how to nurture others better, how to possibly work through his emotions better rather than jumping into different situations immediately because he feels a certain way. He missed out on many vital life lessons that he should have learned, but didn’t. And while a village to take care of a child is nearly always beneficial, the child still needs it’s parents. A village is not a substitute for parents, it’s an extra teacher.

Due to this, Lance will always be different from others. He had to be self-sufficient, he had to take care of his brother, he had to be the rock, he had to be curious. It was the only way he could truly assure his and his brother’s survival, because they needed to be prepared in case the villagers decided to make them leave. Why? Who knows, but they didn’t have their parents, so clearly they could always lose everything they have, even when what they have is so little

Overall, I believe Lance is very smart, professional and strives to be better everyday, especially in A New Era, but he’ll never truly grasp the understanding of having close personal relationships. He can hang out with others, have a bit of a laugh, but he’ll never really rely on anyone, he’ll always have a back-up plan, a second way out. In a way, he’s always planning for the possibility that everything could fall apart and be taken from him, even things that he never knew he had or should have, so he’ll always be distanced from everyone. He can play the part of ‘perfect Chief of Obsidian and greatest warrior’, but he will always have a hard time understanding how to maintain a close relationship, because the only person he was ever actually close with was Valkyon, and he’s gone now

Perhaps if he had his mother as a guide, a teacher, a brick house in the storm of life, he would have perceived things differently and things never would have ended up like this

Lance with a very motherly partner:

i proMISE THIS WON’T BE AS LONG AS THE FIRST HEADCANON

Firstly I want to give a quick overview of what I perceive to be a ‘very motherly’ S/O - Being motherly suggests that someone acts upon maternal instincts, and maternal instincts differ from person to person. However, seeing as this ask requests a very motherly S/O, I’m taking a lot of the major aspects about maternal instincts, and what is typically seen in a mother and a motherly S/O, and writing them all within one person. So while there are many motherly partners and people, many of them are motherly in specific ways and are a bit less so in other ways, but again; very motherly S/O = putting as many major points as possible into one person. I originally wanted to write specific traits under their own bullets, but they just merge so much with each other to the point that it’s easier to just describe the general relationship. Hopefully readers who love Lance find a bit of themselves within some of the traits that I provide 😊

Lance didn’t originally intend to get this attached. He enjoyed her company, found it endearing that she worried about him despite his past actions, and found it even more endearing and amusing that she worried about him getting hurt on missions (you know, he’s known as the best warrior in the guard for a reason). However, something about how she treated him struck a chord in him. The villagers he grew up with were never this worried about him... they always just let him do his thing without much bothering. But her... she brought back to surface a deep chasm of mixed emotions that he thought he had forgotten. He realized in time that, while he likes when others depend on him and look up to him, it’s also quite nice for him to have a bit of a break. He begins to notice that he spends so much time trying to provide for others that he forgets to take care of himself sometimes. Suddenly it felt nice to have someone look out for him. He spent so long alone, without his brother and with no one to watch his back, that he realized having a close companion is something that he craves.

And this scares him

He’ll withdraw a bit, try to press the fact that she doesn’t need to worry about him. He’ll be fine, he’ll survive, he’s been through worse, but she won’t have any of it. He’s so used to allowing himself to live only the basics in life that when she begins to tug him into trying to enjoy and appreciate his life a bit more, it startles him a bit. How does he do that? Does he deserve it? He doesn’t really think he does, or can. So he gets a bit irritated every now and again, his personality bristles a bit as he tries to stress that she shouldn’t worry about him. He doesn’t mean to be prickly towards her, but it’s just so hard for him to accept that she wants to offer something the he lived just fine without.

He softens in time, begins to wonder why she wants to offer care to him. He comes to her one night and questions her; her motives, her thoughts, her feelings

She explains that it’s just who she is - she worries - about everyone. She’s a caretaker, she wants to help provide, to help heal, and he doesn’t do a very good job at hiding the fact that he’s in pain...

He softens upon realizing that she’s like this with everyone - it makes sense now - and is then disappointed at the fact that she treats him the same as she treats everyone

Just like the villagers...

It strikes a painful chord in him again, but he’s more comfortable at least understanding her reasoning now... but he notices subtle differences in time...

She seems to check in on him more-often than she does with the others. She tells him to be careful on missions and stresses that she doesn’t want him to get hurt. She worries about every little thing to the point where he needn't bother worrying because she has it covered. When he does get a small wound, or in the rare case he falls ill - but it’s not enough to send him to the Infirmary - she’ll move herself into his room to take care of him. She’ll try to be more included in his life and offer new subjects that she knows more on because she loves to teach him about things and she knows he’s genuinely interested in learning new things

Lance realizes that he truly enjoys all of this - yes even her endless worrying and rants about how she told him to be careful

And when she tries to scold him in a fit of anger because she doesn’t approve of something?

Fucking adorable

He begins to realize that she seems to spend more time with him than with others, seems to worry about him more than she does the others, cares about him more than she does the others

So he asks her another night why she’s so adamant on this - why she feels the need to press all of this onto him instead of giving it to someone who will - almost for sure - be more responsive to this. After all, Lance doesn’t know how to react to this; why does she insist on doing all of this for him when he’ll be fine anyways?

She admits that she enjoys his company, that providing moments of happiness during the day makes her happy as well, and that she admired his sturdiness in the whirlwind of life, but knows it can be tiring, and she enjoys being his safe place when he needs a break

“Well what if I don’t want to be fixed or protected or supported?”

“Then why do you keep letting me care for you like this?”

That stops him

And then he realized; he can find it irritating, annoying, and even overbearing at times, but he really enjoys having someone to care for him in a way that he should have had but never had

“I know you grew up without parents, and without someone to really take care of you, so I understand if my actions seem very strange to you, but this is what it’s like to have someone watch out for you. I worry because I care for you...”

But the look in her eyes, the way she speaks in a soft - affectionate - tone, and how she leans slightly towards him, almost looking ready to take a step towards him but hesitating, all tells him that while she may be a very motherly person, her feelings for him run deeper than just friendship.

‘I worry because I care for you...’ and the more she cares the more she worries

The instant this all dawns on him, he finds one of his hands tangled in her hair, the other wrapped tightly around her small waist to leave as little distance between them as possible, and his lips on hers in a harsh, desperate kiss that reflects all the things he wished he had but never could

Nobody ever offered to care for him like this, nobody ever opened their arms and gave him the opportunity to collapse into them in fatigue, so why should he push this away?

It’s then he realizes that he told himself to control his impulses better. Who’s to say she was alright with moving this quickly?

But she doesn’t push him away - she pulls him closer and lets him take her down onto the bed, and although she allows him to take the lead, they both know that he’s the one basking in her presence

He begins to soften more in time. He begins to realize that instead of being irritated, it’s better to listen to, accept, and diffuse her worries and concerns for him by reminding her that he’s incredibly capable of taking care of himself because he has the knowledge and experience to do so - he’ll do his best to come home safe. And when he’s hurt or ill, he lets her help ease his suffering. She’s forgiving with him, but still needs to scold him and rant every now and again because she needs him to know that she really cares for him. He lets her into his life more, finds places to take her that will spark new conversations and listens intently

And over time, he notices he begins to pick up a few things from her. He tells her to be careful, expresses his worries to her, panics a bit upon finding out she’s in the Infirmary and then steels himself to prepare for the worst as he heads there to do what he can for her (although, unlike her, he doesn’t come bolting through the Infirmary door like a wild Black Dog before asking so many questions that one would wonder if he’s interrogating her). And it comes to the point where one of the two doesn’t need to move into the other’s room for a few nights to care for them; they live together now.

He does this all because he knows better now that that’s what you do when you care for someone

However, as much as he’s gotten used to the fact that his S/O can act very motherly about him - and has come to appreciate that he has someone who cares for him that much - he still hurts occasionally at the fact that he never had a mother. He never had the first caretaker that he should have had

His partner recognizes this once in a while, when it seems like it’s really bothering him again

“Are you ok?” - silence - “You can talk to me, I’ll always be here to listen...” - silence - “You don’t need to talk to me now if you don’t want, I understand, just know that I’ll listen if you need to talk it out.”

His piercing blue gaze meets her kind eyes, a soft glint of a mournful smile on her face. She knows he has moments like these; where he thinks about everything he lost and everything he never had and needs to take a while to mourn it all again. But instead of looking away again, as he used to do...

“I wish I knew her... She seemed so taken by her emotions at times, like me, but somehow she still managed to make the right decisions through it all... I just wish I knew her, had her as a mother...”

Silence

“I know no one could ever take her place, or teach you the full extent of what she could have taught you, but she’s still your mother. She’ll love you no matter what, she’ll encourage you no matter what. She may not be able to tell you, you may not have been raised by your mother, but you’ll always be her son and she will always be your mother.”

She hugs him, offers to make him a cup of hot tea and cuddle on their shared bed, and he doesn’t resist. He misses his mother, wishes he could know what she could have taught him, but as he settles on the bed and watches as his partner shuffles around, he realizes that his S/O is right. He has a mother, who does care for him, who does forgive him (hopefully, he can’t be sure), he just can’t see or talk with her

His S/O returns to his side, hands him the cup and lays against him, her shoulder resting on the headboard behind him as she wraps her arms around him and settles her head at his shoulder. He relaxes against her as she strokes his back, and it occurs to him that while he didn’t know his mother, she must have acted similar to this - caring for him and loving him unconditionally

It occurs to him that his motherly S/O could ease the pain and grief that he carried with him from the beginning, and it’s her natural personality that does so

I don’t think that second headcanon was much shorter than the first one, but hey, this was written with Lance in mind and there’s not really a quick and easy way to explain Lance and his emotions lol.

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[donaidk]

Lance Stroll - A special holiday

Thank you for requesting! Sorry for taking so long, I had to take a bit more off from writing than I thought before my last exam. I also tried to learn a bit about Hanukkah as I sadly didn’t know much of it before. Hope I didn’t mess anything up as my mind felt a bit mush while researching the answers to the questions that came up during writing. I hope you will like it, and happy friday 🧡

Photo source

Masterlist | Taglist/Queue | Request

Celebrating Hanukkah, while living by the F1 schedule was never really easy. Some years we got lucky, meaning we could spend all the holiday days together at home, without having to travel or celebrate in a foreign country. Still, even when it wasn’t the case, we always made it work. Usually either by me travelling to him or him coming home as soon as possible, so we could spend the maximum amount of days together. It wasn’t the best solution, but the only way to do it, without disrupting Lance’s career every year when our holiday and his races lined up awkwardly. No one would have been happy with him, if he always missed a race or two. Not even himself. He had too much passion for the sport to just give up chances because of his religion. He rather found a way to fit everything into his schedule.

This year we were quite lucky, having 5 days of the holiday free for Lance and also me being able to travel with him to Abu Dhabi. We also flew out both of our families, so we could celebrate together and wouldn’t have to spend days travelling back to Canada and getting over the jetlag. It was the easier solution from the two, and I could see how happy Lance was that his family was there for the last race, cheering him on and then also taking part in all the rituals. We had everything needed with us, set up in the hotel room just as we would have had it at home. It wasn’t perfect, but enough to be worth not travelling after the race immediately. He was tired after getting out of the car anyways, falling asleep almost as soon as we got back to our room, making me get ready for bed with a smile on my face. I really couldn’t ask for more than falling asleep and waking up next to him, getting on with all our plans for the remainder of the holiday the next morning.

The first time I woke up to the bed and blankets moving I thought it was still quite early, not even opening my eyes and just making sure I got back to the dream I was pulled out of harshly. Although I fell back asleep, the little sounds, soft music and delicious aroma coming from the kitchen did not let me stay in my slumber for a lot longer. Hearing the sizzling of the oil in the pan and smelling the mouthwatering scents flowing around the room made me sit up with a sigh, giving up on my plan of sleeping in. Still, I couldn’t stay mad for long, my lips curling into a smile as soon as I spotted Lance standing next to the stove. I knew that he was making our favourite, even though it wasn’t usually a breakfast food.

“ Morning! ” I mumbled into his back as I stepped behind him, hugging his middle with both of my arms. “ I was missing latkes for breakfast in the last few days. ” I added, the smile turning to a grin that I hid into his skin when his hand landed on mine, which were resting on his stomach.

“ I know. That's why we’re having it. ” He let out a laugh although first shuddered a little from how cold my fingers were against his skin. He was always like a heater compared to my usual body temperature. “ Although I’m pretty sure we won’t be eating anything else for the next few days. ” He let out a laugh, leaning his head on mine as I rested my chin on his shoulder. I had to be on my tiptoes, but it was too comfortable to make me stand normally.

“ Your mum does it best. I can’t wait to get back home twice my usual size. ” I let out a content sigh, imagining all the food we’re gonna have in the upcoming days. “ I could never say no to our family recipes. ” A sigh ran out of me at the speed of light, making me close my eyes and going back to standing normally. I just rested my forehead on his shoulder blade until he was done and we could sit down to eat.

After our meal we packed the remaining clothes and things into our suitcases, so we could leave the hotel for the little beachside house we rented for the holiday we decided to spend in Abu Dhabi. It was easier to spend time with family in a house rather than three separate hotel rooms. We would also have more room to cook and take part in our usual activities. We also made sure to get a house that had a pool, so we could relax a bit in the water without having to go to the crowded beach. That usually ended with someone recognising Lance, making it impossible to relax and enjoy our time there. It was quite inevitable right after a race weekend, with most of the fans who flew out for the event staying for a few days longer and touring the city. I couldn’t fault them though, we did the same just a bit more discreetly, without looking for celebrities everywhere.

The was just a 10 minutes taxi ride away from the hotel, getting us there just minutes before Lance’s parents and Chloe arrived. My family was a bit later, only arriving for lunch as they wanted to have a look around Abu Dhabi, which we already did prior to the weekend. They arrived in time to help us set the table and finish the last steps of getting the food done too. With everyone there it was a meal spent with constant chatter, leaving all of us tired and easily slipping into a content food coma. All the spots on the couches were taken up, as soon as the dishes were done and we could just sit around, watching something on TV. I was just tapping away on my phone, absentmindedly going through my instagram feed and liking a photo here and there, mostly from friends or colleagues, not really paying attention to anything happening around us.

“ I found some fairy lights and candles in one of the closets. We could maybe set them up for dinner? It would look even fancier. ” Lance tapped my legs, which were resting on his thighs as my body was turned towards him. I looked up immediately from the screen, debating his idea for a second. “ Or I can, if you’re too lazy. ” He rolled his eyes, making me shake my head as I pinched the skin on his arm.

“ We can. Maybe on the balcony? We could have dinner there if the temperature goes down a bit. ” I offered back, loving how his idea sounded. The balcony had a fantastic view of the beach that was lit up thanks to all the cafes, bars and clubs every night. It would look perfect with a background like that. “ But not now. I’m too full to move. ” I added, resting my head back, my next blink lasting longer than usual, as my eyes just stayed closed.

When I woke up it was the only me on the couch now lying down and with a thin blanket over my body. I could hear their voices from different spots in the house, making me stretch before truly getting up. Massaging the remnants of sleep out of my eyes I joined them outside. I was surprised to see all the lights already set up around, wrapped over the wooden fence and a few posts that were on the balcony. I heard as they suddenly stopped talking, both Lance and our dads turning to me before Lawrence and Dad rather walked back inside, leaving us alone. I was confused for a second, but didn’t pay much mind to the situation and rather just walked up next to my boyfriend.

“ This already looks perfect. ” I looked around, as I leant on the fence next to him.  “ The candles will just be the cherry on top. ” My head turned in his way but he looked quite out of it. He was looking down at me, but from his eyes I knew his mind was really somewhere else. I bumped our shoulders, making him shake a little before focusing back on me.

“ Yeah, I don’t even know if we need them or not. Maybe we can just leave it like this. ” He looked around still a bit confused, but I didn’t really want to ask about it. I knew he would bring anything important up to me. “ Maybe we can just see and decide before dinner. ” He added, pulling me to him and circling his arms around me when I rested back into his chest.

“ That can work. It doesn’t take long to set up some candles. ” I shrugged a little, watching our families walk around the house, engaging in short conversations, before they would join us outside. “ Pool? ” I asked him when I saw some of them have changed into bathing suits and shorts, letting us know what their ideas were.

“ Yes. It’s still too warm for me here. ” He let out a laugh, letting go of me but following behind as we entered through the sliding door.

Just ten minutes later we were already all in the pool, sitting around the edge just talking about whatever came up. I was always grateful that our families connected this well. It would have been a lot harder to spend time and travel together if they didn’t like each other as much as they did. But we had nothing to fear, as their personalities clicked quite quickly, and they liked the other from the first second. I would say it was usually picture perfect whenever they met up. Couldn’t have asked for more, truly. 

When I started to resemble a crinkled up foil sheet both Chloe and I decided to start preparing dinner, while the others stayed outside. After quickly toweling off and changing clothes, we were already in the kitchen, getting everything ready. It took them a while to crawl out of the pool, helping us cook and set the table when every part of the stove was turned off. Thanks to the Abu Dhabi weather we didn’t have to fear catching a cold and most of us just chose thin clothing. I myself had a short sundress that I took with myself and decided tonight was the right time to finally whip it out. It was perfect for the still warm night air and I knew Lance would love it too, as it was in his favourite colour. When I saw his eyes scanning me from top to bottom, I knew I succeeded.

Dinner was delicious again and really fun with the music playing lowly in the background. The sun already set when we got the dessert out of the fridge, and onto the table. It was while we devoured the donuts that I caught all of them staring at me, at different occasions, but they were always quick to look away, making furrow my brows. Still, I stayed silent, deciding it must be a coincidence as I couldn’t spot anything that would explain their staring in any way. I could just hope it wasn’t something serious I just didn’t know about yet.

“ We should take a family picture. It’s too well decorated to let it go to waste. ” Lawrence offered, standing up immediately to get his phone. We all gladly went with his idea, standing next to each other.

We waited for him to set up the phone at the right height and set a timer on it. He still had time to get back to us and step behind Chloe, who was standing next to me. I felt Lance move around a bit, his hand leaving my waist but I only looked at him after the photo was taken. What I saw was something I never really thought would happen that day. He was already on one knee, a little box in his hand. There was a huge smile on his lips, but I saw he was anxious, hif fingers moving around the box.

“ Y/N, we have been celebrating and getting through everything together for several years now. It’s impossible for me to imagine my life without you and I don’t even want to try it. I want you there always, whatever I’m doing and whatever’s gonna happen in the future. ” Lance started, our families stepping back a little and making it feel like it was only the two of us there. “ Will you marry me? ” He asked in the end, opening the box, and I could feel the first tears roll down my cheeks.

“ Yes. ” I nodded without a second thought as I knew for years what my answer would be. It wasn’t really a question for me after being there for eachother for several years now.

I could feel him push the band onto my finger gently, before enveloping me into a hug. I hid my face to his neck, the applause around us hitting my ears immediately. In that exact second, I understood our dads talking with him, and everyone staring at me during dinner. They all knew about it and still managed to keep it all a secret, not even giving me the chance to suspect anything. We had to retake the photo but I really couldn’t mind. I was too over the moon with the breathtaking jewelry on my finger, which held so much promise for our future, that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I needed a few days to fully realise what this all meant, and I couldn’t get time to pass quick enough so we could start another chapter in our journey.

#lance stroll #lance stroll fanfiction #lance stroll fanfic #lance stroll ff #lance stroll oneshot #lance stroll imagine #f1 #f1 fanfiction #f1 fanfic #f1 ff #f1 oneshot #f1 imagine #bydonaidk #requested #request #requested fanfic #donaidk #requested fanfiction #requested oneshot

[legendarysharpshooter]

Lost Prince Ch. 1

First, Last, Next

A03

******

Each shot hits the target dead on, one after another, unrelenting until he’s out of bullets. The shooting range falls silent. He lowers the weapon to his side and stares at his targets with a frown.

It’s still not enough…

“How do you ever expect to be a leader if you can’t even lead a successful mission?” 

Iverson’s words burn deep in his mind after another failed flight simulation. It’s not his fault Pidge can’t reach… or that Hunk gets sick. Well…. Okay, maybe he could have tried to fly like a sane person, but still… there’s medicine for motion sickness. All that aside though, he can’t even say it wasn’t his fault, because it was. Because he took his eyes off their flight path. He stopped paying attention to their surroundings to berate his crew...

It’s his fault they crashed. 

At this rate, he’s never going to make it into space again. Not as an actual pilot that’s for sure. He can’t even fly a fake ship…. Because he’s not good enough. 

Not as a pilot. Not as a leader. Not as Akiva’s descendent…. Not worthy of being a ‘prince’... Not worthy of the Black Lion…. 

Because at the end of the day, he will never be enough… 

A touch. A gentle caress on his neck has his hair raising. He touches the back of his neck, confused as he glances over his shoulder. Empty space greets him. He sighs, shaking the feeling off and turns back to the task at hand. Targets aren’t going to shoot themselves after all. 

He hears it as he begins setting up the next round of shots. Whispered words on a soft breeze.

Lance. 

The hairs on the back of his neck rise. 

Something dances at the edge of his vision. 

He looks around again, only confirming what he already knew. He’s the only one in the shooting range right now. 

“Great... “ he mutters to himself. “Now they can add crazy to the list of why I shouldn’t lead….” He looks around the area again with a frown before rubbing at his eyes. “Maybe I just need to sl-” 

The door swooshes open behind him. He jumps, spinning around and aiming his gun at the intruder. There’s a yelp and then brownies spilling to the floor as his friend uses the plate to shield himself. 

Hunk, his best friend and current roommate. A big, burly teddy bear of a guy, cowers behind an empty plate of brownies. Next to him and a couple feet shorter, stands Pidge; their crewmate. Pidge looks eerily similar to Matt, in Lance’s humble opinion, though he insists there’s no relation. Lance isn’t too sure but doesn’t have much to prove his theory. 

For all he knows, they could be cousins and Pidge just doesn’t want special treatment from the Garrison. 

Pidge looks up at Hunk unimpressed before grinning. 

“I told you he’d be here,” he says, smugly. Lance lowers his gun with a frown.

“What are you two doing here?” he asks. Lance huffs looking at Hunk’s cowering form. “Put the plate down, Hunk. I’m not going to shoot you.” Slowly the boy lowers his plate, un-scrunching his face into a relaxed stance. 

“Sorry….” Hunk says. “I wasn’t expecting to have a gun pointed at me today… or ever.” 

“Sorry, you startled me,” Lance replies, setting his weapon down on the counter behind him. “Now… what are you doing here?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Pidge asks. He sighs at Lance’s blank stare. “Well…. Hunk wanted to cheer you up with brownies but that obviously isn’t happening now.” 

Lance looks down at the floors with a grimace. Of course he’d ruin a present from his friends. They’re only trying to make him feel better and now he’s ruined it.

“How’d you even find me?” he asks before his thoughts can get any more negative. 

“Everyone knows you come here when you need space,” Hunk says as he stoops down to pick up the fallen treats. His face drops. “I didn’t think you’d be here though… especially after Iverson chewed you out like that.” The trio falls silent; Lance thinking over Hunk’s words; Hunk too busy picking up brownies, and Pidge thoughtfully watching the young prince. 

“Don’t let him get to you, Lance,” Pidge says. “Iverson’s a jerk and you’ll make a great leader someday.” Lance smiles half heartedly, appreciating the words of encouragement. It falls off his face just as soon as it arrives. 

He can’t even connect with the Black Lion. How is he supposed to lead his people? 

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees, standing back up again, full plate in hand. “Iverson’s just hard on you because he can see your potential.” Lance huffs, smile playing on his face. 

 “I bet you say that to everyone,” he says. Hunk sputters, nearly dropping his plate again. 

“No!” 

“Well… either way, we have a project to finish,” Pidge chimes in, adjusting his glasses. “And we can’t do that without Prince Charming. So maybe stop shooting for a bit and help us?” 

“Oh yeah…” Hunk says. “That’s the other reason we came. We need your help putting together the slides for our presentation tomorrow.” 

Lance stares at them, mind drawing a blank. What project are they talking about? He doesn’t have any presentations coming up. What classes do they even have tomorrow? A class that has a presentation…. Are they even in a class like that?

“Well this is embarrassing. He completely forgot,” Pidge mutters. He sighs, leveling the young Altean with an unimpressed look. Lance stares at him, lost on what they’re even talking about. He doesn’t have anything due tomorrow. Not that he can remember at least. 

“Can I tell him?” Hunk asks, shifting anxiously. “We’re wasting time waiting for him to remember.” Pidge rubs his chin thoughtfully before shaking his head. 

“A hint,” Pidge offers. “There’s a lot of historical events to remember after all.” Lance sucks in a breath, eyes going wide. 

Crap.

He forgot about their History project…. The very one he promised them he was working on. 

“You did do your half, right?” Hunk asks. 

“What?” he squeaks. “Yeah! Of course I did! Why wouldn’t I do it?” His nervous laugh has the hope falling right off Hunk’s face. It’s not his fault he put it off until the last minute… okay, maybe it is, but a report on Altean history is a walk in the park. He knows their history like the back of his hand. 

“Lance….”

“It’s fiiiine, Hunk,” Lance says, walking over to his friends. He turns them towards the doors, slinging and arm over Hunk’s shoulders. “We’ll just go back to our room and work on it there. I’m like… a walking Altean Historian, you know. We’ll have this done in no time.” 

Pidge and Hunk look unconvinced but follow him out of the shooting range anyways. At least they have all night to work on the final project. 

Besides, how hard can it be?

It was supposed to be a simple mission. Get in. Find the Red Lion. Remove it from the Galra…. Somehow. The Galra are keeping it under pretty tight surveillance, though, so even if he could get to it, he’s not too sure how to get it off the ship. It’s a simple notion, really, if it weren’t also for the fact that this was meant to be a covert mission. He can’t exactly draw any unwanted attention to himself.  

As it stands, the Red Lion’s holding bay is guarded by sentries and he doesn’t have the authorization to enter on his own. 

He has no idea what Kolivan was thinking sending him here…. 

“Yorak.” He jumps to attention as one of his commanding officers moves from behind to face him. “You know you’re not authorized to be in this sector.” 

“Sorry, sir,” he mutters. “I got lost again…” The Galra officer regards him with a look of disdain. Of course someone like him would get lost on such a big ship. Especially considering he’s only been here for a few days. The officer waves it off with a sigh. 

“Just try to not to get lost again,” he says.

“Of course, sir.” 

“It’s good that I found you, though,” he replies. “Commander Sendak has requested your presence on the bridge.” His eyes go wide, hand slowly dropping back to his side. What could Sendak possibly want? “Best not keep him waiting.” 

Yorak quickly salutes and turns away, darting off down the halls. He can only hope Sendak hasn’t caught wind of him snooping around the lion. That could only spell trouble for everyone involved. Hopefully, it’s just something else unrelated. 

Lance wakes with a start, chest tight from not breathing as his heart races. He stares up at the ceiling as images from his dream refuse to fade. They flash through his mind incessantly. He can hear the faintest rumble as he finally takes a breath and sits up. Across the room, Hunk snores softly, cuddling his teddy. 

It’d be cute if Lance could actually take a moment to focus on the scene. 

As it stands, the young prince is climbing out of bed and stumbling over to his desk. He knocks papers and notebooks off in his frantic search for a sheet of paper. 

The images won’t stop coming. 

Shiro with a scar across his face and a shocking spot of white in his hair. 

The shadow in his vision has grown more defined. 

He sees Pidge with a small, flying robot made of Galra tech. Hunk cooking some type of alien cuisine in what can only be described as a space mall food court.

He does his best to ignore it as he furiously scribbles on the blank page. 

A quick sketch of Keith with long hair and a mark on his cheek; by his side, a large wolf. 

He draws space mice performing tricks for a young, female Altean.

He scribbles five more before a large hand reaches out to stop him. 

“Dude,” Hunk mumbles. “What are you doing?” Lance blinks, and sits back in his seat. What is he doing? He stares at the pages before him. The images finally fade from his mind, lost to the depths of his consciousness. 

He rubs his eye with a frown and blinks. The shadow has taken the shape of a person, but still eludes his direct gaze. 

“I just…” he mutters. Something was pushing him to remember. To not forget whatever it was showing him. He needed to not forget. “I had to get it on paper….” 

Why does this seem so familiar? 

“I don’t….” 

What was he doing before this? 

A small gust of wind tickles at the back of his neck, stronger than it’s ever been. He shivers, brushing a hand against his neck. He looks up at Hunk.

“Did you feel that?” Hunk yawns, shaking his head as he moves back to his bed. It takes the boy a moment to process Lance’s words. 

“Did I feel what?” So… he didn’t then. Hunk would know what he was talking about if he did. It’s impossible to feel the air from the vents at their desk. There’s no way he’d feel something like that. Especially not on his neck. 

“Nothing… sorry I woke you.” So if it’s not the wind then it has to be something else… Lance sighs, rising from his seat and returning to bed. He rubs his eyes again, frowning at the shadow in his vision. 

As the young Altean, falls back to sleep, he’s hears the faintest roar and the quiet whisper of his name. 

Sendak, like most Galra, is large and intimidating. His ears give Keith the impression of bats, and his red, prosthetic eye always makes him feel like he’s being targeted. 

Even so, he enters the bridge and steps up to the Commander, standing straight with an arm across his chest. Sendak grins at him, sharp teeth on display. It’d be scary but Keith knows he can take him.

“You asked to see me, sir?” 

“Yorak,” Sendak replies, grin falling off his face as he looks Keith up and down. “I had expected to you to look…. Less scrawny.” Keith does his best not to grimace, but he’s unable to stop his ears from twitching. It’s no secret that he’s smaller than the average male Galra. He’s heard the whispers… that others thing he’s a half-breed. 

His mom is on the smaller side though, so that definitely helps curb those rumors. It would do no good for them to learn the truth…. That his father was human. He’d be cast out of the ranks much like others before him. He would be useless for undercover missions.

He’s worked too hard to get this far for that to happen. 

“Despite that,” Sendak continues. “You come to my ship with high recommendations.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sendak sneers.

“It is not a compliment, welp. Words mean nothing on this ship. It would do you good to remember that.,” he snaps before composing himself. “I have an assignment for you.” 

“What are your orders, Commander?” Keith asks. 

“We have a special… package being delivered into our possession. You are to escort the vessel to our coordinates and ensure nothing happens to it.” 

“Of course, Commander.” 

“Now go, before I change my mind about sending you.” 

“Vrepit Sa!” Keith says, saluting him once more before departing. Whatever he’s transporting must be important if they need an escort. 

Lance.

He startles, hands violently jerking the controls in his grasp. The ship rattles around them, veering wildly off course. 

“Lance!” Pidge snaps, glare at him from his spot in the back. “Try keeping the ship on course, maybe?” 

“Sorry,” he grumbles, taking a moment to steady his mind. Now really isn’t the time to be hearing things. It’s bad enough that stupid shadow won’t go away. He doesn’t need to be distracted with talking. 

Off to his left, Hunk heaves, face going pale. Lance huffs, turning his attention back to getting on course. They’ve wandered into a new area of this planet but he can just follow Pidge’s new trajectory. It looks like they’ll actually arrive early anyways. 

He’s totally got this. 

The ship appears as a small dot in the distance. Keith squints at it, wondering why such a small ship carrying important cargo is all alone out in space. Are they really that confident nobody is going to attack it? 

With a frown, he opens a transmission to the small vessel. 

“Attention, cargo carrier,” he says. “This is Yorak of Commander Sendak’s ship. I am here to escort you back to his location.” A screen pops up moments later along with a familiar face. He blinks, taking in the light blue skin, large white stripes and pointy ears of none other than a fellow Blade.

“Ulaz?” 

“Yorak,” Ulaz replies with the smallest of smiles. “It’s so nice to see a familiar face! How kind of Sendak to put us in such capable hands.” 

“What….” Why is Ulaz out here? Isn’t he a medic or something? Shouldn’t he be healing Galra somewhere? And what is he transporting that’s so important? 

“I have been tasked with transporting a very special piece of cargo,” Ulaz replies. “Perhaps you should come aboard so we can discuss in further detail.” 

Lance definitely doesn’t have this. He frowns, watching the screen from their simulation go black. Failure flashes before him in bright red letters. Pidge groans, climbing back into his seat from the floor. 

“Nice job, tailor,” Pidge grumbles, as the door to the simulator swings open. Lance unbuckles himself, sinking into his seat with a groan, trying in vain to ignore the heavy footsteps approaching him. 

“Need I remind you, cadets,” their teacher, Iverson growls. “That the purpose of these simulations is to complete them.” 

Lance huffs and gets out of his seat to be greeted with Iverson’s unimpressed scowl. He’s convinced it’s the man’s default expression. None of them have so much as seen Iverson show a different emotion. 

The young prince slinks over to join his friends in front of their teacher, frowning at the ground. 

“Why is it, then, that you three are the only ones incapable of completing even the simplest of tasks?” None of them have an answer to that…. At least, none that will be considered acceptable. It’s not that they can’t do these simulations…. Lance just has a hard time taking them seriously because he knows it’s not real. Simulations and real life are completely different. 

Still… another failed mission doesn’t look good for any of them. Lance can only imagine what his mom must be thinking. She’s going to be so disappointed in him. 

No wonder he can’t connect with the Black Lion…. 

Lance sighs, sparing a look at his friends. Hunk’s face is still pale and he looks like he’s trying in vain not to puke again. Pidge just looks frustrated. 

“You three will be pulled off simulations,” Iverson says. Lance’s attention jerks instantly to their teacher. Pulled off simulations? What is he talking about? “At least until we can reassess you all and decide the best course of action.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Pidge snaps. 

“It means, cadet,” Iverson replies. “That we have to determine whether you are truly a good fit for the program since your record seems to say otherwise.” 

“You’re kicking us out?!” Hunk squeaks. “Oh man…. I’m gonna be in so much trouble….” 

“You can’t be serious!” Pidge protests. 

“Well maybe if your pilot was able to watch his surroundings you wouldn’t be crashing so much,” Iverson snaps. Lance swallows the lump forming in his throat, eyes burning with unshed tears. Of course the blame would be put on him. Iverson isn’t finished though as he zeros in on the smallest of the trio.

Pidge meets his gaze unflinchingly; the two entering into a staring contest. Iverson sneers at him.

 “Or perhaps, Gunderson,” he says. “The navigator should have been watching the monitors more carefully.” 

“Perhaps, sir,” Pidge responds. “Blame shouldn’t be placed on one specific individual when we are a team and failed as a whole. Singling one person out doesn’t constitute camaraderie and instead perpetuates an environment of everyone for themselves.” 

Iverson’s lip curls back as he rises to his full height. Lance uses the moment to push Pidge aside. 

“I’m so sorry, sir,” he says, quickly. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. This was my fault and I’ll be sure to do better next time.” Iverson’s face returns to its usual scowl as he watches the Altean for a long moment. Eventually, he sighs and looks away from the trio.

“Get out of here, all of you,” he grumbles. The trio scramble to exit the space, Iverson calling after them as they go. 

“And don’t come back until you’ve learned to work as a team!” 

The transport ships ends up being larger up close than Keith was really expecting. Thankfully, that means he’s able to land his ship in the holding bay. Ulaz is waiting for him when he steps off his ship. Sentries wander about the bay, but otherwise keep a respectable distance from the pair. 

“Keith,” Ulaz greets. “It’s so nice to see you again.” 

“Why are you here?” Keith asks, eyeing the sentries. It’s a little weird hearing his real name after being undercover for so long… yet refreshing at the same time. Ulaz stares at him for a long moment. 

“Perhaps we should talk somewhere more…. Private.” Confused, Keith follows him out of the holding bay and through the halls to the bridge. Thankfully, the journey is short considering the ship is much smaller than Sendak’s. 

Ulaz turns to him the moment the doors slide shut. 

“It’s most fortunate that you were the one tasked with escorting me to Sendak,” Ulaz says. “I am transport a very important person for the Empire.” Keith watches him, trying to decipher what the Galra is talking about. Who could possibly be so important they need to be escorted in a cargo ship? Someone secret maybe…. 

“Who…” Ulaz sighs.

“Something happened about a phoeb ago,” he replies, looking away from the young boy. His face falls with sorrow. “We were told not to tell you for fear of how you may react… but I feel now there is no choice.”

“What happened, Ulaz,” Keith growls anxiously. What was so awful that they couldn’t tell him? Did something bad happen to someone? His mind reels with the possibility. Who could have possibly been hurt? 

Ulaz takes a deep breath before continuing.

“You must understand,” he says. “We chose not to tell you for the safety of everyone involved. You would have been compromised. Made rash decisions. Our mission can’t afford that.” He gazes at Keith, eyes searching his face for something Keith can’t quite identify. He’s not really sure how he’s meant to be reacting right now. If something happened that they chose not to tell him about…. 

That can only mean one thing. 

“Was it Lance?” he asks, dread washing over him. 

“No,” Ulaz answers much to Keith relief. “Shiro managed to get him away in time.” 

“Shi-” Keith’s eyes go wide, heart skipping a beat. He looks away from his fellow Blade, moving over to the wall for support. They got Shiro? Is that what Ulaz is telling him? How? He gets it now, why they didn’t want to say anything. He definitely would have dropped everything to save his former mentor. 

“He goes by the title Champion within the Galra ranks,” Ulaz says. Keith looks at him in disbelief. Shiro’s the Champion? He’s literally one of the most valuable prisoners in the Galra Empire…. And they’re delivering him right into Sendak’s hands. 

“We have to free him,” Keith says. “He needs to go back to Earth.” 

“Your mission is to remove the Red Lion from the possession of the Galra. Freeing Shiro is not part of that plan.” 

“I don’t care,” Keith snaps. “We can’t let Sendak have him…. I’ll just say you were shot down by rebels or something.” 

“Sendak would kill you for your failure,” Ulaz points out. “And if he doesn’t then Zarkon certainly will for losing his precious Champion.” 

Keith huffs, ears twitching in irritation. He knows, deep down, that he can’t compromise his position. Still… Shiro being here can’t be good. It means the Galra know of Earth. Do they know about the Alteans? Has Earth tried coming after them? Or perhaps they asked the Blade for help returning Shiro…. Who else was taken? More importantly…. How has Lance been doing without his bodyguard? 

“I have to get him back to Earth,” Keith says. “I don’t care if I can never return to the Galra. I’m getting Shiro out of here and taking him home.” 

“How?” Ulaz asks. “You know they’ll just track you back to Earth… and then what? All you efforts will be for nothing and Earth will be in the Galra’s line of sight.” 

“Well then maybe we need to take him home in something that isn’t Galra….” Keith replies. Something that he’s been tasked with retrieving. It’s a big risk and assumes the Red Lion will open for him but… it does solve the problem of removing it from the Galra. He’ll have to give him his position for awhile, but it’ll be worth it if it means Shiro can be home again. “Call Kolivan. There’s been a slight change in plans.”

Kolivan is just going to have to be on board with it. 

 “Alteans are typically a peaceful race. They tend to lean more towards diplomacy rather than turning to war. It has certainly helped the people of Earth over the centuries and assisted with maintaining overall peace,” Lance recites in a voice that is far peppier than he’s currently feeling. He’s just been having a shitty day and doing this stupid presentation isn’t helping. The constant breeze that only he can feel doesn’t help either. It’s practically full blown wind at this point and he’s about to jump out a window. 

He barely pays attention as Pidge recites his part, prattling off facts about Earth and what it might have been like if Alteans never showed up. His gaze wanders to the window, mind straying elsewhere as Pidge’s voice becomes nothing more than a distant hum. 

He blinks. 

The shadow in the corner of his vision moves. 

Confused he blinks again, and suddenly Shiro’s standing in front of him. He’s changed since the Galra took him. His right arm is made of metal and there’s a scar running across the bridge of his nose. His hair has a shock of white in it. Shiro looks at him and steps closer, reaching out to him.

Lance. 

Shiro touches his forehead. 

Lance gasps, eyes going wide as he’s suddenly transported out of the classroom and light years away from Earth. 

Wind roars around the pair, thunder rumbling in the distance as they stand together for the first time in a year. He blinks and Shiro disappears, leaving him in the hurricane force winds.

“Shiro?” Lance shouts, looking around frantically for his friend. The wind carries his voice away and grows stronger. Thunder rumbles closer to him now. He continues to look around, shouting for his lost companion, voice steadily growing hoarse. 

Lance sucks in a breath, frustration mounting. How is he supposed to find Shiro in this chaos? He can barely hear himself think! Tears prick at the corner of his eyes as he squeezes them shut. He crumbles into the ball on the ground hands clutching at his hair.

The wind grows stronger, pushing him onto his knees. He just needs one moment of peace. Of quiet to just…. Just think! 

The ground shakes with a loud clap of thunder. It sounds vaguely like a lion’s roar.

Lance’s eyes fly open and he looks up. 

“Quiet,” he mutters, and the wind dies down. It parts around him as he stands. A sense of calm rushes over him and suddenly the gale is circling around him. He’s in the eyes of the storm now.

Lance looks around, listens for the thunder. It rumbles in the distance and he follows the direction of the sound. 

“Black,” he whispers. Everything stops. The Black Lion lands in front of his, eyes glowing as it meets his unwavering gaze. Lance holds a hand up to the large robot. “Show me.” 

The pair disappears in a flash of white. 

Getting Shiro onto Sendak’s ship was the easy part. With Ulaz’s help they take his sleeping body to a prison cell and leave him there. It’s weird seeing a friend out in space…. Especially one from Earth. The scar, Keith knows, he got from a fight in the Coliseum. The arm, Ulaz informed him, was a present from Zarkon’s witch. 

Haggar’s been experimenting on the human and Keith shudders to think of what’s been done to him. Everyone’s heard the rumors of her Druids and their experimentations. It’s a fate nobody wants to face. 

Keith sees Ulaz off before reporting to Sendak. He seems please that Keith managed to return Shiro but quickly shoos him off, instructing him to make himself scarce. 

Keith finds himself wandering down to the prison block before veering off towards the Red Lion’s holding bay. They can’t know he’s interested in Shiro. I would only raise suspicion and the would compromise his goals. At least walking past the Red Lion is part of his usual routine. Nobody tends to question that. 

Still though, he eventually returns to his room to figure out how to release Shiro and get him to the Red Lion without raising the alarm. 

He paces the length of the room, mulling his options over. Kolivan didn’t seem too pleased by his decision but ultimately relented under the condition he doesn’t get caught. He’s not even sure how to pull that off. One way or another though, he’s getting Shiro back to Earth. 

Keith huffs. The Blade of Marmora operates under secrecy. They don’t do things that could possibly expose him. 

“I don’t exactly have many options here,” Keith mutters to himself. How did Kolivan even expect him to take the Red Lion without being caught? Frowning, he sits on his bed and pulls out his knife. The dark blade gleams in the light, a small crystal tied around the hilt. 

Even after all these years, he’s kept Lance’s gift…. Not that he ever uses it anymore. He’s long come to terms with his heritage and grown to be proud of his Galra half. 

His Galra half because nobody in the Empire know of his human half…. And maybe it’s time to reclaim that human half.

“Hold on, Shiro,” Keith says with a grin as he removes the crystal and resheathes his knife. He stands up, plan forming in his mind. “I’m coming for you.” 

Lance stumbles back with a gasp, knocking everything off the teacher’s desk. The whole room stares at him in stunned silence. He looks around wildly, gaze landing on Hunk and Pidge.

“Come with me,” he snaps, grabbing their wrists and dragging them out of the room. They stumble after him as he picks up the pace. Soon the trio is running through the halls.

“Lance!” Pidge shouts. “What are we doing?” 

“Yeah…” Hunk replies, huffing. “As much… as I like skipping class…. Why?” 

“Something’s coming,” Lance replies, gaze focused straight ahead. “And I need both of you with me.” Hunk and Pidge share a confused look behind their friend’s back but they fall silent. 

Lance leads them right to Iverson’s office. He barges in without bothering to knock. 

“What is the meaning of this?!” Iverson shouts, standing from his seat. “You can’t be in here!” 

“I come to you as Prince of New Altea,” Lance says confidently, standing tall. “By orders of Queen Ourania herself, I am declaring galactic emergency. All off planet communication and travel is officially on lockdown.” Iverson calms himself, staring at Lance for a long moment. Pidge and Hunk watch, confused and curious from outside the room. Whatever’s going on, it’s important and Lance needs them. 

“What is this about, my Prince?” 

“The Galra are coming,” Lance replies. “And I need you to take me to the Black Lion.” 

Sirens blare around him as he ducks into corners and dodges the sentries running about. Behind him, Shiro groans, clutching at his head. He’s only been awake for a few minutes but there was no way Keith could discreetly carry him to the Red Lion’s location. As it stands, his cover has been completely blown. 

The Red Lion is their only chance to get out of here alive. 

Keith watches and waits for the coast to clear before grabbing Shiro’s hand and sprinting down the hall. He halts, pushing Shiro into an alcove and he peers around the corner. Just down the way, one of Sendak’s flunkies guards the door to the Red Lion. 

He can probably take them…. Especially if Shiro gets his act together long enough to help. Keith glances back at his friend, still delirious from sleep. 

“Shiro,” he whispers. “I’m going to need your help for this next part, okay?” Shiro flashes him a thumbs up though Keith’s not too sure he actually heard. Either way, they manage to tag team the Galra and take him down in moments. Fate must be smiling on them too because Keith’s able to use the Galra’s hand to open to doors.

The Red Lion looms inside its shield, quiet and unwavering. Shiro takes a seat next to it with a sigh, head dropping between his legs with a groan. Whatever they knocked him out with is going to take a while to work through his system. They don’t have time to wait though… 

“Hey,” Keith calls up to the lion. “Open up! We need your help!” The shield remains standing. He huffs and knocks on the surface. The Red Lion ignores him. Keith growls, kicking the shield and stomping away from the stubborn creature. 

Is creature even the right word? They’re supposedly sentient…. Does that count as them being creatures? Sentient machines are a thing…. Right? 

He doesn’t know…. Nor does he care. This stupid thing needs to let them in before they’re all caught. 

“Freeze!” 

Keith jumps, spinning around to come face to face with a group of sentries. They level their blasters at him and Shiro. 

Quiznack. This is not how he wanted things to go… he eyes the bay door and the console that opens it. An idea quickly forms in his head. 

He draws his sword and charges towards Shiro just as the sentries begin shooting. Shiro jumps to his feet with a shout, alarmed to see a Galra running towards him. Keith grabs him and sprints to the console, slamming his sword into the ground just as he hits the button. 

The doors swing open, sucking the sentries into space. His sword holds for a moment but the suction and weight of him and Shiro drag them out into space. 

Keith holds his breath, eyes shifting wildly as he tries to figure out how to return to the lion. Shiro slips out of his grasp, distracting him for a split second. 

Next thing he knows, the giant maws of the Red Lion are closing around him and Shiro, and flying away from Sendak’s ship. 

Shiro gasps next to Keith, rolling off his back sluggishly. Next to him, Keith rests on his hands and knees trying to regulate his breathing. They sit in the Red Lion’s mouth, collecting their breaths before Keith attempts to stand. He wobbles to his feet and stumbles over to his companion. 

“Shiro,” he mutters, holding a hand out to help him up. Shiro take his, allowing Keith to pull him to his feet. They stare at each other for a long moment before Keith’s pulled into a crushing hug. Keith hugs him back, resting a hand on Shiro’s shoulder.

His hair becomes wet where Shiro’s face is buried in it. His shoulder shake with sobs. Keith doesn’t realize he’s also crying until a drop lands on his hand.  

“I’m so sorry…” Keith mumbles, voice breaking. “I’m so sorry…. I… I didn’t know… I would’ve come for you… I….” 

“It’s okay,” Shiro replies, brushing a hand through his hair. He pulls away a moment later, face tear-stained but no longer crying. “You came when it mattered and that’s enough.” Keith smiles, rubbing the tears off his face. 

He may have just blown his cover. He can’t return to the Galra or the Blade…. But he got Shiro back. They’re going back to Earth where they can be protected and find help. The Galra may come after them, but Earth will be prepared. That’s a worry for another day though. For now…. There’s only one task at hand. 

“Let’s go home.” 

His mom is waiting for them by the time they arrive at the Black Lion’s den. Iverson stops his buggy and lets the trio climb out and gather their things before driving off again. Lance watches him go before turning to his mom. A bag of this things hangs by her side.

“I see you’ve brought some friends,” she says, glancing briefly at Hunk and Pidge. “And you’ve declared an emergency. Mind telling me why?” 

“The Galra are coming….” Lance replies. “The Black Lion showed me.” Surprise flits across her face, mouth falling open slightly. She looks back at his friends and then to him. 

“And your friends?” 

“They have to come with me.” She raises a brow at that, but Lance remains firm. He knows what he saw. He won’t back down from this. Behind him, Hunk and Pidge share a confused look. Hunk is the one to step forward.

“Um… excuse me, your grace,” he says, giving a little bow. “Not that Pidge and I mind much but… what’s happening? 

“And for that matter,” Pidge chimes in. “Where are we going?” Ourania laughs a little, eyes lighting up in delight. She looks back at her son, proud that he’s made friends at the Garrison. 

“It seems my son failed to mention some details on the ride over,” she comments. “So much like his father.” She steps behind Hunk and Pidge, waving her hands at them as she ushers the trio inside. 

“Lance?” Hunk says, hesitantly steps through the doors to the den. His eyes roam up and down the cave walls. Carvings lines the inside of Alteans and lions alike. Gemstones gleam in the light, adding splashes of reds, blues, greens, and yellows to the portraits. “What’s going on?” 

“The Black Lion, it seems,” Ourania answers. “Is finally ready to accept Lance as its Paladin and you two will be joining him.” 

“Whu-” 

“We have to go fight the Galra,” Lance says, gaze focused straight ahead. Their footstep echo down the hall as they draw closer to the lion’s resting place. “And find your lions.” 

“Wait!” Hunk protests as they step into the Black Lion’s gaze. It’s shield is finally dropped, eyes lit up as it awaits the prince. “I’m not a pilot! I can’t fly a giant cat robot!” 

“Well… you better learn!” Ourania replies teasingly, shoving Hunk and Pidge towards the lion. She straightens and steps over to her son. She hands him the bag. “Extra clothes and some things for you and your friends.” 

“Thanks, mom,” Lance say with a smile, taking the offered bag. 

“There’s a communicator in there too, so you better keep in touch.” 

“We will.” Her eyes shine with unshed tears as she gazes lovingly at her son. She pulls him into a hug.

“You’re going to do great things,” she murmurs. “Akiva would be proud of you.” Lance sucks in a breath, eyes suddenly burning. 

“I’m going to miss you,” he murmurs back. She pulls back, placing a hand on his cheek. 

“We will all miss you,” she says. “Now go get your lions.” She places a kiss on his cheek and steps away. Lance gives her a final, sad smile before turning to his friends. 

“I know I’m dragging you into this,” he says to them. “But… this is your chance, you can turn back now. Nobody’s forced to do this.” Pidge scoffs, giving his arm a punch.

“Are you kidding? This is our chance to go into space and prove Iverson wrong,” he says. “You aren’t the only one who has business out there.” 

“Yeah,” Hunk adds before Lance can reply. “I mean… the fighting part sounds kind of scary but we’re in this together. If you… erm…. Well, I guess the Black Lion, rather, thinks we’re meant to be Paladins then who am I to argue with it? Besides… we’d be helping others, right?” 

“Thanks, guys,” Lance says, grateful to have such loyal companions.

“And don’t worry about your parents,” Ourania calls to them. “I’ll be sure they are informed of where you’re at!”  

“I guess this is it then.” Lance heft the bag onto his shoulder and looks up at the Black Lion.

The moment of truth. He takes a deep breath and steps up to the lion. There a beat, a moment, where nothing happens, and then the Black Lion crouches down, opening up for the trio. Relief floods through Lance. He’s finally being accepted. 

He takes a moment to give one final wave goodbye before entering the lion’s waiting mouth. 

The journey has finally begun. 

#voltron #vld #shance #fanfic #lost prince

[justknitstuff]

What Happens During The Livestream

Klance AU month! Forgive me but they are going to be horribly out of order (for a reason) and most likely late (I’m lazy).

This is day 12, Modern. I picked YouTubers, and it’s going to be the start of a series of oneshots, Enjoy!

"Alright everyone, that was a great workout for this morning." Shiro addressed their viewers. He watched as people quickly typed in the chat their thanks. "No, thank you all so much! Your time and donations means so much to us and the charity. My time with you is up now though. Up next will be everyone's favorite grumpy gamer and Lance."

At that moment the door to the large entertainment room opened and in shuffled said sleepy gamer. Keith's hands were filled with a large mug of coffee and a plate laden with pancakes. Shiro raised an eyebrow, eyeing the sugary plate.

"Hunk's up making breakfast." Keith explained as he sat down next to Shiro in front of the cameras and monitor set up.

"Hunk should be sleeping! His portion of the stream ended not too long ago." Shiro protested.

"You try making him not feed everyone in the house." Keith replied, digging into his food. 

He turned to the monitor that had the streams chat up and began reading the conversations. Shiro meanwhile, got up to leave the room to head to the kitchen. Lance entered the room, carrying his own pancake laden plate just as Shiro was passing the threshold. Greeting each quickly, Shiro pressed on and Lance sat down in his abandoned chair.

"What's shakin, all my bacon? How is everyone this morning?" Lance addressed the main camera. He watched as the chat lit up with happy greetings and emojis.

"Looks like we have some new viewers that don't know what's going on." Keith piped up from his side. Both watched as a few people agreed.

"I'll be happy to explain what's going on to you all!" Lance said happily, a wide smile on his face as he quickly took a gulp from Keith's mug. He ignored the glare he felt boring into the side of his head as he explained.

The Lion's Den. One of the most popular groups of content creators on the platform, consisting of six friends plus their editor and a manger. Each person was scheduled to upload their own content on a specific day of the week, with Sunday reserved for uploading a bloopers reel from the week.

Shiro created for Mindful Mondays. He would make videos to start the week off right. His portion consisted of handicap modified exercises and yoga, as well as inspirational talks.

Pidge had control of Techie Tuesday, where she would review anything technological. Sometimes she would present her own inventions. 

Keith ran Lion's Den Gaming on Wednesday, and did exactly that. His portion consisted of Let's Plays, and he was known mostly for his horror game playthroughs.

Lance had Thursday, a portion he had lovingly called 'Lance Does A Lot,' though many fans have taken to calling his program Lancalot for short. It stuck. Lance does exactly what his channel says, he does a little bit of everything. Depending on his and the viewers mood, he'll sing, or vlog, or try new things.

Hunk mans Foodie Friday. He would go through recipes and cook or bake for his viewers. He also would show how to do recipes with replacement ingredients, such as what to do if you don't have the milk your recipe called for.

Rounding off the week was Allura, who ran Week In Review. It consisted of Allura addressing big news topics of the week, latest trends, and a discussion.

"Sometimes we collaborate on each others segment." Lance finished up the description of what made up The Lion's Den. "We also do live charity streams. Every few months though, we'll do a huuuuuuge..." Lance elongated the word, stretching out his arms to emphasize how huge it was while backing up his chair. In the process he (gently) flung a hand into Keith's face, who glared once again and (not as gently) pushed his hand away. "Long stream. We all invade Allura's house and stream live constantly from Friday morning to Sunday night. We then rotate shifts so we can get some sleep during this. We leave the donations open the whole time, and have special events when we reach a goal."

Keith glanced at the donation amount and snickered. "Guess what Lance?"

Lance groaned and invaded Keith's space, draping himself over his friends back. Keith froze briefly when Lance touched him. 'Not now gay thoughts, not now!' He thought to himself, suppressing the pleasant shudder that wanted to shoot through him.

"Nooooo..." Lance bemoaned. "I mean great for the charity, but not so great for me!"

Keith motioned to the large white board behind them, jostling Lance in the process. "For those that are just joining us, we reached our first goal last night. The event was Pidge had to bake something without a recipe."

"With Hunk's supervision of course cause we all know how dangerous Pidge is in the kitchen." Lance added. He pulled himself away from the gamer and settled back into his own chair, wheeling it back to the desk. Keith sighed at the loss. Lance began to dig into his own breakfast. "She made cookies that were surprisingly almost edible!" 

Keith snickered, looking at the donation bar again. "And we're only $1,000 away from our next goal. So guys, if you want to see Lance play a horror game of my choice..." Keith put a hand on his own chest. He could feel the anxious energy rolling off his friend. "Get those donations in!" He finished.

The pout on Lance's face was too adorable. 'Not adorable! Definitely not adorable!' Keith screamed at himself. On the outside though, he only rolled his eyes.

"You didn't have to agree to this, you know. We could've come up with something else..." Keith said. He stood up and gathered both of their empty plates and his mug for a refill. He paused at the door though when Lance, usually vocal about everything, was silent. Keith turned back and saw Lance engrossed in the chat screen. From his vantage point by the door, it looked the chat was going fast. Keith shrugged his shoulders though and left for the kitchen. If it was important Lance would tell him when he got back.

And boy was it important.

Lance was still unusually silent when Keith returned with two full mugs of coffee. Black for himself, and an ungodly amount of cream and sugar for Lance. Ignoring the contemplative look on Lance's face for the moment, Keith set down the mugs and leaned over to look at the chat.

The gamers eyes bugged wide and he sputtered as he read what the viewers were discussing. "We aren't going to kiss guys!" He cried, settling back into his chair.

Lance twiddled his fingers and quietly said, "We could..."

Keith's blood ran cold. Lance was known for his jokes, both good and bad. In the past he had tried to jokingly obnoxious kiss everyone on the cheek. This wasn't like that time. Keith didn't know how to react.

"We're not going to kiss instead of you playing the game. You're not worming your way out of that." Keith finalized. 

"What if that's not what I was talking about?" Lance wouldn't look directly at Keith, but he could see the Cuban's tanned cheeks darken with a blush.

The chat exploded with comments. Much like Keith's brain was currently doing. While he floundered for something to say, Allura entered the room. Still in pajamas and no makeup, she had clearly been in bed. She put a hand on each boy and squeezed their shoulders.

"I think you two should go have this conversation elsewhere. I will take over for now."

Both boys gaped up at her, Lance finding his voice first. "But Allura, it's not your turn. You're supposed to be asleep!"

"I was. But then I woke up and turned on the stream. This is a private matter though. You come back when this is all sorted out."

Allura left no room for arguing as she lightly pushed them to get them out of their chairs. Keith sighed and stood up first.

"Yeah, you're right Allura. Lance, come on. We have some things to talk about." With a blush rising on his own light checks, he held out a hand for Lance.

Lance looked at it, bewildered, for a moment. Then he smiled and grasped the offered hand, hauling himself up. "Yeah, we do need to talk. I'll follow you." Lance said softly, squeezing their linked hands.

#klance #klance au month #klance au month 2020 #knit writes

[b-kitsune]

Many ways to say I love you: Day Twenty-Eight.

Kidge-a-palooza 2019 Prompt: Enflame. Pairing: Kidge (VLD) Universe: Omegaverse!AU. Status: Part 3/3

Pidge could feel the smell of fried bacon that her mother prepared for breakfast hit her nose hard when she opened her eyes, wishing she could taste it as if she hadn't eaten it for a long time. Her father's laughter from the kitchen and her brother's rumble as he went down the stairs was enough to make her understand that her entire family was home again. And if she was lucky, Pidge could get an extra portion of bacon before Matt snatched it away.

She stretched out on her bed lazily, throwing some blankets and cushions around her on the floor by accident, the remains of a nest still hovering over her bed as the only memory of the stormy week she lived a couple of days ago, but Pidge didn't feel like undoing it at the moment.

Even when she was aware that what she lived with Keith hadn't been part of a wet dream, a product of her uncontrolled hormones, having a thick smell even loitering in her room guaranteed a better rest. It was as if Keith still stood by her side even without being, which seemed ridiculous, but it also made her feel comforted.

She never thought that jealousy would lead her to have such basic and instinctive behaviors, but Pidge was happy that she had at least been accompanied by an Alpha as attentive as her boyfriend.

She went down the stairs slowly while her legs got used to walking after being in bed for many days, seeing her family chatting and eating like an ordinary morning, as if nothing had happened, which she deeply appreciated. Even if she knew they were aware that she was helped by Keith to pass her pains while they weren't at home, they wouldn't press more than they should to respect her privacy. Just as it happened with her brother the first time he went through his period of heat, they left everything she could need for her cramps, and enough food so she wouldn't have to strain to cook while they were outside.

Her parents decided to spend the week on the outskirts of the city to take advantage of a couple's time, and not to disturb her daughter's senses any more during her warmth than those who became extremely sensitive to any nearby sound or smell. As long as they weren't dangerous heat stages, such as the danger of internal hemorrhages or high fevers, it was used to keep the omegas as far away from stimuli that could torment their rest, so leaving the families used to be a decision frequent. Her mother, before leaving her, told her that she was the one who decided to call on Keith's help if she considered it necessary, as long as it was with caution and care. Pidge didn't answer at that time, but the next day she preferred to call him when she failed to sleep because of her cramps.

Her brother meanwhile preferred to spend a week with Shiro, so she wasn't surprised to find marks under his neck that he tried to cover himself with a coat while talking to his father about the new Garrison programs. It was a useless exercise, the smell of Shiro was all over his body.

The only good thing she remembered all week, is that despite having wavered with preventing Keith from knotting her during her heats, (or more technically, that she had manipulated him in a moment of weakness until she was able to impale herself around his knot) is that they prevented it from being bitten, or that would definitely have been a topic of conversation between both families.

The fact that she knotted it wasn't a big problem. Pidge could avoid pregnancy with special suppressants that she took from her brother's room when her season of heat ended, but a mark was a much more complex matter that couldn't be taken lightly.

When she finished breakfast, Pidge decided to take her things quickly to go to school before her mother began with problematic questions that Pidge had no intention of answering yet. Although she loved her so much as to trust many things that the common people considered unthinkable, since the dynamics of omegas were still a moderately forbidden matter in society's view, her mother was still an overly intrusive Alpha about her private life.

She came to the Garrison with some shame when some eyes began to settle on her differently. Pidge knew it was due to the end of her heat and her scent was still releasing certain pheromones that attracted even some betas around her. But being subject to looks was something Pidge still felt too scary. She didn't like to attract attention most of the time when in her experience she always used to be negative, and now feeling like a dam in the savannah where predators stalked her before she launched herself wasn't comfortable.

God, she hated being a damn omega.

''It seems you didn't have a good week.'' Pidge growled in response when she heard Lance by her side as he headed for her first class of the day.

''None your business, Lance.'' She said with more poison in her voice than she would have liked, but it was enough for Lance to understand that she wasn't in the mood that day.

''Hey, I don't want to argue with you, calm down Pidge. Did something bad happen in the morning?''

''Not really. Only awkward changes and everything.''

She avoided the eyes of her classmates as soon as she got to the classroom that belonged to her, being followed by Lance who began to understand the reason for her attitude as soon as some curious looks landed on her. For a moment he thought he could hear a grunt of protest from one of her companions when she passed by. Lance sighed heavily as he sat beside her.

''You'll be fine?'' Lance asked worried, Pidge smiled weakly as soon as she felt the scent of him looming around her, as if he were protecting her from others.

''Yeah, it will only be a few days until I stop stinking of sex.''

''I think that's the real problem.'' He moved closer to Pidge to prevent their conversation from being of interest to others. She watched him confused.  ''If you meet Keith during breaks, let him give you his jacket or something.''

''Why?''

''God Pidge you're not going to make me explain to you.''

A faint blush appeared on Lance's face. Pidge smiled mischievously for a brief moment, she adored that he cared so much for her as a younger sister, but he owed her since before his week of heat for bothering her unduly, and if she could embarrass him in the process while explaining something basic like the impregnation of the scent of an Alpha, she would take advantage of it.

It wasn't a situation that seemed suspicious since a few years ago Pidge was a beta just like her brother. And it was valid to think that she really didn't understand very well the dynamics of an omega when it was never necessary.

Lance cleared his throat briefly before continuing, Pidge made her best effort to continue looking ignorant on the subject.

''Okay listen, omegas like you and I are able to impregnate the smell of our partner, it mixes on our body like a second aroma, that makes others, especially other alphas, know that you are paired.'' Pidge nodded slowly, he was really explaining it quite well, which impressed her. "That will prevent others from throwing on you. You completely removed Keith's scent when you took a shower, that's why people think you're an omega without compromise.''

''I had to do.'' She answered incredulously, but still maintaining a low tone. ''I wasn't going to keep all the sweat and other things on my body.''

''Those ‘other things’ kept you safe, Pidge, and with the end of your heat, some may think that you are not only free but also willing to have sex to find a partner.''

''Oh god, this is hell.''

She groaned overwhelmed, Lance patted her back, understanding. It wasn't a piece of information that was commented openly, much less in the classes given by the school before adolescents went through the process of puberty and discovered the genres in which they belonged. But usually, the omegas were too possessive with the scent of Alpha after their jealousy to quickly get rid of it during baths. He had to assume that with Pidge something was going to be different. To be an omega, there were too many of her mother's genes in her.

''I will tell Keith that you are looking for him after class, talk to him and explain the situation. He will surely understand.''

''Thank you, Lance.'' Pidge said with some more relief. ''I just hope this ends at the end of the day.''

''Yeah...'' Lance smiled awkwardly as soon as he felt the thick scent of more than one Alpha in the room, with clear intentions to draw his friend's attention to a possible courtship. ''Me too.''

 ...

 Although the atmosphere felt tense during classes when her classmates began to growl, the day passed without major problems because her teacher kept the alphas in the classroom at bay. She felt tense, so her inner omega began to release a scent of stress all over the place, causing her companions to stop for now.

If she was scared, it would be impossible for an Alpha to accept her. So, they decided to calm down in the middle of class, paying attention to the board until Pidge even forgot for a moment the whole situation.

But as soon as classes were over, she quickly left for Garrison's advanced pilot zone without looking back or answering the call of her classmates who were completely ignored, she had to find Keith as soon as possible before any event incident happened because of her hormones.

Pidge was scared, she didn't like the idea of ​​having to use her partner to be left alone because of a biological problem, but it was the most efficient solution at the moment. Galaxy Garrison was a huge place with too many alphas running for the space program, so she was the weak individual at the time, and she had to find a way to defend herself from predators who watched her with interest.

When she came to the spacecraft hangar, she found almost no one in sight, so she thought it would be better to wait for him in that place in the meantime. The hangar was open so its smell wasn't as intense as in a closed place. She approached one of the new models that would be launched as a scientific project next month that her father had been talking about for a while. The ship was immense, and Pidge was supposed to take them to the Triton moon in less than three months on the first trip.

It was a structure with fascinating technology, she wondered when it would be the day, she, like her family, would enter the confines of the universe with her own crew.

She hoped it would be soon.

''You shouldn't be here.'' Pidge looked away when she heard a guy a couple of years older walk towards her severely irritated by her presence, her smell reached her strongly, mixed with some curiosity. ''This is the hangar of the advanced piloting course, return to the first-year zone.''

''I'm looking for someone.'' Responded determined, he frowned as if he hadn't understood.

''I'm not suggesting you come back, I'm ordering you.''

''And who the hell are you to come and order something from me?'' She growled irritably, but that guy only took her arm tightly and began to take her towards the exit. ''Let go!''

''Shut up.'' Pidge took a deep breath when she heard his voice rumble in her head, he had used his voice with her. He didn't control her completely but hindered her senses for a few seconds. ''It's amazing that I have to take a damn omega to where it belongs, can't you behave like normal people?''

''Let go.'' She tried again to get out of his grip while trying not to trip over her own feet while walking, but he was stronger and she felt dizzy. ''Just... Keith...''

''What do you have to talk to the emo boy?'' Inquired throwing it with more force, Pidge groaned in pain. ''Won't it be your boyfriend, isn't it?

Pidge showed her teeth in response, something in his tone was not exactly kind when she heard how he meant Keith, she wanted to bite his face to remove that cynical smile from his lips, scratch his throat or at least kick him in the crotch to let her leave her alone.

But in less than an instant, a familiar smell and hands around her shoulders drove her away from that subject like a lifeguard. She looked over to meet Keith, who frowned in irritation and part of his upper lip trembled avoiding showing teeth.

She performed a happy trill from the bottom of her throat when Keith walked along with her toward the opposite direction of the exit. She was sure that he had exchanged a couple of words with the annoying guy that threw her as if it were a dog, but she was so focused on feeling her smell to get out of the trance that the damn asshole had left her that she didn't pay much attention.

They sat in boxes outside the hangar, where only a couple of pilots were outside chatting or drinking some coffee. Pidge was sure that her classes had started a few minutes ago, but she was so calm next to Keith that she thought it wouldn't be so bad to skip them for the day.

''You have to be careful next time.'' Keith said after several minutes in silence, she watched him carefully. ''That guy was a newly graduated cadet; he could have sent you to the director's office if he wanted to.''

''I didn't do anything wrong, he treated me like I was an insect to smash. Damn fool...''

''If you feel like revenge, you could tell Shiro or your father.'' Keith shrugged.  ''It wouldn't be very difficult for him to receive a warning for treating you badly. What he did anyway was unfair.''

''No.'' She answered a little tired. ''I don't want to resort to that at the moment, I will fight my own battles. Besides... I'm reserving it when I really need it.''

''How to sneak off to Iverson computers?'' Keith inquired amused, she laughed maliciously.

''Exactly.''

''I doubt that your father agrees to defend you with that.''

''It doesn't matter if he agrees with what I do, but that it helps me so that Iverson doesn't drive me out of Garrison.''

''How ruthless you are Katie Holt.''

''You are the least indicated to talk about ethics.''

Keith shook his head laughing at her, but Pidge saw the sweetest and warmest smile that made her heart completely tender, felt her glands relax to give way to a thick, sweet fragrance as she approached him a little more, until they were hugging while they watched as the ships began their test flights, the smell that Pidge released at that time was very similar to the flowers that her mother loved to grow at home. She couldn't help it, she loved that boy too much. Keith had been with her at the most fragile moment of her life and never stopped treating her with tenderness and affection, even when she had become really violent from time to time.

She vaguely remembered how the other alphas watched her from the moment she entered Garrison that morning, as the guy treated her just for believing she was being upset. Pidge hated the alphas who thought of her as if it were a nuisance or a prize to win. Keith was the only Alpha capable of emerging in her feelings that flowed with just a simple smile, a fire from which only her smell and kisses inflamed from her vestiges.

They stayed there all day. Away from the eyes of others, there was no other place they wanted to be than in each other's arms while their aromas mingled as a demonstration of possession in the other.

At least that would make it clear that Pidge didn't need another Alpha.

#peith #kidge #kidgefanfic #monthofkidge #kidgeapalooza #kidgeapalooza 2019 #keith kogane #keith (voltron) #pidge gunderson #pidge holt #voltron #voltronship #omegaverse

[beyondspock]

DON OSTERTAG: OFF STAGE

DINNER AT THE NIMOYS’

The elder Nimoys, Dora and Max, were living in a first floor apartment in a red-bricked building in a middle-class section of Boston when I met them. It wasn’t the house where they raised their two sons, Melvin and Leonard, in. This was their retirement home they moved into after Max left his barbering trade.

It was during the second leg of Leonard’s one-man show ,VINCENT, tour. During the first leg, which ended months before, our little troupe consisted of Leonard, his wife Sandy, his dresser Erik, Dennis Babcock, who was the Special Events Coordinator for the Guthrie and the person responsible for converting the bare-bones VINCENT that Leonard brought to the Guthrie and turning it into a full-blown show and for booking the first tour in which he also served as Tour Director. I was the show lighting director, show set-up carpenter, and show electrician.

On the first leg of the tour, a Guthrie production, we jumped from city to city. We spent a lot of our time together, stayed in the same hotel, often on the same floor, and ate many of our meals together. We even spent three days living in Leonard’s home in L.A..

The second leg was completely different, a week of brush-up and four weeks of shows, all in the Wilbur Theater in Boston, Leonard’s home town. It was no longer a Guthrie show, but was promoted by a New York producer. Leonard and his wife, Sandy, stayed in a hotel downtown and were kept busy with friends and relatives. I stayed in a theatrical hotel in the theater district. The first tour had been something special. This time it was like theatrical tours usually are.

I had left the Guthrie shortly after we got back from the first tour and was free-lancing off the Union Hiring Hall. Dennis Babcock had taken a short leave of absence from the Guthrie and helped us get the show back on it’s feet, and then he went back home. Like I said, things had changed.

Leonard said no matter how busy he would be in Boston he wanted Denny and I to met his folks. ‘They want to meet you two. Dora will cook us one of her great dinners and Max will entertain us.’ Leonard set it up for the third evening the set-up week.

One of the things I was surprised by was the fact that both of Leonard’s parents barely came up to his shoulders. One thing I was not surprised by was the immaculate condition of the apartment. Sandy, Leonard’s wife had not come with us, but she had warned us not to feel guilty about making our visit extra work for Leonard’s mother.

‘Her house is always dust free and polished like a mirror. You could walk in at two o’clock in the morning or six o’clock at night, anytime, and the place would look the same, like she worked hours to clean. And as far as cooking a big meal… Max might have left for work with only a cup of coffee and a bagel and lox for breakfast, but no matter what, there was always a big meal waiting when he got home. Of course,’ she added, ‘Homemaker and mother was the only job Dora ever had.’

We walked into the hard wood floored dining room and sat down. Denny and I both had made an attempt to take our shoes off in the hallway, but Max wouldn’t let us. We sat down and Max poured us a glass of wine. ‘Nothing fancy. Kosher. Gets the taste buds alive for Momma’s cooking. L’chaim,’ he said raising his glass. ‘To life.’

[For Max Nimoy’s adventures as a barber and how Dora and Max met please go to the original posts]

(...) I had accepted the offer for seconds, but politeness made me turn down the offer for thirds. Mrs. Nimoy told us that they were going to see VINCENT the night after the opening. She said that they had seen it when we were in Washington D.C. I remembered many of Leonard’s family attended a wedding there. That is where I met Adam, Leonard’s son, but did not meet Leonard’s folks.She said that she really enjoyed VINCENT, but it made her sad. ‘Such an artist. And such a life. But,’ she added, ‘It is a great show. You all should be very proud.’

I had accepted the offer for seconds, but politeness made me turn down the offer for thirds. Mrs. Nimoy told us that they were going to see VINCENT the night after the opening. She said that they had seen it when we were in Washington D.C. I remembered many of Leonard’s family attended a wedding there. That is where I met Adam, Leonard’s son, but did not meet Leonard’s folks.

She said that she really enjoyed VINCENT, but it made her sad. ‘Such an artist. And such a life. But,’ she added, ‘It is a great show. You all should be very proud.’

Momma’s favorite though is when Leonard plays Tevye in FIDDLER, Max told us.

‘Tradition! Tradition!’ Max sang out. Mrs. Nimoy frowned at him.

‘It reminds me of our life in the Ukraine’, Mrs. Nimoy said smiling. ‘Even when Leonard is not in it. I like the story.’

Max laughed. ‘And she really like it when Leonard’s friend, Zero Mostel was in it. They were rehearsing it here before they reopened it on Broadway. Leonard brought him over here for supper one night’, Max told us. ‘Now there was a man wasn’t afraid to accept thirds.’

‘Charming man,’ Mrs. Nimoy said. ‘I cried when he died last year. Way too young to die. Such a shame. Such a good actor, too,’ she added.

‘And a brave man who wasn’t afraid to stand up for his principals,’ Leonard said, his voice drifting off as he spoke.

Max jumped in breaking the sad mood that had settled in. ‘You know, Leonard, I think maybe my story about cutting The Goat’s ear had something to do with you liking Van Gogh so much. What do you think?’

‘If you say so, Poppa,’ Leonard smiled. ‘And maybe your talking about your scissors subliming gave me the idea for Spock’s Vulcan salute.’

‘Leonard,’ Mrs. Nimoy said as she stood up, ‘Don’t humor him! Now who wants dessert? Apple pie and ice cream.’

Source: https://donostertag.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/1618/

DON OSTERTAG: OFF STAGE

DESSERT AT THE NIMOY’S

(...) Later in my hotel room I thought back on the night and meeting Leonard’s parents. And I thought of all the framed pictures around the dining room. All the pictures were of their two sons, their weddings, their children. There wasn’t any pictures showing off their celebrity son in his many roles like Spock or Tevye. Oh, I imagine somewhere there were scrapbooks filled with pictures and articles of Leonard; but that was a something not to be confused with their pride in their FAMILY, the most important part of their lives.

I never had the privilege of seeing Dora and Max again. Max died in July of 1987. Dora died the following December. But meeting them that one time under those homily circumstances showed me where their son Leonard got his down-to-earth humanity.

https://donostertag.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/dessert-at-the-nimoys/

#Voices #stage #parents #vincent #Leonard Nimoy

[theeeveetamer]

Extended Three Houses Thoughts

I’m about two chapters from the end of the Blue Lions route but I do have some extended thoughts on the game that I wanted to type up and share before I get back to it. Spoilers below the cut, in case that wasn’t obvious.

So first off I want to say that I have far more positive things to say about this game than negatives, but I do think this game has some negatives. These aren’t in any particular order I just kind of typed them as I thought of them.

I feel like a lot of what this game does was in direct response to Fates. There was a lot of swinging the pendulum back in very noticeable ways, and for the most part I think that’s a good thing.

The seriously slimmed down cast, for one. I was kind of surprised and a little worried when I first picked up the game and I found out that each house only had about seven core characters, but I like it. Fates had too many characters, and most of the time they ended up being redundant. You had, what, eight fliers in Revelation including children, with at least five more characters potentially able to become fliers through their normal promotion paths? When, at most, you probably needed three. And some were significantly better than others, so obviously you went with those and the rest kind of rotted away in your barracks.

With Three Houses each character feels important. Since you can now train basically any character to be anything it also means you can have some fill specific niches. You can have Sylvain be a sword cavalry unit, and Dimitri be a lance cavalry unit, and Ingrid an axe cavalry unit if you want, drop their breaker skills on them, and they can all be useful and important on the same team.

The supports also feel more meaningful. Don’t get me wrong there’s still a lot of re-hashing of already covered territory (basically all of Dedue’s supports involve either cooking or the fact that he’s from Duscur, most of Ingrid’s revolve around wanting to be a knight or marriage contracts, etc.) but the fact that there’s less of them makes this feel like less of a problem. And it’s nice that, now, they don’t try to force every conversation into a C-B-A-S format. Some characters only have C-B, others have C-B-A-A+, etc. I think it makes sense. Not every character will be as close as others, and not all support conversation threads need three parts to be meaningful and impactful. Some need more, some need less. Trying to squish them in or stretch them out always hurt more than it helped.

That said, I’m a little disappointed there’s no match-making to be had. Everyone in this game gets brother-zoned/sister-zoned so fast it’s kind of comical. There are a few A supports that hint at feelings but you can’t actually make them S-support. Also, a character might indicate feelings for more than one other character in their A supports so it’s not definitive. Maybe there’s more once the game is finished, but within the actual main story there’s nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, it makes sense to me. As young teenagers in school there wouldn’t really be any reason for any of them to get married. I thought that might change after the time skip but it doesn’t. I don’t necessarily hate that it’s gone, it’s just a feature I enjoyed fucking around with in Awakening and Fates (and I was looking forward to, hopefully, more gay representation. I was really hoping that they might allow characters to be gay for each other and not just the Avatar character, especially since they included so many lesbian options this time around. But alas, maybe next game).

The exclusion of child characters was a good call. Barring the fact that the exclusion of S-Supports would automatically exclude child characters, I still think it was a good call. Unless the game had a significant time skip (15+ years) then they just wouldn’t have made sense. They worked in Awakening because the central narrative included time travel, but they didn’t work at all in Fates. The narrative only had tentative connections to the “multi-verse/multiple realities” thing. And, let’s be real, it’s fucking weird to have kids walking around that are the same damn age as their parents (and parents that didn’t look a day older than 17). In Fates they’d just needlessly ballooned up the cast of a game that was already way too big anyways. If they did it then they needed to do it like Genealogy, where the main cast was essentially replaced by their children instead of strapped onto the game alongside them.

I was worried that Fate’s poor handling of them meant the series was doomed to include them regardless of relevance. Glad I was wrong on that one.

The calendar progression is pretty cool, as is walking around the monastery. It was pretty fun to run around and figure out where each character liked spending their time, which characters interacted with which, etc. I’m always a fan of a little flavor text and having each character say a few lines about current events was really cool and helped give each one a little more personality. The more structured pace of things makes sense for the school environment. Though it does take out some of the urgency when the mission is “FIND FLAYN IMMEDIATELY” and then you have to wait until the end of the month anyways to do it. But for other things, like a mission to march on enemy territory, it makes sense (your entire army isn’t ready to go immediately, there’s preparations that need done).

The designs of the characters themselves were pretty well done. I especially appreciate how they toned down a lot of the sexualization that Fates became pretty famous for. And considering basically all of these characters are between 15-18 all I can say is THANK GOD. Even their aged up versions don’t seem too bad, though I’ve only really seen the Lions (because I was dumb and didn’t recruit very aggressively).

I’m still NOT a fan of this “silent” protagonist thing. It just makes some of the cut scenes and dialogue sections feel really disconnected and awkward. From what I can tell a lot of your dialogue choices don’t particularly matter, anyways. You only have two options, and for the most part they have the same meaning (”You shouldn’t talk that way!” versus “I wish you would calm down.”)  and the character you’re talking to responds the same way regardless of your choice. Or you pick between two different options (”Tell me about the officer’s academy” and “Tell me about the church”) and the characters proceed to explain both anyways.

I think the biggest issues I have with this come from the fact that the game itself is fully voice acted. I think Three Houses fell into the same problem that Breath of the Wild did. Dropping a character that never speaks aloud into a cast of characters that are fully and beautifully voiced feels unnatural. I think they had two options here: Either go back to what they did with Fates (No full voice acting, just some lines spoken here and there) or they needed to have Byleth fully voice acted. After Echoes did full voice acting I really don’t think they would have been able to go back without some serious backlash. 

Personally I would have preferred it if Byleth were fully voice acted but they got rid of some of the dialogue “options”. They don’t feel like a meaningful feature, it’s just a thin veneer so they can say they had dialogue options, because that’s what every other game on the market is doing. Part of me wonders if they did this as a response to the Corrin hate after Fates. It’s hard to hate a character when you pick all of their dialogue, right? If that is the case, then they clearly didn’t understand why people hated Corrin so much.

Overall I don’t really feel any connection or attachment to Byleth. That might just be me, though. The three “lords” of the game are clearly meant to be the main focus, especially when it comes to character development. Maybe I’ll change my mind on that after I beat the game.

That said, thank fuck they toned down the avatar hero worship. Circling back a little bit, I just feel like the character of Byleth is handled much better than Corrin. It’s kind of unfortunate that Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses kind of have this avatar hero-worship vibe to them but if we’re going to have to live with it then I guess I’ll explain myself.

In Awakening the hero worship worked. Robin was, essentially, a brilliant tactician that brought a lot of success to Ylisse’s army. There were at least a few characters that were initially wary of Robin, but they were treated respectfully by the story and it’s presented as though they are just exercising a healthy amount of caution.

In Three Houses the hero worship works. It feels much less like worship and more like genuine respect and admiration. Byleth is a professor and a mentor to these young people so it makes sense. There are a few that were initially skeptical of him/her (which is totally justified in the story because Byleth appears to be barely older than them with zero teaching experience) but they come around after Byleth’s skill is demonstrated to them throughout Part 1. The only character I’d say seems to blindly worship Byleth is Rhea, and that’s justified because she clearly knows something about the main character that no one else does.

In Fates the hero worship was excessive. Corrin as a character is nothing really special. He/She isn’t particularly intelligent or particularly skilled at anything. The most you could say is that Corrin is probably supposed to be charismatic (since every character falls at their feet the second they meet) but Corrin doesn’t feel charismatic to me. They have multiple characters that seem to exist for the sole purpose of worshiping the ground they walk on (Camilla, Ryoma, Sylas, Jakob, Felicia, etc.), to the point that I felt it ruined otherwise interesting characters (Camilla mainly). Any character that doesn’t immediately worship Corrin is either forced to come around, brainwashed by the big bad and turned into a villain, or just wanted to love Corrin so much but circumstances made it impossible so they had to be evil. I could make an entire post about how much I hate Corrin but I’ll stop it here since this is supposed to be about Three Houses.

So considering where they were coming from... Byleth is fine. I don’t know if I like them more than Robin, but I definitely like them more than Corrin. I’ll feel more definitively about them after I’ve finished the game and played some of the other routes.

They re-use maps in this game. A lot. I noticed it pretty quickly about five chapters in, but IMO it’s a serious problem that this game never quite seems to shake. If the battle is in a city, they pick one of two city maps. If it’s in a forest they’ve got one of three forest maps. And I’m not complaining about Auxiliary battles because I only did a handful of those (and they always reuse maps for those, even in Fates and Awakening). I’m talking about main story and paralogue mission maps.

Sometimes they have a unique map (like the tomb/catacombs) but it invariably comes back later for a paralogue or another main mission. Sometimes it comes back less than two chapters after it first appeared (the monastery fight right before the time skip and then defending the monastery two chapters after the time skip.) I could understand if they re-used maps across different routes (because Fates did the same thing), but so far I’ve only been in one route and it’s the same maps over and over.

Finally, I have no idea how I’m going to survive playing this game two (three?) more times. I mean, I like it. It’s fun. But it took me like 40 hours just to complete one route I have no idea how I’m going to do all three (possibly four, since I’ve been told the eagles route can be different depending on if you side with the church or not).

#fe:3h #fire emblem: Three Houses #Three Houses #fire emblem #spoilers #fe:3h spoilers #thoughts #opinions #Not really a review but kind of a review

[shiroslefttesticle]

All of these kids deserve so much appreciation, I was happy to do this one

Shiro:

It was like you were living in Satan’s ball sack

You were considering peeling off your skin

Shiro was laying next to you, equally as miserable

Yall weren’t actually cuddling though

It was beyond too hot for that

You just cuddled in spirit

Apparently, the a/c was broken

Part of you felt sympathy for poor Hunk and Pidge who were working hard to get it working again

The other part of you was growing irritable that it was taking so long

You grumbled another complaint and Shiro finally sat up

“I’m going to get some water, do you want some?”

You nodded numbly, wondering if you’d die from a heat stroke while he was gone

“A couple cubes of ice please,” you mumbled

He nodded and walked out of the room

After a couple minutes, he returned

You sat up and greedily accepted your glass of water

As you drank, you could hear Shiro giggle

Pausing, you peeked over your glass, staring at Shiro as he laughed into his hand

“Shiro?” you started, growing suspicious, “Did you do something?”

Shiro bit his lip but you could still hear him giggling

Finally, he was able to speak

“You asked for a couple ice cubes,” he interrupted himself with another giggle, “but I only gave you one.”

You glance down at your glass, seeing the one floating ice cube and a small grin forms on your face

Shiro is laughing so hard at this point

And you join in

What kind of fucking dork is your boyfriend?

And did he really just pull a prank from SpongeBob on you?

Soon you’re laughing so hard at just what a complete nerd Shiro is that you don’t even notice the a/c finally come back on

When you finally stop laughing, you have to wipe tears from your eyes and could hardly breathe

Shiro is grinning from ear to ear and you feel yourself melt a little

“I’m so lucky to have you”

Really, who else could make you laugh this hard when just a few minutes ago you felt like death?

Shiro smiles softly, his cheek a light pink and he returns your comment

He kisses you sweetly and you two spend the rest of the day finally cooling down while telling various stories and joke

#LetShiroBeADork2018

Inspired by this

Keith:

When Keith stepped out of his pod, you nearly tackled him to the floor

He had been gone for a month on a blade mission and you had missed him

He kind of chuckled as he wrapped his arms around you and stood you two back up

You two heard the doors open behind you as the rest of the team walked in to greet Keith

Reluctantly, you separated from each other

Keith was always a little reserved with pda, mostly because Lance and Pidge, and occasionally Hunk, would give him a hard time about it

Still, he kept his hand intertwined with yours, rubbing his thumb across it and lightly squeezing from time to time

Finally, you two were able to break away from everyone

You walked to your room, glad to have your boyfriend back

You two sit in your bed for a while

You catch Keith up on all that he’s missed while he was gone

And he fills you in on the details of his mission and all that happened

Soon you two fall quiet, just soaking in each other’s presence

The silence only breaks when you suddenly tell Keith how much you missed him

He kisses your cheek, saying that he missed you too

“I thought of you constantly,” he admits

Then, to prove his statement, he gets out of bed and walks to his bag that he left by the door

He rummages around for a second before finally finding what he was looking for

Hiding his hands behind his back, he smiles at you, a small blush on his cheeks

“You have to close your eyes.”

Your curiosity is almost overwhelming, but you comply, holding both your hands out

Keith places something down in them

It’s small, solid, and has rough, somewhat sharp, edges

Slowly, you open your eyes

In your hand is a rock, a little smaller than a 50 cent coin

At first, you think it’s just a shiny, black rock

Which is pretty and all, but a little underwhelming

But then you turn it over in your hands and it shimmers

It stuns you and you audibly gasp

Holy shit it’s gorgeous

Finally you look at Keith, who is now sitting next to you, still blushing

Without you even having to question him, he shrugs, a little embarrassed by his own sweet gesture

“I don’t know, I just saw it and thought of you and how you would probably like it.”

You feel yourself grin

Sure it was “just a rock” but it felt like more than that

It meant that Keith really did think of you while he was gone

“I’m so lucky to have you,” you smile

Keith grows even more red, quietly mumbling that he feels lucky to have you too

For the rest of the day, he keeps replaying your words, blushing every time and sometimes stuttering

Lance:

You hadn’t been feeling too great recently

All the stress from recent events was getting to you

Lance was quick to pick up on this

Before you could even say anything, he practically demanded that you partake in one of his self-care days

This was actually something you two did together quite often

But this time Lance was determined to make it all about you

So here you were, sitting in a pile of stolen pillows on Lance’s floor

You were trying desperately not to kick your boyfriend out of reflex as he tried to give you a foot massage

Tried being the keyword because you were squirming so much

It tickles, ok??

As you bit your lip to muffle your laughter, Lance was relaying the hottest gossip the space mice shared with him

You thought the mice only talked with Allura about that, however, they seemed to like Lance

Their gossip was actually quite interesting, and you eventually abandoned your efforts to keep quiet

Bursting out into laughter, you threw Lance a look of disbelief

“Keith sings what in his lion??”

Lance shrugged, laughing with you as he finally let go of your feet

Next you two were doing facemasks

Lance always had a bunch of special ones that he had made himself

And they were all so good

You picked this green looking one for today, and Lance slathered it on your face liberally

As you and Lance sat next to each other, still laughing about random shit, you couldn’t help but really think about how nice this moment was

Apparently, you had fallen silent while daydreaming a bit

“Babe, you ok?” Lance asked, waving a hand in front of your face

“I’m so lucky to have you,” you answered, smiling

Lance was probably blushing under his face mask

He fell quiet for maybe two seconds before a huge grin spread on his face

It created funny looking cracks in his facemask, but you didn’t even get the chance to point it out

Lance practically lunged towards you, peppering your messy green face in small kisses

If a green face mask won’t stop Lance from kissing you, nothing will

When he finally releases you, it’s only so he can watch you laugh at his antics

His eyes are filled with complete adoration

I’m dying just thinking about it

He’s a bit quieter for the rest of the day

But his dorky grin doesn’t go away for about a week

Hunk:

You and Hunk were cooking together

He had some wild new recipe he wanted to try

You were skeptical, poking at what looked like a purple rotting avocado

It was supposed to look like that too

Space stuff is weird

Despite your reservations, Hunk insisted it would be ok

So you just went with it

I mean really, Hunk had yet to prepare a dish you didn’t like

Aside from the scaultrite cookies, of course

“Here, cut this for me” Hunk passed you something that might be a carrot

Trying your best to show off to your boyfriend, you began to cut the carrot(?) as quickly as you could

Too bad you’re not an expert chef

You yelp and clutch your hands to your chest, glaring at the knife as though it had sliced you on purpose, rather than you just being careless

Hunk immediately stops what he’s doing and practically flies over to your side

He looks at your finger

Thankfully it wasn’t a bad cut, but there was a surprising amount of blood

You’re basically ordered to wash the cut before applying pressure with a washcloth while Hunk goes rummaging for a first aid kit

When he finally comes back, you’re seated on one of the counters, internally exaggerating your injury and pain

You know like how when you get a paper cut and it feels like someone sliced off your hand?

Or when you accidentally stub your toe and you wonder what your life will be like with only one foot?

That’s basically what you’re doing

Hunk applies some of that alcohol stuff that stings like fucking hell and you hiss

He then puts a band-aid over it, a power rangers themed one

Pidge is lowkey one of the clumsiest ones on the ship due to all the shit in her room that she trips over so you bought them from that weird Earth store just for her, as a joke

Hunk glances up at you as you’re pouting at your failure

You’re about to hop off the counter but Hunk stops you, raising your hand to his face as he quickly kisses the top of your band-aid

“To make it feel better,” he quickly explains, smiling

You feel your cheeks heat up, he was just so fucking cute oh my god

“I’m so lucky to have you!”

You kind of just blurt it out on accident, taking both of you by surprise

Now Hunk is blushing with you, but he’s got this big dopey grin on his face

He kind of stutters as he returns your comment, but you know he’s sincere

He insists that you stay seated on the counter while he finishes cooking, despite your objections

He keeps getting distracted by you though, even when you’re not doing anything, he just keeps looking at you and blushing.

How to effectively fluster your boyfriend 101

Pidge:

Pidge had asked if you would help her with some upgrades

You were both sitting around her computer, various trinkets and gadgets surrounding you

Hours had passed since you first agreed to help and you were growing exhausted

At this point you were hardly helping, just fidgeting with various tools and sometimes mumbling answers to Pidge’s questions

You don’t know how Pidge can have so much energy

Sure she’s hyper-focused and all but still

Eventually your eyelids droop and you’re out like a light

You somehow manage to get into some awkwardly sprawled out position, all of the tools scattered around you

Pidge briefly thinks of carrying you to bed or at least somewhere more comfortable

However, she knows that’s probably a bad idea

Sure she’s stronger now that she trains for her paladin duties, but she still doesn’t feel confident trying to carry you all the way to your room

Plus, even if she could keep her grip on you, she’d probably accidentally smack your head into a door or wall

That was her thought process anyway

Quietly, knowing she should take a break to stretch and such anyway, she stands up and leaves the room

Half the crew has started scolding her for bad habits like not stretching and forgetting to eat when she’s busy

She finds a spare blanket and grabs her pillow, heading back to where she left you

You’re still out cold

For a second Pidge got paranoid that you died or something

She probably held a mirror up to your face just to make sure you were breathing

Once she confirms you’re alive, she throws the blanket on top of you and somehow manages to readjust you so your head is on the pillow

When you finally wake up, quite a while later, Pidge is just about finished with her upgrades

You notice the blanket you cocooned yourself in and the pillow that kept your neck from cramping.

There were some other things as well, like a thermos full of soup since you had accidentally slept through the last meal

Sitting up, you drop your head over Pidge’s shoulder, getting a lazy hum in acknowledgment

You press a chaste kiss to her cheek, seeing her lips twitch up in a smile despite her growing blush

“I’m so lucky to have you”

Pidge’s head immediately snaps around to look at you and her face is tomato red

She stutters for a few seconds, completely taken off guard by your sincerity

Congrats, you broke her

She’s got a blush on her face for the rest of the day

Allura:

You growl as the training bot manages to knock you down again

You’ve been at this for what feels like an eternity

Allura was on the side of the room, shouting out tips

However, you still can’t seem to clear the level

The next time you get knocked down, you just stay laying on the floor

You were tired and sore and probably bruised

Allura shouted for the simulation to turn off and she knelt next to you

She’s checking you over for any visible harm

Aside from your bruises of course

“I’m dying,” you state blankly

Allura rolls her eyes at your melodramatics and stands up

She expects you to get up with her, but instead, you just make grabby hands towards her

You’re too tired to walk

Rolling her eyes yet again, though this time she only half meant it, she bent over picked you up

Bridal style :)

On her face is a small smile as she carries you to your room

Internally you’re swooning at how strong she is

Listen, loving Allura’s muscles is a kink

And you’ve got it bad

She drops you on your bed and you make an ‘oof’ noise

You try to sit up, but Allura just pushes you back down

Then she begins massaging your legs

You didn’t even know you needed a massage until she started

But now you’re like putty in her hands

While she works on you, she talks about your training

It is endless compliments the entire time

But not like she’s lying about your abilities or forcing herself to compliment you

She truly, genuinely means everything she says

You’re almost overwhelmed by her attention

When she’s done, you feel revitalized

You sit up, and flop yourself onto her, not caring that you’re a little sweaty still

Your voice is muffled from your face pressing into her neck, but she can still clearly hear you

“I’m so lucky to have you”

She has a pulse point on her neck

You can feel her heart rate pick up a little bit after what you said

But other than that she has no visible reaction of being flustered

She just smiles and kisses your forehead and says she’s lucky to have you too

She’s got a small smile on her face for the rest of the day

#shiro x reader #keith x reader #lance x reader #hunk x reader #pidge x reader #allura x reader #takashi shirogane #keith kogane #lance mcclain #hunk garrett #pidge holt #princess allura #voltron #voltron x reader #voltron imagines #voltron scenarios #voltron headcanons #shiro headcanons #keith kogane headcanons #keith kogane x reader #lance headcanons #hunk headcanons #pidge headcanons #allura headcanons #sfwprompt

[leiyahime]

Advent 2018: Day 23 - Christmas lights/I only need one more present

Wuhuuu I managed to write today.

Keith is looking for the last missing present. The one for the most important person in his life.

Day 23: Christmas lights/I only need one more present

 One! One more present and then he was done! Since when was Christmas connected with so much stress? Oh right, since he had found himself a new family and they had returned to Earth and a halfway quiet life... And now he had to think of everyone for this holiday... Most of his friends were no big problem. Hunk got something for his cooking, Pidge had mentioned she wanted a new microscope and everyone gave some money so that Matt could buy a quite expensive one for her, Lance simply some beauty products, Allura would get things that were typical earth... His mom would get a few gag presents. They didn’t laugh much together and he wanted to change that. The only one missing... was Shiro. What could he get his wonderful loving dork of a boyfriend?

 He strolled through the city and looked at all the things there but nothing, really nothing, jumped him and wanted to be Shiro’s. Nothing funny, nothing useful, no book (he had shortly thought about getting him an e-reader though, so Shiro could read with only one hand – but then remembered that that was what Pidge and Matt already got for him)... What could you get someone who had seen big parts of the universe? Who had everything he could ever want? Yes, as Captain of the Atlas he was not free to roam the universe as he wanted to but that didn’t keep them from sneaking out into space nonetheless. Black was quite useful! He could get him a free trip to any destination he wanted to, but that would be lame since they already did that.

 He passed a sex shop. Something from there? But how could he know what Shiro liked? They had not started to experiment with toys, yet and he didn’t want to embarrass himself. Perhaps they should come here together? Or a gift coupon? But what if Shiro thought he was dissatisfied with their intimate hours? He went on. Too many risks he didn’t want to take!

 He stopped at a pet shop and entered. Perhaps he should get Kosmo something as well. And he was easy to please. He went straight to the dog treats and bones and toys. After a few lances he disregarded the toys. His proud space wolf would not want squeaky balls or chickens. But he would not refuse a nice bone and treats. He smiled and chose a few items for his beloved companion. Then he noticed the animals... Puppies. Would Shiro like that? Another thing he shouldn’t get him without having talked first. They had a wolf... No, better not buy any new pet. He went to pay for Kosmo’s gifts and asked the clerk if she could wrap it up, what she gladly did. Many people got gifts for their pets apparently.  Keith shook his head. Of course he got Kosmo something right now, but he spoiled him every day even without Christmas...

 He put the wrapped treats into his bag and left the shop still not any wiser about Shiro’s gift...

 He passed a toy shop and out of pure desperation entered that. They had plush animals. Lions even? Yes Keith found some, even the Voltron lions. But they had each gotten some at the last Clear Day event. And Kosmo loved plush toys... so much they were almost unrecognizable by now. So he left once more.

 Slowly he grew more and more frustrated. It couldn’t be so hard to find a gift for your damn boyfriend! The person you loved more than anything! It wasn’t like Shiro had any expectations! He would be happy about a flower or something like that, but it was exactly that treat of his partner that made Keith want to get him something special!  Something only he could get him! Something... Now it stroke him! The perfect gift for Shiro!

 He grinned to himself and just entered the next stationery shop. He got a large red bow and a gift card. Perhaps it had been done by other coupled before but... Shiro had once said that for him it was the biggest gift that Keith was at his side... So that’s what he would get. He smiled and returned home where he found his wolf jumping around in pure joy.

 “What’s this?” he asked.

 “Your mom brought us a few Christmas lights. I’m lighting up our flat!” Shiro smiled and leaned down to kiss him.

 Keith returned the kiss gladly and was only interrupted when he felt how Kosmo tried to get the bag out of his hands.

 He let go of Shiro and lifted the bag. “Oh no, buddy! You’ll get it tomorrow like everyone else!” he laughed.

 “So you finished your Christmas shopping?”

 “Yep. Got something nice for everyone!”

“For me, too?”

 “For you the best!” Keith grinned, pecked Shiro’s lips another time and then went to hide his purchases in a place the wolf could neither reach nor open.

#Advent 2018 #voltron #sheith #My writing

[maychorian]

Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #55

Merry Christmas! For some reason I thought I already did list 55, but when I looked back at my tags I hadn’t yet. So yeah, this one is extra long, but that’s all to the good, hopefully.

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. Also follow @maychorianrecs for individually tagged posts, the easier to search and reblog. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

Paper Patience by isabeau25 Words: 1,483 Author’s Summary: Someone is making paper flowers for Pidge, and it takes her a while to figure out why. *Takes place during the beginning of season 3, while Shiro is still missing.* My Comments: Sweet and lovely. Pidge’s frustration and fear is understandable, and it’s very kind of her teammate to make this effort to soothe her.

Space Jellybeans by YukiSetsu Words: 2,274 Author’s Summary: Lance has trouble sleeping and seeks out help from Coran. He gets something to help him sleep, but his body reacts negatively, leaving Lance with little time to get help before it got worse. My Comments: Another great whumpfic. I’m getting so spoiled this Christmas season.

No Place Like Home For the Holidays (But Sometimes Home Isn’t a Place)by WildWolf25 Words: 7,329 Author’s Summary: After a rough battle, Team Voltron decides to set down on a safe, deserted planet to rest and let the castle’s defenses recover. And if that planet happens to be covered in snow, well, there’s no harm in having a little winter fun while they’re at it. (Written for Lórien for the Voltron Secret Santa event on tumblr. Happy holidays!) My Comments: Cute, cuddly winter vacation with Team Voltron, including snow fights, ugly sweaters, and a cuddle pile under the stars. Implied Polydins but reads as gen.

for lack of advice columnists by againstmygreeleaf Words: 5,798 Author’s Summary: Hunk isn’t sure when he noticed the rock, doesn’t recall noticing it at all. The rock is within reach and his bayard isn’t. My Comments: Fantastic Hunk whump, and fantastic exploration of the consequences of war and how that affects Hunk in particular. I loved the team taking care of Hunk, all in their own ways.

Keith’s ‘Physical Contact’ Initiation Program by alisayamin (sh_04e) Words: 26,522 Author’s Summary: Keith didn’t move and neither did Pidge. It was a little awkward until Keith finally said, “Maybe we could officially officiate this..?” “What do you mean?” “Fist me.” Pidge recoiled and sputtered, “Keith, what the f-” She was cut off by Shiro’s bellowing laughter from the observatory deck.With his straight face unchanged, Keith lowered his left hand with the stopwatch and lifted his right hand, fisted. Pidge actually sighed with so much relief, “OH. You mean fistbump! Right.” She slapped her forehead to remove the very very wrong image her imagination drew for her, “Holy shit, Keith, we need to work on that but yeah sure, I’d be honoured to officiate your physical contact program whatever.” Or That one time Coran realized Keith was too distant and decided to make him undergo the 'Physical Contact’ Initiation Program which then led to –> 5 times the paladins realized Keith was an actual cat. My Comments: A little over the top and a touch OOC, but if you’re in the mood for paladin cuddle puddles and platonic cuddling and hugs and affectionate touches and all that good stuff, this is very much the fic for you. It’s incredibly indulgent and cuddly and really scratches that itch. Mentions of past child abuse.

Flu Season by YukiSetsu Words: 2,099 Author’s Summary: Lance comes down with the flu before a mission. And although he tries to ignore it to do his job, it turns out to be a bad idea once things take a turn for the worst. My Comments: Delightful sickfic plus whump. Poor Lance, lucky us.

Hippo You’d Better Come Home by pinstripedJackalope Words: 3,847 Author’s Summary: What if Keith had a little stuffed hippo hidden in one of the pouches on his belt, you ask? This is your answer. My Comments: This is absolutely adorable. Keith’s generosity bites him, a little bit, but it was so cute to see the whole team appreciating his precious hippo, and the ending was lovely.

Little Princess by Eastofthemoon Words: 7,488 Author’s Summary: “It was that weird bracelet,” Lance snapped as he struggled to keep his voice down. “I found it on the shelf, handed it to Allura because it was sparkly and I know she likes that stuff, she puts it on,” he pointed to her with his thumb, “and wham! Next thing we knew she was a kid!” “I still find it weird the clothes shrunk with her,” Pidge whispered. “Pidge, that’s the least of our concerns right now,” Hunk stammered as he cupped a hand over his mouth. My Comments: Wonderful deaged Allura with tea parties, makeovers, and various messes. I loved how much Lance and Hunk got into it, with the other paladins dragged into things with varying degrees of acceptance, and poor Coran’s heart got a bit of a workout. So good.

Varadero by 5557 Words: 2,109 Author’s Summary: While on Vacation at Varadero beach, a restless Lance cannot sit still and sleep when all the adults are away and having fun. Something is out there, calling to him. And it might just be worth the trouble. My Comments: Beautiful, vivid and lush, this story transported me back to the joy and curiosity of childhood. Lance is a cutie pie, as always.

Stranger Danger by YukiSetsu Words: 2,768 Author’s Summary: Lance makes a new friend at the school pool, and the others feel something is… off. And although Lance initially brushes off the warnings, even he starts to notice that his friend might be a bit more dangerous than he expected. But by then, it’s a bit too late. My Comments: Dramatic without being cheesy and whumpy without being unbelievable, just the right mix for me. Naive Lance and protective-everyone-else is my jam.

Coming Home by Vialana Words: 4,211 Author’s Summary: After the battle, Keith needs to decompress. So do the other paladins. My Comments: Absolutely beautiful. I loved the way every teammate checked on Keith, all of the hugs and cuddling and touches were just lovely and wonderful. And the tears, too. Very warm and soft and healing. I love this a lot.

Slippery Steps And Broken Cups by YukiSetsu Words: 2,062 Author’s Summary: Modern College AU. Lance had been busy planning a big Christmas party with Hunk, Shiro, Pidge, and Keith, only to go missing on the special day. Keith goes to check in on him, and ends up having to deal with way more than he expected. My Comments: Dizzy Lance with a high fever and somewhat grumpy but concerned Keith. Absolutely delightful.

déjà vu by mangotangerine Words: 3,501 Author’s Summary: Team Voltron finds themselves trying to convince a previously unknown planet to join the Coalition but they’re having trouble - these new aliens won’t do anything unless their God ordains it. Enter Lance, who knows a bit more than he’s supposed to and doesn’t know why. My Comments: Interesting little Star Trek fusion (no knowledge of Star Trek is necessary). I really enjoyed the mystery, and I would love to read something much longer with this concept.

Ghosts of Christmas Past by Swump (Zelan) Words: 1,841 Author’s Summary: Pidge crash-lands in the middle of a blizzard, where the others can’t get to her, and must fend for herself until help arrives. My Comments: Great whump, great Hunk and Pidge at the end.

Below Freezing by YukiSetsu Words: 2,495 Author’s Summary: The Blue Lion crash lands on a planet with extremely cold temperatures, leaving the team in a race against time to get Lance out alive. Shiro risks going down before the snowstorm subsides to get to Lance faster, but even he can only hold out for so long. My Comments: This fic REALLY hit the sweet spot for me. Lance with hypothermia, Shiro huddling for warmth with him, and just a touch of angst. Perfection.

Taste of Home by umbraja Words: 2,402 Author’s Summary: “I don’t know, Lance. I think Pidge is right. Waffles are superior to pancakes,” Hunk’s gentle voice drifted through the door. “Traitor! How could you say that? And after having my abuela’s pancakes,” Lance gasped dramatically. Hunk started to reply but Pidge cut him off, “Because pancakes are just flat disks of cooked batter no matter who does the cooking while Waffles are a masterpiece of culinary engineering with built in pockets for holding syrup and a crisp shell for the perfect crunch. It’s just a superior design, Lance.” The Paladins are all homesick and banter about missed food puts Keith in a talking mood, even if it’s just to Shiro. Somewhat of a character study. Or - I might have grown up on a farm in the Panhandle (that’s north Texas, btw) and every now ��n’ then I get a mite nostalgic. My Comments: Warm, soft, and melancholy. I love how Shiro draws Keith out to reminisce about things long gone, and Allura was a sweetheart, too, surrounded by homesick paladins and trying her best to understand.

a grass in the beginning by coyotesuspect Words: 5,308 Author’s Summary: Pidge starts a garden on the Castle of Lions. Or: seven conversations Pidge has while standing next to a tree. My Comments: Lovely, rich, and touching fic. All of Pidge’s conversations with the others are just right, and the descriptions are vivid and entrancing. This was relaxing and warming to read.

Eat In Moderation, Kids by YukiSetsu Words: 2,013 Author’s Summary: Lance loves Hunk’s food, and for good reason. But when one Christmas cookie baking session gets out of hand, Lance bites off more than he can chew and his stomach suffers the consequences. Luckily, he doesn’t have to deal with it alone. My Comments: Sometimes it nice to have a problem that’s not that big of a deal, but everyone pitches in to help, anyway.

Rational Paranoia by TheQueen Words: 1,886 Author’s Summary: A story of Lance and Pidge, crashed on a hostile planet, waiting. My Starboy: A Lance Zine piece My Comments: Painful, but very well-written. I hope they get rescued soon. Tagged as possible romance but reads platonic to me.

Even Space Can Be Warmed Up By Christmas by YukiSetsu Words: 2,391 Author’s Summary: Lance leads preparations for a Christmas celebration on the Castle, only to be sidetracked by a bad fever on the big day. Nevertheless, he wants to continue with the party. My Comments: This has just about everything I love, fluff and team bonding and Lance getting sick and being cared for and loved. So very heartwarming. It was like drinking hot chocolate.

Learning Curve by psyraah Words: 2,498 Author’s Summary: The Galaxy Garrison has a name for training some of the best and the brightest. It’s rough, tough, and many would agree not an all together pleasant experience. Lance, Katie, and Hunk can all attest to that. The Paladins of Voltron are legendary, unmatched in their intellect and fighting prowess, and the only hope against the Galra Empire. Everything the Garrison should have trained them for. But Lance, Pidge, and Hunk know that there’s something that the Garrison didn’t teach them, something that took being light years from home for the three of them to understand: Heart. My Comments: Wonderful character study of Hunk, Pidge, and Lance and how they handle failure both at the Garrison in the past and now as part of the Voltron team. It’s great to see how much they’ve grown. And how much they trust each other.

What Keeps Him Whole by LightPinkTheColorOfMyAura Words: 6,398 Author’s Summary: Lance struggles in space. He knows that he is doing good by being part of the Voltron team, but everything is just constantly moving, difficult, and unrelenting. He’s tired. He doesn’t know what’s keeping him going anymore. My Comments: A little over the top and the writing’s a little rough, but this is a great scenario for Lance angst with lovely team comfort. Klance.

Five Stages of Grief by Sandyclaws68 Words: 5,058 Author’s Summary: There are five stages to the grieving process, but when you’re consistently lied to about your brothers’ “deaths” you might just get stuck in anger. My Comments: Great characterization and plot, and I loved the relationship between Pidge and Keith and Pidge and her mom.

Detonate by IcyPanther for heyheroics Words: 9,824 Author’s Summary: “Keith, please,” Lance pleaded, voice breaking. “They can’t lose you too.” / A routine mission takes a deadly turn. There are but literal ticks counting down until the end and Keith has a decision to make: leave Lance behind so he can escape or go down with him? It’s a good thing Keith is so stubborn. / Gen fic, Langst, whump My Comments: Excellent scenario, excellent whump, excellent protective Keith, excellent platonic Keith and Lance, it’s just all good. This one really kept me on the edge of my seat.

The Sound of Family by Anonymous Words: 8,623 Author’s Summary: As Keith swung the weapon in his hand, which he quickly realised was a bayard, it transformed. But instead of the usual comfortable weight of a blade, he felt the weapon tip forward, completely unbalanced. He made a noise of surprise, only to notice this voice was too high-pitched, too smooth to be his own. He looked down and saw blue armour instead of his black suit and in his right hand was a red rifle. “Keith?” he heard his own voice say. The figure tried to crouch but fell down with a grunt. “Keith, buddy, is that you?” His vision refocused and when he was able to see clearly again, he found himself gazing into his own… eyes? “Who are you?” he demanded. [When Keith and Lance accidentally swap bodies, hidden scars and wounds, both literal and metaphorical, are revealed and the two boys realise that there are some things that really shouldn’t be avoided any longer.] My Comments: I’d never thought about the fact that if a body swap happened, the brain chemistry would stay with the brain, not the mind. So what if there was a body swap and one of the bodies had depression? Great concept, explored very well. I love Keith and Lance’s mutual comfort and protectiveness. It was a fun scenario and a sweet fic. Ambiguous Klance, can be read as gen. Mentions of past child abuse.

each a perfect porcelain doll by panaili Words: 42,634 Author’s Summary: A new mission presents Team Voltron with the opportunity to get important information about Galra movements. Unfortunately, in order to successfully pull it off, Allura needs to be in two places at once: both shape-shifting to sneak into an alien server room and acting diplomatically as the Princess of Altea. Luckily, even though she is only one able to pull off the shape-shifting infiltration, disguising one of the paladins as the Altean princess should be much easier. [Set Season 2 at some point maybe] My Comments: This is everything I could have wanted from the premise of Pidge dressing up like Allura to fool an alien race. There’s bonding, fluff, whump, hurt/comfort, great action scenes and thrilling rescues, and, of course, Disney movies. This one grabbed me from the beginning and pulled me right along, and I loved it.

Earth, Meet Voltron by Gods_Writing_Fan Words: 2,181 Author’s Summary: What happens when the paladins try to warn Earth of an incoming attack? They freak out the entire population! Also, Lance gets to see his family again. My Comments: Packed full of emotion in not many words. I hope Lance gets to see his mom like this someday and give her a big hug and explain what he’s been up to.

What Not to Do in Chemistry Lab by Engineer104 Words: 2,458 Author’s Summary: Hunk’s to-do list for this semester consists of only one thing: making sure Lance doesn’t kill himself - and Hunk - in lab…and passes organic chemistry My Comments: Fluffy little modern AU in which Hunk is both amused and horrified by Lance’s shenanigans and Pidge mostly snarks from the side. Some hints of background romance of the college hookup variety, but the relationships on page are gen.

Interlude by LittleWhiteTie Words: 4,123 Author’s Summary: “Where are you going?” Keith asks, just barely catching Shiro before he collapses. “My room, or just… not here. Please.” Shiro should probably stay here in the infirmary where he can be monitored, but his eyes are pleading. “Alright,” Keith concedes. “But I’m not leaving you alone.” – In which Keith takes care of Shiro after The Journey. My Comments: So soft and indulgent and comforting to read, ahh, I love it, and something like this DEFINITELY happened in the gap between those episodes. Tagged as either romantic or platonic, but it did not ping me as romantic at all, just very intimate and brotherly.

Blood Brother, Space Brother by wingedflower Words: 4,826 Author’s Summary: (taking place around mid-season 4) Pidge has finally found her brother and Lance was happy for her, he truly was. But after filling the role of her big brother for so long, he couldn’t help but feel like he was… left out. My Comments: This fic literally made me cry, which is exceedingly rare. Lance’s feelings of loneliness and loss were so vivid that I felt them in my stomach as well as my chest. It’s all resolved beautifully, but yeah. Wow. This hit my buttons super hard. Going into my personal favorites.

Daily Interlude by Vialana Words: 1,540 Author’s Summary: “I need a hug.” Keith paused, spoonful of goo halfway to his mouth, and stared at Pidge. My Comments: Very cute and funny, with a touch of sweetness. Tagged Klance, but can be read as gen.

Previously Recced Fics That Updated:

Little Crystals (13555 words) As Color Fades Away (237268 words) The Purity of Sin (41134 words) Back from the Edge (5074 words) Taking One For The Team (38446 words)

#voltron legendary defender #weekly voltron fic recs #fic rec #vldgen

[audiovizualna]

This particular illustration belongs somewhere between pt. 3 and 4 of CC Christmas fic, but It’s my favourite. You’ll find a lot of team dynamic in this chapter and some nice memories. As always massive ‘thank you’ for @flabbergabst  for correcting my mistakes.

Cheers, lads. Enjoy :*

(I own nothing)

~

“You’re Not Him”

Part 1: “For Him”

Part 2: “About Him”

Part 3: ”From Him”

When  the Captain finally came back to Waverider, Nate was in the middle of singing along ”God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman”—the very same Stein had been singing last Christmas. Considering how horrible this version was, she stormed off to her quaters faster than intended. Sara had to admit though, the atmosphere on the ship improved significantly. The plan was working.

Leo had no intention of following her. She was upset enough after he had her sussed a few moments ago; so instead,  he also went straight inside and joined Amaya and Jax in the kitchen for dinner preparations.

Even with the lack of cooking possibilities on Earth-X, he managed not to burn the yam casserole with marshmallows. He also did a pretty good job with herbal mashed potatoes, but that was all he could achieve in this field. However, an attempt to make spiced mulled wine turned out to be disaster, so he imperceptibly retreated. Only God knows how Snart missed the laughter and learning simple things from his own mistakes. Eventually, another members of the Legends came to help too. Leo figured that he is not needed in the already too crowdy space.

 Leo asked Gideon where the captain is. The AI reported that Sara was currently in the training room, punching hell out of leather board. Leonard wanted to approach her again but he had one more person to talk to before dinner.

So there he stood, in front of Mick’s door, waiting. The doors opened at the request and Leo walked into the messy room without invitation. Not like he needed any.

”Before you try to kick me out, let me clarify one thing,” Leo started. ”You, or more like your version from Earth-X, was my best friend. Him and I have a strong connection in every world we exist. So why don’t you just talk to me? It will cost you nothing. But then again, I know you’re afraid.”

”I’m afraid of nothing! You wanna know why?” Rory almost growled. ”Because I have nothing else to loose, Snart!”

Leo waited for the man to calm down. Mick picked up a bottle of beer lying around and said in a way less gruff than a few seconds ago. ”There was only one Leonard for me. My true partner who had to play the hero and die, leaving me with those bunch of idiots.”

”Then why did you stay?” Leo asked, turning his head towards the arsonist and patiently waiting for the answer.

Mick loudly sighed. ”Exactly because of the same man who blew himself up. I knew he would stay if I had been the one dead in that damnxplosion. Beside, someone has to take care of those kids now that grandpa professor is gone.”

That comment caused small laughter deep inside Snart’s stomach, but he managed to find some snarky answer.

”I assume you’re not exactly the most suitable role model for any of them. But I’m no different, Mick. I never wanted to be a role model, but at least I try. The awful things we went through  made us the people that we are now and you, my friend, as terrible as it may sound, are becoming a better man every day. And those ‘idiots’ are one of the reasons behind that.”

Heatwave started to open his mouth in response, but Citizen Cold already stood up and began leaving the room with one last sentence.

”And yes, I know what you’re going to say. ‘Stop calling me your friend!’,” Leo drawled. ”Noted, Mick, once and for all. But that doesn’t mean you’re not my greatest companion.”

That’s how he left, asking Gideon to close the door to Mick’s room.

While everybody was busy preparing for dinner, Leo decided to roam around the ship, looking for places he hasn’t discovered yet. He could not understand though, why Sara felt emotional while having their previous conversation. The former assassin knew his presence in the ship is only temporary and sooner or later, he’s going to go back to Ray Terrill - love of his life.

On the other end of the ship was Sara, taking a cold shower after her training session. As the cold water flow through her body, one thing was bothering her. Why did Leo decide to stay in this Earth if everything he cared about was on another Earth?

As worried as she was, Sara Lance had to know the answer to that question and fast. Otherwise, her head might explode. She got dressed and despite her state, she entered the galley to see everybody patiently waiting for her.

”Ah! Finally our boss showed up! Now, let’s eat,” Mick proposed enthusiastically and grabbed closest dish - cranberry-stuffed duck.

”Shall I do the honours again?” Sara asked the group with one raised eyebrow, holding a large carving knife in her hand.

”Yup. As I remember correctly, last year Martin asked you to carve the poultry. Turkey is all yours, Captain,” Ray answered, already waiting with plates next to Sara.

The heroes almost forgot how good it was to sit together, laugh, and bring back some memories of their past days, both as the team and as individuals.

The original Legends answered every question Zari and Leo had about the photos displayed around the ship. Most of them were pretty funny stories like the one about kidnapping their younger selves, or meeting the Justice Society of America and the big misunderstanding between the two teams.

”Jax, do you remember when Marty rescued you from time pirates? He loved every minute of being… how had we called him?” Raymond asked.

Jax chuckled at the memory. ”A Space Ranger! Oh, yeah. Grey was a total badass those days.”

Both men laughed out loud, then looked at Mick carefully, remembering other events from that night.

”You’re right boys. That would have been cool if I had not almost froze to death in our engine room and Rory didn’t burn my arm,” Sara mentioned casually with a smirk.

”Oh, come on Birdie! Cut me some slack. That’s the part none of us want to remember,” Mick reminded the captain. ”Screwing things up is our speciality and it’ll never change. Less talking, more drinking.”

”What about the toast? Sara, that’s your call,” Jax suggested eloquently with a raised glass of wine on hand.

Sara was lost in her thoughts after Jefferson mentioned the time pirates. She was currently looking at the photo of her Leonard after he left Mick in the middle of nowhere. The said picture is both beautiful and sad. She realize that she’s never seen it before. Jax, however, knew when it was taken. Jax remembered perfectly this moment and that’s when he snapped the Canary out of her thoughts, gently putting hand on her shoulder and giving a her small smile.

She smiled back at the young man and stood up.

”Well, it seems like routine to me now, so I can’t retreat now,” Sara said, rolling her blue eyes and continued on with the toast.

”First of all, I want to thank Jax, Ray and… Leo, for the whole idea of bringing us together again. I had my doubts if this would be helpful at all after what happened last month, but I see now that the plan worked.”

She caught herself staring at Leo’s eyes, which were focused on her through the whole timethey’ve spent at the table. Even if she wanted to drown in steel blue irises, Sara carried on.

”We all had our precious time to think, to silently save the timeline, making it worse first obviously, but I’m glad we’re enjoying each other’s company once again. I assume that what happened made us stronger than ever, even if not all of us can fell it now.” She paused for a second, catching Jax’s stare.

”Everything is temporary, guys, and it’s up to us to show our own demons that we want to save ourselves. It’s up to us how much light we want to give to one another. So I make this toast for everyone who isn’t scared to share with us their best and their worst. To the people who made us better. Through darkness and light.”

”Through darkness and light!” All the voices answered in sync, emptying the glasses.

After dinner, the Legends moved to the main hall for another portion of exchanging stories saved on photo-chain. The whole team knew that this is a kind of bittersweet Christmas that will be the most memorable of them all.

Bottles of eggnog were opened and quickly consumed. Stories of King Arthur, evil demigods, brainwashed friends or World War I were shared and genuine laughter filled the air, mixed with the ginger scent of candles and the dim light of christmas lights.

One by one, the team members began to disappear in their private rooms, until only Sara, Leo, and Jax remained in the spacious hall.

”Thanks, both of you. I mean it. You did something I should have done many weeks ago, but I’ve never found courage to do so,” Sara softly said with a small smile, looking at the men in front of her.

”Hey Sara, like you said: ‘We all needed time,’” Jax replied. ”Besides, I bet Grey would be proud. The team took the opportunity to recover without fights and arguments. Aaaaaand he would also be pissed I’m still not in bed, so goodnight and…of course, you’re welcome, Captain,” Jax ended, looking at his watch and saluting both of them goodbye before he headed back to the quarters.

”I see that Stein is still the voice of reason here,” Sara exclaimed after her young friend turned back.

Jax smiled and looked back at the Captain.

”Yeah. I got it from him. Someone has to be the voice of reason in this crazy ship.”

If he got a glare from Sara, Jefferson never had a chance to see it.

#captain canary #citizen canary #sara lance #leo snart #jefferson jackson #martin stein #mick rory #amaya jiwe #nate heywood #ray palmer #zari tomaz #CC christmas fic #PANDArt

[sad-trash-writing]

You Want Me To Annoy Your Family Again?!

Part 2 of the Want to Annoy Your Family This Thanksgiving? Call Skye! AU

Part 1: Here

Back by popular demand (and only 2 years late) is this lovely Thanksgiving AU! So many people requested a Christmas follow-up that I had to do some kind of sequel to the first one, but I could not make a Christmas one work, so here this is! Hopefully, you all enjoy it as much as the original!

Jemma prodded the the chicken she was cooking up on the stove absentmindedly. She stared in the direction of the clock on the microwave without really seeing the numbers. She just knew it was about five minutes until Skye was supposed to be home from work. She hadn’t settled on how she was going to broach the subject to her. 

Skye had been dodging family holidays with Jemma for a full year now. After that (intentionally) disastrous Thanksgiving, Jemma’s parents invited Skye and Jemma to nearly every event, mostly at the request of Jemma’s grandmother (who had also coerced Jemma into setting up an internet router at her house because she wanted to 'read up on the lesbians.' Jemma rolled her eyes at nearly everything Helen said, but at least she was trying to understand). 

Despite her family’s effort at hospitality, Skye found a way to dodge every invite. She frequently used work as an excuse. Skye being a freelancer meant she did have an unpredictable schedule most days, so Jemma couldn’t call her out for it. If that didn’t work, she claimed she was deathly ill or found a dog on the way home from the grocery store and had to return it home, which would somehow take seven hours. 

Inevitably, Jemma ended up going to family events alone, when she couldn't weasel out of them herself, and it always led to the same conversation.

“Where’s Skye today?” Evelyn would ask with forced politeness. 

“She’s insert this week’s excuse here,” Jemma would mutter. 

Henry would grunt something along the lines of 'good' or 'don’t need that rabble ruining X holiday.'

“Henry!” Evelyn would scold, sounding scandalized, but secretly agreeing. 

Lance would mutter some agreement, since he was still bitter that Bobbi brought Skye up rather frequently. 

“I just read a story from the internet on the Stonewall Riot. Have you heard of that, Jemma?” Helen would pipe up. 

Shortly after everyone would roll their eyes, down their wine, and move into the living room to sit in front of the TV in silence while Helen tried to teach them about gay rights. 

Jemma sighed and jabbed the chicken again. There was probably too many greens in this recipe for Skye’s liking, but she knew she would grin and bear it. Finally, the door swung open and Skye clattered her way inside. Jemma heard Skye sigh heavily, kick off her shoes, and toss her bag on the sofa. Normally, Jemma would remind her to put it away, but she figured she could let it slide this time. 

“Jemma?”

“In the kitchen,” she replied. 

The shuffle of Skye’s feet on the tile floor of their apartment announced Skye’s presence before the lips on Jemma’s cheek did. 

“I thought it was my night to cook dinner,” Skye muttered as she wrapped her arms around Jemma’s waist. 

Jemma smiled. “It was, but I got off early and thought I’d make something a bit special.”

Skye’s attention turned to the simmering pan in front of Jemma. “Looks…great.”

“You won’t even be able to taste the brussel sprouts,” Jemma responded with an eye roll. 

Skye groaned and buried her face in the back of Jemma’s shoulder. “You’re killing me, woman.”

Jemma sighed and bit back the 'I’m actually extending your life' argument that usually followed and just enjoyed Skye’s closeness for a moment. She knew Skye would not be very happy after this conversation. 

Jemma clicked off the heat and moved the pan to one of the cool burners to set for a few minutes and spun in Skye’s arms to face her. 

“You know what I was thinking?” Jemma began. 

“Hm?”

“Are you busy this Thursday night?” 

Skye scrunched up her face and thought for a second. “No, I think the office is actually closed that day, for some reason.”

Jemma mentally breathed out a sigh of relief. It was a pretty safe gamble that Skye wouldn’t keep track of the date, but it was still a gamble. 

“Great,” Jemma replied with a wide, forced smile. “I was thinking we should have a nice, big, fancy dinner that night.”

“Oh?”

Jemma nodded and snaked her arms around Skye’s neck to gently pull her closer. “Yes, we can cook up a big main course, lots of sides and desserts. Then, once we’ve stuffed ourselves, we can just sit and drink a bunch of wine and relax.”

Skye was close enough that their lips were nearly brushing and Jemma had lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. Skye at least had the forethought to shift Jemma a few inches to the right of the hot burner before pressing her up against the counter.

“Sounds fantastic,” Skye muttered. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Great, because my family’s coming over for Thanksgiving,” Jemma blurted.

“What?!”

Skye’s hands on her waist stiffened and the heated look in her eyes was instantly replaced by abject horror. 

“It’s been a full year since you’ve seen my family and they’ve been asking about you at every event,” Jemma said. 

“Yeah, because they want to know if you’ve broken up with me yet,” Skye retorted. She disentangled herself from Jemma and leaned on the opposite counter, taking deep calming breaths. 

“That’s…probably true, but the longer you keep skipping out on holidays, the weirder it’s going to look,” Jemma said. 

“Yeah, but I…I can’t—I don’t wa—I mean, the last holiday that I went to wasn’t exactly a Hallmark movie waiting to happen.”

“Yes, well I didn’t originally bring you to make it a Hallmark movie,” Jemma replied. She crossed the kitchen and took Skye’s face in her hands. 

“Why did I originally call you?” Jemma prompted. 

“To annoy your family,” Skye replied sullenly. 

“Yes, which you excelled at and—”

“But, I don’t want to always annoy your family,” Skye cut in. 

Jemma paused and waited for Skye to elaborate. Skye took Jemma’s hands off her face and held them in her own. 

“I was fine being obnoxious to your family, because I wasn’t planning on sticking around. I didn’t know you and I didn’t know them and the odds that I was ever going to see any of you again after that night were slim,” Skye explained. “But then, I actually met you. And you were really cute and for some reason actually liked me, even when I was purposely destroying a family dinner and, now…”

Skye trailed off and took a deep breath. Jemma noticed there were the beginnings of tears in Skye’s eyes. 

“I just want to show them that I’m a person who deserves you and isn’t just a screw up.”

Jemma pulled her in for a tight hug. “You’ve never been a screw up, Skye. You’ve always been a survivor. I have some bad news for you, though: You’re never not going to annoy my family.”

“Thanks for the pep talk. I feel much better now,” Skye grumbled into Jemma’s shoulder. 

Jemma chuckled. “No one is ever going to be good enough in my parent’s eyes.”

“What about Bobbi? They love her,” Skye countered. 

“Bobbi’s a master manipulator. She can make anyone like her,” Jemma replied. “She also with Lance and is better than anything they could have hoped for with him. For me, they won’t be happy unless I bring home a neurosurgeon who graduated from Harvard and comes from old money. And even, then, only if they’re a man.”

“Which I’m sure you could find,” Skye retorted. 

“Possibly. But I don’t want that and I didn’t call one of them last year to impress my family. I called you.”

“Weirdo,” Skye teased. 

Jemma shrugged. “You never had to impress my family. You impressed me. And I wouldn’t want anyone else by my side to annoy my family. But I do want you by my side.”

Skye pulled back to look at her, as if trying to find some way to get out of it. When she found only resolve in Jemma’s face, she sighed heavily. 

“Fine. I’ll go to Thanksgiving.” 

Jemma smiled and kissed her firmly on the lips. “Thank you. Now, let’s eat.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Skye muttered so quietly Jemma barely heard. They had been together for a full year and Jemma had never once heard Skye say those words out loud. She turned to respond, but Skye had already shuffled off to the bedroom. 

Jemma let it slide and distributed dinner onto two plates while finishing up her mental preparations for later this week.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Skye, are you sure you don’t—”

“I said I got this!” Skye shouted irritably up the stairs. Of all days for the elevator to break in their apartment building. 

Jemma trudged up the last few stairs with her bags and down the hall to unlock the door. 

Skye stomped slowly up the stairs a few paces behind, arms laden with groceries. Each arm had several bulging bags filled with their Thanksgiving fixings slung over them and balanced between them was a massive turkey. Skye was wheezing as she mounted the last steps, but Jemma wasn’t going to make the mistake of offering to help again. 

Skye waddled through the door that Jemma held open for her and unceremoniously dumped everything on the counter. Jemma shuffled around her and started lining things up on the counter.

“So did you volunteer to host Thanksgiving?” Skye asked grumpily, half-laying on the pile of groceries. “Because this seems like an insane amount of work to do voluntarily.”

“I volunteered. It was supposed to be Bobbi and Hunter’s year but they asked if I could take over since they just eloped to Las Vegas and didn't think they would have time to prepare,” Jemma replied.

“Huh.” Skye looked impressed. “I can see Hunter doing that, but Bobbi doesn't seem the type to elope.”

“You'd be surprised,” Jemma muttered. “Anyway, ready to start cooking?” Skye looked at her like she had grown a second head. “I’m ready to go back to sleep, if that’s what you meant. It’s barely seven in the morning.”

“Not an option! We need to get the turkey cleaned, seasoned, and in the oven within the next—” Jemma checked the clock, “—twenty-three minutes if it’s going to be anywhere near done when everyone arrives. Not to mention we have to squeeze in the sweet potatoes, the stuffing, the pecan pie—”

Skye’s loud groan cut her off. “Fine, let’s get to it. I’ll start mashing the potatoes.”

The three days between Jemma breaking the news to Skye and the morning of Thanksgiving passed way too quickly. Skye was a constant ball of nerves, pacing and fretting over every detail out loud. 

Jemma was more quietly panicking. This was the first year she had hosted Thanksgiving and she had no idea what she was doing. She read thousands of cooking tips online, organized their apartment and rearranged the dining area at least a dozen times, and spent that last 48 hours assuring her mother that yes, everything was going to be fine and no, she didn’t need any help. 

Skye quietly mashed the potatoes in the corner of the kitchen with a bit more force than Jemma thought was strictly necessary, while Jemma got to work on the turkey and gradually crossed off each task according to Jemma’s strict schedule that she had mapped out. 

Eventually, they fell into a rhythm like they always did when they cooked together. They moved around the small kitchen with ease, deftly sliding past each other with mixing bowls or trays held over their heads to not jostle the other’s work. Full sentences didn’t needed to be spoken to pass knives and spices back and forth. 

Once everything was in the oven that needed to be, Jemma grabbed dirty dishes to throw in the sink. She turned back toward the sink with a pile of dishes in her arms to find Skye planted in front of her holding two pies. 

“Pies are done,” she announced proudly. One was pecan and the other pumpkin and, though they wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests anytime soon, they looked edible and that’s what mattered. “Why do we need two pies, though? Aren’t there like six of us?”

“Eleven, actually. The kids can't eat pecan and the adult can’t stand pumpkin.” Jemma sidled around Skye and dumped everything in the sink and started running the water. 

“That’s fa—wait, kids?” Skye squeaked.

“Yes, my cousin is bringing her triplets. I told you this.”

“Triplets?!”

“Yes, they just turned five.”

“Five?!” 

Jemma turned toward Skye. “Why are you panicking? You’re great with kids.”

“Yeah, but—” 

“Skye, it will be fine. They’re only children,” Jemma consoled. “And they’re going to be here in an hour, so you may want to start getting ready.”

“Shit,” Skye hissed. She set the pies down and darted into the bedroom. 

Jemma finished drying the dishes and tidied up the dining room again. Everything was set out already, from the wine glasses and utensils to the few matching plates that they had. A smaller table was set up just beside the main dining table that the triplets would sit at, since there was barely enough room at the table for all the adults. Jemma smoothed out the tablecloth one last time and she decided to go get changed as well. 

Skye was in the bathroom, very gingerly putting on makeup and cursing to herself. Jemma let her be and rummaged through her closet to find the outfit she had picked out. 

“Damnit. Jemma, is my eyeliner too thick?” Skye asked. 

“Given that the last time you saw them, you had used up an entire eyeliner pencil, I wouldn’t….what on earth are you wearing?”

Skye stood in front of her wearing a button up shirt and a cardigan that she had definitely stolen from Jemma’s closet and her hair was done up in a loose bun. Her makeup was extremely conservative, but she had just enough on to look like she made an effort. 

Skye looked herself up and down. “Does it look bad?”

“No! No, it just doesn't look…like you.”

“Well, 'me' is black leather jackets and torn jeans, and we already tried that one,” Skye replied with a shrug.

“Yes, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Skye fidgeted with the end of her cardigan while Jemma located the shirt she was going to wear. Jemma tugged off her gravy stained T-shirt and tossed it into hamper across the room. Then she noticed Skye’s eyes fixed on her. 

“What?” 

Skye sidled up to her. “You know, we have some time to kill. Maybe we could do something to take the edge off a bit.”

“Anything to make you unwind,” Jemma responded. She slipped an arm around Skye’s neck and pulled her in for a kiss. 

In the millisecond before their lips met, the doorbell rang and they both froze.

“Shit.”

“I’m not ready,” Jemma said

“But—”

“You have to go let them in. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“But—”

“Go!”

Jemma shoved Skye towards the door and scrambled to pull on her clothes. Skye shot her one last look that read more like 'I’m marching to the guillotine' than 'I’m answering the door.'

Jemma tugged off her dirty jeans and fished around for her nice dress pants while listening to who was at the door. Once she was dressed, she ran a brush through her hair and then hovered at the closed bedroom door a minute. 

It was her cousin, Stacy, at the door with her kids. Jemma could hear Skye introducing herself with a tone that sounded, to Jemma, very forced. It seemed to mirror Stacy’s tone perfectly though, so Skye was doing well so far. Stacy introduced herself in return and the triplets, Sara, Terra, and Bradley, and they mumbled their quiet hello’s.  

“Would you like some wine?” Skye asked Stacy. 

“Yes, please. Do you have any Chardonnay?”

“Of course. How about you guys, do you want some wine?”

“…They’re children,” Stacy deadpanned. 

“R-Right, duh. Of course. Would you kids like some….uh….non-alcoholic wine?” Skye stammered. 

Well, that didn’t last long. Time to go save her. 

Jemma bolted out of the bedroom into the kitchen. “The word you’re looking for is 'grape juice,' Skye.”

Jemma shifted some things around in the fridge and dug out a large bottle of grape juice, which she passed to Stacy who was digging plastic cups with lids out of her bag. 

“So good to see you, Stacy. I see you’ve met my girlfriend, Skye,” Jemma greeted. 

“I’ve heard so much about her. It’s nice to put a face with the stories,” Stacy replied. 

“Great,” Skye muttered, once Stacy turned her attention to her kids.

The ding of the oven timer saved them from any more awkward small talk. 

“Oh! Turkey’s done. Go ahead and make yourselves comfortable while we finish up dinner,” Jemma said. 

As soon as Stacy left the kitchen, Skye groaned and flopped against the counter. 

“You’re doing fine, Skye. Relax,” Jemma soothed. 

“I offered her children wine,” Skye hissed. 

“Honest mistake. But I believe you also offered Stacy wine and never opened the bottle.” Jemma handed Skye the bottle of Chardonnay. 

Skye's eyes went wide. “Don’t make me go out there alone again.”

“Would you rather baste the turkey?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means deliver a glass of wine and come right back,” Jemma whispered. 

Skye grumbled the whole time she was uncorking the wine and took out two wine glasses. One she filled up to the brim and took a long drink of before she filled the other a normal amount and took it into the living room. 

While she was gone, the doorbell rang. 

“Shit,” Jemma muttered. Daisy was going to have a heart attack. Jemma made sure nothing was going to overcook and called, “I’ve got it” into the living room.

  She swung open the front door to find Lance and Bobbi and ushered them inside. 

She led them into the living room where Stacy seemed to be regaling Skye with a graphic account of the triplets’ birth and Skye was looking rather pale.

“Stacy just got here and you both remember Skye,” Jemma said loudly. 

Bobbi smiled brightly. “Skye, good to see you again.”

“What a pleasant surprise,” Lance grumbled stepping a bit closer to Bobbi. 

“Skye, can you help me with the—”

A knock at the door interrupted Jemma’s attempt to extract Skye. Jemma stared at her, trying to gage whether Skye would prefer to stay hear the rest of the birthing story or answer the door. Skye looked too shell-shocked to decide, so Jemma just headed for the door. 

Her parents gave her a quick hug each when Jemma opened the door. Jemma noticed a bulging bag on her mother’s shoulder. 

“What is all that?”Jemma asked. 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Evelyn waved her off. “Just a few little things in case you needed some back ups—”

“Your mother cooked a whole Thanksgiving dinner in case you messed something up,” Henry deadpanned. 

“Mother!”

“Henry!”

Henry just shrugged. 

“Mother, I have two doctorate degrees. I think I’m capable of not messing up a turkey,” Jemma snapped.

At that exact moment, the smoke detector in the kitchen went off. Jemma darted into the kitchen and pulled the turkey out of the oven. It only got a little bit extra browned on the top, no major harm done. Jemma would have never heard the end of it. She already needed a drink. 

Jemma pulled everything else that was out of the oven and set it on the stove. She poured herself a glass of wine and brought the rest of Skye’s out to her in the living room. Thankfully, the conversation had switched to something less gruesome, but Skye still looked extremely relieved when Jemma sidled up next to her with a glass of wine. 

The conversation stayed miraculously away from Jemma or Skye for a while as everyone got reacquainted. Jemma tried to hold Skye’s hand at one point to give it a reassuring squeeze, but Skye slyly shifted her grip on her wine glass. Jemma frowned a bit, before she noticed that Skye was standing quite a bit further away than she usually did. And that she was strategically avoiding any kind of display of affection, when usually she was extremely handsy.

Jemma was only vaguely paying attention to Stacy telling everyone about the triplets’ expensive school, when she heard Skye’s name.

“Skye, where did you go to pre-kindergarten?” Evelyn asked.

Skye tensed. “I…um. I didn't?”

Evelyn looked only mildly surprised. “Oh.”

“I had an...unconventional childhood,” Skye admitted.

“Oh,” Evelyn said again. “I understand. Jemma took two years off in middle school to work on her first biology degree at Oxford.”

“Yeah, mine wasn't quite like that. I just went to the public school near St. Agnes’ from first grade to high school,” Skye responded. 

“Oh, my hairdresser’s daughter went there and I think she's about your age. What year did you graduate?” Evelyn asked.

Great, Jemma thought. Leave it to her mother to bring up all the sensitive subjects off the bat.

Skye fidgeted under everyone's intense gaze. “I...I didn't.”

Evelyn, Stacy, and Henry looked visibly affronted. 

“Well, when you're about to age out of the foster system and your only possession is an broken-down van, you have slightly different priorities,” Skye said bitterly. She instantly seemed to regret her tone. “Does anybody else need more wine? I need more wine.”

Everyone was silent as Skye stalked out of the living room. Luckily, they only had to sit in awkward silence for a few seconds until the doorbell rang. 

“I got it!” Daisy called, grumpily, from the kitchen. 

“Must be your grandmother,” Evelyn muttered. 

Sure enough, Helen’s voice filtered through the apartment following the creak of the front door. 

“There she is! My second favorite lesbian!” 

Oh my god. Jemma fought the urge to bury her face in her hands and had another sip of wine instead. 

“Um. Hi, Helen,” Skye muttered sheepishly. Skye and Helen appeared in the living room moments later and two of the triplets ran up and gave her a hug. Terra held back and tugged on her mother’s shirt. “Mama, what’s a lesbian?” she asked loudly. 

Every adult in the room froze. 

“Um...it’s where...I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Stacy replied. 

“Why can’t she know now? It’s not inappropriate,” Helen defended. “It’s when girls like other girls, honey. Like your cousin Jemma and her girlfriend.”

“Cool! Can I be a lesbian?” Sara asked. 

“No,” Stacy deadpanned. 

“I wanna be a lesbian, too!” Bradley announced. 

“That’s not how—”

“Now that everyone’s here, shall we start dinner?” Jemma asked loudly.

Everyone quickly agreed and shuffled into the kitchen. Jemma grabbed Skye and started handing her serving dishes to put out on the table. Once everything was set up, she quickly lit the candles in the centerpiece and directed everyone to sit and start serving themselves. Helen and Bobbi both wanted to sit by Skye and Hunter insisted on sitting on the Bobbi’s other side, so Jemma ended up squished in between her father and Stacy on the opposite side of the round table as Skye, who just stared at her with a panicked look.

The family spent some time complimenting all the food and then conversed about their various jobs. When Stacy started describing the most gory infections she had seen working as a nurse, Evelyn hurriedly shifted the conversation onto Skye, who had been trying to make herself as small as possible. 

“Skye, what do you do for a living?”

“I, um. I’m a freelancer for an IT and cyber-security company,” she replied.

  “That’s really interesting,” Bobbi piped up. “How did you get into that?”

Jemma noticed Lance’s face shift into a glare when Bobbi’s attention turned towards Skye. 

“I’ve just always been interested in computer languages and how security programs work,” Skye said. “Then, earlier this year, I got into tro-- got into contact with some of the higher-ups at SHIELD and they offered me a job.”

Henry made a noise of recognition. “We’ve had some people from SHIELD come work on our systems at the office. Good thing, too, because this past year has not been a great time to be in politics. We’ve had Anonymous and The Rising Tide and  all those other rabble knocking around our servers all year, trying to find dirt on everyone in the building. Oh, but I forgot. You’re an anarchist, they’re probably some of your friends,” Henry finished, gruffly. 

Skye gulped. Jemma knew for a fact that Skye did know people in the Rising Tide. 

“I’m, uh. Well, I do think that there’s a lot that could be changed about our political system,” Skye said, delicately. Jemma tried to stifle a laugh. If she didn’t think about how hard Skye was trying to not make any waves, this was almost as amusing as last year.

Henry huffed. “Kids your age just don’t understand how hard the government works--”

“Henry, no one’s saying you don’t work hard,” Evelyn countered, in attempt to keep the peace. 

“No! No, I definitely wasn’t saying that,” Skye agreed. 

Henry grumbled something under his breath, but let the subject drop. Luckily, Lance and Bobbi picked up the slack in the conversation. 

Jemma didn’t hear what they were talking about. She was just trying to get Skye’s attention. When Skye finally looked up from poking the remaining food on her plate, her eyes were wide. Jemma mimed taking deep breaths to her, hoping she would mirror, and gave her a reassuring thumbs-up. 

Skye took a deep breath and smiled in return, looking slightly more calm. A tiny, blonde head popped up between Jemma and Stacy. 

“Mama, can we have dessert now?” Sara asked. 

“Did you all eat your green beans?”

“Yes,” three voices chanted in unison. 

“Okay then, ask Jemma and Skye,” Stacy replied. 

A different tiny head popped up next to Skye and she jumped so violently she nearly knocked over her wine glass. 

“Miss Skye, can we have dessert please?” Terra asked. 

Skye caught her breath before responding. “Yeah, of course. Let me go grab it. Is everybody done?”

The adults assured her that they were and Skye started gathering up plates and utensils. Jemma was impressed. Most of the time when they had guests (usually just their friends), Skye was more the ‘you have legs, don’t you?’ style of hostess. 

Jemma stood and helped clear the rest of the plates and followed Skye to the kitchen. 

“It’s going well, I promise,” she whispered into Skye’s ear when they were away from the family. 

“Why do I still feel like I’m screwing up then?” 

Jemma shrugged. “My parents have that effect on people.”

They dumped the dishes in the sink for now and each got to work cutting up a pie. Skye distributed the pumpkin onto three small, plastic plates and then delivered them to the kids, and then circled back to help Jemma bring out the pecan to everyone else. 

“This pie tastes funny,” Bradley commented.

Stacy looked aghast. “Don’t be rude.”

Skye just chuckled. “Sorry, kids. It was my first time making a pumpkin pie.”

“That’s okay. I can’t make pie either,” Bradley said. 

“That’s...reassuring,” Skye muttered. 

The conversation was muted while everyone enjoyed their dessert. Until one of the triplets started wheezing. 

“Skye, is there anything with peanuts in the pie?” Jemma asked, slight panic rising in her voice.

“A little bit of peanut butter, why?” Skye replied. 

Stacy darted from the table and grabbed her purse. Jemma’s eyes went wide.

“Sara’s allergic to nuts!” Jemma hissed. 

Skye’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t. You just said that they wouldn’t eat pecan pie.”

“I said they couldn’t eat pecan pie.”

“That doesn’t translate to ‘deathly allergic to it!’”

“Why did you put peanut butter in a pumpkin pie anyway?”

“We didn’t have enough pumpkin! I thought it was fine to fill it out!” Skye shouted.

Stacy finally returned with an Epipen and jabbed it into Sara’s thigh. In a few moments, her wheezing slowed and her breath returned to normal while Stacy rubbed her back reassuringly. 

“Alright, she’s in the clear for now. I’m going to take her to the hospital to be safe,” Stacy announced, scooping Sara up into her arms. “Can you all keep an eye on Terra and Brad until we get back?”

“Of course,” Evelyn replied. 

“I. Am so. Sorry,” Skye said to Stacy. 

“It’s okay,” Sara chirped brightly, her voice a little raspy. 

“It’s fine. Honest mistake,” Stacy replied distantly, grabbing her coat. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

And then she was gone and the apartment was silent. Jemma darted into the kitchen to open another bottle of wine. Skye was definitely going to need it. 

When she returned, everyone was muttering vaguely about how they hoped Sara was going to be okay and Skye’s eyes were fixed firmly on her untouched pie. Jemma slid a generous glass of wine in front of Skye before taking her seat again. 

“That was nothing,” Bradley announced. “One time, Sara had peanut M&M’s at school and said she saw Jesus.”

“Bradley! Don’t be dramatic,” Evelyn scolded lightly. 

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Skye,” Bobbi consoled. “Even after I was with Lance for a year, I forgot he was allergic to shellfish and made him take me out to a seafood restaurant for our anniversary.” Bobbi chuckled. 

“Hey, that was not funny,” Lance replied, but with a good-natured smile. “My face swelled up so badly I couldn’t drive us home and I had to let you drive my bike.”

“Hm, that was a sweet motorcycle,” Bobbi replied. “I should have poisoned you with crab legs earlier and stolen it.”

“Oh, that reminds me!” Evelyn said after the laughter at Lance’s expense died down. “We never did hear how you and Jemma met, Skye.”

Skye blanched and Jemma could feel the color drain from her face as well. They still never worked out their story. At least not one that Jemma’s parents would approve of. 

“Oh, well. It’s, um, it’s really not an interesting story,” Skye muttered. Before anyone could press, she turned to Bobbi and Lance. “How was your Vegas trip?”

Uh oh. Now it was Bobbi and Lance’s turn to go white. 

Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. “Vegas?” she asked. Her voice didn’t change tone much, but it suddenly had a dangerous edge to it. “I thought you went to Denver last weekend.”

Lance and Bobbi both sputtered and looked at each other as they tried desperately to get their stories straight. Skye panickedly looked Jemma. She didn’t realize she should have told Skye that the elopement wasn’t common knowledge yet. 

“Did you go get married by one of those tacky Elvis impersonators?” Evelyn accused. 

It was dead silent for a moment. No one dared to breath. Terra whispered to Bradley, “What’s Elvis?”

“....it was actually Darth Vader,” Bobbi whispered. 

It was like that sentence set off an explosion. Evelyn was yelling about how her only child that’s going to be able to get married eloped to Las Vegas, despite all her Pinterest planning. Helen was yelling that, actually Jemma and Skye can get married now; the Supreme Court said so. Lance was yelling that he was a goddamn adult and could decide how and when he was going to get married. Henry was yelling that Lance shouldn’t speak to his mother that way. 

And Jemma and Skye just sat there. Jemma slumped down in her chair and sighed. Skye’s eyes darted between everyone screaming over each other, like she was trying to figure out how to make this better. 

Skye eventually jolted to her feet to try to restore some order, but ended up bumping the edge of the centerpiece and knocking over one of the candles. The thin, stick candle bounced once on the table, before igniting the linen tablecloth like it was a dead leaf. 

On the upside, it definitely worked as a distraction. All the yelling turned from anger at Bobbi and Lance to oh my god, the table’s on fire. 

“Shit!” Skye cursed loudly, forgetting about the small children in the room. She grabbed the nearest glass of wine and dumped it onto the fire. 

Luckily, it put out the small blaze. Unluckily, it doused both Jemma and Evelyn in red wine. 

Skye gingerly set the empty glass back on the table. “I’ll go get some towels.”

Jemma dabbed her shirt off with her napkin and followed Skye into the kitchen.

  Skye was pacing when Jemma found her, mumbling ‘oh my god’ to herself over and over. 

“Skye, you need to relax. It’s not that bad,” Jemma tried. 

“I nearly killed your cousin’s kid and set everyone on fire. I’d say that’s pretty bad,” Skye countered. 

“Well...on the upside it can’t get any worse.”

Skye shot her a glare. “Really reassuring. I feel much better now.”

“I don’t know how to make you feel better. I mean, last year, you threatened to fight my grandmother in the front yard. At least this is all just accidents and accidents happen,” Jemma said.

Skye groaned and leaned up against the counter. She opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by a quiet buzzing. 

That’s when Jemma noticed Skye had her phone in her hand.

Jemma narrowed her eyes. “Who’s texting you on Thanksgiving?”

Skye flushed. “It’s, uh…it’s work. Coulson needs me for some emergency—”

“No.”

Skye quirked an eyebrow. “'Scuse me?”

“I said no,” Jemma repeated. She leaned in close so she could whisper, “You are not leaving me alone here.”

“But—”

Before Skye could form a full protest, Jemma snatched Skye’s phone out of her hands and stuffed it down her shirt. 

Skye gaped. “You think I’m not going to go for it now?”

“You better not,” Jemma replied. 

Despite the threat in Jemma’s voice, Skye dove her hands under Jemma’s shirt. Jemma yelped slightly at the coldness of Skye’s fingers on her bare skin. She clamped her arms down to try to stop Skye from finding the phone. 

“Stop it,” Jemma snapped.

“Just give it to me.”

“No!”

“Come on, I’m gonna get it anyway. Just make it easier.”

“I said no. Get off.”

“What the hell is going on here?”

Skye and Jemma both froze. Lance stood in the doorway with a murderous glare on his face as he took in the situation. 

Which was Skye, pressing his baby sister against a counter with her hands up her shirt, apparently against her will. 

“This is not—”

Lance crossed the room faster than either of them would have expected, grabbed Skye by the front of her shirt, and pushed her up against the opposite wall. 

Before Lance could hiss out any number of the threats that Jemma could see brewing in his head, Skye knocked his hands away and punched him in the face. 

“Shit!”

“Shit!”

“Motherf—”

“What the hell?”

Now, Jemma’s entire family congregated in the doorway of the kitchen wearing matching expressions of concern. Blood was pouring out of Lance’s nose and he was cursing up a streak. Evelyn frantically tried to cover two pairs of impressionable ears at once. 

Jemma’s gaze went to Skye. She looked stunned. Her hands were still halfway raised in a defensive posture, but her eyes were darting between Jemma, her family, and a bloodied Lance. 

“I—I’m…I’m sorry,” Skye stammered out. She bolted into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. 

Jemma wanted to run after her immediately, but she had to do some damage control here. Mostly because Lance was bleeding all over her kitchen floor (and blood was impossible to get out of grout). 

Jemma grabbed a handful of towels and thrust them into Bobbi’s hands, who was trying to get a better look at Lance’s face. Next, she grabbed a plastic bag and stuffed it with ice from the freezer to pass over to him as well. 

“Will someone tell me what the hel-heck just happened?” Evelyn demanded. 

“Jemma’s crazy girlfriend punched me in the face,” Lance groaned. 

“Why would she do that?” Bobbi asked. 

“I was trying to defend my little sister.”

“From Skye?”

“Yes!” Lance shouted and then groaned in pain. “I saw her...assaulting Jemma.”

“You saw nothing of the sort,” Jemma snapped and jammed the bag of ice onto his face, not caring when he whimpered in pain. “What you saw was me trying to keep Skye from leaving because you all were scaring her off!”

No one had anything to say to that. They just shuffled their feet awkwardly. 

“Honestly, she’s trying her best to impress you and you all keep acting like absolute assholes!” Jemma continued. 

Evelyn gasped and covered the nearest triplet’s ears. 

“She wasn’t all that concerned with impressing us a year ago. What changed?” Henry asked. 

“I—I…”

Every eye in the room was on her. She couldn't lie her way out of this one. “I found her online,” Jemma mumbled. “We had only met for the second time last Thanksgiving because… I hired her specifically to annoy you all.”

An audible gasp circled the room. Skye would probably be pissed at Jemma for telling her whole family this, but Jemma couldn’t lie about it anymore. 

“So has all this been a lie?” Evelyn asked. 

Jemma shook her head. “That only part that was a lie was everything that happened last Thanksgiving. After that, well, Skye took me by surprise.”

A small smile pulled at Jemma’s lips as she thought back on all the memories she and Skye had made over the last year. From their casual Christmas (since they had a snowstorm last year, so Jemma got out of her family holiday) where they spent three days in their pajamas watching Christmas-themed slasher movies, to Skye’s manic joy when she got her job and everything in between. Jemma couldn’t believe it had only been a year and Skye was already in integral part of her life. She couldn’t imagine Skye not being with her anymore. 

Jemma’s cheeks flushed slightly when she realized her family was still staring at her, waiting for more of an explanation. Well, except for Lance, who was trying to peer around his rapidly swelling face and an ice pack. 

Jemma grabbed another bottle of wine from the fridge and smacked it on the counter in front of her family. 

“I’m going to go talk to Skye now. The rest of you, have another glass of wine, relax, and maybe try to be a little less overbearing when we come back,” Jemma snapped. It was strange to have all the appalled looks directed at her this time instead of Skye, but she was willing to take it. 

Without another word, Jemma turned on her heel and marched towards the bedroom. 

The lights were still off when Jemma entered and it took her a few seconds for her eyes to adjust once she closed the door. She couldn’t find Skye at first, but once she fully got used to the darkness, she spotted the top of Skye’s head peeking up from the side of the bed.

“Skye?” Jemma tried softly. 

No response. 

Jemma rounded the corner of the bed to where Skye was sitting on the floor. Even in the low light, Jemma could tell Skye had tears streaming down her face. Skye kept her eyes fixed to the ground until Jemma sat beside her with her back against the bed. 

“I’m sorry,” Skye whispered. “I tried to just not ruin something for one night and I ruined it anyway.”

Jemma sighed. “You didn’t ruin anything, Skye.”

“Your entire family hates me, Jemma. Except maybe your grandmother, for some strange reason.”

“Nobody hates you.”

“What about Lance?” Skye countered. 

Jemma sighed. “Well, he’ll probably be unhappy with you for awhile, but this isn’t the first time he’s been punched in the face. Though, you know he’s all talk and wouldn’t have done anything to you so you didn’t have to punch him.”

Skye sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. “I know, it was just...instinct, I guess. You forget that I was legally homeless for quite a few years. I got into some hairy situations and had to learn how to get out of them. One of which is to hit before the other guy can.”

Jemma didn’t know what to say to that. She just slipped her hand into Skye’s and squeezed firmly. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Jemma muttered, after a few minutes of silence. 

Skye scoffed. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“Yes I do. I forced you into this family dinner thing, even though it made you uncomfortable and everything that’s happened tonight has just been because it stressed you out so much,” Jemma said. “I shouldn’t have pushed it and just accepted that you and my family weren’t going to mix.”

Skye huffed a laugh. “Well, I’m going to apologize again for being such a baby about all of this. Last Thanksgiving really was fun. I don’t know why this was had to be so stressful.”

“Last Thanksgiving, there were no expectations. You knew you were walking into a disaster from the start.” Jemma laughed. 

“That’s true. I should have gone in with that mindset again.”

Jemma chuckled to herself and laid her head on Skye’s shoulder.

“You know, we’ll have to go back out there at some point,” Jemma reminded Skye. As much as she didn’t want to move from this position, her family was still waiting in the living room. 

Skye groaned and buried her face in Jemma’s shoulder. “I know.”

Jemma handed Skye’s phone back to her. She had seen the message from Coulson that said, “Nothing that we need you for tonight. Happy Thanksgiving!” but she figured she would give Skye an out anyway.

“You can go into work if you need to. I can just tell everyone it’s urgent,” Jemma said. 

Skye hesitantly took the phone from her and stared at it, trying to decide what to do next. She tossed the phone up onto the nightstand and shoved herself to her feet. “Let’s go face your family. Maybe you should change clothes first.”

Only then did Jemma remember that she was still covered in wine. 

Skye tugged off her cardigan, handed it over to Jemma, and headed to her closet. 

“What are you doing?” Jemma asked. 

“I’m going to put on something a little more comfortable.” 

Jemma changed out of her wine-stained shirt and into the cardigan (that was definitely hers in the first place, but now had the benefit of smelling like Skye) and waited for Skye to be ready. 

Skye resurfaced looking much more like herself. She had opted for a simple flannel shirt that was casual, but still looked great on her. She took her hair down and let if fall over her shoulders in loose waves, rather than being tied up so tightly. 

Jemma couldn’t help, but smile. She held out a hand and walked with Skye (her Skye) back into the apartment. 

The family had adjourned to the living room with the remaining bottle of wine, as Jemma had hoped. She could hear the muted conversations filtering through the kitchen. 

Before they headed in, Skye detoured to the fridge, dug into the back, and pulled out one of the nice beers from the package they only broke open on special occasions. Skye grabbed Jemma’s hand and then marched into the belly of the beast. 

The already hushed conversation died the minute the pair stepped into the room. Skye took a deep breath and beelined over to the couch that Lance was draped across, moaning about his nose while Bobbi looked on without pity. Skye held the beer in front of his face so he could see it beyond his swollen eyes. Lance eyed the beer, and then Skye, suspiciously, but eventually took it from her hands and sat up. 

“I’m—I’m sorry I punched you,” Skye said to Lance. “You startled me and I just kind of reacted, but that’s no excuse. And I want you to know, I would never do anything to hurt Jemma, ‘cause I—I love her and never want anything bad to happen to her, especially not because of me.”

Lance silently stared at her for a few long moments. He seemed to be sizing her up, looking for any trace of dishonesty in her statement. He finally just shrugged and cracked open the beer. “You’ve got a mean right hook, I’ll give you that.”

The entire room, Jemma included, seemed to let out a breath. 

“Is it true you met online?” Sara asked.

“My mom says you’re not supposed to talk to people on the internet, ‘cause they’re all crazy,” Bradley followed up.

Evelyn made a quiet noise of agreement with that statement. 

Skye spun towards Jemma and shot her an exasperated look. Jemma just shrugged sheepishly. 

Skye sighed and turned back to the rest of the family.

“Okay, well. Cat’s out of the bag, then. No need to pretend otherwise,” Skye announced. “Before anyone asks, I’m going to put all my cards on the table. Yes, I put an ad out last year to go annoy someone’s family at Thanksgiving. You guys are the lucky ones who got me. Yes, I was aiming to be as obnoxious as possible in order to piss everyone off.”

Evelyn and Henry huffed and shared a look. Helen looked almost disappointed. “Also, I’m not really an anarchist, but I will fight you politically on everything you believe, Henry. Just be ready for it. No, Jemma and I don’t use gross pet-names. And I’ve never slapped her ass, except that one time to elicit a reaction from you all. Well, actually—”

Skye glanced towards Jemma, whose eyes went and she made a ‘cut it out’ gesture. 

“Nope, that was the only time. Any questions?”

The door swung open and Sara trotted in, followed closely by a frazzled-looking Stacy. 

“Hello again, everyone. What did we miss?”

No one had the heart to retell every mishap that had happened while they had been gone. Instead, Jemma made some hot cider for everyone and they took turns asking Skye questions, which she answered frankly, even when she knew it wouldn’t go over well. 

Jemma had to give her parents credit, because they were trying very hard to police their reactions to not offend and even occasionally asking for details (even when Jemma could tell her mother was horrified by the tales of Skye’s previous living situation. 

Still, the rest of the evening went by amicably and without incident. Skye even relaxed enough to pull Jemma in for a chaste kiss when the conversation turned to someone else. 

(Eventually, someone told Stacy what all had transpired while she was in the emergency room with Sara. Never had Stacy been more thankful for a peanut-laced pie than she was at that moment.)

#skimmons #bioquake #thanksgiving au #aosficnet2 #want to annoy your family this thanksgiving? craigslist ad #family holiday au

[panda-noosh]

Can I request scenarios for the guys, where they're talking with their s/o about something and just kinda rambling until they notice s/o is staring at them with a adoring smile, the guys are like "what??" And s/o is like "you're cute when you ramble" and gives them a soft kiss on the cheek

  Here you go! x

Shiro:

  There wasn't a lotof things that got Shiro talking at the speed he was currentlyspeaking.

  Slav had been a bittoo much today. Even for Shiro, the man who everybody believed hadthe most patience out of the entire group. For the entire day, Slavhad made it his duty to make Shiro want to rip his own hair out infrustration, and Shiro was feeling the frustration.

   He tried to hideit. With everything in him, the last thing he wanted to do was showSlav that his melodramatic ways were having an affect on the leader,but it was getting more and more difficult to do just that.

   It had started outslow – Slav flicking Shiro's upper arm before adding in a commentabout how 'muscular' the black Paladin was. Shiro could handle thatwith a simple roll of his eyes – nothing new from the weirdcreature that was Slav.

   But then the dayprogressed, and with the incoming darkness came along Slav's moreannoying side. He started to throw himself around the room in anattempt to get Shiro's attention, yelling about how much 'emotionalpain' he was in after leaving the Galra ship. He went into greatdetail explaining how he had made friends with the crickets thatmanifested in the walls, and how curious he was to how they weregetting on right now.

   Shiro had had totake a time out in the other room before continuing on with his work.

   The end of the daycouldn't have come around quick enough. Shiro bombarded himselfthrough the hallways, carrying his plate of spaghetti bolognaise withhim to the bedroom the two of you shared. He knew that eating on thebed wasn't allowed, but he didn't have the energy to care at thismoment.

   He pushed open thedoor to the bedroom, ignoring the way you awkwardly fumbled with yourfood in an attempt to hide the fact that you were already breakingthe one rule the two of you had set out for one another – no eatingon the bed.

   Shiro didn't speakas he slumped down next to you on the mattress, immediately digginghis fork into the meal and slurping up his first forkful ofspaghetti.

   You cautiouslyglanced at him, a noodle hanging from your mouth that you didn'tbother to move just yet. Shiro hadn't greeted you with the usual peckon the cheek, or the usual groan of discomfort after a long hard dayof working. He was simply eating – quite furiously, if you had todescribe it.

    “I hate thisbit,” you say, shattering the tense silence which had settledbetween the two of you.

   Shiro looks up andgrunts in question, clearly confused about your comment.

   You set your plateof spaghetti to the side, wiping your hands on your jeans. “Thisbit. The bit where you refuse to tell me what's wrong.”

   Shiro raises abrow, though he knows you're right. That was a problem he had, evento this day. Even after nearly two years of dating you, he still hadtrouble telling you when things got too much – especially when thereason behind his overwhelmed state was over something as stupid asSlav.

   Nevertheless,it always felt good to talk about it when he was finally able to, somaybe he shouldn't hide todays events from you. Maybe he should justlet go.

    Heslurps up his forkful of noodles and sighs groggily, letting his headfall back against the headboard. “Slav is seriously just – he'ssomething else, you know? He's completely and utterly – somethingelse and I hate that he gets to me so easily. It's what he wants,which is the even more annoying thing. He wants meto react. He wants meto get annoyed, and it's working, but I can't just show himthat. So I end up messing up my work because I'm trying so hard tonot listen to him, but his voice just goes right through me. It'slike – how does he even do it? Idon't understand! I'm the damn leader and I can't even get people'sattention like he does!”    Shiro runs is hands through hishair roughly, tugging on the strands gently before continuing.

   “Itry so hard to get on with him. I really do. You know Ido.”

   “Ofcourse I do, babe.”

   “-buthe's like a god damn infant! Needs so much care and attention or elsehe starts whining and kicking and being frustrating.”

   Shiro'svoice falters as he realises the extent of his outburst. His eyesslowly drift over to you, his own heartbeat speeding up when henotices the way you're looking at him – adoration. Even though hehad just completely lost himself in complaining about something sosimple, you're looking at him with that glint in your eyes that youonly ever held whenever you were looking at him.

   Ofcourse he noticed this side of you. He loved this side of you. Theside that made him feel special when he didn't feel special himself.You were the only person who was ever able to make him feel likethat, and even though he had had a bad day, you still managed tobring him down from whatever anger high he was on a minute ago.

   “W-what?”he stammers. You smile lazily and shake your head.

   BeforeShiro has a chance to respond, you've leaned across the mattress andare pressing a soft kiss to the space right behind his ear, leavinggoosebumps to tingle on Shiro's skin at the contact.

   You'vebarely pulled away when you whisper, “You're cute when you ramble,”your lips still grazing his skin and his entire body heating up.

   Maybehe should get annoyed at Slav more often.

   Keith:

   “Ineed someone to rant to and you're the only person I could think of.”

   Keithdoesn't even say hello. He storms into your office without knocking,letting it slam closed behind him and making your shoulders jolt atthe sudden sound ringing through your previously quiet quarters.

   Youslowly turn around in your seat, eyes narrowed and eyebrow raised inconfusion. You had seen Keith like this before, of course. Contraryto popular belief, he often had these outbursts, but it was only everyou who had to endure them.

   Itwasn't as if you minded, though. You often found his rants quiteamusing.

   Hesits down roughly in the spinning chair beside your own, turningyours around so you're facing him completely. You can't hide thesmile which makes its way onto your face at his eagerness to talk,his hands clamping on your knees and gently massaging the area as away to get his own nervous energy out.

   Yourest your hands atop of his and listen.

    “So,you know like I was telling you about the left overs I left in thefridge a few days back?” he begins, and you frown. “Well, youknow how excited I was about those left overs. They were basicallyall I was looking forward to when I was on the mission this morning,and I got home earlier on just in time to see Lance throwingthem in the bin.”He tuts his tongue, turning away as if the words had physically hurthim to say. “He said that they were left in there too long and thatI would get sick if I even tried to eat them. Can you believe that?Him acting as if he knows my body.”

    “Areyou talking about the left over wings you were telling me about?”you question and Keith nods, eyes wide. “Keith, that was nearly aweek ago. It's not safe to-”

   “Youtoo?” Keith exclaims, flinching his hands back into his lap as ifyour jeans had burned him. “Not only are my friends going againstme, but so if my girlfriend?Whocan I trust on this god damn ship if I can't trust you guys? Am Igonna have to go off on my own again, because I've done it once andI'll do it again.”

   “You'rebeing dramatic.”

   “Yeah,that's what happens whenever a man gets hungry,” he grunts, foldinghis arms over his chest and slumping back in the spinning chair. “Ijust can't believe this. Now I have nothing to eat for dinner and I'mtoo polite to ask Hunk if he'll cook me something, since I've alreadytold him I don't want dinner because I thoughtIhad wings to come back to. Now that's gone the drain, I'll probablyhave to end up making noodles or something once everybodies gone tobed, and we both know how that turned out last time. The burn markstill hasn't gotten off the counter, and Shiro stillrefusesto be in the same room as me whenever there's anything even mildlywarm around.”

   Hebites down on his lip, looking away from you and you can't help butstare at him in absolute adoration. Even as he continues to babbleabout nothing and everything all at once, he still manages to makethe butterflies erupt in your stomach and you have to fold your armsacross your stomach to soothe them even a little bit.

  It'sonly then that Keith realises you are, in fact, staring at him insuch a way. His sentence trails off in the middle of his words andhis eyes click down to look at yours, you not breaking eye contactnor wiping the smile off your face.

   Heraises a brow, feeling a blush creep up on his face. “What are youlooking at me like that for?”

   Yougiggle slightly, lean forward and press a surprise kiss to his cheek,watching as the blush finally takes over, washing over his everyfeature.

   Youpull back, this time with his hand intertwined with yours. “Noreason. You're just cute when you ramble. Please, tell me more aboutyour lack of left overs.”

    Lance:

   When Lance got anidea in his head, it was hard to banish that idea.

   He was what a lotof people called 'adamant.' With his overactive mind and imagination,the possibilities of the world were open to him and he used everysingle one to his advantage. Even the most bizarre of suggestionsnever failed to slip past his lips and make themselves known into theworld. Sometimes it was as simple as rolling your eyes at his wordsthat got him to drop the idea; other times, it was a bit morecomplicated than that.

   Like today, whenLance had bizarrely offered up the idea for you and him to startraising a puppy together.

    There were manyissues with this idea, you knew. First of all, Lance was far fromcapable of raising a puppy with his busy schedule, and yours wasn'tmuch better. Second of all, neither of you had any idea how toraise a puppy. And third – you literally lived in space, on amassive ship that was constantly under attack. Bringing a puppy intothe mix would only add to the hectic aura the ship already held.

   Lancedidn't seem to understand these simple reasons behind you're denialof his request. Which was why he was currently sat beside you now,one hand placed on your elbow. You refused to look over at him. Hispleading eyes had a way of making you crumble into his hands.

   “Okay,tell me one thing,” he says, rubbing circles on your elbow in anattempt to get you to agree with him. It wouldn't work. You wouldn'tlet it. “Would you not love tohave a dog? Just a little one? I'm hardly gonna go out and buy analsation, but something small. Would you not love that?”

   Youpurse your lips, continuing to keep your stubborn gaze on the work infront of you. “Lance, we can't get a dog. There's nothing you cansay that will change that.”

   “Ionly asked a question!” he exclaimed. “We've been together fornearly two years, okay? Think of this as – like – a pre-proposal.The dog is the ring. It's a commitment thing.”

   Youshake your head.

   Lancepouts, bringing his hand back into his lap as he gazes at you. Youcan tell just from his aura that he's getting worked up, desperatefor you to understand and as much as you would love to be able toshare in such a commitment with the man you loved, there was otheraspects to think about – most of which included the safety ofyourselves and others.

   “Iwasn't going to beg, but you've given me no other choice,” Lancemumbles, suddenly. You snap your gaze to him, mouth opening a littlebit. “Y/N L/N, love of my life, beautiful person with whom I am sohappy to call mine – can we please geta puppy?”

   Yougo to reply, the word 'no' still playing at your lips, but Lancenotices your facial expression and dives forward before you have achance to deny his request all over again. His fingers grab for yourhands, tugging them away from the work which litters the desk andpulling them into his lap.

   “Wecan give it such a cute name, Y/N! Think about it. Think about itrunning around our room, all cute and small. And at Christmas we'llput a bow on it and we'll take loads of pictures – we can do afamily Christmas card! You'll hold the puppy and we'll be on eitherside of it and we can send those out and make every other familyjealous, because they have to deal with children and actual humansand we get the same feelings but with easier consequences, you know?Like, I'm really thinking this through. I'm really, reallythinking this through, whetheryou believe me or not.”

   Youraise a brow, shocked at his sudden outburst.

   “Youcan even name it if you want. I won't argue, but the name Cliffordsticks out to me a lot – but you can name it! I won't interfere!And we can buy it a little bed, yeah? Put it beside our bed and itwon't even wake us up in the night because it's a dog and dog's don'tdo that.”

   You'resmiling by now, amusement bubbling at your stomach as you listen tohim ramble on.

   “Iknow you're thinking about the others, but I'm 90% sure the only onewho's allergic to dogs is Keith, and we don't even mind if he gets anallergic reaction, do we? So it's fine. Nobody else will care and –what are you smiling at?”

    Youshake your head numbly, the smile still playing at your lips as youreach your fingers up and curl them in a stray strand of his hairwhich had become loose from the long day of work he had been doing –plus the rambling rampage he was on right now.

   Henarrows his eyes, pulling away from you for a second as he inspectsyour still amused expression.

   “You'renot taking me seriously, are you?”

   Youchuckle. “I'm sorry, okay? We can't get a dog, and you know wecan't. It would be cruel for the poor thing to live in theseconditions. Maybe after everything's settled down, yeah?”

   Lancepouts, but you can see the fight dying from his eyes as he realisesyou're right. You've been right this entire time.

   Hesighs and leans forward, resting his head against your collar bone.You wrap an arm around his shoulder, playing with the thin strands ofhair at the back of his head.

   “You'recute when you ramble, by the way.”

    Hunk:

   Hunkcared a little too much about what other people thought of him attimes, and it was a quirk of his you had been trying to brush out ofhis system from the moment you had noticed it.

   Evenbefore the two of you were officially dating – simply awkwardpeople barely smiling at each other when you passed one another inthe halls – you had been trying to get Hunk to stop caring so much.Stop worrying about what other people thought of him to do what madehim happy.You knew he had hobbies, but you also knew he never portrayed them totheir full potential due to his paralysing fear of being judged.

   Youhad always been the one to nod at his suggestions, give them a go.You had always been the one to encourage him to speak duringmeetings. You had always been the one to scold others for judging himeven the slightest bit, because he didn't deserve any of it.

   Ithad been a long process, a road filled with bumps and some that werestill prominent. He hadn't been completely cured of this worry ofhis, and today was just showing you that fact in full view.

   Hehad stumbled into your and his shared bedroom a little earlier thanyou had expected. You had been in the middle of setting up thecomputer system, a laptop sat up on the bed where you had just beenworking. Whenever you heard the door open, you hesitantly turned,shocked to find Hunk walking in with his cheeks beetroot red and hishands covering them.

    “Hunk?”you say, straightening up. “What are you doing here? I thought themeeting was meant to go on until-”

   Hecuts you off with a groan of despair before throwing himself towardsyou. You barely have time to drop the remote in your hand before hisbody has replaced it, his head leaning against the top of your own ashe continues to groan in embarrassment of whatever event had happenedthat day.

   Younarrow your eyes, gently running your hands through his hair. “What'swrong, Hunk?”

   Hesniffles, pulling away from you. He doesn't look to be too upset –just embarrassed, though that doesn't stop you from taking his handand messing with the rings on his finger in the way you always didwhenever he was about to tell you something that may be hard for himto admit.

    “Ijust – the meeting didn't go quite as I had planned and I had toget out of there.”

   “Whathappened?”

   Heinhales, and it is then that you knowheis about to let go. The way he tilts his head back to reveal theveins in his neck, or the way he grits his teeth as he thinks aboutthe event which happened. He was about to let go, and you had to beprepared for it.

   Hishand squeezes yours once before he begins his rant. “I was tryingto speak up because I had a suggestion on how to fix the ship up, butI got shy and I couldn't do it. I ended up just pulling myself intothe background again and listening to everybody, and I don't mean tobrag, but nobodies idea seemed as good as mine and I reallywantedto speak up, but I couldn't. It was like my mouth was genuinelyclamped shut or something. So throughout the entire thing I was justtrying so hard to speak up, but the Blade of Marmora guys look reallyintimidating and I didn't want to just embarrass myself in front ofthem, so staying quiet seemed like the best option. But then theywere about to pull the plug on the meeting, and I knew it was now ornever, so I stepped forward to speak and I ended up just hiccuping.”

   Hecloses his eyes and your own bulge from your head, a choked gaspescaping your lips at the words that just passed through his. It wasfar from what you were expecting, and you had to cough to hide thelaugh that was threatening to make it's way to the surface.

    “Andthen I tried to get away, and I was apologising and bowing and Iended up tripping over Keith's chair. I just fled from the room afterthat.”

   Hunkshakes his head, finally unclasping his hand from yours to rub at theback of his head, a groan escaping his lips again. You bite down hardon your bottom lip, shaking your head slightly as you stare up at thegoof of a man you were very grateful you had fallen in love with,because it was stories like these that reminded you just why you hadfallen in love with him in the first place – he was so human.Wheresometimes you could genuinely forget Shiro was born and raised onplanet earth due to the amount of inhuman skill he showed, Hunk neverfailed to remind you that making mistakes was perfectly fine – evenfor big, bad Paladin's like himself.

   Hunk'seyes flitter down to meet yours, and you see him visibly relax whenhe sees the amused grin on your face. He sighs and shakes his head,lazily grinning back at you.

    “Ijust did it again, didn't I?”

   Youstep forward. “By 'it' do you mean go off on a rant aboutabsolutely nothing again?”

   Henods, mumbling in response.

   Youchuckle, lean up on your tippy-toes and press a kiss to his cheek.“Don't worry. You're cute when you ramble.”

[shiroslefttesticle]

Lance’s Birthday

I know his birthday isn’t for like another week but I finally wrote something and just like twitter Netflix, I was too excited to keep it from you guys. This takes place after all of the events of season 6 by the way. Enjoy!!

Jolting upright, Lance whipped his head around, desperately trying to gather his bearings for a few moments until he finally remembered all that had happened in the past week. Letting out a sigh of relief, Lance smiled to himself and ran his hands through his hair before looking around his room. 

That’s right, his room. Not the cold, metal walls of the castle and not the thin, white sheets of the Olkari tent he had to share with Hunk and Pidge after the castle was destroyed. His room, in his house, in Varadero, in Cuba, on Earth.

The paladins’ arrival back to Earth was... unexpected, to say the least. Even Sam was surprised that they had managed to return so quickly. Despite the initial shock, however, they were greeted with open arms and after a few days of being analyzed and questioned at the Garrison, they were all allowed to return home with their families.

Everything was exactly as Lance had left it, from his posters to his video games. Even his dirty laundry was sitting in the same pile on his floor. And for once he didn’t mind the clutter. He was just so happy to be back; to be home. Throwing his blankets off of him, Lance hopped out of bed, taking a moment to stretch before crossing his room and opening his door. The moment he did so, he was met with the mouth-watering smell of his mom’s cooking and the sound of his younger brother, Luis, talking a mile a minute as other members of his family hummed in acknowledgment, all coming from down the hall.

There was a chorus of good mornings as Lance walked into the kitchen, everyone grinning from ear to ear. His mom didn’t even scold him for not changing out of his pajamas, opting instead to pull him into a spine-crushing hug as Marco and his wife took over making breakfast. Veronica and Luis were next, his sister burying her head into his neck as Luis clung to his waist. At the table, Lance’s dad pulled out the chair right next to him, slapping Lance on the back affectionately as he sat down. Lance couldn’t even understand everything everyone was saying, the whole being home thing was still so surreal to him.

“Happy Birthday Lance!~” someone cheered. That caught his attention.

Confused, Lance furrowed his brows together, “What?”

Veronica showed him a calendar and Lance gaped at the date. “Holy Quiznak!” Everyone glanced at each other, not yet caught up on Lance’s Altean language skills, though his mom and dad had a pretty good idea of what he meant. Lance received a sharp nudge in his side from his father, along with a disapproving look from his mom. He gave them both a sheepish glance and cleared his throat, “Sorry, I guess it just gets a little difficult to keep track of the date when you’re... ya know, not on Earth.” The room fell into silence as everyone was reminded of how rough the past year had been, but was interrupted when Marco and his wife declared breakfast was ready.

The day seemed to pass by in a blur for Lance, it was like everyone in all of Varadero wanted to visit him. He spent a large portion of the day at the beach with his siblings and even a few friends. By the time he returned home, the sun was setting and he was thoroughly exhausted and maybe even a little sunburned from all of the day’s activities. He stood in the backyard and watched his younger family members play, and he felt as though he could cry. He didn’t know it was possible for a person to be this happy. Sure, he knew he missed his family but now that he was actually with them again, he didn’t know how to handle it. He was scared that his body wouldn’t be able to contain all his happiness and that he might burst apart at any moment.

His train of thought was interrupted when he felt someone ruffle his hair. Standing next to him was Marco, beaming down at him as he leaned against the porch railing. His brother’s smile was contagious and Lance felt himself smiling back before resting against his brother. “We really missed you, ya know,” he heard Marco say. Lance just buried his head deeper into his brother’s arm.

They fell quiet for a few minutes until Lance broke the silence, his voice cracking a little, “You have no idea how much I thought of you guys. Just the thought of coming back here is the only thing that kept me going some days.” He hadn’t meant to sound so vulnerable, though he couldn’t really find it in himself to care either.

Marco moved so that he could sling an arm around Lance’s shoulder, squeezing it while pulling him even closer to his side before he leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to the top of his younger brother’s head. “Don’t forget how special you are Lance. Not just because you’re a paladin, but because you’re you.”

Lance opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by his sister calling them into the house, declaring that his birthday cake was finally done. They filed in excitedly, and Lance found the entirety of his family standing around the table where his cake rested, from his aunts and uncles to his grandfather and grandmothers. As everyone sang completely out of tune and sync, Lance swore he never heard anything more beautiful.

“Blow out your candles!~” everyone encouraged. Lance looked at his family and thought of what Marco had said to him, and he realized he could never want anything more than this. He blew out his candles only wishing that things could stay like this forever and finally felt tears streaming down his cheeks from how perfect everything was. As the candles flickered out and his family cheered, the room grew darker and quieter…

Lance’s eyes snapped open and he sat up. He blinked in confusion for a minute before he felt disappointment wash over him.

He wasn’t back on Earth with his family. He was still in the tent he shared with Hunk and Pidge on Olkari, only his friends weren’t with him, apparently having already woken up and left to go about their daily tasks.

He was completely alone, galaxies away from home.

#enjoy... 😈 #lance mcclain #lance x reader #lance mcclain x reader #lance mcclain scenario #sfwprompt #sfw lance #voltron #voltron imagines #voltron scenarios #voltron headcanons #voltron x reader #paladins #x reader #lance mcclain headcanons #lance headcanons

[dulceringo]

I NEED more of your mafia au in my life. So please continue, I'll make it worthwhile. *slides you Shiny Ninetails Pokémon card and a pack of Trident two layer gum*

Okay everyone, I would just like to say that yes, there will be a Part 4 because I still have some scenes in mind. But the fact that you take time to send me asks about the MafiaAU: Lance Salazar really made my day as well as when some of you commented on the post itself. And thanks to those who liked it and special thanks to those who shared it!

Also @charming-langst​….how did you guessed that I like nine tails? *narrowing my eyes at you* are you spying on me? Joke! But really, it was such a coincidence that you guessed my favorite!

Atthe age of eight, Lance’s studies about their world started. His childhoodbecame limited ever since he showed his intelligence level once during thefamily’s recreational activities. Honestly, Lance thought that they were justplaying a simple board game. His father explained to him the rules and forlittle Lance back then, it was fairly easy. He beat his father five times in arow. It was after a few years passed when Lance discovered that his father wasa genius chess player (Vongola Decimo always called his father for a game ortwo) and strategist.

Atthe age of twelve, Lance sneaked into the meeting room of his father due to adare from one of his siblings. He didn’t manage to get inside the room thoughfor a certain man caught his attention. Maybe the man was near his fifties buthis features still showed that he was one of those types that could easily getthe attention of others. Later on, he discovered that the name of the man was“Reborn” and that he was the most trusted adviser of Vongola Decimo. The guywas also known as the number one hitman in the Mafia world. Maybe this Rebornperson saw something in him for the next day Decimo himself visited Lancepersonally. They chatted for a bit and play some board game called “Games ofthe Generals”. Lance managed to win 2 out of 3.

Lancewas a natural charmer. He could melt anyone’s heart (hearts that were notfrozen cold) and he knew this himself. Sometimes he used it to his advantagewhenever he was kidnapped. But if things got worst then there was a reason whyhe was trained how to use the gun.

Hewas no stranger to blood. Once or twice he passed through their interrogationrooms and the sight of bloodied and dismembered bodies became a norm for him.Lance made his first interrogation at 15 when he and his youngest sister gotkidnapped. A few exchanged of gun shots here and there, and Lance managed toturn the tables around. The hunter became the hunted, a phrase said from anumber of his favourite movies.

Lancewas labelled as “Young Demon” that day.

Justbecause he was used to the sight and smell of murder didn’t mean that he wantedto live his whole life like this. Lance has dreams of his own. He has dreamsthat he wanted to reach with his own hands.

Handsof Lance and not the hands of Salazar’s.

Lanceknew that the Vongola Decimo favoured him from the rest of the children oftheir allies. Though he never knew the reason why, Lance used this to hisadvantage. He listed all the reasons why he wanted to get out, why he wanted tobe freed. Of course all of his reasonings were weak, Lance knew this and theVongola knew this. But still, Decimo talked to that Reborn person and after afew hours of waiting, they escorted Lance back to the Salazar’s mansion andtalked about the future with the Salazar Don.

Atthe age of 16, Lance was no longer a member of the dark world. He was just anordinary civilian.

Yeah,right.

Everyoneknows you could never escape the underworld, especially if you were born insideit.

Thedeal made was consisted of: one, Lance would stay in the vacation house givento him by Decimo himself and located in Cuba. Two, some Salazar’s men wouldcheck up on him personally every other week. Three, he was not allowed toinvite any civilian (even though Lance was technically considered as civilianalso) in his house. Four, he was obligated to meet or talk to the family inimportant events which was birthdays and Christmas.

Soall in all it was like he had just taken a temporary vacation away from theMafia.

Andit was a good thing he only cut the Mafia ties but not his ties as a bloodrelative.

BecauseLance loved his family with all his heart, never question him about this.

Pidgewas beyond irritated right now. Who would have thought that Lance was aSalazar? That Salazar. It was likesuddenly all the pieces clicked together into their own proper places. Shethought Lance was born in a family of soldiers or just used to play strategicgames during his teenage years.

Shenever freaking expected that Lance was born inside the Mafia.

Itwas lunch time and everyone was eating together. When Pidge said everyone shedid meant everyone. Lance just gavehis servants one look and they all settled themselves with the rest of teamVoltron on the dining area after they put down all the foods and drinks.

Thetable was a bit similar to the one they used in the castle. It was long and ellipticalin shape, she was used seeing Allura to be on what the Paladins had dubbed asthe head part of the table so seeing Lance in that position was very unusualfor Pidge. Lance kept cooing like a baby when he saw the foods and drinks onthe table, at least some things hadn’t changed. Pidge didn’t really know if sheknew Lance that deep despite being stuck together in space for five years.

“Wow!Esmeralda, your cooking is the best! No offence, Hunk.” Lance added the lastsentence as an afterthought when he took a bite of what he called ropa vieja.

“Nonetaken, Lance. This taste really good.”

Esmeralda,Pidge assumed it was the woman sitting across from her, smiled when she heard thepraises of the rest of the Paladins and the obvious delight of the two Alteanswhen they started to eat also.

“Thankyou. We really missed your presence here, Young Master.”

“Ah…I’llsay stop calling me ‘Young Master’ but…”

“Butwe will just keep doing it because someone needs to remind you what is yourreal position.” It was the head butler named Alejandro who spoke beforecleaning his lips using the napkin and Pidge was reminded of those movies wherepeople try to learn proper table manners in just one night. Good thing Lancedidn’t care about proper etiquette inside his own house.

“Giveme a break, Alejandro. I’m already 24 years old! I’m not that young boyanymore!”

“Andyet you are still that young boy who almost gave Master Halberd a heart attackwhen he saw you waving a gun.” One of the maids named Juliana commented as shepoured Allura’s cup with apple juice.

“Thatwas one time! And it was Falcata’s fault for leaving her gun on her studytable.” Pidge could not believe it, Lance was pouting because his servants wereganging up on him. She could not consider this as sharing embarrassing storiesbecause imagining little Lance waving a gun with the safety either on or offwas not a really good picture in her mind right now.

“Cometo think of it, isn’t it because of that that Master Khanda started teachingYoung Master Lance how to hold a gun?” Marcelo looked up at the ceiling as ifit could verify his words.

“Emphasizethe word hold. Mistress Flyssa threwa fit when she saw her older brother teaching Young Master Lance how to shoot.”Benita snickered when she refreshed the memory of her twin brother.

“Andbecause of that, Master Halberd was forced to step in and declared that YoungMaster Lance will only be allowed to shoot a gun when he reached the age ofthirteen.”

“Hey,you are just two years older than me, Learco! Why are you calling me ‘YoungMaster’ too?! And why are you guys sharing my childhood stories to my friends?!”Lance started hitting the table with his right hand like a petulant child as hefocused his gaze on the left side of the table where his butlers and maids wereseated.

“Becauseit’s fun~” Sylvia sang as she waved her fork around.

“Andtwo years is still two years. Which means that you are technically my ‘Young Master’.” Learco grinned but ducked under thetable on the last second when Lance threw his glass towards him.

“Ican’t believe this,” Lance held his chest in a show of mock hurt, “betrayed bymy second family. After five years and this is the welcome that I get? I shouldhave fired all of you before I got blasted in space by a sentient lion.”

“Wereally missed you, Young Master Lance.” Pidge heard the oldest human male inthe room and she saw that the man was giving Lance a fatherly smile which theirBlue Paladin returned with an equally soft smile.

“See?Only Grandpa Eterio lives up to his name!”

“Eh,that is because Grandpa Eterio likes to baby you, Young Master.”

“That’sit.”

Learcoyelped when Lance took hold of the knife beside his plate and jumped towardshim. The rest of the maids and butlers just continued eating and coaxed theVoltron team to do the same while Learco was running for his dear life becauseLance has long legs and the stamina to run a five kilometer marathon.

Ifthis was the people that Lance considered as his second family then Pidgethought that she must ready herself in meeting the main family.

Nowonder Lance asked them to bring their bayards.

Langst Mini Fic: The Second Family

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Mafia AU: Lance Salazar (OCs mini guide) 

#langst mini fic #mafiaau #lance salazar AU #lance #vld lance #voltron lance #vld pidge #vld #V:LD #voltron legendary defender #gdesertsandspeaking #langst