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corvus--rex · 3 years

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Semi-abandoned soulmate au. I actually started this one before The Sound of Color, although this is vastly different from that one. This particular au also doesn't have the requirement that soulmates are always romantic (ie Pidge and their soulmate). It jumps around a little, and those sections are marked with dividers. Soulmate strangers-to-lovers. . .

~*~*~*~

Soulmarks. Everyone had one. An indelible mark that bound two people together. Age 13 was when it would start. The mark “waking up” as some called it, and reaching out for its companion mark. Most soulmates were within a few years of each other, so the lingering tingle of a mark searching for its mate usually didn’t last long.

Lance was lucky that way. His mark sprang to life on his thirteenth birthday and quieted three months later. There was no way to know who or where his soulmate was at that point, but he knew they were three months younger than him. He had been getting ready for school that day when the constant tingle in his mark faded.

He’d always liked the quarter note-shaped mark on the inside of his left wrist. What confused him were the numbers that circled it. No two marks were the same, and Lance knew that his soulmate would have something different. But those numbers confused him. 1030211933. Trying to figure it out was a favorite pastime throughout middle and high school, but he never could get there. He hadn’t met his soulmate yet, but he hoped that it would make sense when he did.

Once two marks found each other, the secondary connection opened. The marks on the soul allowed for marks on the body. Words, doodles, full-blown artwork. Drawing or writing on skin would appear on a connected soulmate. Once Lance’s mark had connected, the first thing he did was ask his soulmate about the numbers. They didn’t know either. But he did find out that his soulmate’s mark sat on their right hip, it was a feather, and they didn’t have those numbers but they did have a series of roman numerals along the feather’s shaft that read:

X X X X X X I X I X X X X I I I

They continued to talk for years, learning about each other. They had decided not to share identifying information like names or location, but Lance knew that his soulmate had a twin and that their parents had adopted their cousin when their cousin’s parents died in an accident. They didn’t know anything about the accident because they’d been too young at the time and no one had explained it since. Lance told them that he had three siblings, that he was a twin, too, and that his older sister connected with her soulmate the same day he had.

He lay in his bed in the dorm he shared with his best friend Hunk, rereading the last message his soulmate had sent him about how college sucked and how they already had an in-class performance a month into the semester. He’d responded with a note about how trying to balance classes with rehearsals as the lead in his school’s fall musical was kicking his ass. Lance already knew that his soulmate was studying music at a college close to where they grew up. And they knew that he was majoring in theatre at a college a three-hour drive from home.

Hunk trudged into their dorm room and threw himself onto his bed. “Remind me again why I decided this was a good idea?” he groaned.

“Which part?” Lance asked in return.

“The part where I decided to be a pastry chef and subject myself to the hell that is the one professor I can’t get away from?”

“Because you love baking and always have and one asshole can’t make you hate doing what you love.”

“I swear she just likes to terrorize us. There’s that guy I told you about – Sal, the one I had a class with freshman year and he transferred to general culinary and now he’s back – she hates him. And I don’t know why. But then, she hates me, too. Pretty sure it’s that bun. It’s so tight she doesn’t need a face lift. But I’m also convinced that Chef Dayak is just evil.”

“Hey, at least you have Shay there with you. Not everyone gets to have their soulmate in class with them all day,” Lance pointed out.

“How’s it with yours?” Hunk asked.

“We’re working our way up to talking about meeting. I know I wanted to wait until after graduation, but I’m getting impatient, y’know? It’s been eight years and I don’t want to wait anymore. But I get that they do. So…yeah. Anyway,” he said, shaking himself out of that particular spiral, “You going to the Halloween party this year?”

“Dude! It’s a month away!”

Lance sat up, turning to his best friend, one eyebrow arched. “Seriously? You say this like there’s such a thing as too early. And no, it’s only three weeks. We need to start now.”

Hunk groaned again, this time in only partial exasperation, and sat up. “Fine. The fuck are you planning this year?”

Lance just laughed. Hunk threw a pillow at him, collapsing in his own fit of giggling when a startled Lance took the pillow directly to the face. Lance’s alarm sounded, loud and annoying. He groaned, throwing Hunk’s pillow back, and fumbled for his phone to turn the blaring sound off.

“Fuck me. I have to get to rehearsal.”

In an apartment just off campus, Keith stopped playing and pulled the pencil out of his hair, making yet another correction to his scribbled sheet music. He started over, again, ignoring the key in the door and his roommate coming back in. He ignored their slight form dropping their overpacked backpack on the floor and throwing themselves onto the other end of the couch with their laptop and notebook. Keith was too focused on his music to pay much attention to Pidge.

Except that Pidge wanted his attention right then. “Hey. Asshole,” they said, throwing a ball of notebook paper at him.

“Yes, hellspawn?” he asked casually, setting his guitar on its stand by the couch, “What the fuck do you want?”

“I’m on the committee for the party. You’re coming,” they said while typing away on their laptop.

“No. I’m not. I don’t go to parties, and you know it. Why the fuck are you so determined for me to go?”

Pidge looked up, fixing him with their stare. “Because I said so. And because Matt’s going to be there. His girlfriend’s going too. You actually like Neve. So you’re going.”

“Including you, that’s three people I’d be willing to talk to. Why should I bother?” he stopped, a dreaded thought sparking as to why they were so hellbent on his going to the party. “It’s because it’s a week after my birthday, isn’t it?”

“What? You mean that thing you ignore every year except for the proliferation of doodles from your soulmate? Why would that have anything to do with it?”

“I'm still not going,” Keith insisted.

“We’ll see about that,” Pidge answered cryptically. They went back to their laptop, typing furiously. They stayed that way, ignoring Keith’s death glare until he gave up and went back to his music.

Eventually, Keith decided that the music portion of his brain was fried and gave up for the night. Pidge was buried in their laptop, writing a paper for their robotics class at top speed. Ignoring them for the moment, Keith opened his own laptop, going back to the English assignment he still hadn’t finished. It was due by the next class, which was two days away, but he’d been putting it off for longer than that. He typed lazily at it for a while before a horrible thought hit him and he realized that his previous assessment had been wrong. He glared up at Pidge over his screen.

“She’s going, isn’t she?” he asked.

“Who?” Pidge asked back, pretending they didn’t know what he meant.

“You know who.”

“If you’re referring to your sister, then yes, she is.”

Keith sighed. “Just because she knows who her soulmate is now, that doesn’t mean that you’re right. Mine could be literally anyone.”

Pidge closed their laptop. “And you’re in denial. I can not believe that your twin sister happens to have a soulmate who has a younger brother who is also a twin and his soulmate has a twin. The odds of that happening are so small as to be inconceivable! Not to mention the part where Acxa’s soulmate and her brother both connected with theirs on the same day.”

“Ok, I’ll give you that it’s weird. But you don’t know anything about Acxa’s soulmate’s siblings, and neither does she. And not everyone’s met theirs yet. You haven’t! All you know is their handle on Steam!”

“So? I also know that Beezer’s on the other side of the country. I know that we won’t get to meet in person until after graduation. All I'm saying is that this is a little too weird to be a coincidence.”

“And I’m not going to let you harass my sister’s soulmate about her siblings on the day they’re meeting face to face for the first time. Leave it alone, Pidge.”

“Fine,” they said, going back to their paper.

Keith knew full well that Pidge would not leave it alone, but there was only so much he could do to stop them.

A few days later, Lance dragged his twin sister, Hunk, and Shay to the nearest Halloween pop-up costume store. None of them had found anything they liked, and Lance was getting bored. Shay had wandered off to the decoration part of the store, and Hunk was making sure the twins didn’t get into trouble. But Hunk had gotten briefly distracted and lost them.

“Jules no.” Ah, there was Lance.

“Jules yes.” And his sister.

“Are you two still arguing?” Hunk asked as he approached the twins.

“Hunk,” Lance said, putting his hands on Hunk’s shoulders, “She wants us to be the Wonder Twins again. I absolutely refuse. We did that once when we were like nine.” He felt something hit his back and whipped around to find his sister holding a Wonder Twins costume. “Ana Julieta Alameda-McClain, get that fucking thing away from me.”

“Oh, fine. You’re no fun,” Jules pouted. She put it back, then turned around, spotting something else. “Ooh! Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch?”

“What the fuck – no! I’m never going Halloween shopping with you again. You’re on your own,” Lance said, wandering off and taking Hunk with him.

Hunk was laughing. “Why do you keep letting her do this, dude?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, I say we go over to The Costume Company. I think I’m done with mass-produced crap.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll go find Shay and meet up with you two at the car,” Hunk agreed, heading in the direction he’d last seen Shay.

Lance reluctantly went back to his sister. “We’re going to The Costume Company,” he said without getting her attention.

“Hm? Ok,” Jules answered, not paying attention to her twin.

“Bye, then.” He started to leave without her, getting halfway down the aisle of the Halloween pop-up before she realized what he’d said.

“Lance! Get back here, you ass!” she yelled after him.

He ignored her as payback for her insistence on twin costumes and kept going. She chased him all the way to his car, where Hunk and Shay were already waiting. Lance finally lost his composure, cracking up when he reached his waiting friends.

“Leandro. Alejandro. Alameda. McClain. I am going to kill you,” Jules growled while out of breath from chasing him.

“No you won’t,” he said, “Mamá would kill you in return.”

Shay saw her opportunity and took it. “Shotgun!” she announced, hopping into the passenger seat.

“Shay, I love you,” Hunk said, getting in behind Lance, effectively separating the twins.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Acxa, just promise me you won’t give in to Pidge. They’re being totally insufferable with this,” Keith said. He lay on his bed, earbuds connected to the call he was on with his twin.

“You know me better than that. Gremlin won’t get shit out of me. And she’s not getting anywhere near V at the party."

~*~*~*~

Links to the rest of the series:

1 | 2 | 3* | 4 | 5* | 6* | 7 | 8 | 9* | 10 | 11 | 12* | 13 | 14 | 15* | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19*

#my writing #abandoned wips #keith kogane #lance mcclain #klance #keith x lance #vld #voltron #voltron legendary defender

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archaneanscribe · 3 years

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Big Girls Cry

I wanted some MinPalla childhood sweethearts, inspired by their mini-alts in FEH. Part of the Archanea Chronicles.

When their mother died, Palla did not cry.

Est was one, but due to their mother’s illness she had seen more of the local midwife and her sisters than she ever did of their mother, so only cried as much as a baby normally cries.

Catria was five, and she cried a whole, whole lot. She gripped Palla’s skirt and wailed, snot and tears dripping down her face. She woke up and cried, and went to sleep crying.

When you’re eight like Palla, you’re a big girl- so that means no more crying. That’s what she reminded herself over and over when the tears threatened, anyway. She knew Mother wouldn’t agree, would tell her that it’s okay for big girls to cry, that it’s okay for anyone to cry.

But Mother was gone. They had lost Father only a year ago, and now she was gone too.

It was just the three of them.

So she was going to be the best big sister ever, and be super tough. If she cried, they would know that there was a chance things wouldn’t be okay. She was going to work to be so strong that nothing could ever hurt her little sisters ever again.

The captain of the pegasus division of the Macedonian army, Mylla, had always told her she was too young to follow in her mother’s footsteps, that she had a few more years to grow.

But the day after the funeral, her mind had changed.

First thing in the morning, training lance gripped in hand, Palla approached her again, mouth knit into a tight, determined frown.

“Lass, look-” the older woman began, as always, but now she paused, expression stricken with an emotion that Palla couldn’t yet decipher, “That’s quite the face you're making. Not the face of a young girl anymore.”

Her grip tightened.

Sighing, the captain’s shoulders slumped, “If you’re so determined, you can train with the Princess. Normally only the royal family start this young, but I suppose she wouldn’t mind a sparring partner her own age. Follow me.”

Her face perked up at the mention of Princess Minerva, “Oh, thank you!”

Of course, she had known about the first princess for some time. Her mother had been the queen’s personal vassal before both their deaths, so Palla had been told from a young age she would likely inherit a similar duty. She followed close at Mylla’s heels, into the castle walls. Another place she had visited briefly with her mother, but she had never gone through this way, into the royal guard’s training area.

When they arrived, they found a girl who couldn’t be any older than she was having her footing be critiqued by an older man.

“Oi, Odger!” Mylla called out to catch his attention. He turned to look at them, his grizzled but not unfriendly face reminding Palla of her father in many ways. The girl, who she realized must be Princess Minerva, looked at her with curiosity. Maybe she didn’t get to see a lot of other kids?

The man named Odger relaxed his posture, gesturing to Palla, who was overcome with a sudden wave of shyness and hid behind the Captain, “What’ve you got there? New recruit for the guard? A little young, ain’t she?”

Mylla stepped aside and gave the young girl a gentle push, sending her stumbling forward into focus. Mustering her courage, she stood up straight, holding her lance in the way she remembered seeing her mother do when speaking to the late queen, deferential yet confident, “I’m Palla, sir. Atheleys daughter. I want to become a pegasus knight like my mother was.”

He gazed at her impassively, “What if I said you’re not old enough? Isn’t that what Mylla has been telling ‘ya?”

She knew that she shouldn’t say what she was about to, that with the strict way the Macedonian military operated, she could ruin her chances of ever getting a position in the corps, but the repressed feelings from her mother’s passing bubbled to the surface as she replied, heatedly, “I would say that I am old enough. I watched my Mother my whole life. Give me time and I’ll surpass everyone!”

For a moment following their outburst, there was silence, but it was quickly followed by raucous laughter from Odger, who pat his belly jovially, “Careful talking to yer superiors like that, little lady! If I was anyone but a retired knight turned combat instructor, there'd be some real consequences,” he calmed down, settling his face into a soft smile, “I see you’re truly serious. It won’t be easy, and you won’t get any special treatment- just like this one here doesn’t.”

The Princess nodded gravely.

“Show up tomorrow at sun up, and be ready. I won’t be teaching you the basics.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll do my best!”

---

He was serious when he said it wouldn’t be easy. Every evening when she came home to her sisters, it was in a state of exhaustion and ache, every muscle complaining at once.

That doesn’t mean she wasn’t enjoying herself.

Every lance swing, every knee scrape, made her feel closer to her mother, which in turn made her stomach churn less when Est looked up at her and called her “Mama!” before being corrected,

And, of course, there was her training partner.

Princess Minerva was a serious girl, in much the same way Catria seemed poised to become. There was a look on her face that Palla knew meant she planned to be a fighter her whole life, and that this training was not just exercise- but might one day keep her alive.

But if you got her talking about her brother, baby sister, or the pegasus she had been working with, it was an entirely different story. Her eyes would light up and she would laugh and swing her arms around recounting the story of the way her little sibling finally said her name for the first time.

“She can only call me ‘Min’ right now,” she recounted as they took a break to eat some lunch, smiling as she wiped some crumbs off her face, “But the nursemaid told me that in a few months she will likely be able to say my full name.”

“I remember when Catria used to call me ‘Pal’,” Palla replied, swallowing her bite of bread, “Its’ nice that you’re a big sister too. I get lonely sometimes when I only get to see my sisters.”

Minerva nodded, “I understand. I love my brother and my sister, but I enjoy speaking to someone close to my own age. Father said it would be good for me. He wants me to be strong, but,” she leaned in conspiratorially, “He’s actually nice. Him and my brother can be scary, but they’re both very kind.”

Palla giggled, “My mother was the same way. Everyone said she was so serious, but she always played with me and read me lots of stories.”

“...do you miss your mother very much?”

Her head snapped up at this abrupt question to look at Minerva, who was turned away to hide her face, “I miss my mother.”

She sometimes forgot that the Princess had lost a parent as well, “...Yes. I miss her a whole lot. But,” she reached out to pat her companion’s knee, “I’m doing just fine! I’m going to be just as strong as she was. So you don’t have to worry about me!”

Because she was a big girl! Big girls didn’t think about their mother and cry into their pillows, or want to scream whenever they saw someone holding their mother’s hand!

Minerva moved to face her now, face twisted in confusion, looking like she had something to say but just didn’t know the right words, “Palla, I-”

“Times up, kiddos!” Odger’s voice shattered the tense atmosphere between them. So the conversation was left behind- but not forgotten.

---

It was many months later, nearing Palla’s tenth birthday, that Minerva stopped her before she headed home. The sun was setting and it’s final rays were streaming into the open area of the royal training area. Odger had already left, so it was only the two of them.

“Palla.”

“Yes, Lady Minerva?”

Minerva’s hand was on her wrist, holding her in place for the ensuing silence, before the Princess finally gathered her courage, “I was thinking about... when we get older.”

“When we get older?”

“Yes,” she took a deep breath, and spoke in that serious, assured tone she always did, “We should get married. That way, I can always make sure you’re not lonely or sad.”

Palla’s eyes widened, cheeks reddened, and jaw dropped, “Married!?”

Minerva’s face twisted like it had that day nearly a year ago, but this time, she was able to voice her thoughts, “When you leave, my heart hurts, because I know that you are sad- you always smile when you come here, but there are times I see you nearly in tears. The thought of you being lonely makes me quite angry. I want to make sure you’re always actually happy. Marriage seemed like the easiest way to do that.”

This never happened in any of her mother’s storybooks. There was usually an epic adventure and love story before the princess decided she was to defy her station and be with the knight she loved.

And they usually weren’t nine years old, either.

However, the offer made Palla’s stomach warm. Minerva was strong, and reliable. She never expected Palla to be more than she was- just a girl her own age, a peer, a friend. Sometimes she even thought that it might be okay to share how she really feels to her, to open up, to... to cry. Even though she was a big girl.

She thought that maybe, she didn’t have to be a big girl around Minerva.

“You mean it?”

“Yes. I want to make you happy.”

The tears started coming down, and big girl Palla was gone. All that was left was Palla- a not-quite-ten year old child who missed her mother, and just wanted to be a kid. The quiet crying quickly became hiccuping sobs, dragging her forearm across her eyes to dry the deluge as it came.

“I’m,” she sniffed loudly, “I’m lonely! I love my sisters, but I want my mother! I want my father! I want someone to take care of me sometimes too!”

In a flash, she felt a pair of arms around her, and realized slowly that she was being hugged by the taller girl. It was an awkward, unpracticed hug, but it was the first time she had been hugged by someone bigger than her in nearly a year. It wasn’t Catria or Est hugging her leg before they scurried off to play, it was a warm, enveloping hug that made her feel safe.

“I will take care of you. We can be together always. Father tells me that one day I shall get to be in charge of my own unit, and you can be in it. And we can get married. That way you’ll always know I will be there for you.”

Sniffling weakly now, she squeezed back tightly, “Thank you. I’ll do my best to get as strong as you so I can stay by your side.”

They stayed like that for a moment, the setting sun now having almost fully retreated, casting them in the cool darkness of the early night. In the back of her mind, Palla knew that Minerva was probably beholden to whatever marriage promises her father makes for her, but she couldn’t get herself to care.

Not when she could finally, finally, be herself.

---

It was thirteen years later when they were actually wed.

Of course Palla’s doubts had been correct at the time. The king had just laughed at his daughter, pat her head, and sent her on her way. He had several marriage contracts in talks with other kingdoms even at that time, so as much as he loved his daughter, one freedom he hadn’t planned to allow her was romance.

But, of course, before any of them could come to fruition, his life was snuffed out by his own son.

Over the years, Palla kept her promise, and was the first pegasus knight assigned to Minerva’s unit, later followed dutifully by her younger sisters and becoming the Whitewings that were known far and wide. Together, the two women had fought two wars, overcome adversity in all its forms, and a childhood friendship became... more.

So when Minerva renounced her claim to the throne, and wandered the land helping the war restitution with her own two hands, Palla followed suit. Their marriage was a small affair, done in the halls of Lena’s convent by the woman herself. It wasn’t for the public’s eye- it was just for them.

That night, as they curled together in bed feeling a peace that had been out of reach for months, Palla remembered her wife’s first proposal.

“You were ready to marry me at nine years old,” she reminiscenced fondly, enjoying the brief embarrassed tense up from Minerva, “I don’t think I could ever forget.”

“That seemed to me to be the only solution at the time,” she pulled Palla closer, “Everyone was always discussing marriage around me, so I believed it to be the solution to every ‘adult’ problem.”

“You turned out to be right, all these years later. I’m happily married to you, and I never feel lonely when you’re around.”

Minerva placed a kiss on her wife’s forehead, who hummed appreciatively at the gesture, “I did think about asking you again, many times, as we grew up, but by that point I had learned what it truly meant. And glad I am that I waited. I want to give you a peaceful, happy life.”

“And I want the same for you,” Palla replied, more certain than she had ever felt before. Happy tears welled in her eyes, just like they had when they exchanged vows.

And she let them fall.•

#my gut is telling me i published this somewhere but i cant fucking find it lol #minpalla #pallerva #minerva fire emblem #palla fire emblem #fire emblem #fe #archanea #fe1 #fe3 #fe11 #fe12 #suu's scribbles

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 3 years

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Feathers for the Pillows

Prompt: Hey there, I have a prompt for you if you'll take it! I absolutely loved your wingfics with Virgil, and was wondering if we could have something similar with Merlin? Maybe with his magic slowly turning him into a more ethereal magical being and giving him wings that he has to figure out how to deal with and hide? Possibly Arthur finding out? Thank you!

Thanks for the prompt, babe!

Read on Ao3

Warnings: none

Pairings: merthur, can be platonic or romantic you decide

Word Count: 3776

A bird falls out of the sky when Merlin is little.

Merlin didn’t realize it was happening at first.

He was young, still learning how his human body worked, how his magic worked, how to play and run and jump and laugh. His mother looked on fondly and shook her head, wondering how the gods could’ve created such a boisterous little boy and then had the idea to give him magic on top. Perhaps in some way, it was a way to keep himself safe, when he toppled off of shelves he’d managed to float himself up into, or when he fell from trees that he was too young to climb. Or perhaps it was another of their tricks, something to keep the mortals busy and entertained while they plotted. Either way, Merlin has magic and he runs about the woods, leaves dancing along in his wake, the forest itself opening up and welcoming him into its shadows. Patches of golden light draw forth the gold from Merlin’s eyes. The forest breathes.

A bird falls out of the sky.

It lands in front of Merlin, strangely still. It looks at him with dull, cloudy eyes. The light glints off of its feathers. There are three bent out of place. It lies on a bed of leaves and looks at Merlin.

Merlin stops, tilting his head as he looks back. The bird’s eyes are unfocused, staring not at Merlin’s face but through it. The beak is open partway, the head cocked to the side. The wind ruffles its wings. The feathers twitch. It won’t look away from Merlin.

Merlin gulps, reaching out his chubby little hands and taking a step closer. Does the bird want his clothes?

“Merlin?” His mother’s voice comes from far away. “Merlin, it’s time to eat!”

Merlin stops, looking once more at the bird before turning around and running back home. The bird’s eyes watch him go.

Merlin dreams of flying.

When he’s just turning into a young man, his back starts to hurt all the time. His mother frets that he’s working too hard, but he mumbles that he’s been using magic, he’s not putting any strain on his back. She cuffs him lightly across the shoulder, but the furrow between her brows doesn’t disappear. It only deepens as Merlin’s back worsens, when little lips begin to appear beneath his shoulder blades.

She sends him to Camelot.

Gaius looks him over and raises an eyebrow—the first time Merlin sees the eyebrow of magical disbelief, but certainly not the last—and points Merlin to a drawing of a man with wings.

“They will grow,” Gaius explains solemnly, “but they will not hurt you.”

“They’re hurting me now,” Merlin grumbles, reaching around to scratch at his back. Gaius stops him.

“Growing pains are to be expected,” he says, “but they will get worse if you do not let them grow in properly.”

“How’m I supposed to do that?”

Neither of them knows. Neither of them knows because Merlin is magic, under Uther Pendragon’s nose, as the servant of the Crown Prince Arthur.

They can’t bind the wings as they grow. They can’t excuse Merlin’s back pain as anything other than back pain. They can only pad Merlin up with ill-fitting tunics so much.

Arthur doesn’t notice.

After a year, they’re fully grown. The feathers are…unruly, but small enough and white enough that they can be passed off as ornamentation, discarded from some elaborate headdress. The wings can fold up under his tunic and stay hidden, so long as no one touches him.

Well, that won’t be a problem.

He moves through the castle too fast for people to get a good look at him. The knights don’t want to look at him. Arthur only cuffs him upside the head.

His secret is safe.

Then he undergoes his first molt and he lies in agony for a day, as Gaius tries his best to care for the wings. The feathers overflow, crowding the room, until Merlin can figure out that they can make pillows out of them. It takes a moment for them to appear in the rest of the castle, but Morgana comes by to ask whether she can have an extra one. Apparently, they help with her nightmares.

Merlin is more than happy to oblige, at least until Morgana asks him where he gets the feathers from.

“Um…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she winks, giving his arm a gentle pat, “I won’t tell. Just make sure you bring plenty, hmm?”

Morgana touches him. It’s always sweet, just a quick pat on his arm or his shoulder, but she touches him. She notices. Gwen notices too. And Gwen sticks by his side, is allowed to stick by his side, when the feasts and the council meetings happen and they work.

“Merlin,” she admonishes one hot night, “you must take off at least one of those shirts, you’re going to boil to death.”

“I’m fine, Gwen,” Merlin says, wiping sweat off his brow, “I’ll only be cold in a few minutes.”

His hands are always cold.

The wings don’t like always being cooped up under his tunic, so he stretches them every once in a while. He goes out of Camelot, far away from the prying lights of the high walls, and sits in the forest, stretching his wings. They are a little stiff sometimes, but he works patiently until he can unfurl them painlessly, letting the extra feathers slide off to be collected.

“You really must tell me where you’re getting all these feathers, Merlin,” Morgana remarks one day, “maybe I’ll have to place an order large enough for a shawl.”

Merlin gulps. “I can—I can see?”

“Oh, I’m only teasing,” she says, taking him gently by the arm, “I know you’ve got more important things to do.”

“Merlin!”

“Like tending to Arthur,” she mutters, rolling her eyes as Arthur storms around the corner.

“There you are, come on. Job for you.”

“Coming.”

No, Arthur doesn’t notice.

The knights…the knights.

Leon notices, Leon notices everything. Although he doesn’t realize exactly what he’s noticing, Merlin watches him approach after a training session and carefully pull him to his feet.

“Can it be healed,” the knight asks softly, far too quiet for the others to hear, “what ails you?”

“What?”

Leon gestures to Merlin’s back. “I have known men that…cannot be healed as easily.”

Merlin’s shoulders slump. “No, it’s not…it’s the way I am.”

“I understand. Please,” Leon says, resting a kind hand on his shoulder, “do not hesitate to tell me if there are things that I can do to make this easier.”

Leon notices everything, Lancelot notices Merlin.

Merlin doesn’t bother to hide his magic from Lancelot. The man met him and knew, and he takes very great pains to make sure that Merlin knows his secret is safe with Lancelot. Merlin finds himself leaning on Lancelot more than he would care to admit, even going so far as to physically lean on the man. Lancelot never minds, always reaching to stealthily make it a little easier for Merlin to stand. But Lancelot doesn’t put together that Merlin has wings.

“I’ll help you,” Lancelot promises when merlin says he doesn’t want to tell him, “you don’t owe me an explanation.”

Merlin lets himself slump forward into Lancelot gratefully.

Lancelot helps quietly, Gwaine helps loudly.

Whenever Merlin beings to slump, needing a break, Gwaine makes the loudest, most obnoxious distraction he can, be that some loud bawdy joke, some great exclamation, or knocking over a massive shelf of newly polished pie tins. He plays up his clumsiness, his ‘common’ nature, all to make everyone else more focused on him than on Merlin.

“Let them think what they will,” he says to Merlin by the fire one night as they keep watch, “I don’t care. As long as you’re okay.”

“Even if you don’t…know why?”

Gwaine shrugs. “I trust you.”

Merlin smiles.

Gwaine distracts, Elyan suggests.

The first time Elyan notices Merlin wincing every time something comes near his back, he brings Merlin to the armory and suggests a leather tunic.

“It might help with support,” he says, pointing out the different points on the back, “and give your spine a little less to deal with.”

“…could it be made to fit under clothing?”

“Of course. I’ve got a friend that works down in the blacksmith’s district that makes ones to go under ladies’ clothes.”

Merlin looks at it and promises to think about it. In truth, if it’s going to be fitted properly, they’re going to have to see his wings.

That’s not a risk he’s willing to take.

But he does promise that Elyan can make him something to make things a little easier.

“I won’t pry,” Elyan promises, “but you’ll let us help, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Elyan puts things together, Percival pulls things apart.

“Easy,” the knight mutters as Merlin winces, “almost there.”

Merlin grits his teeth and pulls, straining away from the metal digging into his back. Percival grunts, holding it apart.

“On three, ready?”

“Ready.”

“One…two…three.”

Merlin yanks. The metal comes apart in Percival’s hand and the force sends the two staggering apart, panting. Percival tosses the remains over his shoulder.

“That’s the last time I put one of those on,” Merlin grumbles, rubbing his shoulder.

Arthur had the great idea to do full melee drills today. Problem is, with Arthur standing back to watch, the knights are an odd number. Which means that Merlin was placed in a suit and made to hold a lance. The metal pressed his wings flat to his back and squeezed, making it hard for Merlin to stand, much less fight.

Percival had taken one look at him and ushered him away, using his strength to pry apart the pieces to get Merlin free.

“Are you alright,” he asks, using a voice that Merlin has never heard before, “are you very badly hurt?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Percival lays a large hand on Merlin’s back, only for Merlin to flinch away. “Sorry.”

“Just…” Merlin shakes his head. “Go tell Arthur I’ll be back in a minute, yeah?”

Percival leaves with a nod.

The knights notice, even if it’s not everything.

Then Morgana walks in without knocking while Merlin’s wings are out and he freezes.

“Oh,” she breathes, dropping the pieces of fabric she holds, looking at Merlin’s wings spread wide, “Merlin, they’re beautiful.”

Merlin is too shocked to make a sound.

Morgana closes the door softly, walking forward with her hands outstretched. “I won’t hurt you, Merlin, I promise, I just…wow.”

Merlin swallows. “Are you…you’re not afraid?”

“You’re Merlin,” Morgana smiles gently, “how could I be afraid?”

“They’re magic.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re still not afraid?”

“No.” She reaches out tentatively. “May I?”

Merlin shudders as her hands lightly brush one of his feathers. She makes a soft noise.

“These are where those feathers come from,” she murmurs, “aren’t they?”

“…they’re mine.”

“They’re lovely,” she promises, her smile so wide, “and so are you.”

She giggles as Merlin flushes red.

Morgana vows to keep it a secret, and in turn, Merlin teaches her about magic. Her nightmares fade away as she sleeps on pillows they make together, as Merlin carefully grooms his wings and Morgana teaches him how to embroider. They keep it a secret, under the watchful eye of Gaius, sewing, and plucking and talking in the night. Gwen comes to join them, smiling wide and bringing Merlin into a gentle hug as he shows her for the first time. Her hands at the base of his spine feel warm.

“Do they hurt much?”

“Not anymore,” Merlin says, giving them an experimental shake, “I’ve…gotten used to it.”

“Well, you must let us help you when they hurt,” Morgana says, rethreading her needle, “if only as an act of repayment.”

“Repay—Morgana…”

“You’ve given us the gift of your feathers,” Morgana interrupts, “not to mention all that you’ve done for Camelot. For me.”

“And for me.”

“But I—“

“You’re lovely, Merlin,” Morgana promises, smiling when Merlin flushes red again, “let us help you?”

And what can Merlin do but say yes?

They do help, but there’s not a whole lot they can do. It just…it hurts sometimes.

The feathers will itch. The wing joints will grow still and stiff. And when the wings grow still and stiff they’re just pounds of dead weight, almost impossible to hide. Merlin grows slow on these days, unable to bound up the steps after Arthur or dart about the castle. Instead, he sits and does small chores, like polishing armor or writing speeches. Morgana will sit with him if she can, sewing. Gwen will fetch her own chores and they’ll do them together. The knights will sit with him and keep the other eyes of the castle away.

Arthur…Arthur doesn’t do much.

And really, really well…isn’t that why it might hurt so badly?

Merlin spends nearly all of his time with Arthur. He knows more about Arthur than he does about nearly everyone, maybe even more than he knows about himself, and Arthur just…doesn’t care?

That makes the wings grow a little heavier.

One day, it’s very bad. Merlin can’t roll over, can’t dislodge the weight on his back. It makes it hard to breathe with his chest smashed as it is against the mattress. He stares at the wall, blinking, unfocused, not seeing anything but the vague light and dark spots against the solid gray of the stone. It hurts. He feels dull, lifeless, unable to summon any energy to move.

His eyes begin to cloud over as he lies still.

Soft footsteps outside his door. The door opening slowly and closing just as slowly. The creak of the floorboards as someone walks to sit next to his head. Red jerkin. Brown trousers. Golden hair.

…Arthur?

“Hello, Merlin,” Arthur says softly, “hard day?”

Merlin nods, confused as to why Arthur’s here and why he’s not shouting at Merlin to get his lazy arse out of bed.

“Are you feeling alright?”

The answer that Arthur probably wants is ‘yes.’ The honest answer is ‘no.’ The very honest answer is ‘why do you care?’

Merlin settles for shaking his head.

Arthur makes a noise of sympathy, reaching forward to card his fingers lightly through Merlin’s greasy hair. His fingers reach through to Merlin’s scalp, scratching gently.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, Merlin,” Arthur says immediately, “it’s only me. Does it hurt very much today?”

Merlin frowns. How…what…what is Arthur doing?

“Did Gaius…Gaius tell you?”

“No, Merlin. I figured that when you didn’t show up today that something might be wrong, so I…came to check.” Arthur smiles and ruffles Merlin’s hair. “Good thing I did.”

“Not—I meant about my—my—“

Merlin runs of out air, twisting his head as he is to look up at Arthur from his position on his stomach.

“Easy,” Arthur says, gentling Merlin’s head back to the pillow, “rest your neck. I’ll talk, yeah?”

Merlin’s too exhausted to do anything but obey.

“No, Gaius didn’t tell me about your back, Merlin.”

“…Morgana?”

“No, not Morgana.”

“Gwen?”

“Not Gwen.”

“…knights?”

“Not the knights either.” Arthur’s hand reaches down to scratch at the base of Merlin’s head. “No one had to tell me, Merlin.”

But Arthur…but he…

“You never noticed,” Merlin mumbles, half into the pillow, “not…ever. Not before.”

“About your back?” When Merlin nods, Arthur huffs gently. “Merlin, I noticed the first day you arrived in Camelot.”

What?

“I just…well, I figured you were…that you may be ashamed of it,” Arthur continues, a little sheepish, “or maybe I assumed you’d prefer if I never brought it up.”

“S-so…so you…”

“I always knew, Merlin,” Arthur says softly, “but I…no, I’m—I’m sorry I never said anything.”

“…oh.”

Arthur shifts, getting off the stool to kneel on the floor, his face next to Merlin’s, his hand still rubbing the base of Merlin’s skull. “Can I make up for that a little by helping now?”

Merlin nods.

“Right,” Arthur murmurs, “now…thank you, firstly. Second, have you tried getting out of bed today?”

Merlin shakes his head, growing more and more miserable.

“Alright…would you like to?”

“…’ve got work.”

“That wasn’t what I asked,” Arthur chides gently, “I asked if you’d like to get out of bed.”

He smiles kindly when Merlin seems to flounder for an answer.

“I can help you get out of bed if you like,” he says, “but…you are also allowed to lie here for today. Especially if it hurts. I’ll stay with you.”

“You…you will?”

Arthur smiles, petting Merlin’s hair again. “Of course.”

Merlin closes his eyes, losing himself in the gentle pats. It…it might be nice to try and sleep again, but…but his wings might just hurt more when he wakes up.

“No?” Arthur nods when Merlin shakes his head. “Alright. Let’s…let’s see if we can at least sit you up.”

He tucks a palm under Merlin’s head and holds it steady, reaching low and wrapping his arm around Merlin’s waist.

“Hang on.”

Merlin’s back strains with the wings as Arthur begins to sit him up, only for Arthur to grunt and pull harder.

“You’re much heavier than you look, Merlin,” he says worriedly, “are you—are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I—I’m—“

“Are they broken?”

Merlin freezes.

He looks slowly at Arthur. Arthur raises an eyebrow.

“Come on. My Merlin doesn’t get to grow wings and not have me notice.”

“I—I—“

“Shh,” Arthur soothes, his arms still tightly around Merlin, “it’s alright. Do I look angry?”

“N-no, but—“

“I’m not. I’m worried.” Arthur nods at Merlin’s wings. “Are they broken?”

“N-no, just…just stiff.”

“Alright. Can I…can I help?”

Merlin swallows. Arthur…Arthur knows. Arthur’s not angry. Arthur’s not…angry?

“My Merlin,” Arthur murmurs, gently bumping his head against Merlin’s, “of course I’m not angry, you’re lovely.”

He chuckles when Merlin flushes red again, adjusting his grip to help the blanket stay on Merlin’s shoulders.

“Will you let me help?”

Merlin’s fingers tighten in the front of Arthur’s jerkin and he nods.

“I’m going to take the blanket off now, okay?”

The blanket falls to the bed and Merlin’s wings unfurl, spreading as wide as they can, trying to stretch. Arthur’s breath catches in his throat as he holds onto Merlin.

“Oh, Merlin…”

“They hurt,” he mumbles, “they hurt.”

“Alright,” Arthur mutters to himself, “alright. Let’s do this.”

The bed sinks behind him as Arthur carefully positions himself between the wings. He reaches out to gently card his fingers through the wings, going right to the glands.

“Ah!”

“Sorry,” Arthur mumbles, “I’ll be more gentle.”

“How—“ Merlin shudders and gasps as Arthur’s warm, warm hands move easily through his wings— “how do you know how to do this?”

“The stable has hawks,” Arthur murmurs, gently sorting out the stiff joints, “and I learned how to tend to them when the stable master taught me to hunt.”

“So—so you—ah!”

Merlin can hear the smile in Arthur’s voice as he rubs his thumb around the base of the joint connecting Merlin’s wing to his back. “Yes, Merlin, I know what I’m doing.”

Merlin has never been touched like this.

Arthur knows just how to stroke the muscles to get them to relax, to pull out the broken and crumpled feathers and work the oil throughout. He knows just how gentle to be when he swipes his thumb across the gland, knows just how firm to be when he runs his fingers through the base of the wings. He knows Merlin, knows how to pause when Merlin shudders too much, how to reassure him that he’s almost there, just a moment, please.

“H-how—“ Merlin bits back another gasp as Arthur straightens a particularly stubborn feather— “how did you n-not tell me?”

“I thought you were ashamed of them,” Arthur says softly, resting his hands at the base of Merlin’s sides, “I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“I…”

Was he?

“…I was ashamed of my—of the magic,” he stumbles, “and I…”

“Oh, Merlin,” Arthur says quietly, reaching forward to wrap his arms around Merlin’s waist, “you should never be ashamed of your magic.”

He chuckles when he feels Merlin gasp under his hands.

“That one you can blame on everyone else not doing a good job of hiding it.”

“Don’t be mad at them,” Merlin blurts, “please, it’s not their fault—“

“Shh,” Arthur rumbles, reaching up to scratch at the soft part of Merlin’s wings again, “I’m not. Just...you can exhale now, Merlin, it’s alright.”

Merlin breathes. His wings flutter a little. A tiny gold glimmer darts around the feathers. He relaxes back into Arthur’s arms, letting Arthur hold his weight and his wings.

“You’re alright, now…”

A soft knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Morgana.”

“And Gwen!”

“Merlin?” Arthur chuckles when Merlin just mumbles. “Come in.”

Morgana giggles as she catches sight of Merlin all sprawled out on Arthur’s chest. “Seems Arthur started feather collecting earlier, hmm?”

“Feather collecting?”

“You didn’t think those pillows made themselves, did you?”

Gwen rolls her eyes as the two bicker, reaching to gently pull Merlin forward to hug him.

“You feeling a little better?”

“A little.”

Gwen smiles. “I’m so glad. You look…a little lighter too.”

Merlin smiles back.

“He hasn’t told you either?”

Merlin glances around to see Morgana shaking her head. Arthur huffs.

“Well, now we both have to ask him.”

Merlin’s face goes pale. “A-ask me what?”

“Don’t look so afraid,” Morgana says, “it ruins your lovely face.”

…well, he’s not pale anymore.

“Stop flirting with my Merlin.”

“Oh he’s your Merlin, now, is he?”

“He’s always been my Merlin.”

“What did you want to ask me,” Merlin interrupts before his face can get any redder.

“Right.” Arthur claps his hands. “Can you fly?”

“What?”

“Can you fly?” Arthur gestures to the wings. “Or are they just there to be pretty?”

“What happened to no flirting?”

“Oh, that’s just for you.”

“Rude.”

“I, um…” Merlin twists his hands together. “I’ve never tried.”

Morgana looks at Arthur. Arthur looks at Morgana. They both look at Merlin. Gwen giggles.

Merlin sighs.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

Merlin dreams of flying.

#merthur fic #merthur #merlin #merlin bbc #bbc merlin #arthur pendragon #morgana pendragon #dragonbabbles #fic

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butterflies-dragons · 4 years

Note

Hey! There was a giant lemon cake with phallic image in alayne chapter. Do you think it some coincidence or it means something? Especially it's presented by petyr. Also Sansa and her enemies giving her lemoncakes give same vibes as Hansel&gretel story.

And best of all, Lord Nestor’s cooks prepared a splendid subtlety, a lemon cake in the shape of the Giant’s Lance, twelve feet tall and adorned with an Eyrie made of sugar.

For me, Alayne thought, as they wheeled it out. Sweetrobin loved lemon cakes too, but only after she told him that they were her favorites. The cake had required every lemon in the Vale, but Petyr had promised that he would send to Dorne for more.

—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I

Petyr Baelish is grooming Sansa, that’s the awful truth. And he has studied Sansa, he knows what she likes/wants and he will use that knowledge in his favor.

He knows she had a distant relationship with Ned, so he becomes Alayne’s father.

He knows that Ned neglected her and that she always craved for her father’s validation, so he gives her that, he praised her wits for example, and called her clever and smart.

If Sansa says something like “I can’t” or “I don’t know”, he is there to encourage and support and tell her “you can do it” & “you know it”.

He knows she loves knights and tourneys, so he allows her to organize a tournament, whose winners will belong to a kind of “Kingsguard” for Sweetrobin, based on the child’s favorite hero of the legends: The Winged Knight, Ser Artys Arryn.

He knows she loves lemon cakes, so he gives her a giant lemon cake.

The Tyrells has used the same strategy:

"Sansa," Lady Alerie broke in, "you must be very hungry. Shall we have a bite of boar together, and some lemon cakes?"

"Lemon cakes are my favorite," Sansa admitted.

"So we have been told," declared Lady Olenna, who obviously had no intention of being hushed. "That Varys creature seemed to think we should be grateful for the information. I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off. Alerie, will you have them bring the food, or do you mean to starve me to death? Here, Sansa, sit here next to me, I'm much less boring than these others. I hope that you're fond of fools."

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I

We all know how much Sansa loves her lemon cakes, but the Tyrells and Littlefinger really treat her as if she were a child like Sweetrobin:

"Will they be lemon cakes?" Lord Robert loved lemon cakes, perhaps because Alayne did.

"Lemony lemony lemon cakes," she assured him, "and you can have as many as you like."

"A hundred?" he wanted to know. "Could I have a hundred?"

"If it please you." She sat on the bed and smoothed his long, fine hair. He does have pretty hair. Lady Lysa had brushed it herself every night, and cut it when it wanted cutting. After she had fallen Robert had suffered terrible shaking fits whenever anyone came near him with a blade, so Petyr had commanded that his hair be allowed to grow. Alayne wound a lock around her finger, and said, "Now, will you get out of bed and let us dress you?"

"I want a hundred lemon cakes and five tales!"

I'd like to give you a hundred spankings and five slaps. You would not dare behave like this if Petyr were here. The little lord had a good healthy fear of his stepfather. Alayne forced a smile. "As my lord desires. But nothing till you're washed and dressed and on your way. Come, before the morning's gone." She took him firmly by the hand, and drew him out of bed.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

The lemon cake in the shape of the Giant’s Lance

The Giant's Lance is the tallest peak of the Mountains of the Moon within the Vale of Arryn, extending three and a half miles above the the valley below.

The great-grandfather of Petyr Baelish was a Braavosi sellsword that came into the Vale of Arryn at the service of Lord Corbray. His line was continued by his son, who became a hedge knight and took the head of the Titan of Braavos as his sigil.

As I mentioned in this post, a sword, Ice in particular, works as a phallic symbol in Sansa’s chapters.

So, we can also make this association:

The Titan of Braavos = A Giant

The Giant’s Lance = Tallest Peak

Lance & Peak = phallic symbols

Lemon cake in the shape of the Giant’s Lance = I don’t want to write it

We can also say that Petyr Baelish is “compensating” his “shortfalls”, after all he is a short man called Littlefinger.

Yes, I think this giant lemon cake could be seen as a phallic symbol and it makes sense with Littlefinger grooming her... yikes

¡¡¡SOMEONE SAVE HER PLEASE!!!

My friend @lostlittlesatellites has already wrote about these subjects, giant lemon cake as phallic symbol and Hansel and Gretel story:

I argued that lemon cakes in Sansa’s arc actually spell people trying to exploit Sansa’s weakness in an almost Hansel & Gretel way and a betrayal that follows.

“Interestingly Sansa’s first chapter in AGOT poses questions that will drive majority of her arc. Her desire for a courtly life in the South will not only prove to be hollow but worse a dream that turns into nightmare. Sansa asks two questions: “What could you want to see? It’s just fields and farms and holdfasts” and “Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat cakes with the queen?”

The world is larger than Sansa has been taught to believe, reclining more inward into her dreams with the strict regime that she taught to look away from the window. She doesn’t think she is prepared enough and that she needs more training. Yes, she doesn’t know enough but neither does Arya or Bran or Jon. Having Sansa finally leave her cage after completing her tutelage under Littlefinger is continuing that student-teacher dynamic she has had since Septa Mordane. People come to love the security of the cage they live in too long. This is why it takes so long to take out the fear of the outside from Sansa because the fact that she has barely any experience keeps her thinking she needs someone to rely on.

[…]

The “Feather pillows and cakes with the queen” part represents the glamour that attracts little boys and girls like Sansa. However, it is hollow as Sansa comes to realise about many things. In fact, people offering Sansa lemon cakes in Sansa’s storyline often forebodes a betrayal from the person offering it. Cersei offers her lemon cakes and a few chapters later she has Lady executed and even later, she has Ned arrested. Olenna offers Sansa lemon cakes, which Varys offers as valuable information to bring her guard down in order to lure her into her trap of marrying her to Wilas and getting hold of Winterfell and the North. They have her wear the murder weapon, which could implicate her for Joffrey’s murder even if their target is Tyrion. Littlefinger is offering her a 12 foot phallic shaped lemon cake in Sansa’s TWOW chapter. Given how happy Sansa is in this chapter that she is almost forgetting that she isn’t Alayne, the food is way too lavish when Winter is coming and along with this trend with lemon cakes, the clock is going to strike 12 and the illusion is going to break very soon. Soon Sansa will prefer riding those “smelly horses” and getting sweaty and sore in order to escape over those lemon cakes and feather beds offered by untrustworthy people. For Sansa’s arc to be fulfilling she has to experience the lives of small folk up close before she helps them. As a character whose view range is often myopic, she has to be put in the middle of the lives of the small folk to truly understand them.”

I highly recommend you to check @lostlittlesatellites blog, she’s a great ASOIAF meta writer, you can read more about these subjects here and here. She covered a lot of themes and symbolisms around Sansa in the Vale, some of them very disturbing regarding Littlefinger’s present and future actions against Sansa...

But despite all that, since GRRM is a writer that likes to give different meanings to a same thing, there are also some very interesting details that are worthy to mention about the real Giant’s Lance:

So lovely. The snow-clad summit of the Giant's Lance loomed above her, an immensity of stone and ice that dwarfed the castle perched upon its shoulder. Icicles twenty feet long draped the lip of the precipice where Alyssa's Tears fell in summer. A falcon soared above the frozen waterfall, blue wings spread wide against the morning sky. Would that I had wings as well.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

The Winged Knight was Ser Artys Arryn. Legend said that he had driven the First Men from the Vale and flown to the top of the Giant's Lance on a huge falcon to slay the Griffin King.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

I can see strong dragon imagery here...

I already wrote about how Sansa wishing falcon wings could be foreshadowing of her getting dragon wings.

Here I also listed all the similarities between Jon and Sweetrobin.

But the most interesting detail is that the real Giant’s Lance is Stone covered by Ice/Snow.

Sansa’s Vale arc has a lot of connections with Jon Snow, like this parallel that I called “Children of the Mountains”.

There is also the names of the waycastles Stone (Alayne) and Snow (Jon).

And one of my favorite Jon Snow reference in Sansa’s chapters, the ghost wolf, big as mountains:

All around was empty air and sky, the ground falling away sharply to either side. There was ice underfoot, and broken stones just waiting to turn an ankle, and the wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghost wolf, big as mountains.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

So,

The Giant’s Lance is the tallest peak of the Mountains of the Moon.

The Giant’s Lance is Stone covered by Ice/Snow.

Sansa compared those mountains with a giant Ghost Wolf.

I’m sorry Littlefinger, you can’t touch this girl!

Thanks for your message.

#anon ask #jonsa #alayne stone #lemon cakes

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hopelikethemoon · 4 years

Text

The NSFW ABCs of Annie & Javier {MTMF}

You can find out everything you need to know about Maybe Today, Maybe Forever right here.

(gif from @heather-lynn‘s gifset here)

A = Aftercare

Javier is dedicated when it comes to aftercare. Regardless of who he’s with, whether it’s a one night stand from the bar or a sex worker, he knows how to dole out aftercare. He had a really good reputation among the brothels in Colombia, because he took care of the girls after he was done with them. He wasn’t just a pump and dump. It was a whole thing for him.

But with Annie, it becomes his top priority. Especially after particularly rough sex, he absolutely loves doting on her. He’ll leave the bed to grab a washcloth, returning to clean her up and leave kisses along her inner thighs. He loves leaving marks on her, almost as much as she loves when he leaves marks, and even days later he’ll check on them to make sure bruises are fading and marks are healing. There are some moments, at the beginning of their relationship, where he tends to feel a little guilty about leaving marks on her or being too rough.

Annie loves doting on Javier, but it drives Javier absolutely fucking up the wall. Especially after they get more adventurous in their relationship, the aftercare continues the entire day after sex. He secretly loves it though, even if he says he hates the attention.

B = Body part

Annie has always been a little bit in love with Javier’s nose and his hair. Even before they were together, her fingers were known to find their way into his hair. But after they’re together, she’s always finding reasons to play with his hair, fingers at the nape of his neck, fluffing the hair that falls across his forehead.

It might be cliche, but Javier loves Annie’s body — like really loves it. He’d happily just sit and study her, if she’d let him. He also really loved when she was pregnant, there was something he just adored about seeing the way her body changed as their child grew within her. He sometimes wishes he’d taken more time to worship her during both pregnancies, even though Annie would assure him he was very devout in his adoration of her body. He also loves her stretch marks, knows each and every one of them by heart.

Javier is a tits man, so it kinda kills him that he goes literal years without being able to play with Annie’s the way he wants to, but he’s not the type to complain about it. She told him once not to touch them, while she was pregnant with Josie, and he respected that request until she told him otherwise. He really enjoys them, regardless of whether he’s allowed to touch them. He’s content to just look.

C = Cum

Javier doesn’t have any qualms about kissing Annie after she’s had her mouth wrapped around his cock. He also doesn’t have an issue with going down on her while his cum is still leaking out of her pussy. In fact, he kinda enjoys it. It’s messy, it’s primal, it’s intimate. She’s the same way, honestly, she doesn’t mind a little making out, while Javier’s lips taste like her.

When it comes to sex, these two are not fans of condoms. Javier almost always finishes in her, preferring the actual act of sex over getting a blowjob. But that’s not to say he doesn’t absolutely lose his shit when Annie gives him head. The things she can do with her mouth? Incredible.

The first time they tried pegging and Annie made a show of licking his come off his stomach? That went straight into Javier’s spankbank for the rest of eternity.

D = Dirty Secret

Their dirtiest secret is pegging. That is probably the one sexual activity of theirs that no one will ever find out about. They’re both fairly open about their sex lives with their friends, like Steve and Connie, but pegging will be the secret they take to the grave. That’s between Javier, Annie, and everyone’s favorite sex shop worker Rocky.

Javier might not be the best at expressing himself, but deep down he enjoys how liberating it is. He loves when Annie takes control. He loves being completely at her mercy. Not to mention, there’s something much more powerful about when he comes that way. Even though he hates being fussed over, he loves how Annie treats him afterwards. She’s very doting.

E = Experience

Both Annie and Javier are very experienced. Given the nature of their friendship-turned-relationship they’re also pretty intimately familiar with who each other has fucked and how. Honestly, that was one of the things they both loved about each other early on. There was no shame, no judging, and they actively supported each other in their pursuit of getting their rocks off.

Lance was the longest “long term” relationship Annie was ever in. She dated a little in high school and college, but nothing very serious. Similar to how Javier’s only “long term” relationship was Lorraine.

F = Favourite Position

I feel like it would be easier to discuss which positions they don’t like. They’re both down to try anything once. Later on in their relationship, they mostly stick to positions that won’t hurt Javier’s back or knees. But he’s willing to soldier through a little pain.

Annie and Javier are both switches, though Annie has a tendency to start out in control and then let Javier take over. Annie also tends to enjoy rough sex more than Javier. They both love any position that lets him fuck her hard and deep.

Annie secretly loves it when they get so worked up, Javier barely gets a chance to undress before he starts fucking her. Maybe it’s because it brings back memories of them in the bathroom, or maybe she just loves the urgency of the moment. There’s something hot about feeling his jeans scrape the back of her thighs as she rides his cock on the sofa after the kids are down for the night.

G = Goofy

Javier and Annie both look like they could kill you with a single look, but they’re the biggest dorks when it comes to each other. Sex for them, while often intense, is always fun. There’s teasing, giggling, and absolute adoration in every encounter. Annie in particular is a goofball when it comes to Javier.

But it wasn’t always like that with other partners, being goofy is something that is reserved for the two of them alone.

H = Hair

Annie keeps her bush maintained, but it is indeed a bush. She is not a fan of waxing or keeping things hairless. And Javier certainly has no issue with it. If Annie had her way, she wouldn’t ever shave her legs either. But alas, she wears dresses too often to really enjoy going au naturale.

Javier also keeps his own pubes neat, but there’s no real manscaping going on there. Javier always keeps his mustache neatly groomed, but will often let his facial hair on his cheeks go untamed because he knows Annie loves it.

I like to think they’re both forged in the 70s and they fall in line with a lot of the ideologies of that era.

I = Intimacy

Their love language is touch.

Annie and Javier are both deeply romantic people, even if they won’t admit it. In the heat of the moment, there’s always loving touches, tender kisses, and murmured words of encouragement.

They’re very touchy people too — even before they were together, they were very comfortable touching each other. That shifted into their signature three squeezes, when they couldn’t verbally or really physically express their feelings for each other in public.

Even their roughest sexual encounters are layered with passion and intimacy. They care so deeply for each other, it’s hard not to show that compassion in the moment.

J = Jack Off

While they’re both always going to prefer fucking each other, they both have a healthy relationship with their own hands. Sometimes Annie isn’t in the mood, but she’ll know Javier’s wound up so she’ll ask him to get himself off and let her watch. She loves it, even if she isn’t really aroused. There’s something super hot about watching Javier come for her like that.

Ever since they moved to Miami, Annie has had her vibrator to help take care of her own needs. Sometimes she’ll have had a really exhausting day at work and she just needs to take the edge off. Maybe she’ll sprawl out on their bed, face buried in Javier’s pillow while she uses the toy to come or maybe she’ll take a nice long shower and use her own hands and the showerhead. Javier’s definitely caught her in the act a handful of times, he loves watching her as much as she loves watching him.

K = Kink

Annie loves being marked and she loves marking Javier. If she doesn’t have a few finger shaped bruises, she’s not happy. She especially loved this when they were keeping their relationship secret in Colombia, because she knew they were both covered in marks, but no one else did.

Javier has a definite hair pulling kink. He loves when Annie gets her fingers in his hair and pulls. That little twinge of pain, the pull at his scalp that sends little tremors of pleasure straight to his cock? Yes.

Other kinks? Annie loves being overstimulated and Javier loves getting her off more than once when they have the time to make an evening of it.

L = Location

Don’t judge, but Javier and Annie love a quickie in the bathroom of their favorite bar. It drives Steve and Connie crazy because they’re not subtle about it. At all. There’s something really sexy about fucking in the bathroom and returning to the table — Javier loves knowing that he’s dripping out of her and Annie loves the feeling of it too. They’re usually all over each other afterwards too. Javier will keep a hand on her leg or wrapped around her shoulders, while Annie will sit there playing with his hair, all but laying on him.

Javier also loves when they fuck on the sofa or really anywhere where that Annie can straddle him and ride his cock.

M = Motivation

A brisk breeze could get them going.

These two are truly and completely in love with each other and pretty much constantly thinking about how they can get the other one alone. Annie’s kink is Javi and Javi’s kink is Annie. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t the occasional dry spell — like that seven month period where neither of them really instigated anything beyond a few kisses and a cuddle before and after Sofía.

They don’t need an excuse. As long as they’re both in the mood, they’re good to go.

Sometimes Annie has a dress on that sits at just the right place on her thighs and it drives Javier wild, making him think about pulling it up around her hips and sinking his cock into her. Other times, it can be in the midst of a heated conversation where they both get off a little on the argument.

They really feed off each other’s desire.

N = NO

You know, they’d probably be willing to try almost anything once. That being said, they would never have a threesome and they would never invite anyone else into their relationship. Annie and Javier are both extremely greedy personalities and they don’t share.

Miami, unsurprisingly, actually had a pretty active swinger scene during the time period that they lived in the city. They’ve definitely been propositioned by couples and they probably accidentally ended up at the wrong type of party before. Especially since they’re not married, they’re not interested in marriage, and they just refer to each other as partners. People mistake that for meaning that they’re in an open relationship and they’re not. At all. They wouldn’t even humor that as a scenario for their relationship.

O = Oral

If they’re going to have sex, Javier is going to be between Annie’s thighs at some point. He could spend hours eating pussy. He loves it, she loves it — it happens a lot.

They both love giving and receiving. But, like I mentioned above, Javier really prefers having sex over getting head. If they’re planning to go at it for awhile, he’s more amenable to letting Annie get him off with her mouth. At least then he has time to work himself back up to actually fuck her.

Annie and Javier also have an agreement about somnophilia. They’re both very open to being woken up by each other that way. Annie, in particular, really loves being woken up with an orgasm.

P = Pace

It honestly depends. Annie really enjoy rough sex, Javier not so much. But even during rough sex they’re very sensual and tender with each other. Soft caresses, partnered with sharp thrusts. Sometimes they take their time, enjoying a little lovemaking, other times Javier’s fucking Annie into the mattress until she can’t walk straight tomorrow.

Sometimes they’ll start out with Annie on top, setting the pace as she rides him — but they’ll both realize they need more. That tends to be how she ends up face down-ass up with Javier pounding into her.

Q = Quickie

They love quickies. See Location.

With two kids and both of them working? Quickies are a must. They try to work a little alone time into every day. Sometimes that means a quickie in the morning, or hopping into the shower with each other, or taking advantage of the girls naptime.

They make it work. Especially since sex is the quickest way for both of them to get on the same page and ground each other.

R = Risk

They’re always up to experimenting with toys, but even then Javier has it definite hard limits with how far he’s willing to take things like pegging or using toys on him.

The riskiest thing they’d be up to is semi-public teasing and sex. They love the increased risk of getting caught. Whether that’s Javier fingering her in the back of a cab or Annie palming him under the table at the bar.

Mostly, they love seeing how far they can push it before one of them snaps.

S = Stamina

With enough build-up, Javier is usually good to go at least two rounds. Maybe more. But again, it really depends on the foreplay and the intensity of the encounter. They’re both pretty worn out after particularly rough sex or if they’ve really wound each other up beforehand.

Annie loves when Javier can pull multiple orgasms from her. They have safe words for a reason, just in case it’s ever too much.

T = Toy

Initially, she only has the one, but later on in their relationship Annie buys a couple vibrators for her personal use. Though she’s definitely been known to use them to tease Javier’s cock. There’s something she just loves about watching the way it twitches and the way he squirms while she edges him towards a release. And of course, she has her purple rocket for use during anal play.

Of course, they have the neon blue dildo they use on Javier that also fits into her strap-on harness. It’s the only one they ever procure. Javier isn’t really interested in trying any sizes larger than that one and he prefers it because it’s just an oblong toy that doesn’t look phallic at all.

Annie would 100% be down for wearing the rocket while she does laundry or make dinner and letting Javier tease her with it. They definitely experiment with remote control toys.

U = Unfair

They both love teasing each other, but never in a hurtful fashion. Annie, in particular, really enjoys a good delayed orgasm and she loves how attentive Javier is when he plays with her. A little overstimulation goes a long way.

Javier enjoys being edged, but he much prefers edging Annie. He also loves when Annie plays with his nipples, it’s never really something that was done before Annie and he enjoys the stimulation.

V = Volume

Annie could be really loud if she had the opportunity. But usually they’re in an apartment or they’ve got the kids down the hall.

Javier definitely expresses himself and is pretty comfortable letting Annie know exactly how much he enjoys what they’re doing. But Annie is, without a doubt, the loudest of the two of them. And Javier loves it.

W = Wild Card

Javier is way more into roleplay than Annie is. She cannot take it seriously and any of their attempts at roleplay usually descend into giggles. He’s fine with it not really being part of their relationship and the few times they have managed to make it, he really enjoyed it.

They have only had success with roleplay when it involves them being their past selves. Which works for Javier.

X = X-Ray

Let’s just say, Annie is very satisfied with the length of Javier’s cock. He’s got length and girth working for him.

Y = Yearning

I love how yearning is about libido, because Annie and Javier both have extremely high sexual drives but they also have extremely high yearning drives too.

These two are the picture in the dictionary under yearning. They spent five years yearning for each other, but they still yearn for each other even when they’re in a relationship together.

Z = ZZZ

Javier definitely falls asleep first.

Annie tends to stay awake, fingers playing through his hair or stroking any patch of skin she can reach. She loves listening to him snoring quietly and usually follows him shortly afterwards into the afterglow of post-sex sleep.

They alternate between who is the big spoon. Sometimes they go to sleep with Javier’s arms wrapped around her, other times they’ll wake up and Annie is curled around his back.

Javier secretly loves being the little spoon because homeboy just needs hugs and cuddles.

#javier pena #javier pena x reader #pedro pascal x reader

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loveafterthefact · 3 years

Text

Love After the Fact Chapter 76: Going Home? Question Mark?

Lance, Keith, and their ‘associates’ give their farewells and prepare to leave.

Sorry for my perpetual lateness :’(

First Previous Next

Keith sits across from his mother, sipping some tea. Krolia watches him. He’s very still, waiting patiently for her to speak. He's put his circlet back on, though not his Altean clothes, as they no longer fit. A part of her wonders if he has what it takes to be a leader. He always seems so gentle outside of combat.

Perhaps a little too gentle.

“Are you going to tell me, or are you two keeping it to yourselves for now?”

“Putting it like that sort of backs me into a corner,” Keith observes. He worries his lip. “We’re very excited, but I don’t feel ready to celebrate yet.”

“Because you don’t want to feel sad if you miscarry,” Krolia concludes.

Keith nods. Guilt stings at his hearts. “Lance is so happy. I don’t know what I’ll do if-”

“You’re allowed to be happy, kitten.” Krolia pushes some hair out of her son’s face. “Thace’s equipment only goes so far. A few movements ago, we weren’t certain you could get pregnant. Now, you know you can, and you will have every possible chance of bringing this kit into the world.”

"Right..." Gazing around his freshly cleaned den, Keith’s visibly saddened. The windchimes are gone from outside; BleepBloop’s climbing towers missing; the fireplace has been cleaned and scrubbed of soot. The den is empty, like it’s never been lived in. It feels wrong.

“Keith? What-”

“I don’t want to go,” he whispers, throat tight and ready to choke him. “I want to stay here with all of you. I want to see Lance be happy and feel like himself.” “Feel like himself?” Krolai’s ear cocks, trying to understand.

“When we return, Lance will become busy again, with no more excuses to delegate so much of his work. He’ll sort through it, and give me the easy tasks so that he finds time to eat and sleep, and we’ll be together, but apart all over again. He’ll be distant, and coy, and never touch me unless we’re alone and I’ll hate it!” The young man sighs, tugs on a lock of his hair. "I know he's trying, but I don't know how to help him break out of these habits. I don't think he can do it alone, either. I don't want him to."

Krolia fixates on her son, watching his frustration over the rim of her cup. “This is my fault. No one ever told you what being a bearer means on Altea, did they.”

“Obviously I know what it means-”

“No, you don’t.” Krolia’s stare is searing. “Pregnancy is power, Keith. A good man or not, the crown prince is no different than any other Altean sire. You carry his progeny, and he will worship at your feet. He will give you anything you ask for. If you want to be his fawned-over, spoiled pet, tell him. If you want power, tell him. If you want luxury, tell him. If you want to share in his duties, tell him. If you want him to hold you, keep you close all the days of his life, tell him. Whatever you want, he will give it to you.”

“Momma. That’s…”

“That’s survival, kitten. You have power over him. He’s desperate for heirs. After your first kit, hold out on him. You’ll have whatever you want.”

“Momma, what I want is my mate. By my side. Sharing my life.” Keith sips his tea. “I understand what you’re saying. And I understand that you still have concerns about me mated to an Altean, and living on Altea. But I promise, Momma. I promise I don’t have to manipulate Lance into giving me things that I need. I can just ask.”

He waits until his mother meets his gaze. When she does, her eyes are so very sad. Sad for everything they’re still struggling to build between them. He taps his fingers against the clay of his cup, tries to find a way to explain why he’s not worried about having to ask for things.

“You know, when I first arrived, I spent the first movement avoiding everyone, including Lance. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was watching me. Asking the guards about me. He must have asked the gardeners, or was approached, because it’s the only way he found out about this flower I stole from a greenhouse.” Keith laughs. “The next thing I know this garden he built for me is full of orchids. I kept finding new blankets and pillows, uh. Puzzles. Random trinkets. Raw crystals. Snacks.

“We’re addressing his control issues, obviously, but… He was so desperate to make me comfortable, to make it easier. He cared about me even then. I don’t need to manipulate or use him to get what I need or want. Chances are he’ll give it to me before I even ask.”

“I hope you’re right. I do think better of him. But he wears the face of the species that slaughtered your father. My mate.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be blaming my uncle for that?” Keith asks, steady, completely serious.

“An excellent question, kitten. One I ask more every quintant.” The soldier woman gets to her feet. “We should go and meet your mate and your friends. It’s about time for you to leave and we need to stop by my den on our way to the Compound.”

Keith nods, reluctantly following his mother to her own den. BleepBloop is already on their ship, ready for Altea. It’s on the edge of the community. No one owns dens, or even has an ancestral den anymore. Too many people have left, or died. A den becomes empty, and whoever’s lived on the fringes the longest gets to move inward if they like.

“I have something for you,” Krolia tells him. “I suppose, in a way, you have your mate to thank for this. Perhaps you can educate him about it.”

“Okay?”

“Wait here.” Krolia ducks inside her den, coming back out seconds later with a very small wolf cub. “So your mate decided to save an orphaned wolf cub, which was incredibly honorable and respectful of him, but his mother’s companion could not find a surrogate for him, and now he needs a home. The hunter decided that since your mate saved him, you two might like to have him.”

“I-” Keith gulps. Being offered a cub is an extreme honor, especially as an outsider. And the cub is cute. He takes the animal from his mother, rubbing his ears, looking him over. “I love him already. So much.”

Not that he could turn down a wolf cub even if he wanted to. Especially not this one, the one that carries not only a piece of his mother's life force, but Lance's as well. He strokes the wolf’s midnight fur, working a tangle out of the pale blue ruff circling around the animal’s neck and down his back. The cub stares up at him with brilliant, golden eyes.

“I knew you two didn’t have the time for him, so I told Lance I’d keep him here. It was his idea to give him to you today. I guess he thought it might make going home easier.”

“It doesn’t,” Keith whispers. “But it’s still something. Stupid idiot, he’s really toeing that line between secret and surprise.” He holds the cub up to his face, smiling. “You had a rough start, huh?” The cub licks his nose. “Me too. Don’t worry. It gets so much better.” Keith smirks. “Finally someone to take BleepBloop down a peg. He’s gonna be so jealous-”

Keith’s comms unit buzzes in his pocket, a message from Adam: It’s time to go. He takes a deep breath. “Well, little one. Wanna come with me to Altea?”

The animal licks at his face again, tail wagging. Keith grins, cuddles the cub close. Yeah, he’s keeping this little guy.

Keith stalls on his way to the compound, stopping to talk to people, ask a few carefully worded questions about the political climate and what the villagers think of Lance, ask if those thoughts have spread. It’s good news. It means their kit will be a little safer.

“So… Lunch last quintant was a thing, huh?” Lance nibbles at his breakfast. He’s in Allura’s sitting room, one of the few rooms she and Lotor have deemed safe from prying eyes and ears. Meaning Lotor and Pidge searched the room from top to bottom.

Allura nods, eating as quickly and as much as her manners will allow. “It really was quite something.”

“What do you think?”

“I think…” Allura wipes her mouth with her napkin. “I think I should stay closer to Lotor and keep a closer eye on Romelle. I think you should keep an eye on yourself and keep closer to Keith.” She gives her brother a meaningful look.

“Was it that obvious?”

“No. The others wouldn’t have caught it. But I know you, and I know Keith. I could tell… Are you trying to keep it quiet?”

“For now. Keith may very well miscarry and feels too uncertain to make an announcement.” Lance sips his tea.

“And?” Allura gives her brother a pointed look. Lance sighs.

“And the longer we can hide this, the longer our child will be safe. The moment Alfor and Zarkon know, our baby’s future will be dictated to us.” Lance leans forward in his seat, expression tense. “Remember our cousin, Griffin? His son is four years old and rumor is Alfor’s already made an arrangement. Keeping it quiet means I have time to come up with something myself, or pass some legislation under the table to protect the rights of our children. We only have a few movements until the thaw, and I’ve just got ideas, nothing written.”

“Do you plan on including Nibling in that?” Allura asks, gesturing to her belly with her spoon. “Because frankly I don’t like the way Honerva’s been looking at me lately. Lotor doesn’t like it either.”

“Of course. Anyone possessing Altean blood, or under Altean rule.” Lance frowns. “How long do you have?”

It’s a more difficult question than it seems. Galra gestation is only five phoebs, their children born small-bodied, vulnerable and useless with eyes and ears still shut. Altean infants gestate for a decaphoeb and a half- three times as long. They’re born hearing and seeing, ready to learn how to walk and talk.

“Well, I’m about six phoebs along… We’re guessing six more, judging by their development.”

Lance nods. “I don’t know how long we have. I just- I want us to be safe and happy.”

“Lance…” Allura taps her finger on the table. “You don’t remember what Mother was like. She wasn’t at all how she’s described. I mean, she was kind and all that, but she was also wild and very strong. A powerful leader and presence. She didn’t die by accident, Lance. Her death was on purpose. When she was assassinated, they chose her for a reason.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Safe and happy are not available to us. Be respected instead. Be the type of leader that people will kill on purpose, because of who you are, not what you are. That’s how you can best protect our children. Be feared and respected.”

Lance nods, licks his lips. “I should visit Romelle before I go.”

Allura sighs. “I’d appreciate it if you would… I know father was lying about looking for more possible solutions. It was unusually kind of him.”

“I… had a screaming fit with him before we left Altea. I think I got through to him. Somewhat. He’s still Alfor, but he’s a slightly less frustrating Alfor.”

Allura laughs through her nose. “We must take what we can get.” She meets her brother’s gaze. “I am going to miss you, brother.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” Lance rises to his feet, giving his sister a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll come visit again when I can.”

“So… When I make you an uncle?”

Lance grimaces. “Or when Keith makes you an aunt.”

The princess nods, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. They stay like that for a long moment, Lance standing, Allura sitting, missing each other, still in the same room. This woman, his sister, raised him, loved him, supported every one of his choices, even if she disagreed.

Sometimes, he still feels lost without her.

“I love you, Lance.”

“Love you too, ‘Lura.” Lance kisses her cheek again, slips his hand from hers as he heads for the door. “I’ll see you again soon.”

Across the hall, in another room, Lance finds an even sadder affair. Romelle is sitting by a sunny window in yet another red stone room, eyes staring into some unfathomable distance. Despite her vacant expression, she’s visibly well cared for. Her hair is groomed and braided how she always wore it before and she’s clean. Her clothes are fresh, fingernails files short and round so she can’t hurt herself.

He wonders if she still knows how loved she is.

“Hey, Romelle. I just thought I’d come say goodbye. We’re leaving today, so…”

Lance sits in the chair opposite the frail woman, disrupting his sister’s imprinted shadow. Before he knows it, Lance’s eyes are stinging, welling with tears. He grew up playing with this woman, watching her and Allura fall in love. She was so, so young when she went on that final voyage with Alfor, and she won’t ever get better. Not hoping for conversation, Lance elects to sit quietly and keep his friend company for a while-

“Are you afraid of the water?”

“I-” Lance blinks, unsure of the proper response. He takes a chance on the truth. “No, I’m not afraid of the water. I love the water.”

Romelle hums, skeptical, quizzical. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t be. You would not even be aware.”

“Beg pardon?”

“What has come to pass will pass again... the love story theirs and yours are so very fond of. Only neither of you knows it.”

“Romelle-”

“Generations of flesh give way to the rebirth of souls… The guardian waits for the descendants.”

“...I understand,” Lance lies. It’s easy, like lying to a small child, promising that there are no monsters outside their door. He stands, having had as much as he can bear. He gently squeezes the woman’s hand.

“Do not fear the water,” Romelle whispers. “Even submerged, you will still burn.”

“Good, uh.” Lance clears his throat. “Good to know.”

As Lance leaves to gather Pidge and Adam and say goodbye to Lotor, Shiro, Thace, Ulaz, and a few other Blades, he can’t quite shake the anxiety. He struggles to convince himself that Romelle is unwell, just spouting random nonsense from her collapsing mind.

He doesn’t quite succeed.

Sooner or later, Keith finds himself in the courtyard where they arrived, the ship open, revealing a number of packages- gifts and other items they’ve accumulated since their arrival. Lance is talking with Thace and Kolivan, hands animated, eyes shining. Whatever they’re discussing, Lance is excited for it.

“Keith.” Krolia turns him to face her, grips his shoulder tight. “Listen to me carefully. Are you listening?”

Keith turns to his mother, nods, holds the wolf cub closer between them, petting his head.

“You train this animal well. You keep him close. Do not trust anyone except the crown prince… There is something in the stars. I have seen it. All we can do is brace ourselves and wait.”

“What do you mean?” Keith whispers, fear trickling like ice down his spine.

“I mean that the sociopolitical strain on Daibazaal is reaching a breaking point, and none of us are prepared. There are enemies in every corner, and fools behind and beside them. You are carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire civilization in your womb. Know your place, even if it is to run.”

“I-” Keith gulps, nods. “I will… I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, kitten.” Krolia embraces her son, kisses his temple. “You tell that Altean of yours I’m allowed to visit, because I can and will.”

“Okay. Just let us know you’re coming. There’s an entry medical procedure.”

“Noted. I see your mate-”

“Ready to go, beloved?” Lance slips an arm around his waist.

“Not really,” Keith whispers.

The Altean’s smile is so, so sad and so very gentle. “Me neither. But we’ll come back soon; I promise.”

“I know.” Keith doesn’t want to ask for one more trip before their kit is born, but he imagines Lance is already trying to set up the same thing. Lifting his gaze, he spies Adam, holding both of Shiro’s hands. They’re talking quietly.

He’s not the only one breaking his heart today. As he watches, Pidge trots up to the Altean, tugs on his vest, gently whispers that it’s time to go. The look on Adam’s face is inscrutable as he nods, leans up, whispers something in Shiro’s ear before he slips away and onto the ship. The conflicted expression on Shiro's face tells Keith it was a tender confession. His heart breaks for his littermate and for Adam, who finally found each other only for them to be kept apart by duty and honor.

As the ship lifts off the ground, Lance catches Keith sniffling into his new pet’s fur, trying to hide it. The crown prince doesn’t question the cub’s presence, having known about it the whole time. Instead he just holds his husband close, lets him cry.

There’s not a whole lot else he can do. Pidge’s feelers creep over his hands, investigating them both. They hum, soft enough to barely register, sitting quiet for a moment before going to watch Altea loom larger and larger before them. They whisper quietly to Adam, who only shakes his head.

Leaving here is far harder than leaving Altea.

#LoveAftertheFact #LAtF #klance #galtean au #altean lance #galra keith #adashi #altean adam #galra shiro #voltron legendary defender #vld

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justheretobreakthings · 4 years

Text

Perchance to Dream

Written for @gentronlegendaryfriendships

Day Three: Telepathic Bond | Crying in Front of the Other

Written for @badthingshappenbingo

Prompt: Sleep Deprivation

Word Count: 5,092 Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Characters: Keith & Lance Read on AO3 My house, my rules, my ko-fi

Story Summary:

In the stress-filled days following Shiro's disappearance, it becomes clear that Keith is in desperate need of a good night's sleep. Lance and the rest of the team are determined to find a way to make that happen.

It was understandable that Keith would be in a bad mood as of late. After all, now that Zarkon was out of commission, a lot of political matters across the galaxies were up in the air, and the paladins were constantly meeting with one planetary leader after another. They were still having to keep up with battles and missions, and although the Blade was lending its assistance wherever it could, it still felt like they were spread thin now that they were short one paladin, and battles were that much more difficult now that they couldn’t form Voltron.

And, of course, there was the matter of what Shiro’s absence meant for Keith.

The other paladins didn’t have a whole lot of detail about what Keith had gone through when Shiro had disappeared on the Kerberos mission, since Keith wasn’t exactly eager to share any details about his past with anyone, but there were some things he couldn’t hide, not when some of his teammates were witnesses to them. Like the fact that Keith had been expelled from the Garrison for disciplinary issues within a week of the news of Kerberos breaking, or the fact that he had been living in self-imposed isolation for a year afterward, with no sign of having had contact with any sort of family or friends or of any family or friends even existing, until Shiro had finally returned, whereupon he steadfastly took up the role of Shiro’s right-hand man while remaining stubbornly closed off to everyone else in the Castle of Lions.

So, some emotional regressing was probably inevitable, and the rest of the team had formed an unspoken agreement to let it slide when Keith was snappish with them, when he skipped group meals and bonding sessions, when he stormed out of meetings, when he’d take the Red Lion out on yet another fruitless search for any sign of Shiro without letting anyone else know he’d be gone.

It was understandable, sure, but that didn’t mean they weren’t allowed to be irritated by it. And Lance was accustomed to being irritated by Keith, so it wasn’t like this was anything new. Just more of the same.

And more of the same also meant more venting about his Keith-related frustrations to Pidge and Hunk, who were annoyingly not particularly receptive to hearing about it.

“Look,” Pidge told him during one of these rants, cutting him off right in the middle of a very impassioned tirade about Keith having rammed into his shoulder in the hallway earlier that day without even stopping to apologize, “I’d be annoyed too, but cut him some slack. He just lost his brother, again. He has the right to be in a bad mood.”

“A bad mood, sure,” Lance said. “But there’s a limit to mood badness we should be willing to tolerate. Not like he’s never been a grouch before, but now it’s at the point where it’s messing with public image and missions. And team morale.”

“Him shoulder-checking you in the hallway really screwed up your morale that badly?”

“There’s no fucking way he doesn’t know he owes me an apology,” Lance snapped. “He’s just intentionally being a dick.”

“You always say that when it comes to Keith.”

“It’s always true.” He sighed. “Come on, help me out. When you get into a really bad mood about the situation with your brother and dad, you still pull yourself out of it after a while. What’s the difference there, huh? What do you do that Keith doesn’t?”

Pidge bristled. “I don’t get into ‘bad moods’, it’s perfectly justifiable to be pissed the fuck off when a tyrannical empire kidnaps your family and - ”

“Hang on, whoa, I wasn’t saying it wasn’t justifiable!” Lance said hastily. “I was just - ”

“So, what, does it mess with your fucking morale when I get grumpy about - ”

“I think what Lance is trying to say,” Hunk cut in, “Is that, when you’re feeling extra upset about the whole setting, the anger still settles. It’s just not sustainable to stay so angry for a longer period of time, you’d completely burn out and wind up basically breaking down. You’re mad about the whole thing, and rightly so, but you temper it enough that it doesn’t keep you from functioning and interfere with daily life, right? Meanwhile, Keith’s temper’s been flaring a lot longer than is healthy. It’s no good for him to not be coping.”

“Yeah,” Lance said with a nod. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say.”

“Like hell it was,” Pidge muttered, but thankfully she let it go for now. “It’s not like I’m doing anything to work through the anger, really. Just, like you said, it burns out. Eventually I just gotta sleep it off, get some air, wait ‘til I can focus again.”

“Ah, okay, so Keith has to sleep it off,” Lance said. “I’m sure a nap will make everything all better again.”

“Hey, you asked how I deal, and I told you. Not my fucking problem if you don’t like the answer.”

“Well,” Hunk said slowly, “It… actually could help.”

Lance frowned over at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s kind of a well-known fact that lack of sleep basically kills your mood, right? Just think of how cranky toddlers get after they miss a nap. I mean, I’m not trying to say Keith is a toddler or anything, or that this is a temper tantrum, nothing like that. But, well, he’s been really pushing himself trying to find Shiro, and he hasn’t really been recharging. He’s still up earlier than the rest of us, and a couple nights ago when I woke up halfway through the night and went to get a snack, he was up pacing the hallways.”

“Huh,” Pidge said. “Come to think of it, I’m usually the last one to bed, but I have heard Keith still moving around in his room a few times while I was heading to my room to sleep. And he’s been yawning a lot in diplomacy meetings. More than usual, I mean.”

“Oh!” Lance said. “And our last team training session, I was totally kicking his ass on reflex time against those drones! Normally he’s like, almost as fast as I am, but he was stumbling around like a drunk! Think that was because he was tired?”

“Lance, he normally has the fastest reflexes out of all of us,” said Hunk.

“No, no, we’re pretty much even. My reflexes just look slower to you guys because you’re more used to seeing them.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how it works,” Pidge said, rolling her eyes. “But hey, the point stands. Bit of sleep would probably do him some good.”

“Well, if it means a possibility of a slightly less pouty Mullet stinking up the place? It’s gotta be worth a shot.”

---------------------------------------------------------

The next time Lance encountered Keith in the hall, he didn’t wait around to get brushed off or bumped into. Instead he strode straight up into the path of Keith’s stomping boots, earning himself a level glare that he pointedly ignored.

“Hey,” Lance said, “Cancel any plans you’ve got for tonight. We’re doing a sleepover.”

“... What?” Keith said, blinking uncomprehendingly.

Lance wasn’t sure if Keith was just taken aback by his abruptness, or if he actually didn’t know what a sleepover was. Just in case, he explained. “You know, we all gather together, have some quality bonding time, get as comfortable as possible, then pass out and sleep through the rest of the night and, if we did it right, half of the next day too. We’re all meeting in the paladins’ lounge, at - at half past, uh… fuck it, Altean clocks are stupid. Once you start seeing someone heading that way in pajamas, it’s time.”

“No thanks,” Keith grunted.

He moved to step around Lance, and Lance held out a hand to block him. “Wait, you gotta hear me out first. We’re all gonna put on our paladin pajamas and lion slippers - that’s all mandatory, by the way, sleepovers are very strict about dress codes - and gather up all the pillows and blankets we can find, and we’re going to basically transform the lounge into a massive blanket fort. And Pidge is gonna bring her caterpillars along to join, and they’re basically the softest things in all of existence, and we’re gonna taste-test some of Hunk’s new dessert recipes he’s trying out, get nice and stuffed before we go to bed. Basically, this is gonna be the best night’s sleep any of us have had in years.”

“I’ll pass.”

“No, look, you can’t pass. It’s team bonding.”

Keith huffed. “We do plenty of team bonding in all our battles and meetings. And speaking of which, we’ve got more important things to be focusing on than blanket forts.”

“Well, yeah, but how are we going to be able to focus on those important things if we don’t take some time to relax in between? All work and no play makes Keith a dull paladin.”

“All… what are you talking about?”

Lance sighed. “Okay, look, I’ll level with you. The whole team’s been kind of, uh, concerned, lately. About your mood. And Hunk noticed you haven’t been getting much sleep lately, and frankly it’s making you even more of a grouch than usual - no offense, I mean - so we figured - ”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Keith growled. “Yeah, I’ve been in a bad mood. Do you wanna guess why, Lance? Can you think of anything that might have happened lately that may be worth getting a little bit upset over? What could I be concerned about, huh? What could I possibly have going on that’s more important than a goddamn sleepover?!”

“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Lance said. “Maybe if you got a decent night’s sleep, you wouldn’t be yelling at me right now.”

“I’m not yelling!” Keith snapped. “And I definitely don’t need you to be monitoring my sleep schedule!” He stepped around Lance, and this time, Lance didn’t stop him. “Have all the sleepovers you want, but leave me out of them,” Keith muttered as he left.

Lance slumped as he watched him go. He had figured that it would take a bit of convincing to get Keith on board for a sleepover, but he hadn’t actually expected him to get angry over it.

God, he definitely needed a nap.

“Stupid, stubborn Mullet,” Lance grumbled under his breath, scuffing his shoes against the floor as started back to the lounge.

-----------------------------------------------------

The sleepover may have been a no-go, but that didn’t mean they had to give up on Operation: Make Keith Actually Get Some Sleep quite yet, especially since, in the coming quintants, the dark bags under Keith’s eyes, the disheveled state of his hair and his clothes, and his irritability were all increasing before the very eyes of the rest of the team. If any of them had had any doubts over whether he was sleep-deprived, they were certainly dashed by now.

But since apparently Keith had some sort of issue with his teammates actively encouraging him to sleep, they agreed that they would have to try more subtle methods to get him past his insomnia, help him sleep without letting him realize they were doing it.

Lance initially proposed raiding the med bay for some sort of sleeping tonic and slipping it into his food, but that idea was shot down immediately by Pidge explaining that it would be too risky to use a medicinal sleep aid on someone when they didn’t know how it would react with his biology, and Hunk saying that drugging Keith without his knowledge and consent was just an extremely sleazy and messed up thing, and making it clear that he found it very disturbing that he even had to point that out to them.

But there were other things to try, discrete ways to try to make the Red Paladin a bit more susceptible to some solid sleep. Hunk planned out dinners over the next few nights that heavily featured poultry and whole grains, which he explained to Lance induced the production of some sort of sleep hormone - Lance honestly had sort of zoned out the moment Hunk started throwing science into the conversation. Pidge messed with the lighting in the living quarters to dim the lights in Keith’s room, just enough that he probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but would also have a slightly easier time falling asleep despite the light.

Even the Alteans got in on it, as it seemed the human paladins weren’t the only ones who had taken notice of Keith’s insomnia. Allura had them all do meditation shortly before the castle’s night cycle began, under the pretense of it being a training exercise for the paladin bond. Coran, who it turned out was an ardent advocate of aromatherapy, pumped some sort of faint fragrance into the air vents in the living quarters, which smelled a bit like lavender and vanilla, although with a certain tartness to the scent that was distinctly Altean.

And yet, even after all of that, they still weren’t seeing a change. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Lance decided to try his own hand at it a few quintants into their new subtle approach, figuring it couldn’t possibly hurt. He waited in his own room with the door kept open, until he saw Keith pass by in the hall and called him in.

“What?” Keith asked. The word came out sharp and tetchy, but lately that was how everything Keith said sounded, so Lance paid it no mind.

Instead, he simply held out his headphones. “Would you mind giving this a listen for me? I think something’s a little weird with the audio, like it’s scratchy or something, but it’s hard to tell. I wanna know if I’m just imagining it.”

“Wouldn’t Pidge be better with audio stuff?” Keith asked.

“With fixing it, yeah, but right now I just need someone to give a second opinion.” Lance bounced the headphones in his hand. “Come on, please?”

Keith let out a long, low breath, but he obliged, taking the headphones and sitting on the edge of Lance’s bed as he placed them over his ears. Lance gave him a thumbs-up and pressed play on his music player, watching Keith’s face carefully. This was a special mix he’d been using for the last couple of years, and the fact that he’d had his player in his backpack with him when they’d wound up in the Blue Lion was a godsend. A playlist of soft guitar songs and light Caribbean ballads with steady and melodic percussion beats, all interspersed with ocean sounds. It had lulled him to sleep every night since he’d been in the Castle of Lions.

The mix played for a few minutes before Keith moved one of the earphones aside and said, “I don’t hear anything weird.”

“You positive?” Lance said. “Listen real closely, all right? Close your eyes, it’ll help you concentrate.”

Keith did, and his eyes stayed closed for another few minutes before he shook his head. “It all sounds fine to me.”

“Well, that’s good,” Lance said. “Guess it was all in my head after all.” He accepted the headphones as Keith handed them back to him, then cleared his throat. “So, ah, did you like that music? You looked like you were enjoying it.”

“Sure,” Keith said with a shrug.

“Hey, that’s - that’s cool. Gives us something in common. You know, if you want, you can borrow my music player for a while.”

“That’s all right, you keep it.”

“No really, I think you’d like it. You could, like, give the whole mix a listen, let me know what you think. I bet you’ll enjoy it, I’m sort of known for having great taste in music.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Lance asked.

“Since when are you so eager to let me borrow your things?”

“Uh, since always? I’m generous.”

“Lance, last week I accidentally used your toothpaste instead of mine and you acted like I had stabbed you.”

Lance huffed. “Our bottles look completely different, how could you possibly have - ? You know what, not important. Just, I’m up for sharing now, okay? So come on, just take the music. You’ll like it.”

“Not until I figure out what you’re trying to - ”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m just trying to help you, Mullet! This is supposed to be relaxing! So could you quit being so goddamn stubborn for once in your life and just take the stupid headphones already?!”

A pause of silence stretched between them as Keith’s expression slowly fell to a dark scowl. “Oh my god. Is this seriously about that stupid sleep thing again?!”

“Yes,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “You know what, yes, it is. And honestly, we shouldn’t be having to go to this much trouble to get a grown-ass adult to actually take a nap, and this is getting really ridiculous - ”

“Wait a minute, ‘we’?”

“Well, it’s kind of really fucking obvious that you haven’t gotten half a dobosh of sleep in ages, but since apparently you’re too proud or something to admit you actually need help, the rest of us have had to intervene to keep you from just straight up dying of exhaustion.”

“For the love of - I don’t need anyone’s help to sleep!”

“Oh, like hell you don’t. Look at you, the bags under your eyes are so big I’d have to check them at the ticket counter. I don’t know why you’ve gone and decided that having trouble sleeping is something you’ve got to be ashamed or whatever’s going on in your head, but - ”

“I can sleep just fine! I don’t want to sleep!”

“What, because you’re being so damn productive in those extra waking hours you get when you don’t? You’re not exactly doing yourself any favors here.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that!”

“Well then what’s it got to - ”

“Do you know what happens every time I fall asleep?” Keith snarled. “You know what I see every single time?”

“Uh…” said Lance.

“I see Shiro.” Keith crossed his arms, his scowl deepening. “Every time I close my eyes to go to sleep, it’s Shiro. Sometimes I see him bleeding out in the hall of a Galra base. Sometimes I see that gladiator arena he told us about, and he’s in the middle of it, barely hanging in there. Sometimes he’s just floating out in the middle of space and he’s cold and he’s too far from anyone or anything to get help. And sometimes it’s just the Black Lion, getting shot to smithereens right in front of me in the middle of battle and I can’t do anything to stop. He’s hurt and he’s dying and I just do nothing.

“Because that’s what I did, didn’t I?” He choked out a dry laugh that was completely devoid of any humor. “He got taken, right under our noses, and we didn’t even know until we got back to the hangars. He could be dead, or being tortured; maybe the Galra have something in mind for him that’s so horrible we can’t even fathom it. And we could have prevented it, but we didn’t. And it’s all I can think about, and when I’m asleep, it’s all I can see.

“Hell, I got nightmares after the Kerberos thing too, imagined his shuttle crash-landing against that stupid moon and wound up with that playing over and over every night. But at least that time, it wasn’t like it was my fault. Not like I was there and could have done anything. Not like I’d ever seen Shiro hurt and scared before, so my stupid brain couldn’t use that for reference. This time, though?” He tapped his temple. “It’s all there. Just waiting to play out.”

He took a shaky breath. “If I stay awake as long as possible, though, just let my body pass out when it can’t handle being awake for one more second, I don’t dream. I guess I’m just, like, too exhausted for the subconscious to do anything but wait for me to wake up. So I can’t sleep until I absolutely have to, you know? Because if I don’t I end up - I have to see - ” He gritted his teeth and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“... Shit, dude,” Lance said, slowly lowering himself onto the bed next to Keith. “I, uh… I didn’t know.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Keith grunted. He lowered his hands and Lance could see the glistening of tears there before he brought his knees up, wrapped his arms around them and buried his face in them. “God, you’re not supposed to see this.”

“Why not?” Lance asked softly. “Keith, if you’d told us what you were dealing with, we could’ve helped you out.”

“How?” Keith snapped. “You can’t control what I dream about, you can’t undo what happened to Shiro. I just - I have to deal with this.

“Keith, you don’t need to - ”

“Yeah, I do.” He sniffed, wiping at his eyes. “Okay? And this isn’t me being stubborn or anything, I’m just stating facts. This isn’t something that can be fixed, it’s just something I - something I have to figure out. Somehow.” He coughed. “So, please, Lance. Stop trying to help. Tell the others to stop trying to help.” With one last sniff and failed attempt to blink away the now cascading tears, he stood and turned away. “I’ve gotta go,” he mumbled. “Should really get to the training deck.”

“But - ”

“Don’t - don’t tell the others. About this. It’ll just… make them worry.” And before Lance could say anything in response, Keith was out the door.

------------------------------------------------------------------

It was several vargas later that Keith finally stopped training and came back to the living quarters, and by then the castle was well into its night cycle. Keith was drenched in sweat, trembling somewhat from exertion as he trudged his way back toward his room.

So, the sight of Lance standing in front of the door probably wasn’t a welcome one, and Lance was unsurprised by the glare he received as Keith approached, which deepened further as he spotted the music player in Lance’s hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” Keith asked.

Lance took a deep breath. “I, uh - I had a bit of an idea. I know you said you don’t want me to, like, get involved in - in this whole thing going on with you, but I gave this a lot of thought, I really did, and I think you should hear me out. I’ve got something you really need to try.”

“Lance,” Keith sighed. “We already went over this. I don’t need you to help me fall asleep. And besides, the music, the beach sounds? They just don’t work for me, okay? There’s no point in - ”

“No, okay, I know we went over all of that,” Lance interrupted. “But this is different, I swear.”

“Lance - ”

“Look, this is either going to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done for you, or a stroke of absolute genius. It’s like fifty-fifty and we won’t know which one it is until we try it. So, here.” He held up the headphones. “Just give it a shot.”

Keith frowned down at the headphones, but slowly, he obliged, taking them from Lance’s hand and positioning them onto his head. “All right,” he said, closing his eyes. “Ready.”

Lance nodded and pressed play, then watched Keith’s face. At first he remained stoic, then, gradually, his brow began to scrunch in confusion. Lance held his breath as he watched, and after about a minute Keith’s eyes opened to look warily at him. “What… what is this?” He moved the headphones down, and Lance could just hear the sound of the playing track: a voice, soft and tinny at this distance from the earpiece but still confident and sincere. “We’re entering a new era of human exploration of the unknown universe, and every one of you has the ability to become part of history.”

“That,” Lance said, “Is a speech that was made about five years ago at my middle school, and probably a couple hundred others. By a certain Galaxy Garrison lieutenant I admired very much.”

“Yeah.” Keith brought the headphones off his head completely to stare at in his hands. “Thought I, um, recognized it. How did - how did you even get a recording of it way out here?”

“I downloaded a video of it that was on Youtube, converted into an MP3. Listened to it while I worked on my Garrison application, because that stupid application process was frustrating as shit and I needed the motivation. Guess I just never deleted it.”

“...Oh.” Keith kept staring at the headphones for a while longer before slowly moving them back up onto his head and closing his eyes again. Lance watched as he stayed still, for long enough that Lance was starting to wonder if Keith had forgotten he was there, when Keith finally opened his eyes back up and pushed the headphones aside again. “It’s… nice,” he said softly. “Hearing him talk. I’d… forgotten… how nice that was.”

Lance gave him a small smile. “Yeah. That’s the idea. See, I got to thinking, about the stuff I was having you try listening to before, and how you didn’t find it relaxing the way you were supposed to, and I realized, like, the reason that that stuff calms me and helps me sleep, is because it’s for me, specifically. Like, the Timba music is stuff I’ve been listening to my whole life, that I’d play in my room at home all the time, and the ocean sounds, they make me think of swimming and going to the beach with my family and laying down on a surfboard to watch the sun and stuff. And, you know, stuff like that, it makes me feel at home, right? It feels peaceful, and familiar, and safe, and that’s all good for getting a good night’s sleep, and for keeping the bad stuff away.

“But for you, well, none of those sounds are really home to you, are they? The music genre’s kinda niche, and I figure you’re more into… I dunno, punk rock? Post-hardcore? Some genre where your mullet might be considered acceptable. And as for the ocean sounds, I mean, you lived in the middle of the desert and you don’t even swim.”

“I can swim,” Keith said.

“Eh, you don’t so much swim as just ‘not drown’, but whatever,” said Lance. “Point is, they weren’t the right sounds for you. So I asked myself, okay, what sort of things would make Keith feel at home? Duh, explosions. But then I realized explosion sound effects would probably be hard to sleep through, so I went searching through my MP3s and found this. And, like, it works doubly well because if you fall asleep with this playing and Shiro shows up in your dream, then your subconscious or whatever might connect the two. So instead of him, um, going missing or - or stuff like that, dream-Shiro will start giving a motivational speech instead. You know, how sometimes when you’re asleep and dreaming and you hear a sound in real life and your brain just sort of incorporates it into the dream? I mean, it’s just a theory, but it has to be worth a shot, right?”

“Lance, I dunno if - ”

“Yeah, I don’t really know for sure either. Might be a little out there. But, you know. I just thought maybe this could be, uh - this could work. Here, you can set it to play the track on a loop like this, see.” He held up the player to show him. “And the whole thing is about an hour long, so it’ll probably only make it through one loop, if even, before you fall asleep, so you don’t need to worry about it getting super repetitive and driving you crazy. Now, the real motivational stuff is only at the beginning and the end. The whole forty-five minutes or so in the middle is mostly just talking about the Garrison’s programs and how to apply and stuff like that, but that’s still probably better than nothing, right? You can dream about Shiro in teacher-mode or whatever.”

Keith bit his lip in thought, eyes darting between Lance and the headphones, before quietly saying, “... Yeah. Maybe.”

“Try it, at least. For the team’s sake, yeah? ‘Cause we’re all kinda worried about your health at this point, and - and I don’t care what you say, you really need a good night’s sleep.”

“...Okay.”

“Okay?”

Keith nodded, reaching and hand out to take the music player from Lance. “I’ll try it, at least.”

“Great!” Lance said, face brightening. “Let me know tomorrow how it goes, okay?”

“All right,” Keith said. “And, um - just - for the uh, for the - I just - it’s, um, it’s nice to know that you guys all - ”

“Yeah, you’re welcome, Mullet,” Lance said. “Now, go the fuck to sleep.”

-------------------------------------------------------

For the first morning in a long time, Keith wasn’t the first paladin up and about. In fact, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were all already halfway through their breakfasts when Keith finally showed up in the kitchen, blinking drowsily against the light. But it was a different drowsiness than usual. The sort of drowsiness that came from just having woken rather than from desperately needing to go to bed.

Wisely, none of them made any remarks about the change. They bid him good morning and asked if he’d like to join for breakfast, as casually as they would have on any given morning on the castle before Keith’s whole insomnia episode began, and he accepted, his focus entirely on the food in front of him.

Lance waited until Hunk and Pidge started their own conversation, distracted enough by each other not to pay the rest of the table any mind, before tapping the table near Keith’s plate and giving him a questioning thumbs-up. Keith nodded, and Lance smiled as what he had already suspected was confirmed: Shiro’s speech had worked.

Lance was a goddamn genius.

And in the following quintants, as Keith gradually grew less irritable and the bags beneath his eyes started to fade, it became easier to believe that maybe, the team could get through this. Keith could get through this.

He just needed his goddamn genius teammates to help out a bit sometimes. That’s all.

#gentronweek #badthingshappenbingo #vldgen #keith #lance #shiro #my writing #fic: perchance to dream

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otterknowbynow · 4 years

Text

T’as de la place sur le canapé

Sometimes the others need a nap; Hunk is more than happy to provide comfort for his paladin family.

Written as part of Gentron Week 2020 for the prompt Cuddle Pile | Literal Sleeping Together. Also on ao3

Keith falls asleep on him first. Hunk wouldn’t normally expect it, but the guy’s been up for three days straight at this point, probably, between all they’ve been doing for alliance-building since Shiro’s been back and zipping off on Blades missions left and right. He’s focused on going over the notes from his last few sourdough biscuit attempts -- it seems like the space yeast, or whatever it is, is more sensitive to temperature than the Earth variety -- when Keith slumps over sideways against his shoulder. He tenses for a brief moment, worried something is very wrong, and looks over carefully without moving anything apart from his eyes. Keith’s mouth is slack, but his eyes are still open and as they focus on Hunk’s face, they widen, and Keith sits back up again quickly.

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking away. His shoulders tense quickly and resettle as he leans against the back of the couch, as if he’s felt a chill. “Didn’t mean to…” he trails off, one hand waving vaguely in front of himself.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Hunk says with a shrug. And it is, of course, now that he knows nothing’s wrong. “We’re all family here.” Keith looks back over at him and blinks.

“...we are?” He doesn’t sound upset, just bewildered.

“Aren’t we?” Hunk asks, and thinks he’s probably just as confused as Keith is. He’s pretty sure there isn’t a better word for the five of them -- seven really -- than family at this point, considering.

“I…” Keith trails off and picks up his tablet again, and Hunk shrugs as he goes back to his notes. He’s just worked out what he thinks would be an ideal ending point of temperature for the yalmor fat in the biscuits and has started to factor in the ambient temperature of the kitchen to know where it needs to start when Keith speaks again, so quietly he’s not sure he’s supposed to hear. “I guess we are.” Hunk nods without adding anything to that, still mostly focused on the numbers in front of him. Keith shrugs and leans to the side again, tentatively resting his head against Hunk’s shoulder.

“This okay?” That question he knows is meant for him to hear, and Hunk nods again without really looking up.

“‘Course,” he says.

As he finishes writing out the new procedure for his biscuits, Hunk slowly becomes aware that Keith’s body is vibrating softly against him. He frowns, almost opening his mouth to speak, and then closes it as he looks down and realizes the vibrating is accompanied by a quiet rumbling sound, and Keith is out like a light.

“He’s purring,” says a voice, and Hunk looks up to see Pidge leaning against the doorway to the lounge, carrying her tablet in one hand and a shoebox-sized container under her other arm.

“He can do that?” Hunk asks. “That’s…”

“Something he’s done for a long time,” Pidge says with a shrug. “He makes a lot of noises, if you listen for them -- extraverbal communication and all that. I noticed the trend a while ago -- that his tends to be cat-adjacent.” Hunk thinks back over the past several months and nods slowly.

“Yeah, I guess he does. I never really thought about them being cat noises...thought they were just, I don’t know --” it’s Hunk’s turn to wave his hand vaguely in front of himself, carefully avoiding moving the side Keith’s leaning on “-- him noises.” Pidge shrugs again and crosses to sit on the couch on his other side, the shoebox thing between them. “What is that, anyway?”

“Couple of broken communicators. I’m pretty sure they’re just old Altean walkie-talkies,” she says, lifting the lid so he can see two sleek white things that look like exactly that. “The thing that’s cool is they don’t use the same long-range frequencies as our suit communicators or the intercom. As far as I can tell, they’re just run-of-the-mill handheld two-way radios -- maximum communication distance should be something like five miles, but it seems like they might come in handy if I can figure out how to reload their power source..”

“Nice,” Hunk says, looking them over and taking in the dual antennae and impossibly delicate-looking speakers. "Do they not just run on quintessence…?"

"Oh, they do," she says, nodding rapidly, Hunk assumes to offset how low they're still keeping their voices. "It’s just not in a form I’ve seen before, and I’m not sure how to recharge them, or really how they discharge." She flips one of the units over as she's speaking to show him a little catch on the back, which she slides open to reveal what looks like a small bag full of translucent blue gel -- it reminds Hunk more than anything of those little packs of dishwasher soap, but nearly drained.

"Oh, wild," he breathes, careful not to let his shoulders move and jostle Keith. "Is that like...quintessence goop?"

"Looks like it! How they got it in this form is still a mystery, though, and I think I'm well past having the level of focus I'd need to figure it out -- nearly fell asleep in the lab. I thought the change of scenery might help, or you might have some ideas, but..." She glances over at Keith -- head still resting on Hunk's shoulder, arms folded in front of his chest, and soundly asleep -- almost longingly. Hunk grins.

"Tell you what -- why don't you get some rest and let me think on it?"

"You sure?" She asks, stifling a yawn.

"Yeah, I’m sure. You deserve a break, kid.” She grumbles a bit at that, but when he moves the box to the floor and picks up his tablet again, she doesn’t object. Instead, she faces the door and curls up against the back of the couch, resting her head on top of it. It doesn’t look like an entirely comfortable position, but Hunk shrugs and pulls up the data they’ve collected about the different matter forms of quintessence so far.

Halfway through reading about its liquid form, however, he’s interrupted by a highly irritated-sounding Lance, who’s standing in front of him having apparently just come from the pool, if the combination of the smell of chlorine and his wet hair is any indication.

“Oh, sure, no one bother telling me we’re taking a group nap, just don’t try --” he breaks off into a yawn, and Hunk takes the opportunity to shush him as emphatically as he can considering the sleeping forms on either side of him, but Lance continues just as indignantly as soon as he can draw a normal breath. “Don’t try to include Lance; he doesn’t need to know about local comfy gathering, more at 11!” His hands are on his hips, glare so sharp it could probably cut glass.

“Shush,” Hunk stage whispers, holding up his one free arm and trying not to laugh and disturb the others by shaking. “This wasn’t exactly a plan.” Lance narrows his eyes even further, looking down at the shoebox-y container on the floor.

“Then why did you guys move things off the couch, hmm?” he asks, and Hunk is just glad he’s brought his voice down a bit. “Checkmate!” Apparently it’s not quiet enough, though, since Pidge stirs, mumbling something about a crick in her neck. And resettles facing toward Hunk instead, all without opening her eyes or taking her glasses off.

“Lance, buddy, you are welcome to join us,” he says, raising his eyebrows pointedly. Lance’s mouth is already half-open to continue his tirade, but he stops and closes it, blinking.

“Yeah, that’s...probably better,” he says slowly. “I’m pretty beat.” He plops down onto the couch between Hunk and Pidge, where there’s barely enough space even for him. Pidge grumbles half into Lance’s shoulder and shoves him slightly toward Hunk, who lifts his arm to wrap it around him so he can still get to his tablet. Lance settles against Hunk’s side and yawns once, eyes already closed.

“Wake me if there’s breakfast.”

“I can do that,” Hunk says, fumbling a bit as he gets his screen back in front of him. He didn’t notice exactly when Pidge decided that his bicep made a better pillow than the back of the couch, but she’s wrapped onto his arm now, her glasses balanced somewhat precariously where her head was resting before. “I can do that.”

#gentronweek #gentron 2020 #voltron #vld #vld fic #hunk (voltron)#keith kogane #pidge (voltron)#lance (voltron #I don't know what character tags people use RIP #anyway have some really cute cuddle pile times with the kiddos #scribbles #the title is from a french pop song bc I'm a nostalgic sentimental disaster

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ambermation · 4 years

Text

Part of Me (Lance x Fem!Child!Reader)

A Spies in Disguise Fanfic!

Key:

Y/N = Your Name

N/N = Nickname

B/F/N = Best Friend Name

3542 Words

~~~~~~~~

𝕀 𝕒𝕞 𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖, 𝕀 𝕒𝕞 𝕓𝕣𝕦𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕

𝕀 𝕒𝕞 𝕨𝕙𝕠 𝕀'𝕞 𝕞𝕖𝕒𝕟𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕖, 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕞𝕖

~~~~~~~~

You didn't think much of the way you felt towards girls. You assumed they were just platonic- sisterly, even- feelings. When you were younger, and had only been going to school for a few years now, had always preferred having a female partner to work with. You thought that most, if not all, of the girls in your class were quite pretty. The fact you thought you were a plain Jane, physically of course (and you still think this), boosted these thoughts. You were a shy little girl, and had managed to make a very outgoing, extroverted friend.

(B/F/N).

She helped you come out of your shyness a bit and slowly you started talking more and more. But since hardly anyone talked directly to you during work time or out on the playground you didn't get to talk much. It's funny considering the fact that at home, you talked to your uncle all the time. Sometimes you talked to other relatives, usually when they came for a visit from California (they moved there shortly after you were born, which is unrelated to the reason why btw), and even the many different women uncle Lance would bring home. Typically they'd come over at least three times, maybe four if they're lucky, and then you'd never see them again.

Back to you, since you were a genius like your biological father, you were able to start middle school at seven, start high school at eight, and now you're going to graduate at twelve years old. Half way through Freshman year of high school and you managed to make what you call "school buddies", who are people you don't really hang out with outside of school but you kind of do inside of school. (You did make two friends that you hang out with and talk to outside of school though other than your BFF.) They were chill, and most of them had conversations about nearly anything with everyone who wants to join included.

Sometimes they would talk about their relationships, breakups, crushes, and even their sexuality. When someone had started asking everyone what their sexual orientation was, you felt a flash of panic before calmly remembering that your were straight. Obviously you were. You had crushes on countless fictional guys and occasionally you'd find a random guy to be attractive. You thinking girls were cute and pretty had nothing to do with your sexuality and you were just being nice. You thought this way your whole life and never doubted the way you thought.

Of course, this was before you started to learn even more about sexual orientation.

Since the beginning of the year, when you first started to hang out with your school buddies, you managed to learn so much more about the LGBTQIA+ community than ever before since a lot of them were in it. At first, you barely talked and mainly listened to the discussions they would have, yet slowly you started talking more. You joined and even started a few conversations. It was just interesting to you.

Your school friends had brought up the word bisexual before, heck two of them were bi, and its definition was easy for you to understand. However, learning more about sexual preferences didn't immediately make you realize your own sexuality. You continued to read X Readers with guy characters, but one day you decided to read an x Reader for a female character you really loved. You figured it'd be cute, and it was, and thought nothing of that. Man, for a genius, you can be pretty dense sometimes, am I right? Because it wasn't until you were daydreaming at home one day about another female character you love did you realize something. You didn't notice what you were actually daydreaming until it suddenly clicked.

You would love to have her as a girlfriend if she were real. You'd love to have so many characters as girlfriends. You were attracted to both girls and boys. You're..bisexual? The thought was just curious, as if you were asked what's your favorite color, then you gave your answer, and then the person was confirming what you said. If that makes any sense. Being bisexual made sense to you and explained the way you felt towards girls and guys.

So you believed yourself to be bi without the courage, or need, to tell anyone. It's not like you didn't want people to know, well kind of; some people were were really against the LGBTQIA+ community, but that's besides the point, your friends would accept you. You just felt like you'd make a big deal out of nothing. But it wasn't nothing to you. It was a special nothing! It was a part of you that you wanted others to know about. And then the worried thoughts came in. How would your dad react?

You could never tell how he felt towards the queer. The two of you wouldn't really talk exclusively about the community; it just came up with other topics and even then you wouldn't even dip your toes into those discussions. It wasn't on purpose, it just came and went with the natural flow of the conversation. Dad seemed like he was neutral. But you weren't sure.

And, up until two months ago, you were thinking of ways to come out as bisexual to your dad. You stopped thinking of how to come out as bisexual due to your friends. After talking with your friends at lunch one day you learned another sexuality. Pansexual. Since you hadn't heard that word before you asked what it meant. At first, the way it was explained confused you. You didn't understand what your friend was saying, so another friend stepped in and explained in much easier to understand terms. The word pansexual kept ringing in your head, and once you got home you got on your computer and did some more research; research such as differences between bisexual and pansexual.

Shortly after researching the differences you understood that they were different. With a better understanding of pansexual you came to another realization; You didn't really care about someone's gender, you just cared if they loved you and cared about you the same way you would love and care for them. Thanks to your friend, you knew now that you were pansexual, not bisexual.

Great. Now you just had to come out as pansexual to dad!

Yaaaaaaayyy... Notice the sarcasm? Yeah you didn't know how to come out when you thought you were bi so you wouldn't know how to come out as pan.

~~~~~~~~

𝕀 𝕜𝕟𝕠𝕨 𝕪𝕠𝕦'𝕣𝕖 𝕤𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕦𝕟𝕜𝕟𝕠𝕨𝕟

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕟𝕟𝕒 𝕓𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕠𝕟𝕖

𝕀 𝕜𝕟𝕠𝕨 𝕀 𝕒𝕝𝕨𝕒𝕪𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕘𝕠

𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕥'𝕤 𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕞𝕪 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕝

~~~~~~~~

(A/N: I'm using the word "daddy" even though reader is twelve because she's a rich kid. She's a bit spoiled too but she's a nice spoiled kid, you know? And I'm using it as a subconscious expression of the reader not having to grow up too much since she's related to the Lance Sterling. I imagine he's got a lot of money because have you even seen his car? And the fact there's the Sterling Private Jet Hanger? His Air pods? Dude's loaded. I chose to have Lance live in a very nice house that looks fancy but also quite normal (to blend in) because...why not? I felt the need to explain why I chose to use daddy instead of dad, father, etc. Also I felt like the lyrics above relate to the whole story I have for the reader, just not in the same context as the song they're from which is Sunflower.)

Reader POV:

Why am I making such a big deal out of this? I mean, it's kind of a big deal. It's my sexuality and I don't know how daddy will react. I want him to know though. I try to think of what I'll say to him and when.

"Daddy? I've got something important to say. Well, it's important to me at least, and I was hoping that you'd understand or would try to understand. I'm pansexual."

I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. "No, that doesn't sound right to me. What can I say... to lead up to me saying 'I'm pansexual'?" I paced around my room, continuing to think of ways to come out. I'm not sure how daddy will respond to 'I have something important to say' other than making a joke. Probably. Even then I'm not sure what kind of joke he'd make. This was stupidly difficult and I wished I had the courage to just simply say it without any build up.

"That'd make things a lot easier if I could." I muttered, stopping my pacing to to sit down. I was planning on writing it down on paper, but instead I put my face in my hands and let out a disgruntled groan. Half of me was just screaming to simply say it whenever seemed like the best time while the other half was cowering in the corner of my mind bawling.

I get up from my desk so I can flop down on to my bed. If I can't figure out what to do then I'll just curl up under my blankets all cozy until I'm forced to get out. I struggle to keep my eyes open and soon enough I succumb to a dreamless sleep.

I wake up to someone shaking me, their hands on my back and my shoulder.

"Hey, come on N/N, time to eat," A voice said. In my sleepy state I couldn't recognize the voice.

I mumble nonsense in response, searching and grabbing my blanket to pull it over me. I snuggle into the warmth of my bed, not wanting to leave. Before I could even stop it, my blanket was pulled off of me and thrown to the floor. My head snaps to look at my daddy. He looks at me with a deadpan look.

"You up now?" He asked. I groan and drop my head on to my pillow. "No." I answer, closing my eyes. Right after I do that I feel daddy's hands grab on to my wrists. He then starts pulling me up and away from my bed. I move like a ragdoll. "There's no napping before dinner. After dinner? Maybe. But not before. Now come on." Daddy says, still dragging me. I fall to the floor. Alright, that's enough. I pull out of his strong grip and stand up.

"Alright, alright! Geez..." I drag my hand up my face, swaying a little. "Why were you even napping?" He asks. I shrug. "I curled up in bed, and next thing I know you're waking me up," I try shooting him a glare, "Thanks by the way. I could've just ate later, when I woke up," I huff. Daddy laughs. "Aw, you don't want to spend time with your old man anymore? Man, I thought I had a few more years." He looks at me in mock sadness. I lightly shove him as I head towards the door.

"No need to be so dramatic." I tease. You're almost my best friend." We head down the hallway, side by side. Daddy laughs. "Almost?" He asks. I nod. As we're walking down the winding staircase I explain.

"Obviously (B/F/N)'s my best friend."

"Oh yeah...she's a strange one. But at least she's nice."

"Correction! She's nice, a total sweetheart, funny, witty, weird, dorky, and very smart."

"Uh, right. How's she doing?"

"From what she's told me, she's doing alright. She also jokes that I could do her science and math homework for her, of course I'm not and she doesn't mean it, but still," I answer, just as we reach the bottom of the stairs. "You're way too smart to being doing somebody else's homework, right Y/N?" Daddy asked. I nodded.

We talked some more as we reached the dining room/area. We were having Chinese takeout tonight and it smelled wonderful! We sat down and began to eat. In the back of my mind I was thinking about coming out, a thought that was slowly becoming more and more prominent until it was the one thing I was thinking about. We were talking, but as I thought about coming out more and more I started to talk less. I, of course, didn't know this. It wasn't until daddy snapped me out of my thought did I realize I kind of just...stopped responding to him. I look at him. Immediately I see amusement and some concern in his eyes.

"Honey, you got your head in the clouds or something?" He asked with amusement. I shake my head. "Nah, just thinking about something," I said, taking another bite of my food. "About what?" Daddy inquired. Of course he wants to know. "Something," I answer reticenty.

"Are you gonna tell me what this 'something' is?"

I pause, debating whether or not to tell him. Eh, sure, why not? I feel myself tense slightly.

"Well, I... it's kind of, or no, actually, not-not kind of... it's pretty important- to me, at least." As I speak I grab one of my wrists, squeezing it. My left leg was bouncing. "Honey you know you can tell me anything, right? Wait! You're not pregnant are you?" He questioned. I recoil in a mixture of disgust and horror.

"Wha- no!" I quickly answer. "No, are you kidding? That kid's life would suck man. Like you're telling me," I point at myself, "That I have to raise this kid? Geez I can't even use the oven without you breathing down my neck, how am I supposed to take care of a baby!" I joke and laugh. Daddy laughs too. I manage my laughter enough to talk. "Besides, I haven't, uh, started yet," I look down, fiddling with my hands. I'm uncomfortable talking about my period primarily due to my dad being, well, a dad, i.e. a male without any female organs and personal experience dealing with said periods himself.

Daddy was also a bit uncomfortable talking about it, but he has assured that it's nothing to be ashamed of, so that's nice. He just wasn't used to having to deal with periods almost firsthand.

"Sweetie I'm just messing with you. And when you do..." He trails off, moving his hand in a 'You know' gesture, "Uh, start, don't be afraid to tell me. I'll help anyway I can," He says before taking another bite of food. I nod. I take the brief moment of silence to take a sip from my drink. Daddy speaks up again. "So what were you actually gon' say?"

I ponder whether or not I should continue. On one hand, I've piqued his interest with me saying how important what I was gonna say. So it'd be odd for me to now say that it's not that important a few minutes after saying how important it was. On the other hand...it doesn't seem right to come out now anymore. I lost what little confidence I had, which was barely any, but still.

"Eh, never mind. It's actually not that important; I was just being dramatic. Ya know, like you," I said, smirking by the end of my sentence. Daddy huffs and rolls his eyes, clearly in a playful way. "The world's greatest spy can't be dull, Princess. I've gotta had some flavor to the job," He retorts.

"Oh, so going around the world, beating bad guys, 'saving the say', isn't dramatic enough?"

"Oh it is. But I bring an extra flare to it."

"Whatever you say Daddy," I say, focusing on my food. Daddy doesn't seem bothered by my sudden decision to not say what was "so important"; that's good. I'll come out another time.

We finish our dinner and as we're cleaning up I ask if we could watch a movie. "Sure. Which movie?" Daddy asks as we go to the living room. "(Fav. movie)?" I suggest, knowing that Daddy will probably agree, regardless if he likes the movie or not. As I predicted, he agreed. I happily got the movie and after everything else was set up (our spots on the couch, the movie being ready to play, and lighting) we sat down and watched it. I didn't have school tomorrow (yay for Friday!) so I didn't have to worry about getting ready for bed after the movie's over.

I was laying on the couch, my head and back leaning against daddy, who was leaning against the couch. The movie was almost over, so I was thinking of whether or not I wanted to watch another one. On one hand, yes. Please. I'd love that. On the other hand, I kind of wanted to watch YouTube. Soon enough the movie ends and the credits roll with the accompanying music. I was about to get up when daddy spoke.

"So Y/N, I was wondering about what you wanted to say earlier. Ya know, since you said it was important." I look up at my dad. "I also said that it wasn't important." I retorted. "Yeah, but thing is, you tend to do that a lot. You say something's important to you, then say it isn't, then I find out what it is and it turns out to be important to you. So why don't we speed things up huh?"

I look down, fiddling with my fingers. "...It's really not important this time. I promise..." I say gingerly. I feel daddy's hand on my shoulder. I turn to look at him. "Sweetie, you know you can tell me anything right?" At this I laugh. Daddy pulls his hand away, clearly confused by me laughing.

"What? You know you can! What's so funny?" He asks bewildered. Smiling I answer. "It's because all parents say that. I just found it funny." I make eye contact with him. I see his eyes light up with realization before becoming serious again.

"But it's true! Y/N I love you, and whenever you feel the need to tell me something, I hope and want you to tell me. As soon as possible," He says, emphasizing the last bit by moving his hand. I go back to looking at my hands, frowning. I did want to tell him, but part of me was saying that I shouldn't. One little voice. A voice that was being quite persuasive, and yet I was still debating whether or not I should-

Daddy's voice breaks me out of my thoughts. "Hey, where'd that happy smile go? It was just here." I don't smile; I try to deepen my frown instead. Daddy scoffs. I turn my head to look away, crossing my arms. Unfortunately, since I was looking away, I couldn't see the light bulb that went off in daddy's head.

I involuntarily break into a fit of giggles as a pair of hands starts tickling my sides. I wiggle and see my daddy's hands tickling me. "Ah, there it is! My beautiful daughter's smile." I vigorously shook my head at his compliment. My body was still squirming from his tickling. However, me shaking my head made him stop, so I stopped squirming and tried to relax. "What? No, N/N you are beautiful. You are my beautiful little girl in my eyes, always," Daddy says lovingly. Breathing heavily, I let his words sink in.

I fell off the couch during daddy's tickle attack, so the both of us were on the floor. I turn to lay on my stomach, facing the TV (which was now back at the title screen). Daddy lays down next to me. He crosses his arms and lays his head on them, facing me. I look back at him. I give him a smile. He smiles back. His expression is laced with love and amusement. Then he gives me a look that says "Will you tell me now?" My eyes dart away for a second before looking back at him. I focus on his elbow; I just can't make eye contact with him while saying this.

"I'm pansexual." I say, eyes still staring at his elbow.

"Oh..."

Daddy says in a tone I can't place at the moment. I pull my gaze away from his elbow to his face. He sits up, so I copy him. "Thank you for trusting me, Y/N. This doesn't change how I feel about you. I still love you," Daddy pulls me into a hug. I return the hug, relieved by his words. "Do your friends know?"

"No they don't. Only you know daddy." I answer, breaking the hug to look at him. He cups a hand on my cheek. "If you want them to know, them come out to them when you feel like you should. Don't feel forced to tell them, okay sweetie?"

I nodded. He kisses my forehead. "Good." I give a small smile. Daddy leans back a little, his hands supporting himself. "You wanna know something?" He asks, a smirk on his lips. Questioningly, I look at him, raising one brow. Daddy smiles. "Trust me, you'll like this," He said. I think about it for a second before nodding. Daddy straightens out his posture, no longer needing his hands for support. He claps said hands together.

"Okay, so I remember one time when I was visiting you and your parents, you were three around this time, and we were just talking. Then the conversation ended up about you. Your mom had said that she wouldn't be surprised if you were attracted to both girls and boys. Your dad, however, disagreed. he thought you would be straight." At this my mouth dropped slightly and my eyes widened. "How did she-?"

"I don't know. Mother's intuition, I guess? But your dad was adamant that you were straight. He finally shut up once he saw the glare your mom was giving him." Daddy smiles, probably at the memory. "Huh. Well, mom was close. I'm basically gender blind." I laugh.

"Y/N," Daddy says, his hands on both of my arms, "Again, thank you for trusting me enough with this. I love you, N/N." He kisses my forehead once more before hugging me again.

"I love you too, Daddy."

The End

(WOOOH I'VE FELT HORRIBLE ABOUT HOW LONG THIS WAS TAKING!!! I hope you enjoyed reading this! This idea came to me, and I thought: Since a lot of fans say that Walter is gay, and Lance supports his gay son (obviously!), what about Lance being supportive of a pan daughter? I was not too sure how to end it, so I hope it was not too sudden! Thanks for reading!!! :D)

#spies in disguise #x reader #child!reader #lance sterling x reader #lance sterling #sid movie #fem!reader #spiesindisguise

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 4 years

Text

Once Bitten Twice Stupid Prt.86

Stumbling out of bed, Keith staggered from his bedroom to the bathroom, then to the kitchen. His bed had been devoid of Lance, and he didn’t like it. Making a beeline for his boyfriend, Keith crashed into him, sliding his arms around him. Lance was cooking something that wasn’t coffee, chuckling at him as he turned from the oven. Wrapping his arms around him, Lance kissed his forehead at his hairline

“Good morning, you”

“Nghmmm...”

The time was a little after 6. Dressed in his shirt and boxer briefs it was too cold to be awake. The sun shining through the window unwantedly

“Coffee’ll be ready soon. You’ll have to let me go if you want me to pour you a cup”

Keith didn’t want to Lance go. Dragged along in the kitchen, Lance worked around him, making sure to give him plenty of cuddles as he waited for the coffee to drip through the machine... that Lance had gotten out the box and set up

“You weren’t in bed...”

Cuddling in front of the light creeping in, Keith kept his face hidden from it. Had Lance not been making breakfast than they could have gone back to bed

“I know, babe. I wanted to make you breakfast... I had a nice night last night. I’ve missed snuggling with you”

“Missed you too...”

“You’re doing well without your coffee. Ready to shuffle back, I think it’s done now”

“Don’t wanna move”

Lance kissed his hair

“I feel honoured, but you need your coffee”

Shuffling round clinging to Lance turned into shuffling around trying to have his boyfriend and his coffee. Guided from the kitchen, he was tricked into sitting at the dining table

“Whaaa...”

Lance dropped a kiss on head

“Drink your coffee. I’m going to finish making breakfast”

Catching his boyfriend before he could dart away, Keith pulled him closer, whining

“Youuuu...”

He wanted to tell Lance to sit down and cuddle. Only English was hard and words didn’t want to cooperate

“Meeeee... will be back with breakfast��

“Kiss?”

Taking his face in his hand, Lance pressed half a dozen kisses to Keith’s lips with a smile between his words

“Now, be good boy and wait for breakfast”

Lance cooked up a feast for breakfast with ingredients Keith didn’t know they had. His boyfriend sitting across from him as Keith ate. Shiro’s and Curtis’s breakfast sat in the oven keeping warm seeing it wouldn’t be long before Shiro’s alarm went off. With his leg drawn up, Lance had his chin resting on his knee, his half drunken cup of tea in his right hand

“This is good. You should have cooked yourself some”

“Nah, I ate as I cooked. Had to make sure I wasn’t about to accidentally give everyone food poisoning”

Keith’s plate was full to the point of nearly over flowing. Scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, sliced sausages mixed into fried tomatoes and toast

“At least have some bacon...”

“I made it for you”

“And I want to see you eat something”

Lance shifted his leg so he could lean across the table, Keith holding out a piece of bacon for Lance to take with his teeth. Leaning back, Lance tore the bacon smiling as he chewed, both of them in a comfortable silence until Lance finished the piece

“Not to brag, but I’m kind of good cook”

“I know you are. You didn’t have to make breakfast”

“I wanted to. I was so tired last night that I totally brushed off Curtis and couldn’t wait for Coran to leave”

“So this is an apology breakfast?”

“Not really. It’s more of a “I love you guys and wanted to cook”. I never sleep as well as I do when I’m with you”

Keith smiled at his boyfriend. Lance’s birthday was right around the corner now. Pidge and Hunk had added him to a private chat over what they should do for Lance’s birthday. Pidge had suggested an “18 again” party, that Hunk shot down thanks to Lance having requested for them not to. He was still yet to pick out a present for his boyfriend, but he’d gone ahead and booked a hotel for the night, and even if it wasn’t very romantic he’d made a reservation for three at a restaurant with good reviews for him, Lance, and Miriam. He didn’t want to share Lance, but Lance didn’t know how many more birthdays he’d have with his mother. And unlike Krolia, Keith didn’t mind Miriam being there. She had all sorts of stories about Lance that he wanted to hear.

“Is that breakfast I smell?”

Shiro came shuffling out his room, left arm stretching up as covered his mouth with his right, yawning widely as Curtis came up behind him. Breakfast was so good he didn’t want to share... also, he was enjoying having the apartment pretty much to themselves, and Kosmo

“Lance cooked”

Shiros face lit up. Their cooking skills were lacking, and often they couldn’t be bothered with much more than toast

“Really?! Thanks, you didn’t have to do that”

Lance ducked his head

“It’s fine. I’m really sorry I bailed early on you guys last night. I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow”

When Keith climbed into bed, Lance moved automatically to cuddle into him with a mumbly sigh. Keith loved I knowing that Lance only cuddled him like that. That he felt he could be vulnerable enough not to stir properly. Nosing his way under the blankets, Kosmo liked to sleep near Keith’s butt.

“It’s nice to see you, awake Lance. Thank you for breakfast. I’ve really missed your cooking”

Curtis followed after Shiro to the kitchen, Shiro then heading into the bathroom as. Curtis opened up the oven

“I’ve missed cooking. Three meals a day. Blood was a little rationed, but it was nice to taste red wine again. Matt and Rieva are pretty easy to please. Yeah... it’s not the same though, without you around. I never thought I’d miss having a full house”

Keith picked up his cup of coffee, asking

“What happened to hating people?”

“I still do. But it was nice... I don’t have someone to watch soap operas with anymore. So that sucks”

Keith couldn’t get into them. Curtis called out from the kitchen though he didn’t need to

“I am sorry that I’ve remained in Platt. Staying with you is the most at easy I’ve felt in some time”

“That’s because it’s your official second home now. I mean, Keith is my boyfriend and it’s his home and your dating and his brother, but even if you weren’t, you’re always welcome there”

Keith stabbed at the fried tomatoes on his plate

“It’s my home?”

“Dah. I don’t have to hide who I am now. The only reason I have to leave is to either be with you or because I’m on the run. Pidge is moulding into the sofa again. She wasn’t there yesterday, but that’s because I left before she got up. I didn’t tell them about the mission. I’m still not okay with my house being “Amateur Hunters-R-us””

“They haven’t given up?”

Lance rested his chin back on his knee. Keith didn’t like that the others were investigating, yet there wasn’t much he could that wouldn’t get them into spades of trouble

“Nope. Oh, and guess what, Pidge now what’s to do a video explaining ghost hoaxes on top of all the stuff they’re already doing. She wanted me to do the effects because I’m so fast”

“That doesn’t sound fun”

“I’ll take a night of discomfort over a night of them investigating any day of the year”

“They’re still being cautious right?”

“No one’s turned up on my doorstep yet to tell them to stop, so I assume so... It’s not like they have a lot to really work on”

That was a relief. As long as they didn’t dig too close to Lotor’s affairs then they should remain relatively safe

“Are you headed back after we see Lotor?”

“Kind of have to. I want to see Mami though. She didn’t want me coming back if you weren’t with me. I think she likes you better than me”

Keith couldn’t work out how that was possible. Not when Krolia hadn’t tried to talk to him and she was his own mother

“I doubt it”

“I don’t. She literally told me not to come back without you”

Lance’s pout carried in his tone

“Do you want me to come?”

“Only if you want to. I’m hoping to take her to mass this afternoon but I know that isn’t your thing”

“Maybe we could meet up after?”

Lance offered him as warm smile making Keith’s heart go weird

“I’d really like that”

Heading to VOLTRON after breakfast, Coran greeted them with a bag of blood. Lance happy to eat because damn he was starving. Those weird wings took a lot of energy to put away, and the mission it’s self had been draining. Part of the reason he’d woken up so early was thanks to his hunger. Twisting off the cap of the bag, he fell into step with the group, comfortably beside Keith

“Now. The Blades came by last night to examine both items. I’ve taken small samples and photographed everything. Krolia and Kolivan will both be present as you talk to Lotor. I did try to dissuade them, but both of them were stubborn. Lotor is already here, Allura is currently with him”

Lance nodded at Coran’s words. It made sense they’d want to be there to gauge Lotor’s reaction. He still felt dirty about stealing from a nun, even if she was long gone. Religion had been such a big part of his life for so long, and the woman deserved to have her items treated with respect. Walking through to the conference room, Krolia and Kolivan were suited up like Keith and Shiro were. Lance feeling instantly nervous at the sight of Krolia and somewhat wary about being shot again

“This is where I leave you. I’ll wait on Coran’s office”

Curtis should have been allowed in if Lance had his way, but he understood that thanks to his curse Curtis couldn’t speak freely and may reveal too much. It wasn’t fair on him. He was a great guy and Lance missed him around the house. He hadn’t offered Curtis to come back thanks to his budding relationship with Shiro. That and the fact the others were snooping into Lotor at home. He didn’t want to put Curtis in danger, despite him being a hunter and all that. And he kind of thought it might be triggering for Curtis seeing he’d been cursed by werewolves. Quickly draining half a bag of blood, Lance passed it over to Curtis

“Can you look after this until we’re done? I feel like Lotor wouldn’t approve of me drinking out a blood bag”

“Sure thing. Good luck in there”

“Thanks. I think I’m going to need it”

The first thing Lotor did was look him up and down. Lotor was in a different suit, Lance in the same one he’d worn the day before with one of Keith’s shirts instead of his own. Sitting directly across from Lotor, Kolivan placed down the Bible and locket in front of Lance, Lance then sliding them across the table to Lotor. Calmly picking up the locket, Lotor crushed it in his fist, smiling as he did

“Thank you for that. I had hoped you’d be successful”

Dropping the balled up piece of metal, there was no recovering the locket or what had been inside

“You mean you’re happy to see we can be trusted, though it was so simple it was barely worth our time”

Lance sounded bored. Lotor’s ego may of gotten the better of him the previous day, today was a new day and he was letting his ego flare

“My generals will be rather disappointed, they of course thought you’d run home with your tail between your legs”

“Your generals don’t know me. What you mean to say is that you thought I’d run home”

Lotor smiled

“Perhaps. You of course know either item had any particular meaning”

“I know you like to fuck with people you think lesser than yourself”

“After yesterday it is refreshing to see such unguarded hostility. You’re not quite the quivering little lamb you lead on”

Lance let go on his ego, letting his teeth and nails extend. Beside him both Allura and Keith drew away slightly

“Not when it comes to what belongs to me. We completed your first task. You said you had two”

“All business makes for a rather dull conversation”

“A dull conversation with a dull partner. I hardly see why you’re called “The Prince of Europe”. Honestly, what do you gain from sending us to do mere grunt work? I see no ensured mutual destruction in last night actions”

Lotor laughed, wiping a fake tear from his cheek. Lance was starting to feel the same dreaminess as the previous day, but wasn’t about to let his concentration slip

“You are most entertaining. Very well, for the laugh I shall give you your second task. This one is for you and Allura. You are to go collect something much more interesting this time...”

Lotor drew a black business card from his pocket, sliding it over to Lance

“... These are the details of the address. A companion will be require for entry, and perhaps a change of dress... Some sense of something more fashionable then this current off the rack ensemble”

“Something gaudy would be insulting to the senses. When are we expected?”

Lotor was ruffled at Lance’s dislike of his fugly purple suit. The suit was only ugly because Lance had a fair idea that it was a useless show of money

“This Wednesday night. If you miss your opportunity, there won’t be a second one. Dress your companion accordingly”

Nope. Keith wasn’t dressing like a scantily clad pet. He’d ask his boyfriend what he was comfortable and they’d go from their

“I will dress my companion how I please. If that is all, then there is no need to waste further time on this”

“On that we agree. Leash and muzzle will be acceptable”

Keith wasn’t being muzzled. He wouldn’t be Lance’s first choice as a “companion” purely because he loved Keith as an independent person. His boyfriend wouldn’t let him go on a mission with Allura without him tagging along. Waving his hand airily, he enjoyed knowing he was getting right under Lotor’s skin. It was easier dealing with Lotor when his ego decided it didn’t like how Lotor made him feel so had to play up

“Such tacky taste. You would have thought our people would have moved past such archaic things. Never mind. We’ll be there”

“Then we have an agreement. Allura, absolutely lovely to see you again. I do hope to see you again quite soon. Lance... everyone else... thank you for your... time”

Allura offered to walk Lotor out, Lance sighing as Lotor left the room and he was able to lean back in his chair. He didn’t like how hard it was to keep his head with Lotor around. Being in the room with another vampire was exhausting

“What was that?”

Lance sighed again. Kolivan sounded kind of annoyed

“That’s what happens when you put two vampires in the same room”

“You were supposed to question him, not insult him”

“Yeah. Well. If you couldn’t tell me ego was talking for the most part”

Keith reached out and placed his hand on Lance’s

“You did good, babe. I’m not keen to dress as a pet again”

“I don’t want you dressed as pet either. We’ll need to look the part, but I figured for the most part I’d let you... no, sorry. I hate my stupid poxy ego. You’re not my pet and I don’t ever want you to feel like that. What I mean is, you can pick what you want to wear...”

“You’d know better than I do how pets dress”

“And you’re not a pet. I don’t like the idea of you having to dress like one”

Keith squeezed his leg comfortingly

“I’ll be okay. What’s on the card?”

The black business card was to a lower vampire club called “Club D-L-A”. The name in silver cursive. On the back was the club hours, leaving the card as probably their ticket in there, not that he’d have much trouble. Passing it over to Keith, Krolia intercepted

“We’ll send agents in to watch over you”

They’d be made on the spot. Not only would they be new faces, they’d be new faces the same night as other new faces

“No. Don’t. They’ll be made by scent. A place like this means you’ve got to be dead to be there, or a pet. Allura isn’t human, so she’d pass. Werewolves in a vampire club would be problematic. I’ll get us in, and I’ll keep Keith safe. Babe, I know you hate it, but we’ll have to go shopping... and I’ll have to get another suit. I think I offended him by wearing this one twice”

“I think it looks good on you”

His boyfriend was the sweetest. Keith shouldn’t have to put up with his ego. Krolia sounded cheerful as she invited herself along

“Then we should go today. We can fit your clothing with tracking, audio and visual”

Keith’s gaze flicked up to his mother

“Lance and I have plans today”

“Plans more important than your mission”

“Yes”

Lance’s heart was warmed at the thought Keith considered Mami so important

“We can go tomorrow?”

“No. You wanted to see Miriam today...”

“But this is important”

“So is she. Maybe we could go after?”

That’d be undoing the whole going to church thing. Keith needed a muzzle and collar... which meant a trip to the closest adult store

“Why don’t we visit Lance’s mother together. I would love to meet the mother of the man dating my son”

Keith snapped at his mother

“You can’t invite yourself along”

Lance didn’t want Keith and Krolia fighting...

“Babe, we’re not going to win this argument. Krolia, we planned to take Miriam to church. If you’d prefer, we can meet after?”

“Who doesn’t love a good visit to church? I’ll pick you both up after Keith has changed. Let’s say, half an hour in front of your apartment building? Good? Good. I’ll drive”

Yay... Keith was going to be cranky for the rest of the day... He’d done it this time.

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid #ashratherose

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because-im-write · 5 years

Text

The Beloved Big Sister of 1-7 feat. Number Five

1 2 3 5

4/7

“Allison would look to her for help when she was stuck with no way out. She knew, always, that her big sister would get her out. I used to get woken up at night by her running through the halls, sneaking out of the house to drive to her sister’s. When she left home, the first place she lived was there. They were closer after Five vanished.” -Luther

X walked through the cold night, flicking her collar up over her neck, clambering up the stairs to the Academy. She opened the door and moved through the house, nodding to Pogo when he came to see who it was.

‘Allison?’

She peered around the bedroom door, seeing Allison on the bed, wiping her eyes.

She looked up when her big sister entered. ‘X.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I...’ Allison’s face crumpled into tears again. ‘I miss Claire. I messed it all up. I used my power to tell her to go to sleep, and...’

X frowned. ‘What’s wrong with that? That’s one of the few things I’d say you could use it on her for.’

‘Patrick saw me. And...’ Allison dissolved beyond words and curled up.

X softened further and sat on the bed beside her.

It was a long time before Allison recovered, but she did. Sniffling, she looked up. ‘Did Five get a coffee?’

‘Yes,’ X replied, smiling, putting her head on top of Allison’s. ‘Get some sleep. Claire will be fine, don’t ever give up hope, Allison.’

Allison nodded and scooted out from her hold, lying under the blankets on the pillow and closing her eyes.

X turned the light off and closed the door, smiling softly as she felt disorientation making her unsteady.

With Five back, and Allison in her room she felt a little like time had warped again.

---

She was three steps out of the house the following morning after a long sleep in when Klaus appeared, dragging her backwards back inside.

‘What on Earth are you wearing?’ she asked, glancing behind her.

‘A pinstriped suit from Dad’s closet.’

‘It looks horrible.’

‘Oh goodie! You can come with us! Someone was looking for you!’

‘Oh god, now who?’ X groaned, allowing Klaus to guide her up the steps.

‘A little number I like to call-,’

‘Five,’ X smiled, laughing.

They walked through the doors and Five appeared right next to X, standing an inch away.

‘We’re going to return an eyeball,’ Klaus declared, clapping his hands.

‘You what?’ X returned, perplexed.

‘The glass eye I found in the Apocalypse,’ Five explain with a sigh. I went this morning and because I look seven apparently I’m going to have to go back with someone that looks like a parent.’

‘I see.’

‘I found Klaus before I found you, but please come along; Klaus is disturbing me.’

X nodded and Klaus offered her an arm. She linked her own through it and put the other around Five’s shoulders, pulling him to lean on her as Klaus skipped them out.

With Klaus driving, they got to the factory in less than ten minutes. While Five feared for his life in the back, yelling every time they went around the corner, X was laughing the whole way, urging Klaus on and betting him he couldn’t make the lights, or get around the corner without hitting the footpath.

Five had groaned and pressed himself into the corner of the car.

‘This is the only time I get to drive!’ Klaus had cheered back, ‘lighten up, little Five!’

‘Don’t call me “little”,’ Five roared back.

X laughed again.

They got out of the car and Five shook his head, a brave attempt to stop it spinning. Klaus put an arm through his sister’s again and led them up to the front door. Five marched ahead into the lift, punched the button and stormed out the second the doors had opened, moving straight past the receptionist and into an office.

X altered her age to match Klaus’ and they sauntered after Five in time to hear him angrily declare he’d summoned his parents.

Klaus sat down on a chair and X the other, Five angrily standing at the front of the desk.

The man behind the desk sighed. ‘Like I said to your son earlier, any information about the prosthetics we build is strictly confidential, without the client’s consent, I simply can’t help.’

Five leant forward and snarled. ‘But we can’t get consent if you don’t give us a name!’

X tilted her head, thinking of a way around while Klaus was starting at the snowglobe staring at him from the desk.

‘Well, that’s not my problem, I’m sorry. Now there’s simply nothing more I can do, so...’

Five’s angry attention was ripped from staring daggers into the man when Klaus, one leg over the other and hands clasped together, spoke in a shaky, offended voice.

‘And what about my consent?’ he said poetically.

Five blinked at him, glancing at X to see a suspicious but amused expression on her face.

The man blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Who gave you,’ Klaus continued, descending further into whimpers and dramatics, ‘permission... to lay your hands.... on my son?’ He finished by pointing at Five, who was frowning at his brother quizzically.

The man and Five blinked. ‘What?’

X fought to keep her face impassive.

‘You heard me,’ Klaus affirmed.

‘I didn’t touch your son!’ The man glanced at Five, then to X, then back to Klaus.

X put on an outraged expression, pulling Five backward toward her protectively as she joined in Klaus’ act.

Feeling rather like a rag-doll, Five surrendered the situation to his siblings.

Klaus lent forward. ‘Oh, really, then how did he get that swollen lip then?’

X was the first to react, blinking wide, eye shooting to Klaus, somehow unable to be surprised.

‘He doesn’t have a swollen-,’

In one swift movement, Klaus stood up and punched Five in the mouth, who stumbled back against X.

She responded by gasping dramatically and bending down to study Five’s face.

‘I want it,’ Klaus said, leaning his hands on the desk, ‘name please, now!’

The now highly startled man shook a finger at him. ‘You’re crazy!’

‘You got no idea,’ Klaus said, staring him down.

X watched Klaus almost proudly, reminding Five once again that the duo was an absolute nightmare of chaotic influence.

Klaus picked up the snowglobe with a smile. ‘Peace on Earth? That is so sweet!’

Before he could break it over his head, X warned; ‘careful with that, dear!’

Klaus turned to her. ‘You’re right, I should be!’

Their eyes met, glowing with mischief, and several things happened at once from Five’ perspective.

He frowned, X put both both her arms over his head as a shield, Klaus hurled the globe toward her, a loud smashing sound took centre stage of the room and the smashed snowglobe rained around him, glass falling harmlessly around him as X grunted and yelled in pain.

When he looked up, Klaus’ throw had cut through her face in multiple places, blood streaming from under her eye and hairline.

He felt his blood beginning to boil before letting it go; it had been Klaus, after all.

The sibling in question was currently breezily smiling at the stunned worker, who was staring unblinking at the three of them.

He picked up the phone. ‘I’m calling security!’

Klaus wrenched the phone from his grasp with an angry exclamation and Five frowned up at his sister, still unable to grasp anything.

While Klaus angrily wrestled the phone away, he wiped a little blood away from her face as she was busy cheering Klaus on.

‘What are you doing?!’ the man yelled in a wild attempt to stop Klaus.

Klaus showed no cares and leaned against X, wailing down the phone; ‘There’s been an assault! In Mr Big’s office and we need security now, sh-now!’ He slammed the phone down, pulled X forward and indicated her face. Five stood behind them, resorting to blinking as he thought they might finally have lost it.

‘Now here’s what’s gonna happen, Grant,’ Klaus said, as snow and glitter streamed down X’s face, who was still wincing.

‘It’s... Lance...’

‘In about sixty seconds, two security guards are going to burst through that door, and they’re gonna see a whole lotta blood on my son’s mother’s beautiful face!’

Five caught on and grinned, watching the two of them leaning down over the desk menacingly, proudly watching the consequences of their stirring each other on.

‘And they’re gonna wonder what on Earth happened, and we’re gonna tell them that you... beat the shit out of them!’ Klaus finished with a dramatic intake of breath.

X began to cry, leaning onto Klaus.

Lance was faced with an incredible scene. A man gasping and comfortingly putting an arm around a woman with a bleeding face, while a young boy stood behind them with a bruised lip, grinning at him smugly over their shoulders.

Klaus stood up. ‘You’re gonna do great in prison, Grant, trust me, I’ve been there. Little piece of chicken like you... oh my god you’re gonna get passed around like a...’

At this point Klaus was shaking his hips, Five was frowning at him and looking off out of the window with a slightly squeamish expression and X was wiping blood away from her eyes, blood covering her smirk.

Klaus waved a hand. ‘You’re just- you’re do great.’ He ended it with a smile. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Jesus,’ Lance blinked, glancing around, ‘you two are some sick bastards.’

‘Thank you,’ they said in unison.

Klaus tapped X’s forehead, picking off a little piece of glass and Five grinned at Lance once again.

Lance, without a word, stood up and escorted them to the filing drawers.

Klaus waved like royalty at anyone that stared at them and Five kept glancing at X’s face in concern as he triumphantly walked after Klaus.

X noticed and put a hand on his shoulder, standing him in front of her when they reached the drawers. Klaus plonked himself on top of them and Lance hurried to dig through the drawers.

He pulled out a file as Five watched him intently.

‘Huh, that’s strange.’

‘What?’ Five breathed impatiently.

‘Uh, the eye hasn’t been purchased by anyone yet.’

Klaus jumped off the drawers, hovering inches away from Lance’s highly uneasy face. ‘What do you mean?’

Lance looked at the file, anywhere but Klaus, Five and X. ‘Well, our logs say that the eye with that serial number... this can’t be right, it hasn’t even been manufactured yet. Where did you get that eye?’

‘Aaaaargh,’ X groaned, tilting her head back, ‘I should be having coffee right now.’ She looked back at Lance. ‘Okay. So same time next week? You might want to purchase a new snowglobe. Wait we know where the records are, we can just break in.’

‘Ooo,’ Klaus clapped his hands, ‘how fun!’

‘Who... who are you people?!’

‘Oh god nevermind.’ X grabbed Klaus and Five and bundled them out into the lifts. Klaus pressed the button and X set about swearing and pulling glass from her hair and face.

‘Jesus, Klaus, that was one hell of a throw.’

‘Oh, thank you! I played a little baseball in rehab, you know, getting my swings in.’

They continued like this all the way outside, by which time X had healed herself and returned her age down.

Five sighed when they made it out. ‘Well this is not good.’

‘Nothing normally is,’ X replied, pulling glitter from her hair.

‘I was pretty good, though, right?’ Klaus asked happily. ‘Yeah, what about my consent, bitch?!’ He giggled and turned around, noticing Five had stopped walking.

‘Klaus, it doesn’t matter!’ Five growled.

‘What, what’s the big deal with this eye, huh?’ Klaus asked, swinging his arms carelessly.

‘There is someone out there who’s going to lose an eye in the next few days. They’re going to wipe out life on Earth as we know it!’ Five set off past Klaus, who turned around and followed him, helping X with the glass in her hair.

‘Yeah, can I get that twenty bucks like, now, or...?’

‘Your twenty bucks?!’ Five echoed in disbelief, staring him down.

‘Yeah, my twenty bucks.’

Five took an angry step forward, frustration seeping deeper and deeper into him. ‘The apocalypse is coming and all you care about is getting high?’

Klaus was very unperturbed by Five’s in-credulousness and put his hands over his stomach. ‘Well I’m also... quite hungry. Tummy’s a rumbling. Rrrrr!’

‘I could eat,’ X said, preoccupied, staring at the hair she was holding in front of her face.

‘You’re useless,’ Five breathed, still staring at Klaus, ‘you’re all useless!’

‘Five...!’ warned X.

‘Oh, come on, you need to lighten up, old man!’ Klaus groaned as Five sat himself down on the steps, pulling X down to sit beside him as she continued to pick glitter from her hair.

‘Hey, I’ve just now realised why you’re so uptight, you must be horny as hell! All those years by yourself, it’s gotta screw with your head!’ Klaus sat beside Five, on his other side.

‘Well,’ Five said, looking up into the sky, ‘I wasn’t alone.’

‘Oh? Pray tell!’

‘Her name was Delores,’ Five said, grabbing X’s attention, ‘we were together for over thirty years.’

X blinked, remembering Five mentioning her the night before.

‘Thirty years?’ Klaus asked while Five nodded. ‘Wow! The longest I’ve been with someone is... two weeks, and that’s only because I was so tired of looking for a place to eat and sleep...’

Five made to disappear at that moment, but a distracted, restricting hand forced him back into place.

He turned to glare at his sister, until her realized she wasn’t paying him any attention, half her mind on her hair and the other half on listening to Klaus. He groaned and listened to Klaus talk, before suddenly the man jumped up.

‘What are we eating?’ he declared.

‘I don’t have time to ea-,’

‘Burgers?’ X suggested, making Five stop in his tracks and stare at her, like a child does when its parent betrays a plan.

‘Ooo,’ Klaus bowed, ‘a perfect suggestion, my dear X. And at which place shall we eat?’

‘You said you’d help me!’ Five hissed at her.

‘I’m not going to last the eight days before the apocalypse without eating, Five,’ she replied, finishing her hair. ‘And Klaus, I’ll pay for lunch, not the drugs.’

‘As always, you drive the best bargain, my dearest eldest.’

Realising there was nothing he could do anyway, Five sighed and followed them to lunch.

The place was busy and filled with people, making Five a little cross.

‘I’m going to find Delores tonight, I’d like you to meet her,’ he said to X when Klaus went to order.

X nodded. ‘Anything I should know about her?’

Five looked down for a moment. ‘Only... that I met her in the apocalypse. And I was the only one alive.’

X let this sink in and nodded, not knowing what to expect, but not wanting to ask anything further.

---

She waited outside when Five went in to find Delores, lying on the roof and staring at the sky.

‘My sister’s here,’ Five said warmly, nodding upwards as he spoke to Delores. ‘X. She’s here. It was nice to see her again. I’m sorry you couldn’t come with me to see her when I did.’

Hazel and Cha-Cha appeared, and Five screeched out a “no!” and ran, grabbing the broken half of Delores and jumping through the clothes of the store.

On the roof, X heard the shots. Her eyes snapped open and she rolled up, jumped off the roof and looked through the windows, seeing the two masks and guns. They had to be looking for Five.

She winced a little as she rearranged her feet and put her arms protectively over her head, before surging through the window to the back of the shop.

Hazel and Cha-Cha turned at the noise and fired frantically at the doors.

Five heard the window smash and knew X had come after him, tasked with finding her among the bullets, debris and clothes. He ran further into the store, back from Hazel and Cha-Cha and stuck his head up for a second, looking around. The back was filled with clothing racks.

He ducked down and lay flat on the floor, rushing.

He scanned the ground before he saw X, also on the floor. They saw each other at the same time and the clothes all moved, creeping Hazel and Cha-Cha out as she immediately surged to Five under the clothes, grabbing him and surging down the aisle away from the moving clothes to the back wall.

‘What happened?’

‘The Commission, they found me.’

‘You can’t shift?’ She had begun to age herself to 24.

‘No,’ Five panted.

X nodded, keeping her hands on his arms to calm him down.

He’d survived the apocalypse and the agency by himself, but faced with one of the more dangerous situations he’d ever found himself in, the part of him that was a child felt very happy to have his big sister there to protect him. Which was exactly what she was doing, keeping him calm, looking around and assessing their surroundings.

It had been a very long time since Five had seen her that focused, that strong. Despite the chaos, he smiled a little.

‘Where’s Delores?’ she asked over the gunfire.

‘By the front.’

She nodded a couple of times, thinking. Then she grabbed a black scarf and tied it around her face. ‘I’ll get you to the front, get your bag, get Delores and get out.’

Five agreed, grabbing her hand. ‘And what are you doing?’

‘I’ll take them down if I can. If not, I’ll keep them busy until you get out.’

They raised themselves a little to be able to run and held their hands as tightly as they could.

X looked up and immediately ducked down as bullets scaled over her head. ‘Shit.’

‘Who the hell is that?!’ came a yell.

‘They’re everywhere,’ she said, ‘close your eyes and just run,’ she said.

Five nodded, automatically trusting X with his life and waited until she moved.

They sprinted down the aisle, gunfire hailing around them, X steering Five.

She raised her head above the the clothes, and surged to a different aisle, then another and another and another until Five had no idea where they were, but wasn’t disorientated like he would be if he could see. He felt like he was running down a very long corridor.

X surged again, getting faster and faster until they were sprinting through the store, at which point she began to look for Five’s bag.

When she found it she slowed, Five mirroring her speed, and let go of his hand. He opened his eyes and ran to his bag, knowing where he was.

He didn’t bother looking back; he knew she’d be gone.

X ran straight up full force behind Hazel, who had stopped near a wall.

Cha-Cha had seen her and fired, getting Hazel to turn around. When he did, X surged to the wall behind him before he could fire, kicked off it and landed, leaping the one step to Hazel at speed and kicked him in the back. He was heavy, but he stumbled enough for X to land on his back, sending him to the ground.

She was a moment away from getting his head in her hands when Cha-Cha appeared, gun pointing straight at her.

X growled and surged straight into Cha-Cha, sending the woman flying backwards, gun firing into the air.

Five whittled his way through the clothes and shoved Delores into his bag and looked up. He couldn’t see anything, but heard the yells of Hazel and Cha-Cha.

He tried to jump again, but still couldn’t and, with a last look in the direction of X, ran out through the broken window, Delores on his back.

He stopped in a garden nearby and looked back, hearing the gunshots. He waited.

X healed her arm while she backflipped and surged straight up to the ceiling, right above the confused Cha-Cha.

Hazel was searching for his gun and didn’t see X fall through the air and land feet first on Cha-Cha, crouching and punching the cut Five had made in Cha-Cha’s arm.

The woman yelled in pain and grabbed X, who growled in retaliation and looked up, surging to the furthest corner of the store, to the ceiling. Cha-Cha was below her and was dragged against a shelf, loosening her grip and she landed on her back when she hit the ground, hand flying away from X, who surged back to the roof in the middle of the store, saw Hazel as she fell and surged to the next aisle. She waited for him to run past and kicked out, sending his gun flying. She surged after it, caught it and immediately had to throw it behind her as Hazel reached for her.

The heavy shotgun hit him in the face and he stumbled back, blocking the kick X sent with his arm.

‘HAZEL?!’

He blocked every blow that came his way and X hissed in annoyance, turning around, surging as far back as she could and then aiming straight at Hazel again.

She collided with him, and he was blown back to the wall with a yell.

Once again, she was seconds away from being able to snap his neck when Cha-Cha appeared, woozy and unsteady on her feet. She hit Hazel as hard as she could in the head and vanished, getting ready to go for Cha-Cha when the sirens rang through the air as the police arrived.

Cha-Cha looked toward Hazel and fired randomly though the air. X ducked to the ground and swore multiple times before the bullets stopped.

The silence nearly killed Five. He’d seen her dead once.

She needed more time than she had to take them down and so yelled a final time and jumped high into the air, surging to cover near the doors, angled to get a long shot to the garden and surged forward, landing with a breath and a grunt and coughed, rolling onto her back.

Immediately, Five was beside her, or on her rather in a bear hug before he realised he’d moved.

X blinked and put an arm over him, catching her breath. ‘Five? What is it?’

Five closed his eyes and lowered his head, letting it drop and rest on her.

She frowned, and put her other hand in his hair. ‘Five.’

‘Nothing.’

X lifted his head up, searched his eyes and let it go.

@woohoney @i-think-you-are-gr8 @maiabiovillage @catvader101 @theamazinghana @livinlifelikeishould @itsintothegreatbeyondstuff @reallysparklychaos @queenmissfit @shadowsndaisies @papacola @pawsitively-purfect

#the big sister of 1-7 #klaus #five #hargreeves #the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy x reader #the umbrella academy imagine #tua #luther #diego #allison

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thathopelessromantic · 4 years

Text

Crossing Lines

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Mature (implied sexual content + mild language) Pairing: Lance/Keith Note: The comeback no one expected with a series I thought was finished in 2018 and a fic I started in 2019 finally finished lol

There’s a nagging worry in the back of his head that this is not normal friends-with-benefits behavior, but it is easily drowned out by Lance’s sleepy smile when he shifts again to face Keith. He hides another wide yawn in his shoulder.

“Those kids wore you out, clearly.” Keith observes, trying to fight back his own yawn.

Lance smiles fondly. “It was fun to see them, to go back and be with everyone for a while. But I’m really glad you were here when I got home.”

AO3: (X) Part 1 of the series: (X)

Keith looks away from his computer as his phone buzzes against his leg. Pidge sits across the room at her desk, muttering to herself as she readjusts the device’s calibration – again. Their project was supposed to be at least 80 percent theoretical, but Keith knew the moment he was paired with Pidge that option was thrown out the window.

He flips his phone over just as it vibrates again. There’s a text from Shiro, asking him for the third time about a shirt Shiro insists Keith stole and Keith insists Shiro just lost, and a snapchat from Lance. Dismissing the text notification, he opens snapchat.

Most of the picture is just of a bright blue sky above him, but Lance’s face peeks out from the bottom, at an extremely unflattering angle. The selfie is taken at chest level while Lance looks down at the camera. His hair is pushed under a backwards baseball cap with frayed stitching along the edge and there is, what appears to be, a sparkly butterfly sticker on his cheek. Above his head it reads:

don’t blow up my apartment while im gone, mullet. i live there.

Shaking his head, he taps away the message. Pidge still appears absorbed in her tinkering and doesn’t notice as he takes a blurry picture of her.

we’re not that irresponsible

It only takes a few seconds for Lance to reply, no longer bothering with pictures and just texting back.

HA! but seriously, hunk’s been sending me worried messages all weekend

…Hunk had seemed particularly anxious the last time Keith emerged from Pidge’s room for a drink.

hm…like an hour ago pidge thought she had gotten the laser to work for real and did seem a little maniacal…

Lance replies with a supremely unimpressed expression, made, of course, all the more effective by the butterfly sticker. Keith snorts, but also half-heartedly wonders how easily he could get away with saving a screenshot of the selfie. He just saved one last night, of Lance cuddling with his parent’s dog ruined only slightly by the caption insinuating the dog had better breath than Keith, but he brushed it off with a lie about trying to lock his phone and taking the screenshot accidentally. He’s not sure if Lance believed him then, but he definitely wouldn’t believe it two times in a row.

Pidge loudly clears her throat across the room. Startled, Keith dismisses the message, and nearly drops his phone in the process. When he looks up, Pidge is looking at him over the rim of her glasses, with one brow raised.

“…Yes?”

“How’s that report coming, Keith?”

He glances back at his computer, at the three and a half pages he had finished of their ten-page report. “Fine.”

“Hm.” Pidge looks away, jotting down some other measurements on a pad besides her. “And how’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my-” Keith starts before he gives up with a heavy sigh. It’s a waste of breath with her. “Lance thinks we’re going to blow up the apartment. Well I guess actually Hunk does, and he turned to Lance for help.”

Pidge rolls her eyes, muttering something under her breath about worry-warts and ridiculous roommates. Keith smiles at the, somehow, simultaneously exasperated but fond tone she uses and turns back to his computer, tucking his phone under his leg again. But it takes a while to focus on anything other than blue eyes and familiar, silly banter.

It’s nearly three and a half hours later, though it hardly feels like it, when Hunk knocks at the door, tempting them out of the room and their work-stupors with the promise of pizza, the heady aroma already spilling out from the kitchen. They settle in the living room, Pidge and Hunk on the couch with Keith on the floor in front of them, legs stretched out under the coffee table. Pidge is still complaining around mouthfuls of burning cheese that they were almost done, if Hunk had just waited a little while longer, but Hunk turns on the sci-fi series they’ve been watching together and within ten minutes into the episode her complaints have turned into an analysis of how the character’s spacesuits work.

Keith relaxes against the couch as their familiar chatter falls around him. He’s a little lost in what is happening in the show, they’re further than he’s been able to get on his own, but it’s nice to share it with them anyways, especially with the way Hunk laughs triumphantly when he guesses the ridiculous plot twist twenty minutes early and Pidge keeps comparing the characters to people they know with frightening accuracy.

It only takes them an episode and a half to completely demolish the pizza, but when the third one starts up in the queue, no one bothers to reach for the remote. Full of good food and only half-paying attention to the show, Keith can feel himself being lulled to sleep right there on the living room floor. He fights against the urge as much as he can, but the last thing he remembers is the upbeat opening starting for the next episode, and then suddenly the episode is ending as he jerks awake, knocking his knee on the underside of the table, hard.

After his unfortunate waking, he extracts himself from under the table, gathering up dirty plates, despite Hunk’s protest, and taking them into the kitchen – the moving helps wake him up, even if his knee still hurts like a bitch. The stove clock reads 7:03. He slips through the living room as another episode is starting and goes to their bathroom.

As he’s washing his hands, his phone buzzes with another text. He opens the text as he exits the room. It’s a picture from Adam, Shiro’s fiancé, of Shiro sitting on the floor of what Keith is pretty sure is their laundry room, head buried in his hands. There’s a very dusty pile of something next to him.

The text says: we found his shirt.

Keith leaves the text conversation, trying not to laugh. Considering all the trouble Shiro gave him, Keith feels like he should be at least mildly annoyed by this instead of amused.

He turns the doorknob to the room in front of him and swings it open before he even realizes what he’s doing. He freezes, looking in at Lance’s dark, empty room. Distracted, he had apparently been moving through the apartment on autopilot – straight to Lance’s room. Feeling like he’s breaking some kind of unspoken rule, he takes a few steps in. Lance’s bed is still a mess of blankets and pillows, and there’s piles of books and discarded shoes covering his floor. He’s only been gone a few days, but his absence feels so prominent, especially like this, Keith can’t help but feel like something is wrong.

He’s texting Lance before he can think better of it.

when are you coming back again?

Lance’s response is almost instantaneous.

why? missing me that much already, mullet?

Yes, Keith’s head or heart, or maybe both, shout.

no just wondering how much longer we get to enjoy this peace and quiet he says instead.

whatever, asshole …….tomorrow night

Keith silently but firmly tells himself to stop being so damn happy about this news as he slips his phone back into his pocket. He takes one last look at Lance’s room before stepping back out into the hall and pulling the door closed behind him.

He just barely manages to fight the telling smile off his face before he gets back to the living room.

Keith crashes at their apartment for the night, on the couch. Hunk and Pidge both try to convince him that he could take Lance’s bed and Lance wouldn’t care, but Keith is fairly certain he wouldn’t get much sleep if he was in Lance’s room – even if he would be alone – and insists the couch is fine. He wakes up once around 5 or 6 in the morning as Hunk is getting ready for his opening shift at a local diner but otherwise sleeps well until about 10:30. He wanders into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee before going to roust Pidge. He doesn’t mind mornings much, but he learned very soon into their friendship that Pidge is very firmly a “night owl,” and has no interest in trying to deny her nature. She’s lying upside down on her bed when he gets to her room, and somehow managed to kick all of her blankets off of the bed, except one, which looks dangerously close to suffocating her.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, just staring at her. “How do you even manage this?”

“Mmphf.” Sleeping Pidge replies, very firmly.

“Right.” Keith pauses. “I’ll come back when the coffee’s done, actually.”

With a little extra time, Keith hops in the shower. As soon as he opens the bottle of shampoo, he recognizes the familiar, fresh scent as Lance’s soap. He’s a little surprised Lance left his favorite soap behind, even if he was just going to his family home for a few days. He also isn’t sure what to do, looking around the shower space for other soap. There’s plenty, and surely none of them would care either way if he used a little soap but…

Is he totally over thinking this? Absolutely.

Does that realization help him make a decision about which soap to use? Absolutely not.

What feels like ages, but is hopefully only a few minutes, passes before he finally convinces himself to stop being ridiculous and just use the damn shampoo. He just grabbed Lance’s first, it was a coincidence and if Pidge noticed later…well, she would just have to accept that.

…Right.

He washes up quickly after wasting who knows how long second-guessing his soap choices and leaves the bathroom to the smell of coffee slowly starting to fill the apartment.

He has to break the nonexistent, unspoken rule his brain has built up in his mind a second time, and trespasses across Lance’s room to find some spare clothes he’s left behind for overnight stays. He pulls on some clean boxers and his jeans from yesterday, but after he’s pulled the worn Altea University shirt over his head, he realizes its Lance shirt, not his. There’s a small hole starting in the bottom hem and the white letters are fading and cracked from excessive wear. It was folded in his drawers, so Keith is like…ninety percent certain it’s clean, but it still smells like Lance’s cologne. Or maybe it’s his lotion or laundry soap or bodywash, but between whatever lingering scent Lance has left on his clothes and the smell of his shampoo still obvious in Keith’s damp hair, he suddenly feels overwhelmed.

He hates how much he hates that Lance is gone.

It’s just a couple of days. Why is he such a disaster? They’re friends. When was the last time he missed Hunk or Pidge this much when they were gone? Even with their friends with benefits arrangement, what made Lance that special to him?

Actually, that was a can of worms he wasn’t really prepared to open just yet.

Keith makes a hasty retreat – a calm, completely normal walk out of one room to another if anyone asks – back to the kitchen for coffee. He pours a generous amount for both Pidge and himself, before he returns to Pidge’s room to finally wake her. He’s not exactly eager to spend another full day working on this project, but he wants to get it done, and he officially really needs the distraction.

It takes another hour, even with the promise of coffee, to pull Pidge out of bed, and she insists on showering “to feel like a real person” before they can get back to work on their project.

Keith has gotten as far as turning his laptop back on and opening their report, rereading the last few paragraphs to remember where he left off, when Pidge returns to her room in some leggings and a baggy t-shirt Keith is pretty sure belongs to either Lance or Matt.

“How about food first?” she suggests.

It’s not exactly the distraction he was looking for, but he shuts his laptop anyways, pushing it off his lap before she even finishes her sentence.

Sal’s is a small 24-hour diner just outside of Altea's central campus that makes it a popular place for both students and professors. Sunday morning, it is practically bursting at the seams, but it’s got good food for reasonable prices and Hunk, Lance, and Pidge had become regulars even before Hunk got a job in the kitchen. Within a few months of becoming friends, Keith had been invited along enough times that the waitstaff began to recognize him too.

Their wait for a table is reasonable, all things considered, and then Keith and Pidge have only been at the table for maybe three minutes before their waitress, Flora, drops drinks off at the table with a promise to be back for their orders in just a minute. Her long, red pony tail swings wildly behind her as she flits around the small space.

They hadn’t ordered anything, but Flora had been there for a long time and was used to their group stopping in, especially on weekend mornings when Hunk was working. But sitting on the table in front of them is two coffee mugs, and a tall glass of apple juice.

Keith and Pidge both stare at it for a moment, before looking to each other. Keith has a feeling the juice is making him feel a whole lot more…things than it is Pidge.

“I guess she just assumed?” Pidge finally says after a moment and goes back to the menu, as if she hadn’t memorized it within the first three months of their visits.

Keith pulls out his phone and takes a picture of the juice, sending it to Lance with a text:

from flora

Lance’s response comes in a few minutes later, interspersed with at least a dozen crying emojis.

i cant believe u traitors went to sal’s w/o me. tell flora i love her and one of u better drink that. we don’t let apple juice go to waste in this house

i am not telling her that. but i will drink the juice for u

Flora comes back to the table before Lance’s next reply comes in. “Just your usual’s today?”

Pidge hums and haws over the decision a few times, like she does every time they come, before agreeing to her usual order. Though she asks for fresh fruit as well today, just to mix it up.

He can feel his phone buzz against his leg almost the entire time Pidge is ordering. And again a few more times as he confirms that he would like his usual order as well. “But, Lance isn’t with us today so…nothing for him.” Keith adds awkwardly at the end.

Flora blinks at him a few times, surprised, before she snaps her fingers as if suddenly remembering something. “Right. I remember Hunk mentioning one of his roommates was out of town for a few days. Sorry guys, I’m just so used to your trio, or just you and him,” she says to Keith, thankfully not seeing the way Pidge wiggles her eyebrows and makes kissy-faces at him for the aside. “I’ll take that juice back for you.”

“Oh no, that’s fine.” Keith says, moving the glass closer to him. “It’s already poured, we’ll drink it.”

Flora arches a brow, but doesn’t argue with him. She promises their food will be out shortly and leaves the table.

“I can’t believe Lance didn’t request you deliver any messages to her for him, or insist we eat his chocolate chip pancakes in his honor too.” Pidge says once she’s gone.

Keith pulls out his phone, flipping it around to show Pidge the twelve messages he got while they were ordering. “Oh, I’m sure he did somewhere in there.”

It’s hard to get back to work on a full stomach, but they power through it. Their shared determination to not have to worry about the project after today deters the usual urge to distract each other. Still, progress is slow, and they’re still working when Hunk comes home from work and peeks in to check on them. They pass on lunch when Hunk asks after his shower, and give non-committal answers to his questions about dinner plans.

Keith is entirely unaware of time and date and hell maybe even location by the time he drags himself through the conclusion but he is bordering on ecstatic when he finally saves the document for the last time and looks up from the computer only for Pidge to look up from her own work and meet his eye a few seconds later.

“Done?”

He nods, and she gives an excited “whoop!” stumbling off her desk chair to throw herself on the bed besides him. “So I just need to add in my input and double-check the details match up, right?”

He nods again, and she immediately scrolls to the top of the document to start reading. “Oh!” she jumps up again, grabbing her laptop from the desk and the notebook she was working in besides it. “Do you want to double check the equations and make sure the experiment outline matches the order you have everything in the paper?”

He is relatively confident in Pidge’s work, but he agrees, nonetheless, and the two settle against each other in the twin bed to finish their work.

Keith isn’t sure when he dozes off, he doesn’t even really remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up, it’s dark in Pidge’s room. Both of their computers are on her desk and he’s alone in her bed. He sits up, half-heartedly feeling around the blankets for his phone to check the time.

“C’mon Mullet, you really had to move right then?”

Keith about jumps out of his skin at the unexpected voice, though he’d vehemently deny it if asked. Lance is sitting backwards in Pidge’s desk chair, pushed close to the door. He lowers his phone, smirking at Keith’s startled expression.

“I guess the deer-in-the-headlights look is fun too, but I was really going to enjoy lording the drooling-all-over-Pidge’s-sheets picture over you.” Lance teases.

Keith’s heart brain is doing some kind of stupid, fluttery thing over the boy across the room that he is pointedly ignoring.

“Shut up.” Keith mutters, even as he hastily wipes at his mouth. There’s nothing there. Asshole. He pushes himself off the bed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Lance presses a hand to his chest in fake offense. “Really? You sleep through my grand return and when you finally bother to wake up, that’s how you greet me?”

Keith crosses the room, folding his arms over his chest and summoning the most unimpressed expression he can muster. “You know what I meant.”

Lance doesn’t seem deterred by the new height difference between them, or Keith’s attitude, crossing his arms over the back of the chair and batting his eyelashes up at him cheekily. He’s wearing the same baseball hat from the picture he sent Keith yesterday, but he’s got it on in the right direction this time, making him look minorly less like a douchebag. The baggy zip-up, which may very well be Hunk’s, over a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and sweatpants isn’t really helping though.

“When did you get back?” Keith askes instead of commenting on his poor outfit choices.

Lance shrugs. “A little after five. Pidge said you started to doze off around four.” He adds before Keith can ask. “Hunk made stir fry for dinner.”

Taking that to mean Lance was actually sent here to wake him up for dinner, rather than simply coming to terrorize him because he was bored, Keith steps around him to leave. A moment later Lance stumbles off the chair after him, complaining all the way.

“Hey,” Lance calls after him.

Keith is already rolling his eyes as he turns around, assuming Lance has a few more jabs he wants to get out before they get to the kitchen, so he is wholly unprepared for Lance to hook a finger in the collar of his shirt and pull him close.

“Is this my shirt?”

It takes all of his self-control not to fly away from Lance’s hold, though the heat rising rapidly to his cheeks is probably giving away his embarrassment all the same. “Maybe? I just grabbed something from your drawers after my shower this morning.”

Lance has a look in his eyes that Keith recognizes as usually meaning something dangerous is in store for him. He leans in closer, stopping just before the bill of his hat brushes the top of Keith’s head. “Did you use my shampoo too?”

“I think you’re a little too obsessed with your things for someone wearing someone else’s hoodie.”

“Well I think you missed me while I was gone.”

Keith isn’t entirely sure who moves first, but one second they’re staring each other down daring the other to give in and the next he’s shoved Lance’s baseball cap off his head, burying his fingers in Lance’s messy hair while Lance’s hands have dropped to his waist, pulling him close with a bruising grip. Their kiss is uncoordinated and messy. Keith is ninety percent certain he was not the only one missing someone a stupid amount this weekend. His back hits the wall, and he faintly registers Pidge yelling something about her room from the other side of the apartment.

Lance rucks up his shirt, warm hands brushing over his sides, and Keith is dangerously close to wrapping his legs around his hips and saying fuck dinner.

They finally break apart for air and Lance laughs against his throat, the sensation sending shivers down his back. “I knew you missed me.”

“And what?” Keith asks breathlessly. “You were ambivalent about it all? I don’t think so. Not kissing like that.”

Lance pulls back to look at him with a surprisingly soft look. “I just wanted to hear you admit it,” he teases.

Normally, Keith would have a comeback for that, probably, but now he’s distracted as he runs his fingers through Lance’s bangs. “You have blue hair.”

Just the tips of his hair that are dyed, actually, not his whole head, he’s still surprised by the change. It seems a little silly, but it still looks good on him.

Lance, not one to be deterred by much, winks at him, striking a pose. “Hot, right? Rachel did it.”

“Yeah, it looks good.”

That does give Lance pause and he blinks at Keith and his easy admission a few times. “Er, well…we should probably go eat now. If just to reassure Pidge we aren’t defiling her room.”

Dinner is great, as usual when Hunk cooks, and they sit in the living room with another show on in the background, but they fill most of the time talking about Lance’s trip and gossip in their department that Keith is somehow always unaware of.

It is well after eleven before conversation begins to fade and they start to disperse around the apartment. Keith is, maybe a little, embarrassed about it, but he doesn’t bother to hide his intentions to stay with Lance rather than going back to his own apartment now that the project is done. For once, Pidge and Hunk leave them be with minimal suggestive looks.

Considering the brief tryst in the hallway earlier, Keith isn’t entirely sure what to expect when they finally retire to Lance’s room, but Lance doesn’t seem to be in a particular rush to do anything. Keith shimmies out of his jeans and drops into bed while Lance puts on some kind of moisturizer. He strips down to his boxers after and Keith can see new, blue markings up and down his arms before Lance turns the light off. Predictably, a moment later there’s a crash and Lance swears. Keith leans over to turn on the lamp next to the bed. Lance is leaning against the footboard, rubbing his shin.

“What did you knock over this time?”

Lance sticks out his tongue. “Don’t worry about it. Move over.” He says. He doesn’t wait before he climbs over the end of the bed and flops down, half on top of Keith.

“I would have moved if you let me,” Keith says into his shoulder.

Lance hums in consideration before he shifts on the mattress. Keith lets him maneuver him around the bed, mostly curious as to what he’s doing, until they end up on their sides, legs tangled together and arms around each other. Lance’s head is pressed against his chest, and his hands are, conveniently, on his ass.

“Lance-”

“Shh,” Lance interrupts immediately. “I had to go a whole weekend without even being able to see this ass, give me a moment to enjoy it.”

Keith laughs despite himself, rolling his eyes. “You are ridiculous.”

Lance wiggles against him, sighing contently. “You like it.”

“Whatever.”

Absentmindedly, Keith runs a hand against Lance’s back, trailing nonsense patterns against his warm skin. Eventually, he looks down, just to make sure Lance hasn’t actually fallen asleep like that, and sees the blue drawings on his arm again.

“What is all over you?”

Lance lets go of him to roll onto his back and show off his arms. “After Rachel dyed my hair, Nadia and Sylvio wanted to match, but Lisa, their mom, wasn’t really thrilled with the idea, so we found these tattoo markers at the dollar store and they were washable, so we went kind of crazy.” Lance shifts so his side is up where the black outline of a shark tattooed into his waist is now black and blue. “They also colored in my tattoo.”

“Did you draw these?”

“Haha,” Lance elbows him in the side half-heartedly. “I drew the rocket ship on my wrist, and the constellations on my shoulder, if they’re still there, are from Veronica, but everything else is from Nadia and Sylvio. Oh, and Luis,” Lance points to a…something near his elbow.

“A flower?” Keith guesses.

Lance snorts. “A lion, according to him.”

“Not the most artistically inclined I’m assuming?”

Lance shakes his head. “Not at all. Nadia’s pretty good though,” he turns over his arm to show off a dog on his forearm. “That’s pretty damn good for a seven-year-old drawing on a moving canvas with dollar-store markers.”

They just spent the last few hours talking about this weekend with Hunk and Pidge in the living room, but Keith can’t help but ask more questions about his family and what they did over the weekend. He brushes Lance’s hair out of his face, and Lance settles deeper into his arms, waving his hands in the air as he talks about the piñata he had to fill for the party by himself, that was bigger than the birthday boy, and the balloon mishaps that had his mother ready to call the whole thing off more than once.

There’s a nagging worry in the back of his head that this is not normal friends-with-benefits behavior, but it is easily drowned out by Lance’s sleepy smile when he shifts again to face Keith.

“Did you guys have fun this weekend?”

Keith shrugs one shoulder. “As much fun as you can have the weekend before a Kolivan deadline.”

Lance grimaces sympathetically. “You finished everything though, right?”

“I think so. We were just checking each other’s work before I fell asleep. If there was more to do, I doubt Pidge would have let me sleep for long.”

Lance hides a wide yawn in his shoulder. “That’s good,” he tries to say, only to break off half-way through into another yawn.

“Those kids wore you out, clearly.” Keith observes, trying to fight back his own yawn.

Lance smiles fondly. “It was fun to see them, to go back and be with everyone for a while. But I’m really glad you were here when I got home.”

The admittance is so quiet in the still room, and almost immediately drowned out by the way Keith’s pulse races, blood roaring in his ears.

Lance had closed his eyes, but he opens them again and looks up at him curiously. Keith knows he has to be able to hear the erratic beating of his heart. He wonders if Lance is even remotely aware of how many lines they’ve crossed in the period of their relationship, if he thinks at all about how little like fuck-buddies they behave when they spend nights wrapped in each other’s arms saying soft things and doing nothing else and if it affects him at all or if this is just how he is casually intimate with everyone. And he wonders why he hates that idea so much.

“Can I kiss you?” Keith asks. It’s usually Lance’s question, but for once, Keith can’t help but ask, ignoring, for now, how overwhelmed he is.

Surprisingly, Lance is quiet, and just nods his agreement, watching Keith with wide eyes.

The kiss now is nothing like the ones they shared before dinner, slow and gentle where the others were rushed and near-frantic. Keith wraps both arms around Lance’s waist, and Lance cradles his face with one hand, threading his other hand through Keith’s hair.

“Good night,” Keith whispers against his lips as they break apart feeling like he’s doing something unbelievably stupid even as the words come.

Lance presses one more quick, closed-mouth kiss against his lips. “Good night.”

Keith flips off the bedside table lamp, dousing them in darkness.

He isn’t sure how long they lay in the dark before Lance finally relaxes and falls asleep, but it feels like at least another hour before Keith admits to himself, he can’t sleep yet and carefully extracts himself from the bed. Lance makes a quiet noise of displeasure in his sleep, but easily stretches out, taking up the empty space and doesn’t wake up.

Keith goes out into the hallway, thinking he’ll just go to the living room and calm down but a light shines through the crack of Pidge’s closed door and he finds himself drawn there instead. He knocks once and Pidge opens the door immediately, looking around the hall almost alarmed.

“Keith? What’s wrong? It’s almost four in the morn-”

“Pidge, I think I love him.” Keith interrupts. “I think I’m in love.”

#vld #voltron #klance #fic #au #fwb #vld lance #vld keith #rita writes #fic: get some #lance mcclain #keith kogane #6.13.20

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turtle-paced · 5 years

Text

Appreciation Post: Arya Stark

Arya’s stitches were crooked again.

Right away we see the problem: Arya Stark is not cut out for the life that her society, family included, tells her that she must live. Arya is eight and this is already apparent. Audience sympathy is quickly and firmly with this scrappy, curious, gregarious little girl who doesn’t want to abide by the sexist, classist rules of her society, which tell her what she should dress like, what she should be good at, and who she should be friends with.

The seriousness - and the potential consequences- of Arya’s disregard for these particular social mores is established at the infamous Incident at Darry. Arya made friends with the butcher’s boy Mycah, and sneaks off to play with him. These games are rougher than what is deemed acceptable for noble girls. When Joffrey discovers them and tries to bully Mycah with a drawn sword, Arya intervenes in her friend’s defence.

Though Arya’s sense of social justice was already apparent -

"The woman is important too!" Arya protested.

- Arya I, AGoT

- her attempted defence of Mycah and humiliation of Joffrey starts a thread that continues throughout her storyline all series. Arya believes in justice. Her immediate short-term discovery that the people who she loves and trusts don’t share her beliefs with her urgency, to the cost of her friend, is a hard one for her to cope with. Getting some direction for this and a means to channel her energies is what helps her manage best.

"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm.”

- Arya II, AGoT

"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon."

Arya screwed up her face.

"No," she said, "that's Sansa." She folded up her right leg and resumed her balancing.

- Eddard V, AGoT

As we can see here, Arya’s relationship with her father is positive and loving, but that does not negate the fact that he’s the source of some of the social pressure to adhere to a certain model of femininity that Arya struggles with.

Thanks to Syrio Forel and a well-learned lesson about seeing the things that are really there, Arya escapes the massacre of the Stark household, and promptly learns that things are a bit different when she’s not the daughter of one of Westeros’ most powerful lords. Despite this, and despite the trauma of witnessing her father’s murder and accidentally killing a stableboy in her escape, she continues on. The scattering of her family drives her to find her own, and to stick with her friends. Or even just the people she’s with. Some of Arya’s best is on display when the Watch recruits are attacked, as Arya refuses to leave a child refugee behind or leave dangerous criminals to burn alive.

Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did.

- Arya IV, ACoK

But she does it anyway, her sense of justice and compassion applying even to people as lovely as the three in the cage.

This does, however, mark the start of a more intense exposure to violence. Brought to Harrenhal, she gets to see Harrenhal, witnessing horrors large and small, and suffering some herself too. She’s our on the ground viewpoint for the suffering of the common people in the Riverlands. As is to be expected, this affect her. One of the more obvious effects is how Arya develops a list of people she hates.

Every night Arya would say their names. "Ser Gregor," she'd whisper to her stone pillow. "Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei." Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the sept and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and her names were the only prayer she cared to remember.

- Arya VI, ACoK

The assassin known as Jaqen H’ghar, in repayment for Arya saving his life, offers her three deaths. Even in this awful situation in Harrenhal, Arya retains a scrap of agency. What she does with those deaths is revealing - she orders the death of Chiswyck, who told a gruesome and graphic story of a gang rape he participated in as though it were a joke; she orders the death of her immediate supervisor Weese, a petty tyrant of the Harrenhal kitchens; and she orders the death of Jaqen H’ghar himself.

That last, Arya does to escape Harrenhal, still trying to get back to her family. Jaqen gives her a coin. Arya kills a guard herself to escape, deliberately and in cold blood.

Arya spends a good chunk of ASoS in the company of the Brotherhood Without Banners, who at the time are at trying to do their best for the smallfolk in the war, with good intentions and mixed, morally ambiguous results. When Sandor Clegane arrives, fleeing from the Blackwater, and Arya gets a chance to press the charge she never got to in AGoT:

Arya squirted past Greenbeard so fast he never saw her. "You are a murderer!" she screamed. "You killed Mycah, don't say you never did. You murdered him!"

The Hound stared at her with no flicker of recognition. "And who was this Mycah, boy?"

"I'm not a boy! But Mycah was. He was a butcher's boy and you killed him. Jory said you cut him near in half, and he never even had a sword."

- Arya VI, ASoS

The trial does not work out, and Arya refuses to accept the verdict. She’s promptly captured by Sandor himself.

Over the course of ASoS in particular, it’s clear that the narrative does not regard Arya’s ability to kill as ‘cool’ or ‘badass’. It is instead depicted as trauma. With Ned Dayne, for instance:

"I never learned the lance, but I could beat you with a sword," said Arya. "Have you killed anyone?"

That seemed to startle him. "I'm only twelve."

I killed a boy when I was eight, Arya almost said, but she thought she'd better not.

- Arya VIII, ASoS

It’s not a competition, but an observation that there’s something horribly wrong with this child asking whether other children have killed. Ned’s reply that he’s only twelve represents the norm.

And there was one girl who took to following her, the village elder's daughter. She was of an age with Arya, but just a child; she cried if she skinned a knee, and carried a stupid cloth doll with her everywhere she went. The doll was made up to look like a man-at-arms, sort of, so the girl called him Ser Soldier and bragged how he kept her safe. "Go away," Arya told her half a hundred times. "Just leave me be." She wouldn't, though, so finally Arya took the doll away from her, ripped it open, and pulled the rag stuffing out of its belly with a finger. "Now he really looks like a soldier!" she said, before she threw the doll in a brook. After that the girl stopped pestering her, and Arya spent her days grooming Craven and Stranger or walking in the woods.

- Arya XII, ASoS

That passage follows the Red Wedding, an even more traumatic event for Arya. After a book and a half of trying to get back to her mother and Robb, she’s present outside the event at which they’re murdered, never seeing them, unable to do anything to help them. This leaves Arya adrift.

Where would she go? Winterfell was gone. Her grandfather's brother was at Riverrun, but he didn't know her, no more than she knew him. Maybe Lady Smallwood would take her in at Acorn Hall, but maybe she wouldn't. Besides, Arya wasn't even sure she could find Acorn Hall again. Sometimes she thought she might go back to Sharna's inn, if the floods hadn't washed it away. She could stay with Hot Pie, or maybe Lord Beric would find her there. Anguy would teach her to use a bow, and she could ride with Gendry and be an outlaw, like Wenda the White Fawn in the songs.

But that was just stupid, like something Sansa might dream. Hot Pie and Gendry had left her just as soon as they could, and Lord Beric and the outlaws only wanted to ransom her, just like the Hound. None of them wanted her around. They were never my pack, not even Hot Pie and Gendry. I was stupid to think so, just a stupid little girl, and no wolf at all.

- Arya XII, ASoS

So we see the extent to which Arya needs family and community to help shore up her identity. This is exactly what makes her AFFC storyline with the Faceless Men possible. Not long after this passage, she leaves Sandor Clegane when he sickens from an infected wound. He might have killed Mycah, but he also helped Arya, and on balance Arya finds herself unable to kill him.

Arya goes to the Faceless Men, per Jaqen’s recommendation, because she feels she has nowhere else to go. What they offer Arya has powerful appeal for her after all that she’s suffered, and costs a lot, too. The House of Black and White will take her in and give her a purpose, if Arya sacrifices her entire identity.

Arya cannot do it.

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

Polliver had stolen the sword from her when the Mountain's men took her captive, but when she and the Hound walked into the inn at the crossroads, there it was. The gods wanted me to have it. Not the Seven, nor Him of Many Faces, but her father's gods, the old gods of the north. The Many-Faced God can have the rest, she thought, but he can't have this.

- Arya II, AFFC

She cannot even truly give up being Arya Stark when she’s enjoying being Cat of the Canals. The very name is a hint that Arya’s identity is not subsumed - Cat - but she cannot get rid of the wolf dreams. (As demonstrated in Bran and Jon’s PoVs, Arya’s a skinchanger. We have direct evidence that she’s a very powerful skinchanger, maintaining her bond with her wolf across an ocean and later skinchanging into a cat as well.) Eventually, it’s Arya’s sense of what is right that brings her back - via murder, but it brings her back.

Arya killing the Night’s Watch deserter Dareon was the result of what Arya of House Stark learned about right and wrong. Part of the identity that the Faceless Men want Arya to shed are those very beliefs.

Arya drew back from him. "He killed the slave?" That did not sound right. "He should have killed the masters!"

- Arya II, AFFC

When she is ordered to kill someone, she starts by trying to convince herself they deserve it:

"He is an evil man," she announced that evening when she returned to the House of Black and White. "His lips are cruel, his eyes are mean, and he has a villain's beard."

The kindly man chuckled. "He is a man like any other, with light in him and darkness. It is not for you to judge him."

- The Ugly Little Girl, ADWD

Arya can and has killed, but she doesn’t do it without remorse, and we see that she’s struggling to do so for amoral reasons. Arya is angry and traumatised, but we see that she wants justice more than simple survival. That, and the importance she places on family and community, seem likely to me to be the way back from the brink. The girl who makes friends wherever she goes is going to have a part to play in the narrative, reminding others that for all the greater goods out there and in the future, the people here and now deserve justice and protection too.

#ASoIaF #valyrianscrolls #cw: violence #cw: rape #arya stark #a game of thrones #a clash of kings #a storm of swords #a feast for crows #a dance with dragons #another post not doing characters justice

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rueitae · 4 years

Text

This Moment

Written for @time-is-fading for the @plancesecretsanta! The ask was for fluffy and fun! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The first to arrive for an all-Paladin get-away in the mountains over the holidays, Pidge and Lance find themselves in for the long haul when a blizzard strikes. Without power, they'll have to make due - its not as if they've never cuddled before.

Read on Ao3

~~~~~

Arms numb and muscles strained with the weight he holds both in his hands and his heart, Lance leans his shoulder into the door, one foot anchored a step below the other. It swings open and he staggers into the kitchen, letting out a terrified squeak as he nearly drops the precious - and very heavy - portable generator.

He nearly trips over a rug in the near complete darkness. With a final heave, he lifts the precious machine onto the kitchen table, wrinkling the perfectly ironed tablecloth. Dust plumes all around him, built up from the years the machine has spent in storage. Lance coughs, waving his arms - that honestly feel like wet noodles at this point after the heavy lifting - in a futile attempt to stop any more dusty particles from reaching his throat.

Short strides and light feet scamper into the kitchen. Lance squints in between coughs just in time watch Pidge’s eyes light up in delight when she crosses the threshold, the lights of the Christmas Tree on the front of her sweater blinking on and off through the dust like Rudolph’s nose on that foggy night, giving off just enough light to see in front of them in the cold, dark kitchen.

“You found it!” she exclaims, jogging over to him. Pidge wastes no time in rolling up the sleeves of her sweater, examining the generator for functionality as she grips it possessively. Her face contorts, nose wrinkling as she begins to sort out whatever problem she’s found. Lance’s heart does a little leap, finding the action so quintessentially Pidge and therefore endearing and adorable.

He coughs, the dust still scratchy against his throat. “Does it have enough juice?” he wheezes.

Pidge frowns, eyes still on the machine. “It’s been over a decade since I was last here with Mom, Dad, and Matt,” she admits. “Only one way to find out how deteriorated it is.”

Lance whines at the thought of cold showers and canned food for a week (or longer, who knew how long this snowstorm would last). To distract himself from the possibility of such a dismal future, he watches her delicate fingers dig into a mess of cables. They’re so tiny, fitting into small spaces and rearranging components with calming ease. Speckles of dust and grime fall onto them, though Pidge pays it no mind, focused as she is on her task. Dirty or not, he has the sudden, inexplicable need to hold them - but he does not reach. Pidge’s work is far too important to interrupt right now, just as imperative as any mission they went on as Paladins.

Licking his lips, Lance frets. Had he sized the ring too large?

With a grunt, Pidge flips the switch and to Lance's extreme relief, it hums to life.

“Oh thank goodness,” Lance sighs, slumping to a squat, arms hanging onto the table. “I don’t think I could have lived with a cold shower.”

The window pane above the kitchen sink rattles, strong winds swirling both the falling and newfallen snow. Though the snow shines brightly in the dark of the evening, he still can’t see Pidge’s car, parked on the gravel road only feet from the cabin.

Pidge switches the generator off. “Dad must have modified this one if it’s lasted this long.” Gently, she brushes off some lingering dust around the manufacturer label. “We’d better save power regardless, I’m still not sure how much is left in this one.” She lifts her eyes to the window, mouth a thin, concerned line. “I don’t think the others are going to be able to make it in time for Christmas.”

Disappointment laces her tone, and Lance is upset too. They all needed this break from their various duties across the universe. Lance had genuinely been looking forward to it being just the seven of them again, recounting the insanity of the beginning of their tenure as team Voltron. It was Matt who’d reminded them of the Holt family cabin in the mountains, and at the time it seemed like an idyllic getaway from media and duty alike.

Except now it would just be him and Pidge in a near powerless cabin in the middle of nowhere until the blizzard subsided, both simmering with frustration at the weather and all traces of joyous holiday spirit gone.

Lance drops a hand into his jacket pocket, fingering the small black box. He’d missed his chance on the car ride here. He’d missed his chance after the Galaxy Garrison holiday party and during numerous lunchtime walks on the Galaxy Garrison grounds. No opportunity had seemed right. Maybe the universe was telling him now to just suck it up and do it - gifting him this unplanned time alone with her. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t discussed getting married so many times before - he and Pidge were ready (or at least as ready as they thought they could be).

But it seems wrong to do so here, during a winter storm, when he could take her to see the sun set on the waters of Varadero Beach, dining with spaghetti, garlic knots, and peanut butter cookies for dessert.

If he could just be patient a little longer and create the perfect moment for her. It’s the very least Pidge deserves.

He looks up at her, flashing his most flirtatious and cheesy of grins. One thing he can do at the moment, is lift their spirits and make the most of this and make up for the fact he won’t have the others to help keep things festive. “Well, just you and me isn't so bad, Pidge. Alone in a cabin, cut off from the rest of the universe.” He waggles his eyebrows to sell it further. “I can think of a few things to keep us entertained.”

Pidge’s face alone looks as if it could heat the entire cabin for the whole two weeks they'd be here. It entertains him for all of three seconds before she grins wickedly right back at him, his face falling in slight fear that she might actually be willing to indulge in the innuendo.

“You’re right, Lance,” she says with a sly smirk. “Alone in the middle of the mountains and a snowstorm that won’t let us see what kind of spooky creatures are out there.” She shrugs smugly. “We'll do what the old song says and tell a bunch of scary ghost stories. A brilliant idea to keep us entertained,” she continues, with a smile that tells Lance she knew exactly what he meant and pulled the rug from under him on purpose. “I’ll grab the blankets and we can camp out in the living room.”

She splits off and Lance falls to his back on the kitchen floor, just now finding the breath he’d been holding. He’d nearly ruined something else that he wanted to be absolutely perfect and romantic on their wedding night over a joke to keep her mind off the lack of the rest of the team.

She’d quiznaking had him in the first half.

He loves her so much.

Telling stories was a great idea, though, he decides as he arranges the throw pillows on the floor of the living room in front of the crackling stone fireplace and Pidge drops the blankets and pillows gathered from the bedrooms on top of them. Telling the absolute scariest story will surely have Pidge clinging and cuddling against him! The perfect opportunity to use his arm-over-the-shoulder technique - tested and perfected years before he arrived at the Galaxy Garrison for his first class. Just the thought of cuddling with Pidge makes his toes tingle despite his fuzzy wool socks, eager to bask in the known warmth of her arms wrapped around him.

The promise of cuddling perks him up and clears his senses like a brisk December morning. It feels festive now, and Pidge's sweater looks right at home with shiny bobbles on the Christmas tree - illuminated by the fire on the wood - the silver tinsel strewn about the shelf lining the room, and the folding table ready to hold his mother's famous punch recipe that he can't wait for Pidge to try and pair with whatever delectable snacks Hunk brings. Just being among the trappings of the holiday, doing something fun with Pidge, makes his heart feel much lighter.

Like a well-oiled machine, honed from years of sharing the Voltron bond and heightened in the years of courtship, the two of them layer the pillows together between the two pronged corner couch and loveseat and drape bed sheets on top of them for a roof. They squish as many comforters and blankets and pillows inside the three-sided fort as they possibly can, making a cozy tent for two. It could be a scene from the outside, with this tent a recreation of a cabin and the evergreen by the large window filled with ornaments and topped with a star just a normal part of the forest. The only thing needed was the seven of them participating in the most epic snowball fight known to the universe - where he’d finally enact his sweet revenge on Keith for the hit in the Squishy Asteroid Fight.

But, he realizes as he eyes Pidge making sure their bedsheet roof was secure, he could practice.

With a childhood full of playing baseball in the schoolyard behind him, Lance launches the circle shaped throw pillow at Pidge. It hits her square in the back of the head and falls limply to the ground. Pidge straightens from being bent over to her full height. Then, just as fast as if it were her bayard, Pidge lunges at him with a body pillow - the spark of competition the last thing he sees before nothing but white fluff.

“I had an older brother too, Lance,” Pidge says devilishly. “I know how to pillow fight.”

All nervousness surrounding the ring in his pocket forgotten, Lance picks a pillow up off the floor. “You had one sibling, I had four,” he retorts. “I have the stamina and the awareness to win this one. And,” he adds, pointing smugly to her sweater, “mine doesn’t light up like a target.”

Still, fighting a group wasn’t the same as fighting one-on-one, as Lance found out. Pidge was just as fierce (and far more used to hand-to-hand combat than he) as he remembered during training sessions on the Castle. Not that he minded in the least, the distraction was welcome.

Lance lands on his side first, head resting on the pillow he’s designated as his own near the back of the fort, breath heavy, but laugher from the utter silliness they’d partaken in not far from his lips. His heart beats with a delighted trill as Pidge falls to her side next to him, nearly bouncing on top of the layers of pillows and blankets, mouth formed into a wide, contented smile

She opens her eyes, their faces so close together it would be so easy to kiss her.

So he does, a simple peck right on her nose.

“I love you,” he tells her.

Pidge snorts at his action, her mouth curling up adorably in amusement. “What brought this on? The brilliance to conserve energy by making a pillow fort?”

“That too,” Lance admits with a laugh. “Can’t I just say it for no particular reason?”

Thick brown eyebrows raise in curiosity. “What are you buttering me up for, Lance?”

“Nothing!” he squeaks. His hands freeze in a heart-stopping moment; quiznak, what if she’s expecting a proposal on this trip? Will he let her down by not offering her the ring in his pocket? The howling wind outside is hardly the perfect atmosphere compared to the sun-kissed ocean waves. “I’m just… glad if I had to be stuck anywhere during the holidays, it’s with you. You make me feel like I can do anything.”

Rather than a sickeningly sweet and teasing ‘aww’, Pidge’s gaze falls to the pillow laden floor, her grip tightening on the edge of a quilt. “That means more than you know,” she says somberly. “You’re my best friend, Lance. I gave you the cold shoulder so many times back when we were a simulator crew and you never gave up trying to hang out.” A small, gentle smile forms on her face as she looks back up at him. “You - You’re all family to me. Shiro and Keith, Coran and Allura, Hunk and..” she meets his gaze and he can’t breathe or look away. “And you.”

Warmth overwhelms his heart. He’d known, of course, his persistence had paid off to gain Pidge’s friendship, but to hear it from her makes him happy beyond belief.

He never can - or wants to - replace that familial feeling between the Paladins but… he also wants to be a family with her - just the two of them.

“You definitely had us all fooled for a while,” he admits. Slowly, he curls his fingers and fully encases her hand in his free one. “But I’m forever grateful I got the chance to know the real Pidge.”

And he means it. The more he sinks into the soft blankets in comfort, the more he just wants to stay like this forever. To take Pidge into his arms and hold her through the entire storm.

Pidge squeezes the hand that holds hers. “Me too - about the real Lance,” she says laying relaxed among the blankets with eyes that are full of purpose. “Marry me.”

Lance's face is stretched so wide and like an idiot it takes him several seconds to realize what had just happened.

He shoots up, head making a dent in the bedsheet ceiling. “What?” he squeaks. “Wait. Hold on. I was going to propose to you!”

As he witnesses the myriad of emotions that pass across Pidge’s face, from fear to relief to the audacity to outright laugh at him, Lance resigns that he won’t be able to give Pidge the perfect proposal on the beach.

But he loves Pidge and as long as she says yes that is all that matters in the end. He can make up for a low-key proposal with a grand wedding.

“I figured, after our tenth talk about what to name our kids and all,” Pidge says, then rolls onto her back and chuckles a few more times at his expense.

Lance huffs. “It’s not funny, Pidge. I had it all planned. We’d go to the beach, watch the sunset and have the most perfect romantic candlelit dinner! My mom was even going to cook! You know how delicious her cooking is!” He digs into his pocket and pulls out the black box. “I even had this ready!”

Pidge stops laughing the instant she lays eyes on the box, her mouth agape in pure surprise as she slowly sits up. “You… already have the ring. You actually have it. Here. Right now.”

At Pidge’s disbelief, Lance’s own jaw drops. Planned or not, this was happening right here, right now. He clears his throat and shifts to his knees, opening the box and offering it out to Pidge. The band is green and silver with seven tiny diamonds set as low as possible - as much of a sacrifice between Pidge’s desire for nothing too flashy, easy to work with in the lab, and Lance’s desire to give her everything.

Now that the ring is out, Pidge viewing it… there is no doubt in Lance’s mind that this is the right moment.

“I’ve had it for a while,” he admits. “I’ve always wanted to give the girl I marry the most perfect and romantic proposal and… this isn’t it, but, I love you, Pidge,” he says with a fluttering heart that he hopes reflects in his smile. “I’d be more than happy to share my life with you.”

In awe, Pidge takes the ring out of the box with shaking hands, inspecting it thoroughly, still in a wave of disbelief. “I - I…”

Now it’s his turn to worry about rejection. A thousand terrible scenarios run through his mind - that Pidge hates the ring or worse, that she has second thoughts about this level of commitment. Lance knows he has none, and if he has to wait for years for her to be ready he will.

Even if - his heart thumps painfully - if she never does.

He frowns. “Are you okay, Pidge?”

She nods. She nods furiously, tears pricking at her eyes. “My heart was yours first.” With the skills of a ninja she swiftly drapes her arms around his neck, head resting on his shoulder. “Absolutely, yes.”

Lance knows she answers both of his questions. Joy in his heart and butterflies dissipating from his stomach, he takes her into the closest of hugs and enjoys the comfort of being able to hold his fiancee.

It may not have been the perfect proposal he’d envisioned, but all the same he’s overcome with all the happiness in the universe and an urge to do something. He flops back down onto their pillow-bed and laughs as Pidge both shrieks and giggles in delight when he takes her with him, kicking at him playfully and futility.

Her breath surrounds his senses and he doesn’t even mind taking a whiff of the salami she’d had for lunch. Just as their arms and legs are tangled together, their noses bump roughly. Lance snorts and chuckles as Pidge curls into his chest, still giggling softly. His lips are already on her forehead, so he takes the opportunity to kiss her. Once for their engagement, twice for how thankful he is for her company snowed-in, and three times for how much he loves her.

A flash of light and a crack of thunder tells him that the intensity of the storm won’t be diminishing anytime soon. And that’s okay by him, so long as he can stay like this.

Pidge’s humorous noises still to a sigh and she makes no move to leave his arms, instead taking a fistful of his sweater in her hands and snuggling closer. “You know, I’m kind of glad the storm interrupted our plans,” she hums. “Otherwise you might still be planning for that perfect moment.”

“You’re right, as usual,” Lance concedes. He doesn’t much care to be shown up, not when this outcome is a win for him too. What he’s not going to tell her, is that what was once a grand proposal, is now going to be the best and most romantic first anniversary date.

He grins into her hair, content as he equates the warmth of the beach to the warmth of her arms and the blankets.

“So how about those ghost stories?” he reminds her as mischievousness builds in his heart. Now that they’re engaged, he has even more reason to perfect his protective cuddling of Pidge. Because they have their whole lives together to look forward to now, and he’s certain there will be moments where Pidge will want the weight of his arms around her to both comfort her when she’s sad and protect her when she’s scared.

Pidge shifts to her back, head resting easy on her pillow as she gives him a smug smile. “You’re on,” she tells him as he leans back into his own pillow, staying on his side so he can keep his arms wrapped around the one of her closest to him. “Ever hear about Yeti around this area?” The confident glint in her eyes sends his heart pounding, knowing this was going to be a good one. Pidge never did things halfway.

“A local legend, huh?” Lance grins, completely sure he’ll weather this one. It’s not like any of these things were real. “I’m all ears, Pidge. Try me.” After knowing her story, he’ll be able to one-up her with one of his own and they’ll cuddle under the covers in their little tent with the warmth of each other. They’ll be able to save the generator for a nice hot shower in the morning - or whenever they thought it was morning. The blizzard will make it difficult to tell.

And Lance had no intention of leaving their little tent to check. By the vice grip Pidge had on his sweater as she begins her story, neither did she.

#plance #pidgance #pidge #lance #plancesecretsanta2019 #plance secret santa #voltron legendary defender #rueitae #vld fanfic #fluff #marriage proposal #time-is-fading

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raiyakun · 5 years

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Two Worlds

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As always my brain randomly decides to kick into overdrive when thinking of AUs so it took on a life of its own (ADKJSHDKASD), but this was very fun to think of so please have the rest of it under the cut.

(TW for those who might be prompted to check out W: [mostly minor] character deaths, violence, blood, which get more prevalent in later episodes. The music volume changes quickly at certain points too. My concept so far only covers the early half of the series, but still TW for mentions of violence, blood, and minor character deaths.)

(Also a sidenote because I’ve had comments with other AU concepts (；´∀｀) This won’t be a 1:1 AU. The basic premise stands but I make a bunch of changes especially with character roles like splitting and/or splicing roles.)

❝Keith Kogane is the hero of the immensely popular action mystery webcomic W. Marco McClain, the series’ artist and writer, has become practically a household name as everyone has gotten addicted to the story of Keith, a young man who once rose to fame as the prodigy who became the youngest Olympic judo gold medalist at 18 under his father’s training but gets embroiled in a series of tragedies and injustices as his father is later found dead in their home and his mother discovered missing, with Keith framed and later imprisoned for the murder and abduction by the ambitious prosecutor Zarkon Daibazaal.

Keith is later proven innocent and released following a year in prison, then disappears from the public eye for years only to reemerge later as the successful co-CEO of Voltron Co., and alongside his mentor and brother figure Takashi Shirogane, co-CEO Allura Altea, and assistant Acxa Marmora, he establishes W, a TV program that aims to solve criminal cases and mysteries and give people the justice that they seek for. But Keith’s ultimate goal is to find his father’s killer and his mother’s whereabouts, a goal which he will stop at nothing to achieve.

Meanwhile, Lance McClain is a new resident in the esteemed cardiovascular and thoracic surgery department of the Garrison University Hospital under the tutelage of Professor Iverson, who doesn’t exactly have the most stellar impression of him. That is, until Iverson learns that Lance is the younger brother of Marco McClain, writer and artist of W. Lance sees this as a chance to get on Iverson’s good side and decides to visit his brother Marco, who in reality has had little contact with his family after dropping out of medical school to pursue being a comic artist, much to the disapproval of his and Lance’s parents. His sister Veronica, herself also a doctor at the same hospital, advises him against the idea, but Lance decides to push through.

At Marco’s studio, though, Lance learns through his friends Hunk and Pidge, both assistants to Marco, that his brother has been missing since the previous night, which is a problem since the deadline for W’s latest chapter was the next day. They have absolutely no idea where he could’ve gone, and in the middle of their conversation, Lance finds out about Marco’s plan to kill off his comic’s main character, much to his disbelief. Hunk brings him into Marco’s room to show the last panel he’d worked on his tablet, showing Keith lying in a pool of blood on a hotel rooftop after getting stabbed by the story’s mysterious killer.

After Hunk leaves him alone in the room to attend to a call from the editor, a bloody hand suddenly shoots out from Marco’s tablet to pull him in, and Lance finds himself on a high rooftop, with nobody but a bloody young man with a mullet at his feet.

Lance is incredibly confused, but quickly jumps into action and helps out the man, saving him from dying from a collapsed lung by puncturing his chest with a pen, the man’s eyes opening for a split second just as Lance does so. After paramedics arrive to bring the man to the hospital (with Lance feeling quite proud he managed to save someone under pressure. Take that, Iverson!), Lance is thanked by the hospital’s manager, and Lance learns the name of who he’d just saved: Keith Kogane.

Wait. Is it a coincidence? For him to have the same name as Marco’s character? But Lance recalls the bloody hand that pulled him in and realizes how the man was lying exactly like Keith in the drawn panel was. And at the corner of his vision, Lance catches the words To be continued appearing out of thin air just before he finds himself back in Marco’s room.

And that’s how Lance’s curious experiences with moving between reality and (what should have been) fiction begin. What’s worse is that whatever events that happen while he is in the comic world end up getting reflected in W’s story, to the point that Iverson accuses his of forcing his brother to base a new character on himself.

And Marco is little help to Lance’s predicament. He reappears like nothing happened and refuses to listen to his younger brother talking about what he experienced, instead cryptically proclaiming that he needs Keith to die in the comic, even if it goes against what the readers and his editors (and Hunk and Pidge) are hoping he would do.

Lance manages to save Keith’s life a second time after getting sucked into the W world again, and he discovers that the world follows a weird logic that revolves around its main character, and that Lance would only be able to get back to the real world whenever something shocking to Keith happens.

As for Keith, meeting the man who saved him on the rooftop that one fateful night leads him to believe that he has the key to his existence, his purpose. But the man seems elusive and....very weird. He has a nameーLance McClainーbut it’s as if he swims in and out of existence, with no one knowing him or him disappearing without a trace. But despite his friends’ doubt, Keith is resolute that Lance McClain holds the answer to the mystery governing his life.

The question is, is that a mystery both him and Lance are prepared to unravel?❞

(end of Part One)

This was getting long so I just decided to bunch the rest of some important details into bullet points (；´∀｀) (there’s a LOT more since a ton of stuff happen in the series so there’s a bunch more to come after this. Some might be confusing if you don’t know what happens in the series but I’ll try to clear them up in later posts ksdjfhksdfj)

Romance isn’t a big point in W, but its readers popularly believe that Marco is building a love triangle with Keith and Allura, with whom Keith shares a hatred for Zarkon and some common ground due to her parents also having been murdered, and Acxa, who used to work for Zarkon but whom Keith convinces of Zarkon’s evil and hires as a personal assistant-slash-bodyguard. Lance believed this too, at first, since when they were younger Marco told him about his plans, although at present Lance isn’t sure if Marco still intends it since he’s only played with the idea in the really early chapters but has not touched upon it again. (Later, when Lance and Keith realize they’re falling for each other and the comic IRL begins to turn into a romantic comedy, Iverson rants at Lance about how the story is getting completely ruined by the “new character Lance” and that Keith should’ve gotten set up with one of the two heroines, only for Lance to yell back at him “Well how are you completely sure Keith is into girls in the first place!”)

Shiro’s role is a combination of Do-yoon’s and Hyun-seok’s from W. He was an athlete also trained by Keith’s father and a close family friend. He took Keith in after his release from prison and became the program manager of W. (No, he does not get Hyun-seok’s fate.)

Hunk and Pidge share Soo-bong’s role, although their reactions to realizing Lance can somehow get into the webcomic world are very different: Hunk is extremely anxious while Pidge gets excited and curious.

Keith’s father was murdered by stabbing, and Zarkon framed Keith as the murderer with the knife that Keith got as a gift from his mother as the murder weapon. It’s what Keith secretly keeps under his pillow (which Lance is aware of, much to Keith’s shock. But Lance only knows it thanks to having a lot of knowledge about the webcomic details from the real world).

Lance gets caught by the police in the comic a similar way that Yeon-joo in the series does, but this isn’t due to any purposeful set up by Allura or Acxa the same way the series did for So-hee. I really don’t like how the writing treated So-hee sdjkfsdkjfksf. Lance genuinely becomes friends with Allura and Acxa, and instead it’s Zarkon, thinking that he can use Lance as the key to send Keith to jail permanently, who’s the reason Lance is caught by the police. Allura and Acxa try to help him out but are prevented by Zarkon until Keith’s return.

Marco used to be very close to both Veronica and Lance when they were younger, since all three used to share a love for comics and Marco had a talent for drawing (and although they don’t remember it at first, both Lance and Veronica contributed ideas to what eventually became W). But their parents wanted them to aim for “real” jobs and pressured Marco into studying medicine. While Marco rebelled and left, becoming a small artist that anyone barely knew until W blew up, Veronica chose to bury her love for comics and pursue medicine, thus becoming a doctor. Lance is caught between the two routes they took (wanting to pursue his own dreams like Marco or persisting in the field with Veronica). Despite looking stern most of the time, Veronica is indeed worried and cares for both her brothers.

Eventually, Veronica gets roped into the mess as well, especially after Marco gets attacked and sent to the hospital and when she finds a hysterical Hunk and Pidge yelling about them and Lance getting chased by a killer only for her to find Lance passed out and so weak he needs to be hospitalized.

Eventually, both Lance and Veronica realize that they are able to influence the W world too, since the comic’s logic recognizes them as “part-creators” due to Marco having taken inspiration from them when he was originally planning the comic. I may or may not have a Veracxa agenda here KJFHKDJFHDKSJFHD. Bottom line is: instead of just Yeon-joo and her dad in the original, the three siblings can get dragged into the comic. Okay I admit there is a Veracxa agenda here.

Aaaaaannnnd more to come because W has like 3-4 arcs and both my sister and I can’t stop watching it because it’s cliffhangers everywhere KJDHKJSHKSDJFHKDF

#klance #klance au #lance mcclain #keith kogane #vld lance #vld keith #Raiyakun!! Art #Raiyakun!! Rambles #This got so long DKJHASKDJ #also redoing the background of the intro was KJHDKJHASKJDHASd #also i know I drew them in their canon casual clothes but in the AU they'd be in their twenties #W AU!!#long post

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