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vldkeith · 2 years

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keithtober🔪🎃💢 week two: star pilot🌟🚀 or loner

keith is so annoying, thinking he's all that. lance confronts him about it. (garrison!au)

ko-fi☕️ | 🔗read on ao3 - leave a kudos even if u read on here please!

If Lance had a penny for every time the instructors made Keith do a demonstration for the fourth year class, he swears he’d be a billionaire by the end of the month.

It’s trite to the point of being comical by now, though Lance isn’t laughing at all. He wants to say that every time Keith sighs and steps up into the sim-rig at the request of a teacher, he resolutely looks away, not deigning to watch the too-cool-for-everything student excel again and again seemingly without even trying, but that’s not true. More often, Lance watches with rapt attention, trying to catalogue in his mind every technique Keith uses, every twist and turn he takes, every time he swan-dives and manages to pull out of it at the last second to the shock of everyone present.

It’s amazing. Lance kind of hates him for it.

Once Keith has finished, received the praise from the teacher (with a few sly comments about his behavioral issues, Lance notes with relish), and slipped back into the shadows of the crowd, Lance turns to Hunk, who’d been standing next to him the entire time. The second Lance opens his mouth, Hunk groans.

“What?” Lance says, taken aback.

“Please do not talk to me about Keith right now,” Hunk sighs, scrubbing tiredly at his eyes. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Give me a break.”

Lance glares. “You act like I spend every second of every day talking about Keith. I don’t.”

“When it’s demonstration day? You kind of do,” Hunk replies grimly, his face a straight line. Lance folds his arms against his chest and sulks just a little bit.

He doesn’t even manage to keep quiet for the duration it takes Hunk to complete a single stretch and yawn.

“I just think it’s not fair that they always choose him to do the demos,” he says, staring with narrowed eyes at the teacher, Singletary, as she resets the sim gear for the next group of students. He’d known she was going to choose Keith, since she’s always talking about things he’s done right, but it was still a disappointment to have to cross another teacher off his dwindling list of non-Keith-worshippers at the Garrison.

Lance himself isn’t even on that list. If that gives an idea of how fucking short it is.

Hunk shakes his head, grabbing Lance by the shoulders and forcibly turning him away from the teacher. “How many times do we have to go through this, Lance? You know why they do this, and you know my answer. Come on, buddy.”

“That doesn’t make it fair!” Lance bursts out, shrugging Hunk off and stalking away from the classroom and into the bland, beige hallways of the Garrison. They start the deceptively lengthy walk back to their dorm room. “Like, is this not against every teacher’s code in the world? You’re not supposed to play favorites. Picking Keith to do every sim run is, like, the definition of playing favorites.”

“You think the Garrison cares about that?” Hunk scoffs. “Dude, they don’t care if they’re being unfair as long as we know what needs to be done. We’re in the military.”

“Still,” Lance mutters sullenly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. It’s so unfair. It’s unfair that Keith always gets chosen to do the demo simulations, and it’s unfair that every group, even lowly cargo pilots like Lance, has to leave class to watch it every month, again and again. It’s bullshit, and they all know it, so why don’t they stop it already?

They round a corner, Lance still lost in annoyed thought and Hunk darting exasperated, concerned looks at him every once in a while, when all of a sudden Lance draws up short and stops walking altogether. Hunk nearly slams into him but catches himself at the last minute and, still wobbling, turns to tell Lance to stop playing games like that, when he glances toward where Lance is looking and sees Keith Kogane himself leaning against the wall, staring down at the Garrison-issued tablet in his hands.

All coherent, reasonable thought flies from Lance’s mind, and he actually rolls his sleeves up as he begins marching toward that annoying mullet head bent slightly to stare at the screen. Hunk makes an aborted grab to stop Lance from going, but his heart’s not in it, and Lance easily escapes his grasp.

As Lance approaches Keith, he sees that his screen is filled with black-and-white panels of characters drawn with thick lines and big eyes. If Veronica had taught Lance anything, it’s how to spot a manga, so Lance unfortunately recognizes that imagery immediately. Somehow, that makes him both angrier and more softened at the same time.

“Hey, Kogane,” Lance says a little too loudly, stopping just short of violating Keith’s personal space. Immediately, Keith looks up, confused.

“How do you know my name?” he asks after a beat of silence. Lance blinks, caught off guard for a moment, and then recognizes it for the cruel joke it is.

“Very funny,” he all but snarls, crossing his arms with a glare. “Ha, ha. As if anyone in this place wouldn’t know who you are.”

Keith gives him a confused look, but Lance is not going to fall for his faux innocence again, no siree!

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know,” Lance continues, “being all the teachers’ favorite but acting like you’re above this whole thing. You don’t know how good you have it!”

The confused look Keith had been wearing turns sharper, and he clicks his tablet off and tucks it under his arm, giving Lance his full attention. Lance feels his skin warm in response. “I don’t even know you. Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad!” Lance says, mad. “I just think someone should tell you you’re not all that!”

Keith’s lips curl into a sneer. “I’ve got the message, then. Can you fuck off now?”

Lance puffs up at that, spurred by adrenaline and the need to prove that he isn’t a loser, but before he can do or say anything, Keith is pushing past him with rather alarming strength, nearly whirling him back into the wall.

“Hey!” Lance shouts, recovering quickly and jumping forward. Several students turn to stare at him. “Get back here! We’re not done!”

Keith doesn’t respond, and Lance doesn’t give chase. Soon enough, he’s disappeared down another hallway, and Lance turns his attention beyond the ringing in his ears enough to realize that everyone has gone still and quiet around him. He plasters on a decidedly fake smile and rubs the back of his neck, shrugging. Hunk’s palm connects to his forehead.

Sensing that the interesting part is over, the students turn back to their individual activities quickly enough, allowing Lance to slink back over to Hunk’s side and partially hide behind him.

“Wait a minute,” Hunk says, dodging Lance’s attempts to crouch near his back, “I don’t even know if I want to be associated with you anymore, Jesus Christ, Lance. What the fuck.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Lance argues weakly, but even he can admit that it was a rather...lame attempt at a confrontation. One that left Lance looking like an antagonizing idiot and not Keith. God. Fuck. He fucked up. Is Keith going to hate him now? Doesn’t he want Keith to hate him?

This is only the second time they’ve ever talked, and the first time left Lance looking stupid, too. He’d just been trying to make friends, but Keith had completely shirked his (platonic) advances, choosing instead to isolate himself in a corner at orientation and leave early with none other than Professor Shirogane. It had been...embarrassing, but not quite as embarrassing as this time, wherein Lance had been actively hostile.

“I’m going to go hide in my bed,” Lance murmurs, all of this running through his mind in a blur. Hunk sighs, long and deep.

“When are you going to admit that this crush is out of control?” he says under his breath, but Lance is so preoccupied with his own misery that he doesn’t hear him or pay attention.

“What was that?” he asks, finally turning to face Hunk.

Hunk puts an arm around him, despite his earlier denial of sympathy. “Nothing, man. Nothing. Let’s get your idiot ass back to the room, then I’ll go and get you some ice cream from the kitchens.”

“Strawberry cheesecake, please,” Lance mumbles, allowing Hunk to lead him along.

This is what he gets for targeting the Galaxy Garrison’s star pilot: a big ol’ embarrassing memory to haunt him in the middle of the night for probably years to come.

Awesome.

☆ ☆ ☆

#klance #klance fanfiction #keithtober2022 #keith kogane #lance mcclain #voltron #voltron fanfiction #renfic

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vldkeith · 2 years

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julance☀️🌊🚀 week one: beach 🏖🐚 or family

a/n: i made it. this one's short, i'm trying to get back into the groove of writing!! hope u enjoy nonetheless <3

read on ao3

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

Lance stretches out luxuriously, folding his feet into the hot sand beneath him.

This…is the life.

It’s midafternoon on a Monday, so the area of beach he and Keith have claimed is pretty empty—so empty, in fact, that Lance can actually spot Keith about 20 feet away from him where he’s crouched near the shoreline, hand hovering over something. There’s a cool, mid-June breeze ruffling the palm trees above, and even the ocean itself seems to be in a good mood, lapping gently into the shore as if playfully nipping at Keith’s hands where Lance can see them.

You deserve this, Lance McClain , Lance tells himself smugly, pushing his heart-shaped sunglasses up a little more and tilting his head back to let the sunlight catch on his face. This world was soooo worth saving.

Before Lance can get too wrapped up in these self-congratulatory thoughts (hey, he’s got to cope in some way, right?), however, his the light spreading across his face is suddenly shadowed, and he squints open his eyes to see the face of Keith above him, looking nervous.

Lance cracks a smile and sits up lazily. “Welcome back. You finally gonna stop ignoring your boyfriend and sunbathe with me?”

Without making a sound, Keith shakes his head, and then quickly holds his hand out. It’s curled into a fist, like he’s got something clutched in it.

Lance looks at it, then slowly arches and eyebrow as he looks back up at Keith. “Yes…?”

Keith huffs as if Lance has done something exasperating, which he most certainly has not. “I have something for you,” he explains pointedly, though he’s still not quite meeting Lance’s eye. “Take it.”

He shakes his hand a little, emphasizing its existence to Lance, who relents and holds his palm out, quizzical. Immediately, something hard and a little bit sharp drops into Lance’s hand, and he peers closer to examine it.

Ridges line a surface of pure white, jutting out into tiny points that dot into neatly concaved edges, folding out like a fan. It’s a shell, almost the size of Lance’s palm, and a happy, indulgent smile stretches across Lance’s face as he curls his fingers around it.

“Nice shell,” he says instead of you’re so adorable or thank you for showing it to me. “It looks, like, exactly how a shell should look. You found a really perfect…” Lance trails off, having finally lifted his gaze from the fossil to find that the space where Keith had stood is completely vacant. Blinking in confusion, he looks around and spots Keith another 20 feet away, but in a different direction this time, folded into the same position and gazing intently at the ground.

“Um…nevermind, then,” Lance murmurs bemusedly to himself, laying the shell gently onto the beach towel beside him. Weirdo. Why would you give someone a random shell without saying anything else?

Apparently, as Lance will find five minutes later, because that hadn’t been exactly what Keith was doing.

When Keith shows up again this time, Lance is already sitting up, ready for him.

“You left your shell,” he says by way of greeting, folding his arms and looking Keith up and down critically. “I was trying to tell you how cool it was, but you very rudely left before I could.”

“Sorry.” Keith shrugs, and Lance is opening his mouth to reprimand Keith for such an apathetic response when, suddenly, something hard drops into his lap.

It’s salmon-colored this time, and far more decorated with sharp points and jagged edges; it has a small opening in the middle of itself, where it curls over like smooth cake frosting. Lance’s first instinct is to pick it up and put it to his ear, because maybe he’ll be able to “hear the ocean”—it’s a conch shell, of course. Lance understands all of this in about 3 seconds, but that’s not long enough to keep Keith from disappearing again; one second Lance is looking down at the shell, and the next time he looks up Keith is gone, leaving him thoroughly bewildered.

“Hey!” he shouts incredulously towards Keith’s back, picking up and waving both shells around as he does. “What do you want me to do with these shells?!”

After that, they just keep on coming.

During the next two visits from Keith, Lance tries to ask him what his plan is; in return, he receives a very pretty spotted white shell the size of his thumb, and then a spiral cone shell, along with a tiny smile. Maybe it was that smile, the disarming nature of it, that makes Lance give up and flop back onto his towel, allowing Keith to come and go as he pleases, dropping off shells all the while; maybe it’s that Lance knows how futile it is to try to get something out of Keith if he doesn’t want to share it. Regardless, Lance surrenders to Keith’s whims, and merely eyes him with a wary sort of distance every time he returns and leaves again, utterly bemused.

The fifth shell is a bright speckled orange, the kind this Lance’s mother would love to fashion into a necklace.

The sixth is a beige snail shell—Keith had seemed especially excited about that one, so Lance put it into his own pocket protectively.

The seventh shell is a rather incredible blue, deep and vibrant and fan-shaped much like the first one was. At this one, Lance can’t help the noise of delight that comes out upon laying eyes on it, and he raises it to the sun appreciatively.

Having learned by now that Keith’s plan is just to dump a shell on him and then leave, Lance doesn’t bother speaking aloud the admiring comments in his mind; until, however, Keith actually flops down onto the sand next to him and gives him a tired, slightly sweaty smile.

“There,” he says with the air of a cat who’s just caught a perfect fish, “I did it.”

“Oh, are you finally going to tell me why I have this pile of shells now?” Lance asks, turning his body fully to face Keith in eager anticipation. “I’ve been taking really good care of these shells for you, you know, even though you haven’t told me once what this was about—”

“They’re just pretty,” Keith interrupts abruptly, shrugging. Lance shuts his mouth, caught off guard by the open honesty in Keith’s voice. “I was looking for a blue one specifically, but I found other pretty ones and I just wanted you to have them.”

If it were possible, Lance swears he’d have huge hearts obscuring his eyes right about now, so cute is Keith’s explanation right now. It’s so cute that Lance puts down his shiny new blue shell and tackles Keith in a hug, causing them both to fall into the sand.

Lance lands on top of Keith and immediately starts kissing him senseless all over his face. “Why are you so cute, Kogane?” he says in between kisses, deftly dodging Keith’s protesting hands and shoves as he does.

“Shut up!” Keith sputters, and finally heaves Lance off of him. He lands back on the beach towel, grinning a huge, lovestruck grin.

“It’s nice to be reminded that you actually do like me,” Lance says cheekily, but with no small amount of fondness. Keith scoffs, and punches his arm, but huddles up close to Lance a moment later like the cat he is.

“I more than like you,” he mutters as Lance puts an arm around him happily. “I wouldn’t spend, like, 30 minutes seashell hunting if I just liked you.”

Lance hums. “It was more like an hour, I think.”

Keith jerks up a little to glare at Lance. “Was not. Liar.”

“I don’t know, it felt like a full 60 minutes to me…”

“I’ll give you 45. Maybe. But that’s still pushing it.”

Lance laughs, pressing a wet, annoying kiss to Keith’s cheek and scooping his shells into his hands.

“I’m gonna ask Mama to make me a necklace out of these. All seven of ‘em.”

He feels rather than sees Keith cringe. “Jesus, that sounds ugly.”

“Yeah,” Lance affirms fondly. He could probably make it work, though.

☕️ko-fi

#klance #klance fanfiction #julance2022 #lance mcclain #voltron #voltron fanfiction #keith kogane #renfic #WHEW. OK! this is so Nothing but its okay. its okay

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vldkeith · 2 years

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keithtober🔪🎃💢 week four: conspiracy theory or halloween🎃

team voltron takes a trip to notoriously high-quality halloween superstore, spirit halloween. keith is emotional about it.

ko-fi | read on ao3 (leave a kudos there if you enjoyed, please!)

a/n: HAPPY HALLOWEEN & KEITHTOBER!! had lots of fun. hope y'all enjoyed <3

When Shiro finally manages to pull into a parking spot after having spent ten minutes driving around just to find one that wouldn’t force him to attempt parallel parking, everyone spills out with cheers of excitement and relief. Keith gets swept along, hurrying out after Lance (who turns around and smoothly offers him a hand to help, which Keith takes with a roll of his eyes) with Pidge pointedly nudging closer and closer to him every second he waits. Hunk is already catching up to Allura, enthusiastically explaining once more the function of a Spirit Halloween—a one-stop spot for Halloween costumes and decorations.

“And it’s cheap,” he overhears Hunk warn for perhaps the twentieth time, “so, you know, don’t expect too much.”

Allura’s response to that is to, again, ask what Halloween is, and that’s when Keith tunes out, because they’ve all tried to varying degrees of success to answer that question for the past 45 minutes of traffic and he’s kind of over it.

“Everybody stick together,” Shiro calls out, and then pauses, confused. It probably has something to do with the fact that he just implied some kind of danger in the Spirit Halloween parking lot. He shakes his head and turns to Keith, exasperated. “I can’t turn it off sometimes.”

Keith gives Shiro a consoling pat on the arm and then promptly strides ahead of him, tapping lightly on Lance’s shoulder and then shirking to the side when Lance turns to look, avoiding him.

“Hey,” he says, grinning when Lance starts a little, clearly not expecting Keith to be on his left instead of right side.

“Weirdo,” Lance says fondly once his gaze has caught on Keith’s face, twirling around and enveloping Keith in his arms to give him a quick, squeezing hug and small kiss on the cheek. “You’re cute, though.”

Their disgusting couple behavior is met with various groans and sounds of retching from the surrounding group, to which Keith flips them all off and Lance sticks out his tongue, tugging Keith closer to him and resting his hand on his hip, only slightly possessive. Keith fits himself snugly under Lance’s arm, ignoring the plethora of rolling eyes around him.

“Have I mention that I’m never letting you make fun of Adam and I ever again?” Shiro comments pointedly.

The group makes their way across the dismal, cracked parking lot toward the looming yet unassuming square concrete building, with its hung orange sign sporting the words “Spirit Halloween” the only indication that the whole place isn’t abandoned. As they draw closer, Keith can see the rows of costumes vaguely through the windows, and feels his excitement mounting despite himself. It’s his first year back on Earth, the first time he’s been able to even entertain the notion of doing silly recreational activities like this, let alone actually engage in them. It feels special, somehow, even if all they’re doing is going to a cheap Halloween superstore.

One look at the faces of his teammates—well, nowadays friends might actually be a better word—tells Keith that he’s not the only one feeling this way. There’s an air of buzzing excitement, like they’re kids again, experiencing the simple joy of going out for some Halloween tricks and treats and atmosphere. No defending of the universe necessary.

Keith and his dad used to visit these stores every Halloween season, searching up each that popped up near them and going there to check out the decorations and animatronics. The memory is nostalgic and only a little painful, now; as they step through the threshold and are met with a cave-like tunnel built out of shoddy construction material, Keith thinks maybe this experience will act as a balm to soothe the associations he otherwise has with this store.

“This isn’t scary at all,” Pidge sniffs, poking at the wall clearly made out of cardboard and paper. “You’d think a multi-million-dollar corporation could spring for some better structures, but—”

She cuts himself off with a scream as, seemingly out of nowhere, a black and red spider leaps toward her, shrieking wildly. Pidge jumps back squarely into Shiro, who catches him and reflexively swoops him out of harm’s way in a single, severe motion. The rest of the group, frozen solid from the suddenness of it all, takes a moment to locate the soft, flat switch on the ground with a cord trailing behind it, connecting it to the spider. Pidge, emerging from hiding behind Shiro, must notice it too, because her eyes widen and she groans, slapping his forehead against Shiro’s back.

Everyone else bursts into laughter.

“Nice job, Pidge,” Lance chortles, shaking his head and stuffing his hands into his pockets before striding confidently further into the store, leaving Keith behind him. He walks straight onto the switch for a second spider, and screams louder than Pidge did as he jumps away.

“Nice job, Lance!” Pidge intones mockingly. He ducks past Lance, sticking out his tongue, and wanders over to a different animatronic, walking carefully this time.

“Yeah, that was a loss for me,” Lance admits, his tone still breathy from fear. He shrugs at the rest of the group, smiling sheepishly.

“Oh, my!” Allura’s voice sounds excitedly from somewhere to Keith’s left, and he turns to see her standing in front of a large figure of a woman in a nurse’s outfit, her eyes wide with wonder. “Who is she? Is she real?”

Keith nearly chokes on his own laughter. Shiro replies kindly, “Um, no, she’s not. She’s just a…well, something like a puppet.”

“How did we come into a Spirit Halloween and not explain animatronics to her?” Hunk whisper-groans, shaking his head.

Allura frowns. “Is she based on anyone real?”

Lance and Hunk exchange looks. “I sure hope not,” Hunk says.

“Don’t be rude!” Allura rounds on them, her face so open and genuine that Keith immediately knows she isn’t playing a joke. “She is lovely! Just look at the wonderful accessory she has around her eyes, it’s so innovative!”

Keith cranes his neck around her to examine the animatronic who, indeed, has a “bloodied” bandage wrapped around the top of her face, two sunken circles of red outlined where the eyes should be. Aside from that, she has orange, veiny skin, sunken cheeks, gnarled fingers stretched out toward the nearest bystander, and a snarling open mouth.

It seems Allura is very taken with her. Keith doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the animatronic is meant to be horrifying, not attractive.

“She does have shiny skin,” he volunteers, and hears Lance snort beside him. Allura gives him the biggest grin, though, and Keith feels the Sims relationship increase icon pop above both of their heads.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Allura responds, turning happily back to the animatronic.

“We’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” Hunk says, voice only betraying a hint of amused sarcasm.

Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Shiro plunge forward into the tunnel, gawking at the three or four other animatronics present. There’s a Cerberus animatronic Keith is particularly fond of, and he purposefully sets it off snarling and barking three times until Shiro pulls him away, complaining of a headache from the loud noise. The moment they emerge from the tunnel, Lance grabs Keith’s hand and drags him over to the comparatively empty costume section—Keith’s least favorite part of the store.

“This area is boring,” Keith complains even as he lets Lance tug him further in. “Is there a reason we’re going this way?”

Lance hums a little bit. “Not really. Mostly wanted to go somewhere less crowded so I could do this.” He comes to a halt in a corner, sandwiched between ghostly masks and gore-covered saw and sword props, and leans forward to give Keith a slow, lengthy kiss, right there in the store. Keith lets out a muffled noise of surprise at first, but almost embarrassingly quickly allows his eyes to slide shut and reciprocates the kiss.

It lasts probably longer than it should’ve, considering they are in a not-empty store, but it’s still over quickly enough. When Lance releases him, Keith feels slightly dizzy, and wants more.

“You’re cute when you’re interested in things,” Lance says quietly by way of explanation, giving Keith another quick kiss on the cheek. “You make it so hard to not kiss you.”

“When I’m interested in things? You’re embarrassing,” Keith says, though he’s very obviously pleased. “We can’t just make out in this Spirit Halloween. Come on.”

“Aw, can’t we?”

Keith ignores Lance’s cheeky question and busies himself with examining the swords and knives, most of which are entirely impractical for actual murdering, but still cool enough to look at. He picks one up and swings it experimentally—yeah, definitely just light, boring plastic. It fills Keith with joy to not be holding a real weapon for once.

“Keith!” Hunk shouts excitedly from a few aisles away from him, and he and Lance both start guiltily, hoping he hadn’t seen anything. Apparently oblivious, Hunk’s next words are, “I found a perfect costume for you.”

“Oh, really.” Keith’s tone is already unimpressed. “Let me guess, it’s…”

Keith approaches where Hunk is standing, examining the rectangular package he’s clutching in his hands.

Yep. “...an alien.” And a stereotypical green-skinned, bug-eyed one at that. Keith shakes his head. “You ever gonna find a new joke, big guy?”

Hunk shrugs, Keith’s criticism rolling off of him glamorously. “There’s never gonna be a funnier joke than Galra Keith. Sorry, Galra Keith.”

On cue, Pidge pops up from behind Hunk, startling Keith, who hadn’t even realized she was anywhere near them in the store. She waggles her eyebrows and, brandishing a costume package of her own, quips, “How about Cowboy Keith?”

“Yeehaw,” Keith drones tonelessly, taking the teasing in stride. Suddenly, Hunk’s expression brightens, and he waves someone over.

“Shiro! Thoughts on cowboy alien Keith?”

Shiro wanders over, hands tucked casually into his pockets, and gives the costumes a once over. He huffs out a laugh. “Either of you ever watched Cowboy Bebop?”

“Oh, booo, Spike’s too cool for Keith,” Pidge answers immediately, shaking his head in an almost offensively resolute way, at least to Keith. “We mean, like, literally a green alien with a cowboy hat on. That’s the image Keith gives off.”

“I’ve literally dressed up as Spike before, but okay,” Keith says, rolling his eyes. Shiro nods sagely.

“It’s true. I was the corgi.”

Keith escapes the mocking quickly after that, heading back to the animatronics he was rudely ushered away from earlier. There’s a giant figure just slightly to the side of the tunnel-cave he’d passed through to enter the store, with a long black cloak and a beak made of bone. Keith presses the square switch on the ground with his foot, and the figure’s eyes light up red, his head craning forward and backward unnaturally as he says in a gravelly, booming voice, “I knew you would be here soon; you could say I have eyes all over! Remember, wherever you run, my crows and I will find you!"

“Nice,” Keith says out loud, noting the title of the animatronic is “Lord Raven.” Pretty fucking metal if you ask him. Especially the bone face.

He wanders, then, around the rest of the animatronics, noticing that Allura has finally left her star-crossed love and is enthusiastically browsing shirts with Lance at her side, who is trying to explain the jokes on them and apparently not doing very well at it. It’s strange to keep running into his friends wherever he goes; Keith isn’t used to even having enough friends to see multiple of them at different parts of a store. The thought that he isn’t as isolated and alone as he used to be warms him, and he approaches Lance and Allura quietly, hoping not to interrupt or disturb their conversation.

“—Easy Bake Oven, which is, like, a toy from the…’90s? 2000s? Sometime around there, that was meant for children, and—”

“Children?” Allura’s tone is scandalized. She looks back at the shirt in question, which features three little girls dancing in a graveyard around a floating pink oven. “They’ve made the children’s toy…evil?”

Lance rubs the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, it’s…Halloween.”

“They could also use their powers from it for good,” Keith cuts in, making them both turn, surprised, to look at him. “Kind of like you did.” Something about today is making Keith want to win points in Allura’s book, it seems.

Allura nods thoughtfully. “I see, I see…So the oven’s power comes with great responsibility of choice.” When she looks straight at Keith, her eyes are shining. “Thank you, Keith! I feel like I understand this article of clothing much better now. I’m going to buy it.”

The thought of Allura sporting the “Easy-Bake Coven” tshirt feels akin to spotting a frog on a lily pad, so he voices emphatic support for her decision. Lance just shakes his head, amused.

“Romelle’ll like it,” Keith says, making Allura smile even wider.

He and Lance split up from Allura again, promising that they’ll meet up with her later at the cash register to help her figure out how to purchase something. “Though mullet here has a record of purposefully not purchasing things, so who knows if he actually even knows how,” Lance had said to this, earning himself an elbow in the gut from Keith.

They find themselves idling in the décor section near the middle of the store, holding hands and pointing out fun/funny trinkets intermittently. Lance says that he’ll buy Keith a small skeleton-cat figure at one point after he catches Keith patting its head, and Keith responds with a hug so tight and enthusiastic that Lance gets thrown off a bit.

“Woah, hey, it’s not that expensive…” He still wraps his arms around Keith, though, hugging just as tightly as Keith is. Keith falls in love a little bit more.

“It’s not just that,” he says truthfully. “I’m just—Like, I’ve never had this before. Well, not since my dad died, anyway. And having you, and the team, here with me is just…” Keith trails off, unable to find the right words to express how much this means to him, how Lance’s simple, seemingly thoughtless act of kindness had tipped him over the edge, but he doesn’t have to.

Lance squeezes him once more. “I get it,” he murmurs, and then dips his head down to place a feather-light kiss on Keith’s neck. Goosebumps erupt from the spot all the way down his spine—a lovely sensation.

When Lance finally leans away, his dimples are showing with his smile. “Well, hopefully this is just the first of many good things that’ll happen this Halloween!” he declares. “I’m going to make this, like, the best holiday of your life, because you’re too cute when you’re happy.” He tugs Keith closer by his hips again and adds, “And I love you. Or something.”

Keith laughs, light and airy. “Or something,” he agrees, and meets Lance’s lips with his.

It’s great to have family again.

☆ ☆ ☆

#klance #klance fanfiction #keithtober2022 #keith kogane #voltron #voltron fanfic #renfic #ITS DONE WOOOO

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vldkeith · 2 years

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keithtober🔪🎃💢 week three: birthday🎉 or gay

keith decides that the best way to spend his birthday is driving around town and getting free food from restaurants. lance is perplexed, but supportive.

ko-fi | read on ao3

The moment Keith wakes up, he reaches over to his bedside table, turns off his alarm, and grabs the piece of paper he’d written up last night.

It’s do or die. Today is the only day he can accomplish this. The list of restaurants stares back at him, promising hours of commuting and awkward conversation.

Keith turns over and nudges Lance awake—not unkindly. Lance stirs a little bit, murmuring under his breath, and then opens his eyes blearily.

“What...Why are you awake? It’s early, it’s your—” Lance starts, cuts himself off, and then sits up in a sudden burst of wakefulness and energy. He’d gone to bed without his shirt on last night, and Keith allows himself a single moment of distraction, drinking in the always-pleasing sight of Lance’s smooth brown skin and chest. “It’s your birthday!” Lance finishes in a high-pitched, slightly panicked tone.

He turns to Keith, then, a broad smile stretching across his face, the sleepiness from before vanishing.

“Happy birthday, Keith!” he says, pulling Keith close for an unexpectedly strong hug, given he’s just woken up. Keith laughs, amused that Lance had worked himself up into excitement without him even having to do or say anything. It’s endearing, and sweet.

“Thanks,” Keith says, voice muffled from where his cheek is pressed into Lance’s shoulder. Lance squeezes him once more, and then lets go, giving him a sly smile.

Keith’s breath catches as Lance lays a hand low on his hip, tightening ever so slightly. “Want one of your gifts now? Since you woke us up so early…”

Lance starts sliding his hand down Keith’s body, and Keith swallows, momentarily torn. He shakes himself off, though; he’s got no time for this! He has a mission, and god damn him if he isn’t going to complete it this time.

Gently clasping his hands around Lance’s wandering one, Keith removes it from his person and shakes his head forlornly.

“I’d love to,” he begins emphatically, leaning forward to quickly kiss Lance’s cheek as he registers his confused expression, “but I got things to do today. And I’m hoping you’ll help me with them?”

Lance blinks and arches an eyebrow. “What kind of things?” he asks suspiciously.

In response, Keith brandishes his list of restaurants, grinning. “I made this list a few months ago. It’s every restaurant within a 20-mile radius of us that offers free food on peoples’ birthdays.”

Realization dawns on Lance’s face. “Wait,” he begins, disbelief etching itself into his tone, “you’re not seriously planning to—”

“Go to every one of these restaurants today and get my free shit?” Keith grins and folds the list up, slipping it into his pajama pocket. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m planning.”

There’s a light thump as Lance’s head lands back onto his pillow. “Oh my god,” he says with feeling. “You’re insane. Who wants to spend their birthday running around to a bunch of chain restaurants?”

“That feeling is exactly what they’re banking on!” Keith fully orients himself toward Lance, sitting cross-legged on the bed, eyes bright with conviction and determination. “These places reason that you’ll probably only go to one restaurant on your birthday, not all of them. So they don’t consider it an industry risk to offer this kind of thing in the first place.”

“I don’t think it really hurts any of these places to give you one free meal one day a year,” Lance points out skeptically. Keith huffs.

“Maybe not individually. But I’m still kind of getting one over on the restaurant chain industry as a whole, you know? These meals’ll last me days after today.”

Lance sighs and mutters, “If they don’t go bad first...”

Ignoring Lance’s silly concerns, Keith swings his legs over the edge of the bed, planting his feet firmly on the floor. “Well, I’m getting dressed,” he declares, standing up. His words are met with a loud, resounding groan from Lance. “I want you to come with me, but it’s your choice. Like, I’ll be mad if you don’t come, but it’s your choice.”

Keith suspects that the only reason Lance doesn’t throw a pillow at him as he makes his way to their shared closet is because it’s his birthday, if Lance’s murderous glare is anything to go by.

Within the next hour, however, Lance and Keith are climbing into Keith’s small, blazing red car. Keith’s always been convincing like that. Lance is still yawning sleepily in the passenger seat, though, and to be fair to him, it’s barely 9AM and Lance rarely gets up before 10 on his days off.

“Our first stop,” Keith declares, backing out of the parking lot, “is Starbucks. Think that’ll help you stop being so sleepy?”

Immediately, Lance lights up, and Keith can just hear him running through which Frappuccino he’s going to get in his head. He raises his eyebrows at Keith playfully first, though. “Really? You’re willing to go to Starbucks? Isn’t that a bit corporate for you?”

“I’m not actually giving them money,” Keith points out, and maybe because it’s a good argument or maybe because it’s Keith’s birthday, Lance doesn’t bother to respond. He merely rolls his eyes and takes out his phone, scrolling through the Starbucks app (one that Keith had recently downloaded, so yes, it actually exists somehow) and talking out loud about the pros and cons of Pumpkin Spice versus Caramel Frappuccino.

If Keith is being honest, he has no idea what to get at Starbucks. It’s not somewhere he goes regularly, mostly based on principle, but also just because their closest Starbucks is never on Keith’s way to anything. He could ask Lance, but their tastes in coffee are rather...different. Meaning, Lance does not have taste in coffee and instead has taste in vanilla syrup and milk with a little coffee added, while Keith actually does have taste in coffee because he drinks real coffee. Simple.

They pull up to the carbon-copy Starbucks building with its boxy stature and brown bricks and make their way inside, rubbing their hands together against the chill of the air. When they approach the counter, the barista smiles at them.

“Hi, what can I get started for you?” he says, and Keith takes a moment to appreciate the artful fall of his curly black hair across his forehead. He looks extremely fashionable.

Keith swallows. Is he about to look like a fucking idiot?

Thankfully, Lance steps in to order first. “Can I get a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino, please?” he says, meeting the barista’s sleepy smile with a flashier one of his own. The barista gives him a weird look, huffs out a laugh, and then nods, inputting the item.

“Sure can. Anything for you?” He turns to Keith.

“Actually, uh...” Keith fumbles with his phone and opens up the Starbucks app, navigating to the “Rewards” section like he’s practiced. He turns the screen to the barista, who peers at it. “It’s my birthday? I get a free drink, I think.”

“Oh!” The barista nods quickly. “Happy birthday. In that case, let me finish up his transaction, then we can do yours.”

“Thanks.”

Lance gives Keith an encouraging smile before handing over his money, and Keith takes these last few seconds to anxiously stare at the menu, trying to decide what to order.

Finally, once Lance has gotten out of the way and Keith steps forward, he thinks he knows what to get.

“Can I get a Caramel Macchiato with...less sugar?”

The barista gives Keith a funny look. “Less sugar?”

Fuck. Keith falters, “Um, yeah...Do you not put sugar in your drinks?”

“We do, but—” The barista cuts himself off with a laugh, shaking his head. “You don’t come here often, do you?”

“How’d you guess?” Keith responds flatly, making the barista smile more. He clears his throat.

“I think I know what to get you. What size? Small, medium, large?”

“Large.”

The transaction goes smoothly after that, and Keith won’t deny the rush of satisfaction he gets when he doesn’t even have to take out his card or cash. Their drinks get to them in what seems to Keith to be record time, and he watches with only a slightly sick stomach as Lance excitedly sucks on his cold, milkshake-like drink.

“That’s not even coffee anymore,” he says, only a little judgmental. Lance snorts.

“It’s worse than you think. This is the cream version. There literally isn’t coffee in here at all.” Keith’s mouth falls open, and Lance cackles, swinging an arm around Keith and giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek.

“You’re disgusting,” Keith mutters, scrubbing at his face.

He takes a sip of his coffee, and is pleasantly surprised—it’s not overly sweet at all! In fact, it’s actually pretty good. He tells Lance this, and Lance arches an eyebrow, unconvinced, and takes Keith’s cup to try it himself.

His face screws up in something akin to pain immediately after, and he lurches away from the cup as if it’s hurt him.

“What the fuck,” he says, turning the cup around with hateful eyes. “What did they—oh my god.” Lance shoves the cup in Keith’s face and points at the label. Keith only gets as far as his name before Lance is exclaiming, “There’s literally no vanilla in this, Keith.”

Keith has no idea what that means, but Lance’s horrified face tells him plainly that it’s not good or normal. He shrugs—if it tastes good, does it really matter?

The rest of the day goes much like that first trip to Starbucks. They hit up several different restaurants even before noon—Red Robin, Applebees, Chili’s, Chipotle, Noodles & Company, Qdoba, Steak N’ Shake, and Waffle House, to name a few. It’s a road trip of American staples, and as Keith looks through the mirror at his backseat, nearly overflowing with food already, he’s stricken with nerves and hesitantly asks Lance if he’s making a mistake.

“Oh,” Lance replies, waving a hand vaguely around and talking through a mouthful of (free) fries, “probably.”

Their next stop is Baskin Robins, wherein Lance somehow isn’t sugared-out enough from the Frappuccino to abstain from getting himself a birthday cake ice cream along with Keith’s—Keith decides to eat his that moment as well, so it won’t melt. The treat gives them both silly blue lips, and they both giggle and kiss in the car until the color is gone. Krispy Kreme, Longhorn Steakhouse (“Not as good as Texas Roadhouse,” Keith sniffs upon entry), and Jack in the Box are next, filling Keith’s car up even more. The smell of food begins to permeate the air to the point that Keith feels nauseous the second he sits back down at the wheel. Even Lance, who doesn’t let food-related illness bother him too much, looks a little green by the end of it.

Keith looks helplessly down at his crumpled list. They’re just barely over halfway through. He feels ill. His car is overflowing with food—free food, yes, but in the end just...food. Keith wonders if his appetite will ever return. The longer he spends doing this, the more he’s convinced it won’t.

“Hey, Keith...” Lance ventures as they’re driving to the next destination, Denny’s. “I know you wanted to do this, but...”

Keith groans. He knew this was coming. “It feels like losing to give up now, though...” he all but whines, sadly flipping on his turn signal. They’re only five minutes from Denny’s right now.

He hears rather than sees Lance shuffle in his seat. “What if I told you that I...have something we need to get to soon? So we should go home and get ready?”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “What is it?”

Lance sighs. “Oh, you know...” he begins, his voice doing that high-pitched thing it always does when he’s trying to avoid saying something, “just a, uh...reservation?”

Keith’s answering silence is brought by confusion, whereas Lance’s is coated with dread. It goes on long enough that Lance huffs out an “oh my god” and continues,

“Like…at a restaurant?”

Keith actually sits back further in his seat, though he manages to keep his eyes steadfastly on the road. “You...made us dinner reservations?” he asks calmly.

Lance nods. “At Sugiyama.”

Sugiyama. The best Japanese restaurant in town, the one he’d only been able to go to once before because Shiro had brought him and was willing to pay. It’s expensive, and delicious, and perfect for his birthday.

Damn Lance.

“Why the fuck would you let me do this if you had reservations for us at Sugiyama?”

“Well!” Lance’s hands fly out in front of him, and Keith can see him waving them around from the corner of his eye. “I just! You seemed really determined! I didn’t want to ruin that. Plus, it’s still free food!”

“Jesus Christ.” If Keith could, he’d slam his head into the steering wheel. As it is, though, he just turns into the nearest parking lot—a random church, go figure—puts the car in park, and finally turns to face Lance. “You are so annoying,” he says, and then pulls Lance in for a deep, indulgent kiss. “Thank you.”

When he’s released, Lance looks a little out of it, and he blinks several times before coming back to himself. Once he does, Keith sees his cheeks and ears begin to hue scarlet.

He rubs at the back of his neck. “No problem. I was just saying because, you know, the reservation’s for five, and it’s three thirty now, so we should probably try to go home and get ready—”

Keith exhales a laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah. We should. You’re still gonna help me put all this food away, right?”

“Of course!” Lance seems to be bouncing back, judging by the crinkles near his eyes and the smile on his (slightly red, oops) lips. “I still think this was worth it. You have so much free food now!”

“It’s worth it for my, like, mental satisfaction,” Keith replies airily, putting the car into reverse. “Don’t know if any of this food is actually good though.”

“We’re avoiding the only place I was really worried about. I don’t trust Denny’s,” Lance says, wrinkling his nose. “Reminds me of food goo too much.”

“As if.”

At least if Keith’s going to go through the ordeal of experiencing numerous fast food American cuisines today—even free ones—he’ll be able to end it off with something actually good.

☆ ☆ ☆

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEITH!!

#klance #klance fanfiction #keithtober2022 #keith kogane #voltron #voltron fanfic #renfic #reqally NOT a fan of this one god bless. its here now tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#sorry i hate being self deprectating abt fics i justttt this one was hard

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vldkeith · 2 years

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jealousy, thy name is keith

2.2k words | canonverse | klance | fic for @earlyseasonsklzine!! :D

a/n: rlly proud of this and of the zine itself. i love writing jealous keith.

summary:

If Lance flirts with one more alien girl, Keith is going to punch those stupid pick-up lines right out of him and tape his mouth shut. No, there is no deeper meaning to this. Lance is just annoying. Obviously.

☕️ko-fi - if you liked the fic please consider buying me a coffee!! ty :3

#klance #klance fanfiction #klance zine #keith kogane #lance mcclain #voltron #voltron fanfiction #renfic

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vldkeith · 2 years

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keithtober🔪🎃💢 week one: texas or japan🇯🇵

shiro wonders if keith might like to reconnect with family someday.

☕️ko-fi | 🔗read on ao3 - please leave a kudos on ao3 if u read this story (even if it's on tumblr!)

For the past hour, Keith’s been doing his monthly knife maintenance in the Castleship kitchen—sharpening it, polishing it, that sort of thing. Despite the tediousness, it’s actually a pretty serene exercise, and Keith has discovered throughout the years that he enjoys this time of working methodically almost as much as he enjoys actually using his knife. It clears his mind, resets him a little; that’s why he always does it at the end of the month, so he can get a fresh start going next month.

That might’ve fallen by the wayside at this point, though. Keith estimates based on the knife’s dullness that it’s been a month since he last cleaned it, but he has no idea if it’s actually the end of the month on Earth in any way that matters. He’s been gone too long to keep track of things like that, and there’s no way he’s asking Lance, the only one who is actually keeping track of things like that.

He swipes once more, appreciating the shhhing! sound the action produces, and manages not to stab himself when someone appears suddenly right in front of him and he jumps about a mile high.

“Holy shit,” Keith curses, scrambling to get a hand around the handle of his knife, which just clattered onto the kitchen counter. He looks up quickly, sees a tuft of white hair, large muscles, and skin-tight clothes, and blows a strand of hair out of his face, annoyed. “Don’t sneak up on me when I’m doing this. I’ve told you that, like, a thousand times.”

“Sorry,” Shiro says, not sounding very sorry at all. He cranes his neck forward, examining Keith’s progress on the knife, and nods approvingly. “Glad to see you’re keeping up with this even now, though.”

“I’m not that incapable of routine,” Keith grumbles, though the response lacks bite. Shiro can be an annoying brother-dad, for sure, but an annoying brother-dad is leagues better than no brother-dad, and Keith had gotten too close to the latter to ever truly wish for Shiro’s absence again. Even now, his sudden appearance comforts Keith.

They both stand there for a moment in amicable silence, Shiro’s eyes flitting absently from the tip of Keith’s blade to the handle, before Keith grows tired of not saying anything. Shiro must’ve come for a reason, after all.

“So…?” he prompts, grasping his knife and swinging it deftly back into its sheath at his belt. He looks at Shiro expectantly.

Shiro lets out a half-laugh, amused. “So what?”

“I know you didn’t just come to grade my knife maintenance skills,” Keith responds drily, raising an eyebrow. “So, what is it? Did I fuck something up again? Leave the training robots on?”

A brief expression of sadness falls over Shiro’s face, like he’s actually hurt by the insinuation that he only shows up to berate Keith, and Keith hurries to correct himself.

“It was a joke,” he mutters, casting his eyes down. “Sorry.”

Shiro’s face lights up again, and he chuckles, reaching over to shove Keith lightly on the shoulder. The action still sends Keith stumbling about 5 inches back, though, because Shiro will never know his strength. “It’s okay. Should’ve known you were just being crabby.”

Keith mouths crabby to himself, half-mocking and half-amused, but Shiro breezes past the subject quickly before he has a chance to properly respond.

“You were right, though. I did come here for a reason.”

Immediately, Keith’s guard is up, years of disciplinary action from people who weren’t even Shiro flashing before his eyes and constructing a shield of bricks around him. He trusts Shiro more than that, though, and makes an effort not to let them pile up too high.

He stays silent, waiting for Shiro to get to the point. Eventually, Shiro sighs, raising his human hand to rub the back of his neck. “I’ve just been thinking, recently, and I wanted to know your thoughts on a certain…proposition.”

It’s not like Shiro to be this evasive—he’s not direct in the way someone like Keith is, but he doesn’t tend to waste time on hesitancy and nervousness. Keith regards Shiro suspiciously, his anxiety mounting with every passing second that Shiro doesn’t tell him what he’s getting at. Is everyone okay? Is he going to leave again? Keith’s stomach clenches painfully. He wouldn’t…

“I was wondering what you’d think about going to Japan with me someday.”

The words stop Keith in his tracks, and he’s at a complete, utter loss for a moment. The connection is clear as day—he’s Japanese, Shiro is Japanese, so why not make a joint trip at some point? But the implication of family, of genuine connection, makes Keith feel warm and nauseated at the same time.

“For—For what?” Keith croaks, and curses himself for allowing his voice to sound so vulnerable.

Shiro shrugs, but the motion is cautious, with an eye always trained on Keith for his reaction. “I have family there,” he says, talking slow like he’s choosing his words carefully, “that I’ve been meaning to visit for a while. I’d like you to meet them. And…if you have family there, too, then I’d like to meet them as well. If you’re comfortable with that.”

The mere thought of interacting with his extended family overwhelms Keith so fiercely that he has to stare at his shoes for a moment to get himself back in order, to get the room to stop being wavy and out of focus. He’s not going to think about that right now. “Where is your family in Japan?” he asks instead, forcing the subject away from his own direct relation.

Shiro hums a little, considering the question calmly. “I have some cousins and aunts and uncles in Miyagi, but my grandparents moved to Okinawa when my parents were young.”

“That’s where dad said his family was from,” Keith replies without thinking, so struck by the realization that Shiro has a relationship with the same place Keith’s dad did that he forgets how much he doesn’t want to talk about his own blood family. “Okinawa, I mean. His parents moved there when he was a teenager.”

“Really?” Shiro’s smile is broad, if a little exasperated. He shakes his head. “Well, it makes sense, I guess. With the American military base being there.”

Keith nods, remembering the sardonic, bitter comments his dad would make about the Okinawa military base. He was no nationalist by any means, but Keith had always gotten the impression that he resented the American government for having such a permanent, all-encompassing presence in Japan, of making Okinawa a military base first and a city second in the minds of the rest of the world. Keith, anti-imperialist as he always was, shared the sentiment.

By the knowing look Shiro is giving him, Keith suspects that maybe he feels the same way, too. Bold move from two guys ostensibly still in the U.S. military.

“I would love if we could go back together,” Shiro continues, his face open and earnest in the way only Shiro can be. Keith tries his best not to look away from such a blatant display of familial affection; he’s out of practice with this sort of thing, and it’s not like he was even very good at it before Shiro disappeared, anyway. But having two father figures abruptly taken from him has taught Keith that it does nobody any good to reject others’ attempts to be genuine like this, least of all himself.

He swallows hard. Perhaps he should extend that philosophy to Shiro’s offer, rather than just maintaining eye contact. “I…” he begins, but he’s not sure what to say, doesn’t know how to go about discussing this without shutting down or running away. Maybe he should just express that? “I don’t—I don’t really know what to say. It’s—like, a little scary, thinking about going there. I’ve never had contact with any of my family there. I kind of got the impression maybe they didn’t like dad or approve of him.”

Shiro frowns. “You think? Did he do anything?”

“Besides getting an alien girlfriend?” Keith asks wryly, half-smiling. “Not sure. But it would make sense that he would kind of…pull back from family after dealing with what happened with Krolia.” Keith lets his gaze drop, just this once. “I mean, would you want to bring your half-alien kid who might freak out and go alien berserk at any minute to meet your family?”

“Well, that is kind of what I’m offering to do right now, Keith,” Shiro says pointedly, making Keith turn scarlet.

“Okay,” Keith stammers, looking anywhere but at Shiro, “but that’s—that’s different?”

Shiro gives him a doubtful, amused look, and Keith huffs, folding his arms over his chest protectively.

“…Are you sure you want me meeting your family?” he asks quietly after a moment. Shiro sighs and reaches across the counter to lay a comforting hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“They already know about you, you know,” he starts, voice soft but firm, “and they’ve been asking to meet you for a while. They’re thrilled that you’re Japanese, because that’s common ground, but they also understand that you’re important to me. That you’re like my little brother. For that reason alone, they want to know you. Mostly so they can send you otoshidama お年玉.”

A chuckle breezes past Keith’s lips at that, and he finally meets Shiro’s eyes again, allowing the smile to stay on his face. This might be the first time Shiro has told Keith that he sees him as family too, he realizes. Warmth flows through his body, the kind he hasn’t been able to feel in years. “I…guess I’d like that. Mostly for the money.” He mirrors Shiro’s language back at him with a smirk, and Shiro laughs, squeezing his shoulder slightly before letting go.

“Excellent.” Shiro claps his hands together. “First thing we’ll do when we get out of this space hell is buy some tickets to Japan, then. If you and Lance aren’t too busy planning the wedding, of course,” he adds cheekily.

Keith honest-to-god squeaks a noise of surprise, sputtering, “What—What are you talking about, we aren’t even dating, he hates me, you’re fucking insane—” until Shiro silences him with a wave of his hand and a chortle.

“For now,” he says with a knowing smile, before straightening up and stretching out his back. “Anyway, I’m off to get Hunk and Pidge away from the training robots. I think they’re trying to program them to be waiters, and we really don’t need the castle’s bandwidth dealing with something like that.”

He turns to go, and Keith opens his mouth to say goodbye, but he’s cut off when Shiro suddenly pauses right in front of the door and glances back over his shoulder.

“As far as your family goes,” he begins, looking at Keith seriously, “we’ll do that when you’re ready. I won’t push you. But, think about it. It might be good for you.”

Keith takes a deep breath, and nods weakly. “Yeah. I will.”

“Thank you.” Shiro looks satisfied. He presses the button to activate the doors, and they open with a whoosh! “Wish me luck!”

“Good luck,” Keith calls as Shiro leaves, settling his head in his hands and tapping the handle of his knife idly.

It’s weird to have family again. It’ll be even weirder to have extended family, something he’s never experienced before. But it’s worth a try.

And who knows? Maybe someday Keith can build himself a life with a primary characteristic that isn’t isolation. His thoughts wander, only a little lovesick, to Lance, and then to Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Coran, Adam…

It’s possible he’s built that life for himself already. If he gives it a chance.

Now that is something that is totally going to wreck his loner brand image.

☆ ☆ ☆

#klance #klance fanfiction #keithtober2022 #keithtober #broganes #voltron #renfic #WOOO FIRST ONE

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vldkeith · 2 years

Text

julance☀️🌊🚀 week four: birthday 🎂🎉 or blue paladin

a/n: HAPPY BIRTHDAY LANCE!! i love you so much and i've only grown to love you more over the years. i hope everybody had fun with this julance and enjoyed these fics! thank you, hbd lance my love <3

🖼 companion art by @vldlance 🥺

read on ao3 (leave a kudos even if u read it on tumblr please!)

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

On one offhanded afternoon, Keith had happened to glance at the Earth calendar Lance and Hunk insisted on keeping in the shared living space as a reminder of home. He’d examined it rather apathetically, trying to figure out what the date was on Earth more out of boredom than any real need to know. By his calculations, it was July 21st—oh, so, after July 4th… Keith had thought, mind already wandering away from the task.

It wasn’t until he’d reached the door to leave that he realized July 21st was only seven days before July 28th—A.K.A., his boyfriend’s birthday.

Shit.

He had a week.

Keith allowed himself one day to panic, one day to desperately try to come up with something to get Lance without help from anyone, and emerged the next morning with a crushed spirit and nothing to show for it. He’d never been very good at gifts—the first gift he’d gotten Shiro was a gift card to Lowes, for god’s sake—and this is his and Lance’s first event together as a couple, Keith’s first opportunity to prove that he can make his boyfriend happy with a thoughtful present.

And he couldn’t think of anything.

Despairing, Keith had resolved to consult the advice of the first person he saw (other than Lance, of course) that morning after he emerged from his room. Perhaps the fact that he then almost immediately ran head-long into Coran the second he stepped out of the doorway was a sign from god.

Or the devil. It depends on how things go right now.

“Keith, my boy!” Coran exclaims, hand raising instantly to fix his mildly-tousled hair from their collision. “You nearly scared the living daylights out of me! Watch where you’re going, eh?”

The way Coran says it is good-natured, but Keith still has the teenage impulse to roll his eyes and snark back that maybe Coran should also watch where he’s going, thank you very much. He tamps that down, though, because he has learned the hard way that antagonizing someone you need something from is never the best way to get what you want. “Sorry. Hey, can I ask you something, though?”

Coran raises an eyebrow, a glint in his eye that instantly makes Keith feel like a child seeking advice from a wise uncle, or perhaps a grandfather. Keith’s not sure Coran fits either of those bills. “Of course! What can I help you with?”

“Lance’s birthday is coming up…” Keith begins hesitantly, reluctant to admit he’s having so much difficulty with this, “…and I have no idea what to get him. Any ideas?”

Instantly, Coran’s eyes are shining, and a wide smile stretches across his face, crinkling his mustache. He throws his hands up and declares, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask, my boy! Yes, yes, I have the perfect idea! Come, come!”

Bemused and a little unsettled by the enthusiastic response, Keith allows Coran to lead him to the front of the castleship, where he begins to quickly fiddle with the holographic maps.

“I had an inkling that you would need a little help, you see,” Coran says as he does this, bustling around and making noises that sound like several pots and pans banging together, “so I took it upon myself to think up a truly fantastic, show-stopping gift idea ahead of time! Oh, ever since you and Lance sealed the ol’ smackaroo, I had a premonition, of sorts, that you would seek my counsel for this ever-important matter because, and I’m sorry to say this, Red Paladin, but you are not exactly the tip of the Quindylzic when it comes to emotional intelligence!”

Keith is still trying to figure out how offended he should be by Coran’s when suddenly, with a great whooshing sound, blue stars and planets snap into being around him, twinkling and hovering idly. Coran claps his hands, satisfied.

“Perfect! Now, Keith, let’s get you over here—”

Coran grips Keith’s shoulders and steers him to the completely opposite side of the room, planting him squarely in front of the floating holographs of the universe. Keith can’t help but feel a bit in awe of the whole thing, even though he’s seen it multiple times by now, and even though Coran seems to have no trouble in manhandling him without his consent.

“There we go. Now then!” Coran clasps his hands together excitedly, taking up position to his right and gazing toward the map. “Your gift to the Blue Paladin, my bumbling Whizzmawoll, is going to be his very own star.”

There is a beat of silence in which Coran beams at Keith and Keith becomes increasingly confused and agitated.

“Um…” Keith tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Well—we, uh, have something like that on Earth. I kind of feel like it’s not really…enough.”

The smile on Coran’s face wilts slightly. “Do you? I’m surprised, I—I must confess, I did not think Earth had reached far enough into space to deal in the star business.”

Keith shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know, you just contact NASA or the government or whatever, pick a star, and then get a piece of paper saying the star is yours. It’s not like you own it in any real way.”

“Ohhhhh!” Coran breathes out emphatically—and then, wide grin back on his face, continues, “I see!”

He throws an arm around Keith and winks. “Well, Emo Paladin of Fire,” he proclaims, voice infused with triumph, “I can safely assure you that, with my method, he will receive much more than a paltry piece of paper.”

Keith stares at the glass of his helmet, lit up to tell him that he’s arrived at the place he needs to be in order to purchase a star. Coran had spent a good 45 minutes detailing the grandness of owning a star, the status it confers upon the owner, the rich history of privatization and battles through which the industry finally emerged. It had been more than a little overwhelming, and Keith had wondered briefly if he’d even be allowed to step foot into such an extravagant place, convinced that star dealings must happen in opulent casinos and hotels meant for the superrich, plated in gold or Quintessence or whatever stood for value out in space like this.

The place Keith is standing in front of, though…God. There’s no way around it.

It looks like the fucking DMV.

A bland brown box-shaped building looms unimpressively in front of Keith, it’s double-doors thrown open enough so that Keith can get a view of the inside, which is lined with chairs facing toward a large desk counter where five aliens sit, conversing with customers. As Keith stands, frozen, trying to figure out if he’s made a wrong turn somewhere, an amplified voice calls out a series of garbled words Keith cannot understand, and an alien rises from the chair and makes its way slowly to the front.

Keith can already feel the itchy restlessness crawling up his skin. He hates the DMV. He hates anything that operates like the DMV. This…is his own personal form of hell.

After triple- and quadruple-checking that he’s got the right place (he does, and the thought makes him want to kill himself), Keith trudges morosely into the building, leaving Red outside and feeling massively stupid in his full Paladin getup.

He approaches the counter. The alien—a small gecko-like creature with pink scales and bulbous eyes—says something to him in a foreign language.

“Sorry—what?” Keith says helplessly. The alien sighs, rolls its eyes, and switches to English.

“What can I help you with today?” Its tone is monotonous and bland, as it’s liable to be after presumably hours dealing with the same mundane tasks. Keith hopes these employees are paid well.

“Um, I’d like to buy a…star? If I can?”

“Hmmm.” It looks him up and down, apparently unconvinced. “You’ll need proof of residence and identity. Can you provide that?”

Panic shoots through Keith. “I don’t—Well, no, because I don’t live anywhere,” he says, blinking.

The alien blinks back at him. “You don’t live anywhere,” it repeats, voice flat. “Well, then I’m afraid I can’t—”

“W-Wait!” Keith scrambles closer, leaning in nervously. He has to make this work. “I—I don’t live anywhere permanent, I live on—on a ship that, like, travels around the universe a lot. I can show you a picture of the ship? If you want?”

“A picture is not proper documentation, sir.”

He’s losing the alien, and fast—he needs to change tactic. “Look,” Keith lowers his voice anxiously, eyes darting around him, “I don’t live anywhere because I’m a Paladin of Voltron. You’ve heard of Voltron, right? Defender of the universe or whatever? That’s me. Or, partly me. Me and four other people. A-Anyway, we travel around and go where we’re needed, that’s why I don’t have an address. Or an identity. Okay?” Keith’s voice is a high-pitched whisper by the end of his explanation, and he knows he looks frantic and crazy. He can only hope that that makes him a little bit more believable.

The alien levels him with a critical, deadpan stare. “You expect me to believe a Paladin of Voltron just walked in here wanting to buy a star? Really?” Its voice is so convinced of Keith’s foolishness that Keith almost opens his mouth to apologize, before realizing that yes, that’s actually exactly what’s happening!

“…Yes?”

The two look at each other for a moment more, sizing each other up, before the alien sighs and, reaching to tear off a slip of paper from the machine next to it, mutters, “Frankly, I’m not paid enough for this. Here you go.”

Nearly sagging with relief, Keith receives the paper with gratitude. “Thank you,” he says earnestly, and escapes quickly to a seat before the alien can change its mind.

Keith spends nearly two hours that day in that stuffy, crowded, beige monstrosity of a building, but by the time he emerges—worn down and dragging his feet like he’s battled fifteen Galra soldiers at once—he’s armed with coordinates to a star and an elongated box clutched under his arm. He’s exhausted from the bureaucracy of it all, but he can’t deny the sense of glowing accomplishment he feels at having secured such a magical gift for Lance’s birthday.

That is, if this whole thing isn’t a scam. He’ll have to wait a few more days to find that out.

Nervousness buzzes through Keith’s body as he sits in Red’s cockpit waiting for Lance to arrive. It’s the day—July 28th, Lance’s birthday. So far, Keith’s felt pretty good about how it’s been celebrated; Hunk managed to get his hands on some Earth ingredients and was able to make, with minimal substitutions, a pretty skilled replica of Lance’s mom’s garlic knots. Well, Keith assumes it was a good replica, anyway; Lance nearly started crying when he bit into one, and had to leave the room for five minutes to collect himself.

Pidge and Allura teamed up to make Lance a small, stuffed Blue Lion, using Allura’s sewing skills and Pidge’s penchant for precision to make a damn-near perfect replica of the robot cat that somehow still retained the plushness associated with stuffed animals. Lance has insisted on carrying her around with him wherever he goes, like a child given a new toy on Christmas. It’s adorable. She’ll probably be coming with them on this trip, too.

Finally, Shiro presented Lance with a set of blue-topaz earrings that made Keith a little weak at the knees when Lance tried them on—something that Shiro had not missed, if his mischievous smirk was anything to go by. Lance had been overjoyed to receive them, rambling on about how nobody ever got him earrings and of course becoming besties with another gay man would be the perfect way to remedy that situation. He’d then put them carefully back into the box, claiming he wanted a whole day to enjoy them, that half a day didn’t fully appreciate their majesty the way he wanted to. The whole scene had had Keith smiling uncontrollably, because it had felt like his boyfriend and his dad were getting along, even though Shiro was more than that to both Keith and Lance. Still, it had warmed his heart.

Throughout the day, though, Lance had been making comments about Keith’s lack of a gift for him, betraying his impatience by turning to Keith expectantly after opening and cooing over every other gift. Keith had kept his mouth shut with playful feigned ignorance, and had told Lance simply to meet him in Red after dinner that night.

That time is now. And, on cue, Keith hears Lance’s footsteps approaching.

“Alright, Keith, you’ve made me wait long enough,” Lance declares before he’s even fully inside of Red. Keith turns to greet him as he steps into the cockpit, holding plushie Blue in his hands. “What’s my present? Tell me!”

Keith presses the button to close Red’s entrance. “I’m going to show you, actually. Just a little bit longer.” Keith reaches for the oblong box he’d gotten earlier that week, whisking it carefully off of Red’s controls. “But first…”

He hands it bashfully to Lance, keeping his eyes trained on his own hands as he does. Lance blinks, gazing at it with bemusement. Without much preamble, though, he pulls the lid off gently, revealing a glimmering necklace with a blue cord attached to a small, pink-and-gold glowing orb encasing a bright bundle of blue waviness made of fire and gasses. It blazes and rotates, a living piece of jewelry, reminding Keith of the sun in shape and planet Neptune in color.

Lance gazes at it with awe. “Woah. Keith, this is—” He turns his intense stare on Keith, instead. “This is beautiful. Thank you. I…” He coughs a little, and then laughs at himself. “I don’t know what to say.”

Keith’s heart swells with pride. “That’s not even the best part!” he replies eagerly, now twice as excited to get to the real thing. He turns around, then, not wanting to waist another moment—and pauses. “You should put it on,” he adds quickly, giving Lance a slight smile over his shoulder.

Lance, who had been staring reverently at the necklace still in its box, blinks as if coming out of a stupor. “Right!” Quickly, he slips the necklace over his head and allows it to settle across his throat. It looks enchanting on him.

Satisfied, Keith starts Red up and flies them into the vastness of space, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. He’d plugged the coordinates into Red’s system in advance, so the most he really has to do is keep them gliding along that path.

As they near their destination, Keith notices, Lance’s necklace lifts off of his body, floating into the air like a magical object aware that it is approaching its creator, unencumbered by something so trivial as gravity. Lance ooohsand ahhs at this, experimenting with it by trying to push it back down, and reveling in his failure to do so.

By the time Keith puts Red into standby mode, the necklace is hovering at the height of Lance’s mouth, though Keith has instructed Lance to turn away from all windows, lest the surprise be spoiled. Once he’s sure Red is stationary—he doesn’t need to confirm that they’re in the right place; he can see it, right in front of him, in all of its glory—he takes Lance’s hand and leads him to the pilot’s chair.

“Sit down.”

Lance obliges, and Keith makes himself comfy on Lance’s lap, an action that has Lance chuckling and sliding his arm around Keith’s waist, pulling him closer. “Can I open my eyes yet, pretty boy?” he asks suggestively, alerting Keith to the fact that maybe Lance thinks his present is of a bit of a different nature than it is.

Despite his blush, Keith snorts. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Lance opens his eyes and witnesses his star.

It is the blue ball of light, fire, and gas housed in his necklace, but thousands of times larger, taking up nearly the entire visage of the cockpit window with its magnificence. They’re far enough that it isn’t technically dangerous, but it still feels like being in the presence of a god, of something with far greater power than any human—even Paladins of Voltron—can ever hold. Blue fire spews from the constantly-moving ball of light, and it swirls amongst itself, radiating a luminescence so brilliant that Keith briefly considers shielding his eyes, but decides not to.

They both revel at the star, at the proximity of it, and Keith keeps an eye on Lance, waiting for him to put the pieces together. It is only when Lance notices his necklace floating pleasantly closer to the star, however, that he gets it.

“Wait a minute—” Lance begins, turning a wide-eyed gaze to Keith, “Is this—?”

“Yeah.” Keith nods, his smile lopsided and emotional. “All yours.”

Lance is silent for a moment, staring up at the star. It is reflected in his eyes, making their blue color all the more transfixing and bright.

“You got me a star?”

Keith is not entirely prepared for the genuine emotion in Lance’s voice, or the way he can see tears begin to prick at his eyes. He’s about to double back, ask if Lance is okay, when Lance suddenly buries his face in Keith’s neck, shaking with musical laughter.

“How am I going to outdo you for your birthday, Kogane? Holy crow,” he says after a moment, lifting his head and giving Keith a binding smile. “Screw you!”

“Please,” Keith scoffs, though he’s absolutely radiating pride and happiness. “I’d be happy if you let me suck your—”

“Oh my god!” Lance shoves his hand over Keith’s mouth, collapsing into more laughter. “Shut up! You’re so annoying!”

Keith’s chuckling joins Lance’s as he pries Lance’s hand away from his mouth. “Well, it’s true!”

Lance doesn’t deign that with a response, instead simply shaking his head and turning his attention back to the star in front of him, his star. “So,” he says after a moment, gesturing vaguely to his necklace, “this proves the star is mine, right? I basically have this…mini-star with me all the time?”

“Pretty much. It’ll float more the closer you are to the star. It’s kind of like a little piece of it that’s yours forever.”

“Wow.” Lance lets out a low whistle. “That’s way better than the pieces of paper they give you back on Earth.”

“Right?!” Keith nods emphatically. “Plus, like, we can actually see it out here, not just have a random blurry picture!”

Lance shakes his head, still smiling. “Earth is way behind the times, what’s new?”

They are quiet for a moment, lost in their respective thoughts as they gaze up at the star. When Lance breaks it, he’s quiet.

“Hey,” he murmurs, nuzzling against Keith’s throat, giving him goosebumps, “thank you. Seriously. This is—It’s maybe the best present I’ve ever gotten. Don’t tell anyone that, though.”

Keith laughs a little. “I won’t. Happy birthday, though. You deserve it, Lance.” He makes sure to look away when he adds, “You deserve it and more.”

“Keeeeeith,” Lance whines loudly, making Keith jump where he sits on top of him, “don’t make me cry again, I’ve already embarrassed myself once today!”

Keith rolls his eyes and swings a leg across Lance’s middle, resituating himself to be facing Lance instead of the large window. “Alright, alright, enough of being sentimental. I have another part of your gift, too.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Oh? Whatever could it be?” he asks playfully, hands settling on Keith’s hips.

“I’ll show you.”

The space between them closes, and the last thought Keith allows himself before giving in to the sensation of kissing Lance McClain, is Thank god, I finally got it right this time.

He’ll have to thank Coran with some Nunvil, later.

☕️ko-fi - please consider buying me a coffee if you enjoyed my work this month! thank you!

#klance #klance fanfiction #julance2022 #lance mcclain #voltron #voltron fanfiction #renfic

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vldkeith · 2 years

Text

julance☀️🌊🚀 week two: loverboy💘 or sharpshooter

a/n: ohmy god. this was like pulling teeth. im so sorry. maybe i'll rewrite it someday

read on ao3 (also plz leave kudos there if u can :3)

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If Keith and Lance weren’t absolute necessities for the formation of Voltron and thus the continued existence and preservation of the universe, Allura swears she would have fired them both and rocketed them back to earth the first chance she got.

Why, you might ask? Well, it’s simple, really.

“I keep finding you hidden away in closets and corners!” Allura bursts out, advancing forward threateningly even as the two culprits pull each other away from her and down the hall, laughing the whole way. “Stop it! Focus! I swear I’m going to—”

“Got it, Allura!” comes Lance’s echoed voice from somewhere far into the next hallway, thick with laughter. “Stop focusing, understood!”

“Lance—!” Allura’s voice is quickly drowned out by Lance’s loud cackling, along with Keith’s lower undercurrent of snickers. She throws her hands up, a myriad of expletives in both English and Altean running through her mind.

Like she said—fired immediately. Rocketed back to Earth.

Obviously, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. The first time, Allura had been wandering through the castleship, absorbed in her tablet as she read about the culture of a planet they were considering approaching for the mission. She’d been completely oblivious to everything around her, and it seemed, apparently, that she wasn’t the only one, because one second she was striding along, reading fluidly, and the next she was ramming into someone and shrieking as the tablet flew out of her hands.

Lance. It was Lance, if that wasn’t clear enough. A Lance who had clearly just stepped out of the damn closet they’d been right next to, his jacket half-off, his hair mussed, and several dark red and purple marks covering his neck.

To his credit, Lance began apologizing immediately. “Holy sh—Allura! Sorry, sorry!” he’d said, voice high-pitched with panic as he scrambled up and reached for her fallen tablet. Allura stayed on the floor, counting to ten as she observed Lance’s sloppy state.

Suddenly, she heard a click! behind her, and she whipped her head around to find the aforementioned closet door snapping shut.

Keith, she growled internally, giving Lance a murderous glare when he returned to her side and held out her tablet to her, expression sheepish yet still a little half-glazed.

“Sorry,” he said again, offering a small smile before vanishing completely.

That time, Allura had been too enraged and surprised to say anything. She’d merely watched him go with narrowed eyes, stood herself up, rapped on the closet door twice (and loudly; she swears she’d heard a yelp from inside), and carried on with her day as diplomatically as she could.

She did not make that same mistake the second time.

That time, she happened upon the two before they’d begun their little escapade, just as Lance was coaxing Keith into a different tiny closet, pulling him close and kissing him and murmuring in his ear in such a way that made Allura want to roll her eyes to the moon. She’d stood there for a while, arms folded, foot tapping, waiting for them to notice her.

They didn’t. In fact, Keith got halfway into the closet before the two noticed they had any kind of audience at all, and that was only because Allura grew tired of waiting and cleared her throat loudly.

They jumped a mile high. Allura would be lying if she said she hadn’t gotten some satisfaction from that.

“Really, you two?” she said, raising an eyebrow. Keith was rapidly coloring red, but Lance merely laughed nervously, scratching the back of his neck as he poked his head out from the closet. “Again?”

“We’ve never—we’ve never done this before—” Keith began, but he quieted down the moment he caught Allura’s deadpan, disbelieving look. He turned and gave Lance an accusing glare.

“Ummmmm…” Lance drew the word out purposefully, which grated on Allura’s nerves even more. “We’re…sorry?”

Keith let out a groan, folding his head into his hands. Allura could almost laugh at their sorry version of smoothing things over, if she weren’t so exasperated and sick of their antics.

She held up three fingers and put down two. “Three strikes. Then you’re out.”

Lance gave her an amused look. “Where’d you learn about that phrase?”

“Hunk.” Allura’s tone didn’t change at all. “Now get out of the closet before I lock you two in there forever.”

After that, they scattered away—again, satisfying, but worth nothing considering the fact that they’d just went and done it again.

Though she’d made the threat, Allura hadn’t been sure what she’d do once they hit three times, and she’s still not sure, even now, and they have. She’d even let them escape her grasp!

In the middle of the hallway, Allura steeples her hands together, thinking. And then her eyes snap open.

She has the perfect idea.

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“Is this really necessary?” Lance’s voice is muffled by the several bags he’s got stacked in his hands, reaching all the way up to his forehead. Keith makes an unintelligible growling noise next to him.

“Absolutely,” Allura responds airily, picking through another rack of clothes. Next to her, Hunk makes an approving noise at her choices.

“Lance, Keith, I don’t know what you did to deserve this, but thank you,” he says, happily adding another shirt to Keith’s pile. He sags a little underneath it.

“Don’t lump me in with him!” Keith hisses. “All of it was Lance’s idea!”

“Was not! You were a willing participant!”

“Only because you—”

“Enough!” Allura pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. “The loverboy and the impulsive one, as if it’s not both of your faults.” She peers critically at them—or, at least, what she can see of them from behind their piles of bags and clothes. “Now, shhh. Less talking, more carrying.

She feels rather than sees the boys’ forlorn feelings, but that doesn’t really matter right now; Pidge and Shiro are beckoning for her to at the other side of the store, near the earring section.

An eye for an eye, as they say. Perhaps this will end their juvenile shenanigans. After all, Allura thinks as she gasps over the pink sparkly gem Shiro is showing her, we’re very busy saving the universe.

☕️ko-fi

#klance #klance fanfiction #julance2022 #lance mcclain #voltron #voltron fanfiction #keith kogane #renfic #😁🔫

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