#Yes I know the model is green eye but in game I mistook it for beautiful golden orange in the lighting

[beebfreeb]

Agonized howling. Trying to come up with guy variations.

[amaranthinecanicular]

It’s Christmas out in space, and Lance has made it his mission to smooch everyone. (ft: one person who smooches back.)

For @tentwoten! I’m your Voltron Secret Santa! I’m sorry this is late, and I’m also sorry this got so out of hand?? Happy (belated) holidays!!

The meeting runs long, which isn’t a surprise. It runs long because the team bonding exercise was a failure, which also isn’t a surprise. Pidge loves her weird space family, she really does, but she’s ready to hole up with her laptop and her video games far away from the rest of the galaxy for a few hours.

Technically they haven’t been dismissed, but she can’t imagine that the situation is going to repair itself anytime soon. Shiro, Kuron, and Lotor have been arguing for the better part of an hour, while Allura and Coran valiantly attempt to mediate.

“I mean no offense, but hear me when I say this: these exercises are pointless.” Lotor is lounging on a couch, arms spread across the back. He removes his headset and shakes out his hair. “I am no Paladin. While your pilots sit here bonding, I should be strategizing ways to end the war.”

Shiro and Kuron, who are sharing a smaller, more cramped couch, reach up to squeeze the bridges of their noses at the exact same time in the exact same way. When the whole can of worms labeled CLONE SHIRO first opened, Pidge had feared–well, a number of things, and one of them was that they’d never be able to tell the two apart. Now that the theory has been put into practice she’s hard pressed to believe that she ever mistook one for the other. Shiro is patient, gentle, and kind; Kuron is more temperamental, has a shorter fuse. He’s also more honest and easier to relate to. They’re both damaged and good.

Shiro folds his hands together and says, “I understand that you’re eager to defeat Zarkon. We all are. But this is as necessary a step to that end as any other.”

Kuron has yet to let go of the bridge of his nose. “For the tenth time, Lotor, we’re stuck with each other, like it or not.”

“And for the tenth time, Project Kuron, why can’t you be as charming as the original model?”

Kuron’s hand flashes and Allura steps in, eyes hard.

“I know this is more than any of us bargained for,” she says. Coran nods vigorously over her shoulder. “But Shiro and Kuron are right, Lotor. If we are to defeat Zarkon we must learn to coexist and cooperate as a proper team, and you are one of us now.”

Surprise echoes through Lotor’s features, as it has for the past six months whenever someone implied that he was part of the group. It comes and goes so fast that Pidge isn’t sure if anyone else catches it, but it always makes her heart ache, a little. Which sucks, because Lotor is still a jerk who she doesn’t want to sympathize with, even if he’s become more tolerable with time. Barely more tolerable, anyway.

There is a brief but hopeful pause in which it looks like they might actually be getting somewhere. Pidge dares to wonder if her escape plan was premature.

Lotor points at Kuron. “He started it.”

“Oh, really? Because as I recall you started it–when you made me,”

So much for diplomacy. Negotiations devolve once more and a series of Morse code foot taps tell her that Hunk is just as ready for a tactical retreat; another series of foot taps spell out GOOD LUCK from Matt, who is sitting in the armchair across from them, watching the drama unfold with a bag of substitute space potato chips. Pidge executes a stealthy military roll into an army crawl for the door.

“Lance’s bathroom trip was such a good call. Bail out of this crazy before it starts,” Hunk says, crawling behind her.

“Bathroom? He didn’t go to the bathroom. He went to call Keith,”

“Uh, no,” says Hunk, with more sass than Pidge appreciates. “He was all bummed yesterday because Marmora had a mission and they weren’t going to be able to talk today. He has their schedule memorized.”

“Well, he told me he was making a call. And anyway it’s been way too long for a trip to the bathroom, unless–”

A prickle of cold comes over her. She’s only a few feet from the door, and as it senses her and slides open, she sees it: a sprig of green, dotted with red berries. She freezes.

“Pidge? What’s up?”

“What day is it on earth?”

“Huh? What does that–”

“What day is it, Hunk?”

Hunk looks like he’s going to say something else but then his eyes catch the poisonous plant fixed to the doorframe. Horror morphs his features. “Oh, no.”

From across the room Matt says, “It’s December 25th–oh, it’s Christmas. Huh.”

That catches Shiro and Kuron’s attentions. “It is?” says one, and the other says, “It’s Christmas?”

Lotor, looking annoyed at being ignored, flips his hair over one shoulder. “And what, pray tell, is this Christmas?”

“Oh yes, do tell,”

Dutifully, Shiro and Kuron give them a rundown on Christmas.

“That sounds lovely,” says Allura. “Actually, it sounds a little like the Altean celebration of life, love, and light, Moktkrii.”

Coran sighs wistfully. “Ah, Moktkrii. Truly the most wonderful time of fourteen solar cycles.”

“Cool, Space Christmas,” says Matt. He crunches a chip.

“Focus!” says Pidge. “This is not the time for peace in space and goodwill toward all sentient lifeforms. This is war.”

“The green paladin gets it. We should be focusing on defeating my father, not Moktkrii or any such childish things,” says Lotor. Lotor is ignored.

Coran strokes his mustache thoughtfully. “That sounds like rather the opposite of what Christmas is about. Granted, I just learned about it two seconds ago,”

“That’s because it’s not just any Christmas–It’s Christmas the way Lance celebrates it.”

The lights go out, for just a moment. They flicker on in a faint, eerie glow of red and green.

“Oh god, it’s starting. Keep away from the doorways!”

Pidge, standing now with her spine lined up against Hunk’s, taps the light on her tablet. She sweeps it across the room in slow circles, heart pounding. “In the Garrison Lance told us about this tradition his family had on Christmas. They’d hang mistletoe all over–” Shiro and Kuron quickly explain mistletoe, “–and then they’d try and surprise each other. The last person to get kissed was the winner. He said it got competitive.”

“Like, insanely competitive. There were war wounds. He had pictures.”

Pidge sets her mouth in a grim line. “Lance was the champ four years running.”

Kuron opens his mouth–Shiro beats him to it.

“Okay, there are two exits in this room, and both have mistletoe. He can only be behind one of them. If we keep together in one or two large groups we’ll survive the night.”

He sounds…happy, more engaged, than he’s sounded since they got him back. In the low light he looks years younger, and it’s so exactly like old times that Pidge feels an echo of his smile on her own face.

Kuron sees it too, and looks blindsided. He deflates, all at once with one quiet sigh.

“Have fun, guys,” he says, and tries to muster a smile. It doesn’t look anything like Shiro’s. “I don’t think I’m feeling up to it.”

Before Pidge can stop him he passes under the door–and nothing happens.

“Kuron–Kuron, wait,” Shiro stutters into action, following at a brisk clip. Pidge watches them go, and then, from behind her:

“Well, this does seem like a charming pantomime of war, but I’m afraid I have more important things to do.”

It happens in slow motion. She hears Lotor make for the other door and she can’t turn around fast enough. The light swings in one smooth arc and just before it comes to rest there’s a thump, and an ungodly shriek. And there, hunched over Lotor’s fallen body, is–

“Holy crow,” cries Matt, tripping out of his chair. Chips go everywhere. “Is that a gremlin?”

If it is, it’s a large, feral, and blue one. Lance pulls his lips from Lotor’s forehead with a loud smack.

“Welcome to the family, L'Oréal!”

He beams Lotor’s face with a package and scampers off. Coran gives his stunned form a solemn solute.

“The first casualty of war.”

Fleeing through the other door, Pidge wonders if anyone else saw the look of awe on Lotor’s bruised face as he unwrapped a jar of Lance’s homemade mud mask. “Family,” she thinks she hears him mutter, but the door slides shut behind her and she can’t be sure.

Call it intuition, call it an educated guess, call it clone telepathy. Maybe it’s just dumb luck. Really it doesn’t matter how Shiro knew that Kuron would be in the motor pool, among the ships and escape pods all lit up red and green. The point is that he’s there, staring up at one of them, dressed in his Voltron suit with his helmet tucked under one arm.

“You’re not going to say goodbye first?”

Kuron doesn’t turn at Shiro’s approach and he doesn’t turn when he says, “Would you?”

“Yes.”

He laughs. It’s a hollow sound. “Another way we’re different, I guess.”

“Kuron…” A muscle twitches in Kuron’s jaw at the sound of his own name and it stills the words in Shiro’s throat, turns them sour. He would call Kuron anything else if he could, would give up his own name, but after he got back and the truth came out, Kuron was the name his counterpart decided for himself and all Shiro could do was respect his choice. Right now that feels a lot more like being helpless.

“If you really want to leave, no one will stop you. But you already know that.”

“We told Keith and Pidge the same thing.” Kuron winces. “You told Pidge the same thing.”

“And you told Keith.” He takes a breath and chooses his words carefully. Hopes he’s not making a mistake. “What I’m afraid you don’t know is that no one wants you to leave, either. You and I might share genetics and memories but we’re not the same person, and I think that’s okay. They’re not asking us to be. They just want us to be us, and they’re happy with that. Maybe we should try to be too.”

Kuron closes his eyes. “If I’m not you…then who am I?”

“You’re mine!”

Lance’s voice echoes in the motorpool and it’s only pure instinct that saves them. Shiro dives behind the pod and drags Kuron with him, blasters hot on their heels. “I thought this was a mistletoe thing, not war,” says Kuron, grimacing and rubbing a bump on the back of his head.

“They said it was that too.” But as soon as he says it he sees all the mistletoe he had missed before, hanging from the prow of every ship, every pod. Kuron says, “If Lance took this determination to Zarkon I think we’d have won the war already,” and Shiro has to agree. If he wasn’t impressed before, he is now.

They assess and they strategize: Lance has them pinned but there’s no way he can get in close enough to kiss them. If Kuron keeps him occupied with return fire, Shiro can flank his position. Scaling the side of the ship that Lance is perched on is easy, even in the dark; he can barely make out the lanky form stretched on the roof but he doesn’t need to. He’s about to attack when Kuron’s voice reaches him, a revelation:

“Shiro! Those blasts aren’t from a bayard!”

And all at once Shiro realizes that they aren’t. He knows what Lance’s bayard looks like, knows how it fires–this isn’t it. This is the discharge from a training rifle, in the hands of a training dummy. He whips around, too slowly, his hand bright and hot–

To see nothing. No one’s there.

One slash of his hand puts the dummy out of commission and then silence descends on the motor pool. He sees Kuron’s black-helmeted head poking out of cover to be sure the coast is clear. Heart pounding, Shiro returns to their position, walking backwards into cover. Over his shoulder he says, “He might have been using us as a distraction while he went after the others, but keep your guard up–”

He turns to have two lips smushed into his visor.

“Ha!” Lance pulls off Kuron’s helmet, a kiss mark printed on the black, and grins so wide Shiro wonders that it doesn’t stretch right off his face. “The student becomes the master!”

“Took me by complete surprise,” says Kuron, coming to stand with them. Pride radiates from his every angle, he practically glows with it. Shiro understands–he’s proud too. All thoughts of identity and escape pods are forgotten.

Lance gives them consolation prizes in the form of Christmas presents, which unfold into the form of matching sweaters, green for him and red for Kuron. Kuron’s dumbfounded expression is a mirror of his own, he’s sure, and Lance laughs in delight to see it. He dips into a quick bow.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go smooch some Holts. Merry Christmas!”

With that he darts off, before Shiro can even muster a thank you.

“I don’t even understand this,” Kuron says, exhaling a laugh as he appraises his sweater. Maybe it’s just the lighting that makes his eyes look damp. That doesn’t explain why Shiro’s eyes feel damp, too. He puts a hand on Kuron’s shoulder.

“I guess it’s who we both are.”

Knitted into the fabric of both sweaters are the words: BEST SPACE DAD IN THE UNIVERSE.

“You’re making a mistake, Matt.”

There’s a good chance that Pidge is right. Maybe they really do need to work together to take Lance down–it’s only the three of them, now, since Allura and Coran branched off to formulate their own battle strategy. But if he wins then he might reclaim some big-brotherly pride at having lost so many spars to her before, and if he loses he gets to be even more proud of her than he already is, so it kind of sounds like a win-win.

He expands his staff and grins. “Sorry, sis. Lance isn’t the only one with a competitive family.”

He lunges, and Pidge, predictably, dances out of the way. Her bayard flares to life, crackling as it whizzes by his ear. She retreats and he keeps pace; her whip is long range, so as long as he keeps close he has the upper hand.

“No, you can’t fight! You’re tearing this family apart!” Hunk wails, in what Matt suspects to be a stellar attempt to ham up the drama. Matt really likes Hunk.

This is a good place for this, very cinematic: Lance seems to have rigged the holo room to respond only to him, and he left it in this nebulous starry space, with sprigs of floating mistletoe overhead and a mirrored surface of water underfoot. Walking across it is like walking across the ocean, or a salt flat, more likely. Matt bets this fight looks awesome from the outside.

He swings the staff in low and sweeps it around for a second strike when Pidge leaps over it. This time it hits home, but she rolls with the momentum and doesn’t let go when Matt tries to yank the staff back; he realizes too late that she let him hit her. Her bayard zips back to her side and he can’t dodge when she jabs for him–she has short-range too, right–and the zap of electricity paralyzes him just long enough for her to blow a wet raspberry into his cheek. His brilliant little sister.

Defeated, Matt sprawls out on the floor, one arm thrown over his eyes and the other clutching at his heart. He wheezes a death knell. “Betrayed…by my own sister…!”

“You started it, genius,” laughs Pidge, and Matt can’t suppress a grin. He peeks out from under his arm.

A shadow is looming over Pidge’s shoulder.

“Pidge, look out–!”

She spins around too late. Matt hears a loud, wet smooch, and then Pidge staggers back, back, scowling and sporting a visible kiss mark on her glasses. “Eww.”

Matt flops back onto the floor, laughing too hard to stay upright. “Sorry, Pidge, he wouldn’t have gotten the drop on you if I hadn’t distracted you.”

“Yeah, no duh,” Pidge grumbles. She drops back next to him on her behind, pouting. Lance’s smiles down at them; the expression could, charitably, be described as triumphant. Shit-eating, less charitably.

“Sibling rivalries, am I right? So tragic. You guys might have beaten me otherwise.” He dons a sober look for all of two seconds before he cackles. “Who am I kidding? I’m the winner of Christmas. No one can beat me!”

Hunk nearly does, right then. He claps Lance in a bear hug while he’s distracted and lifts him clean off the ground. “Challenge accepted!” he cries, puckering his lips but just before he can dethrone the king the room winks out, and all mistletoe vanishes with it.

“I know I’m very kissable, Hunk, but keep in mind that nothing counts unless it’s under the mistletoe.”

Scowling, Hunk sets him down on the floor and he skips out of arms length as soon as his feet touch down. He grins at them over his shoulder. “Before I forget, a present for the losers.”

He whistles once, sharply, and in through the door rolls a robot shaped like a garbage can, with one digital eye. He’s seen it once before and he loves it already, which, admittedly, is basically indifference compared to Pidge’s love for the little thing.

“Beezer!”

“Nyma and Rolo let him by for a weekend playdate. I figured this would count as a good gift for both of you.”

He’s right and he knows it. Matt hasn’t seen Pidge this giddy since the last time they saw Beezer, and they thought they might be about to die then. Lance stretches and pats his stomach like a large blue cat, self-satisfied.

“Man, all this winning is making me hungry. I think I’m going to…have a Christmas snack.”

He says it with strange intent. Matt doesn’t understand, but Hunk does, apparently. His eyes go narrow. “You wouldn’t.”

“Except how I totally would.”

He saunters out, flipping them a two-fingered salute before the door shuts behind him. Hunk squares his shoulders, and Matt suspects he missed something vital.

“Hunk, you can’t,” says Pidge, still hugging Beezer. “Facing him alone, it’s a suicide mission,”

Hunk tilts his chin up, proud and regal. “The kitchen is my territory. My haven. My sanctuary. Lance is holding it hostage and that will not stand.”

Ah, he can understand that. Hunk marches off to battle and Matt snaps off a salute as he passes. Pidge’s salute isn’t quite as snappy, but she gives one. Beezer can’t salute but he makes some encouraging beeps and whistles, and Pidge squeals with delight. His ribs go soft to see her like this–it’s rare, now, that she gets to act her age. Lance really did outdo himself.

Hunk finds Lance in the kitchen, waiting for him. He’s standing at one end of the food dispensers with a goo nozzle holstered at his hip. Mistletoe is hung above the line of dispensers between them.

“So.” Hunk takes up his stance across from him, drawing the farthest nozzle slowly. He lets it hang by his thigh, grip loose, finger balanced on the trigger. “No more sneaking around, huh?”

“You’re my best bro, Hunk. The least I can do is face you head on.” Lance’s fingers flex around the handle of his own nozzle. “Prepare to get smooched.”

It’s a close call, but Lance claims the title the sharpshooter for a reason. Hunk doesn’t get to see if his shot hit the mark before green slime hits him full in the face. He’s still rubbing goo from his eyes when wet lips smack into his nose.

“Aw, did I get you at least?”

He blinks green gunk out of his eyes to see–more green gunk, and also Lance’s face. “Ha! I did get you!”

“That you did. And as a reward…”

He pulls out a box from under the counter, wrapped in pretty red paper–Hunk does appreciate good wrapping–and hands it to him. Hunk doesn’t really believe it at first.

“Is this–is this what I think it is? Ohmygosh it’s a Cooking Mama 5000! Designed by master chef and aeronautical engineer Lori Liu, it’s the perfect blend of engineering and art! Lance, these cost a fortune at home, how did you get this?”

Lance preens a little, food goo and all. “Found it in the Space Mall for a steal. I don’t get what the big deal is–it just looks like a fancy blender to me.”

Hunk gasps, scandalized, and covers the Cooking Mama 5000’s hypothetical ears. “Don’t worry, baby, Uncle Lance doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Lance rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Hunk had worried, when he heard that Keith wouldn’t be calling. He worried more when he realized Lance was getting this let down on Christmas. He knows the things Lance misses, knows how it hurts him to be so far from home. Keith’s departure came as a blow that none of them were prepared for, and though they sent him off with their blessing–what else could they do?–Hunk knows, too, that his absence wounded Lance more deeply than anyone else.

But here, bathed in food goo and Christmas lights, he looks happy. Relaxed. It’s cheesy, but that’s probably a better Christmas gift than anything else.

He slings an arm around Lance’s shoulders and pulls him close. “Merry Christmas, dude.”

“Aw. Merry Christmas, big guy.”

Lance has to remind himself that the night isn’t over. It feels like it should be; Hunk made some bomb desserts with his new cooking whatchamacallit, and everyone came together for a proper Christmas card moment to enjoy them together. Shiro and Kuron were wearing their sweaters; Pidge was sliding cooking into a slot of Beezer’s to disappear forever, apparently. Even Lotor was present, sporting a black eye beneath his mud mask. Lance felt a little bad about that, but Lotor assured him that the mud made up for it, and even gave him a Christmas present in return. Or Moktkrii, that’s what he called it, and handed him a bottle of his shampoo, along with a bruising punch to his shoulder. So. He guesses they’re even now.

Allura and Coran showed up, too, but they slunk away while Lance wasn’t looking. Which is why he’s patrolling the castle now, late though it may feel–he can’t sleep until Christmas is over, and it’s not over until the last person has been kissed and gift-given. Gift-gave? Same difference.

He remembers when he told Hunk and Pidge about the mistletoe thing. They had been waiting their turn for a training simulation, chatting about holiday traditions–it was his first Christmas away from home–and when it came Lance’s turn to share he gushed about sibling rivalry and kisses. It’s not a lie, not really. His family did it every year, smushed painful and sloppy kisses to cheeks and hair and noses and it was one of his very favorite things. It was also not the first thing that jumped to his mind and mouth, not the thing he wanted to say.

“Being together,” he says now, and swings his bayard onto his shoulder. There’s no reason for that, it just makes him feel cool, and that makes him feel better. His real favorite tradition, if it can be called that, was always the reunion. His big messy family crammed into a little messy house. There wasn’t a single thing he loved more about Christmas than that.

He’s still homesick–he thinks he’ll never stop being homesick, thinks it will always break his heart. But he’s grown up enough to learn to live with it. He just didn’t think he’d have to learn to live without his new family, too.

“Stupid Keith.” Off being a super cool alien ninja with Marmora, on Christmas. He sounded genuinely remorseful when he told Lance about the mission, not that Lance cared. It’s not like he had to muster all his courage to ask him to come back for Christmas. It’s not like Lance misses him so much it aches all over.

He realizes he’s humming I’ll Be Home For Christmas, and okay, that’s too far. “No moping on Christmas!” he says, very loudly. One of his mom’s rules. He still has two people to kiss under the mistletoe. There’s no time for pretty mulleted distractions that he may or may not be head over heels for. He creeps past the airlocks, humming the Mission Impossible theme instead and pricking his ears–

And he hears something. Beeping. And hissing. Very suspicious beeping and hissing that sounds just like a ship boarding their ship, and someone entering one of his mistletoed airlocks.

He flattens himself against the wall. It’s probably nothing, he thinks, a little wildly. Allura is connected to the ship, wherever she is, and no alarms are blaring. It’s probably nothing. Probably just Rolo and Nyma checking on Beezer. He brings his bayard to bear.

The airlock depressurizes, the door opens, and in walks–

“Keith?”

Keith freezes, only half out of the airlock. He’s still wearing his Marmora spandex. His mullet is mussed all funny from the helmet. He looks goofy and awkward and caught out, and he looks too beautiful to stand.

“Hey,” says Lance, super smooth and not at all squeaky and breathless.

“Hey,” says Keith, very breathless. Then he blinks. “Do you have food goo in your hair?”

Lance shakes his head, shakes away the goo and the question itself, because seriously, there are more important things to focus on, Keith. “But you said–the mission–”

“Marmora can survive without me for one mission. Kolivan understood when I explained–”

“Explained what?”

A wash of red rises up Keith’s neck into his cheeks. He rubs the back of his head, twists up one corner of his mouth, looks away–he’s illegal levels of cute, for real–and points one finger above them. Lance has never loved and hated the little plant as much as much as he has that moment.

“This is important to you, right?”

“Yeah.” He takes Keith’s hand. “Yeah, this is important to me.”

And then Keith is kissing him, and tears are springing to Lance’s eyes so absurdly fast that he almost misses the way Keith smiles, all soft and sweet.

“Merry Christmas,” Keith says. Then Coran tackles him and thank god, really, because otherwise Lance thinks he might have died of being so in love.

“What the hell!” Keith shrieks, too shocked to fight Coran off. Over his shoulder Coran shouts, “Now, Princess!”

Allura dives into the fray, wrestling Keith’s mullet into position to place a dainty peck on his cheek. Lance, observing the debacle from above, thinks now he might die of laughter.

Allura stands and smooths her hands over her hair, triumphant and beautiful. She addresses Lance.

“Since Keith kissed you and I kissed Keith, I believe the win is ours.”

She high fives Coran, and Lance thinks that he doesn’t mind losing, as he pulls a confused and grumpy Keith to his feet and kisses his other cheek. Just this once.