#just do what ur good at. whipped keith and annoying family team

[autisticlancemcclain]

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

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

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

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

“I’m just better at it!”

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

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

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

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

“Aw, Coran, no fair!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They smirk at each other. Success.

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

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

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

“Ah. The Road Work Ahead Star.”

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

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

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

Whatever works, honestly.

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

“Nothing. It’s just a call.”

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

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

Keith whistles. “High odds.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something gross and bitter churns in Keith’s stomach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It would be grandly appreciated, thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

“And beaches?” Lance asks hopefully.

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

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

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

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

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

Keith shrugs. “Vacation’s a vacation.”

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

The team erupts into cheers.

———

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come find shells with me!”

Keith couldn’t even dream of saying no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God, that’s nice.”

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

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

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

“Lance? Lance, answer me! La —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[blueplanettrash]

Prompt: Au where Lance has CIP disorder (congenital Insensitivity to pain; a disorder where people can't feel pain at all) and the team doesn't find out until after Lance is badly hurt. Idk if it has been done already. I love ur writing and hope you accomplish everything you want to do this month and year😁

It’s honestly kinda weird how I was scrolling through my prompts trying to decide what to write during class and I saw this while we were learning about pain perception. I thought it was fate. I hope you enjoy! ❤️

Lance had always tried to be careful with his body and what he did with it. Ever since he was five years old and he was taken to the hospital after falling down the stairs in his house and breaking his arm. He was confused why his mother was crying and holding him carefully, promising him that everything was going to be okay. But he wasn’t afraid or anything in fact, when he looked at his arm he let out a giggle thinking it looked a bit like a staircase.

They later discovered that he had CIP disorder. A disorder where people produce a surplus of endorphins in the brain that cause them not to perceive any pain. Because of this, he had never been able to feel pain, and he couldn’t tell his parents whether anything else was wrong with him before breaking his arm. It was a miracle that the doctors didn’t find anything else that had happened to him throughout the years.

After that fateful visit, his family looked after him much closer and demanded that he tell them if he thought that he might have hurt himself in any way even though he couldn’t feel it. If he ever saw blood he was to tell them immediately to make sure he didn’t need to go to the hospital for treatment and the list went on and on. It was a bit annoying to keep the rules over the years but ultimately he didn’t want to die young like the unfortunate stories of others like him that he had read about. So he always tried to be extremely cautious.

That was until he joined the Garrison. At first, his family adamantly refused to let him attend but as the days passed of him begging his mother to please let him go, she was slowly coming around to the idea.

“Please Mamá, I don’t want to be cooped up here forever, at least there I’d be helping the world,” he pleaded with tears in his eyes. She sighed and pulled him forward into a hug. Her throat was tightening as she held him to her chest. All these years, she had never seen her baby cry. Just because he couldn’t feel physical pain, didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel emotional pain.

“I’ll think about it,” she promised.

And she did, the next month Lance was packing his bags, ready to go out into the real world. He turned when he heard his bedroom door creak open. His mother walked in followed by a tall blonde man wearing the Galaxy Garrison uniform.

“Lance, this is Professor Montgomery,” she said gesturing to the man who nodded his head at Lance. “If you think you hurt yourself, you go directly to him, do you understand?”

“Yes Mamá,” he promised. She nodded content before jumping forward and dragging him into a hug.

“Be good,” she whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks. Lance’s throat closed up and he nodded against her shoulder. After they pulled away, Lance picked up his bags and followed Montgomery out of the house and to the Garrison vehicle. As he buckled up he looked out his window and saw his entire family standing outside with teary eyes and waving goodbye to him. Shakily, he brought his hand up and waved until they were out of sight.

“Well, Lance McClain,” he looked over at Montgomery as he started talking. He took his eyes off the road for a moment to send a smile to the boy.

“Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison,”

Lance was especially careful after they became paladins of Voltron. Sure, maybe not feeling pain would be a valuable asset of being a soldier in space but it didn’t exactly help if he was punched in the ribs or something and didn’t notice that they punctured a lung until he couldn’t breathe. Which didn’t happen but was a very likely possibility in his situation.

There were very few times that Lance was thankful for his disorder but when he was caught in an explosion, he was very thankful. Especially because he saved Coran the pain of it. The very few moments that he had before he blacked out he could smell the flesh on his back burning and couldn’t even imagine what kind of pain he would be feeling, you know if he actually knew what pain felt like.

Finding out how close to death Lance actually was when he got out of the pod was another eye opener to him. He had pushed Coran out of the way because he knew that he wouldn’t feel anything and he didn’t want Coran to get hurt but he didn’t think that it would do as much damage as it had.

He looked in the mirror later that night and found a big star-shaped scar on his upper back. It was just another scar that he had collected over the years but this time, it meant so much more.

“Alright paladins, we have quite a simple mission today actually,” Allura told them after they landed on a dark desolate planet. They stood at attention in front of her, eager to get the mission done so they could come back and relax for the rest of the day.

“The Blade discovered this abandoned Galra base and sent a representative to plant some crucial information for us, they told us that it was so sensitive that they didn’t want to risk it being intercepted by the Galra,” Shiro added, pulling up the schematics of the building. He started tracing out areas in their respective colours and routes that they would be taking to get there.

“Because of this they refused to tell us where exactly the information was being stored and we have to split up to find it,” they nodded in understanding and headed to the lift.

“It should be a quick in and out, when we find the information head out and back to the Castle,” Shiro said as they started into the base. One by one they headed down separate hallways until Lance was walking down the main hallway by himself. He pulled up his map and carefully followed his directed path, careful to keep his eyes open for any sign of the Blade’s information drive.

As he hit the end of the hallway he was faced with a single door which he pushed open hesitantly and picked inside. He switched his map to his light and panned around the room.

“AIEEEE!” He screeched loudly as his light landed on a single sentry that was leaning limply against the wall.

“Lance? What happened? What’s wrong?” Shiro asked with concern as Lance let out loud huffs and leaned on his knees.

“Sorry, I just got startled, there’s a dead sentry in here,” he explained breathlessly. Immediately laughs started coming from everyone else and he blushed lightly.

“Haha, very funny, Lance got scared by a machine, laugh it up you guys,” he pouted as he walked further into the room. It looked like he was in the armoury or something but there wasn’t much to go off of except for a dust-covered helmet and the sentry still sitting in the corner.

He walked through a second door in the back and saw that there was actually hundred of soldier uniforms lined up along the walls. They were all layered with dust which admittedly was pretty creepy, seeing as they were in pristine condition. He picked up one of the helmets and brought it up closer to examine it and huffed out a small laugh.

“Guys I got it!” Hunk cheered suddenly making Lance jump in surprise and drop the helmet he had in his hands.

“Heading out now,” he started hearing in his coms as each paladin left their areas.

“Lance, you’re the furthest away, do you want one of us to wait?” Shiro asked.

“Nah, don’t worry about me, it’s a straightaway for me,” he argued, carefully closing the door behind him even though he knew nobody would notice. It was courtesy really.

He was almost out of the door when something hit him from behind and he stumbled slightly forward. He whipped around his bayard forming and pointing and the now activated sentry. It was twitching slightly and barely standing on creaking legs. A single shot took it down and he started stomping out again.

“What was that?” Keith asked.

“The dead sentry wasn’t exactly dead, but it just hit me from behind, no big deal,” he explained shortly.

“Are you okay?” Pidge asked with concern.

“Yeah, it didn’t even have any weapons,” he assured them. He quickened his pace slightly when the main entrance came into view. Thankfully, because the planet was vacant of any life, they were able to land the Castle really close to the base and he was on the lift within minutes.

When he got back to the bridge, he saw that Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, Coran, and Allura were all huddled around the new information and rapidly talking about whatever information they had been given. While Keith was relaxing in his chair waiting for the actual debrief to happen.

With a smile, he slid off his helmet and sat in his chair.

Or, tried to.

When he attempted to lean back he was met with a weird pressure not letting him rest on the back of his chair. His forehead furrowed in confusion and he reached behind him searching until his fingers hit something. He lightly touched at it trying to figure out what it was until it met his back. Finally, he lightly wrapped his fingers around it and his eyes shot wide.

“Oh shit,” he hissed quietly to himself.

It was definitely a knife.

“Oh shit,” he hissed again as he carefully stood up.

“Um, guys?” He called out uncertainly.

“Yes?” Shiro asked as they turned to look at him.

“Okay, first of all, promise that you won’t freak out,” he said nervously wringing his hands together.

“Um, alright?”

“Okay, so, the sentry might have had a weapon after all and I might have been stabbed?”

“What!? Where? Are you okay?” Hunk ran forward with his arms outstretched.

“I said don’t freak out!” Lance whined before he could reach him.

“Hunk’s right though, we have to get you medical attention,” Shiro said with concern as he walked up with Hunk. “Are you bleeding?”

“I don’t really know, I think the knife is stemming most of it,” he mused trying to look over his shoulder at the handle.

“YOU STILL HAVE THE KNIFE IN YOU!?” They shouted at him before he was being rushed towards the med bay.

They sat him on one of the benches while Coran prepped the healing pod and Allura went to retrieve a healing suit. They gently started popping off his armour, careful to avoid the knife.

Hunk precisely started cutting his bodysuit down the back and carefully ripped it until the knife was resting on a small black circle of fabric. Thankfully, it looked like Lance was right and the knife was stemming most of the bleeding.

“Okay, Lance I need you to talk to us, you’re probably going into shock,” Shiro said clearly, keeping Lance’s eyes on his. “Are you in any pain?”

“Oh no, I don’t feel this at all,” he answered distracted, swinging his feet lightly. Shiro’s features paled and went slack.

“WE GOT TO HURRY WITH THAT POD!” He yelled, Pidge jumped up and rushed to Coran’s side to help as Shiro looked back at Lance. He lightly cupped Lance’s cheeks and made him look him in the eye.

“It’s going to be okay Lance, you might have hit something in your spine but we’re going to fix it,” he promised. Lance blinked in confusion before he remembered this exact scenario happening when he broke his arm years earlier.

“Oh shit! I’m sorry Shiro, that’s not what I meant,” he said frantically, reaching up to grab his shoulders.

“What?”

“I have CIP disorder, I’ve never felt pain, that’s why I didn’t notice,” he explained. Shiro’s eyes widened again, this time in shock.

“Pod is ready,” Coran called over to them. Allura stood at the opening of the pod with the healing suit unzipped and ready for him to slip into. Lance slid off the bench and held on to Hunk and Shiro as they offered their hands to him.

He carefully stepped into the legs of the healing suit and let them pull it up and zip it for him until they reached his mid back.

“Okay, I’m going to pull this out now,”  Shiro said holding the handle of the knife. Lance nodded and stared ahead. Shiro took a deep breath and pulled, waiting for the scream that normally came from the immense pain that a stabbing would cause.

But Lance was silent.

Even as blood poured down his back, he didn’t make a single peep.

Quickly, they zipped the rest of the suit up and started the healing cycle.

They definitely needed to talk after this.

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