#my laptop's calibration is shit and you can tell

[nau-the-duke]

Tired, overwhelmed and busy af, but doing silly Crowley doodles gets me going fr

Crowley knows what you are

[mkayoung]

Hi! This might sound weird, but what kind of laptop do you use? I am thinking of getting one but want to make sure I have a good one in terms of colors and what not :)<3

hi! not weird at all, the answer will be long though.

i have a gaming laptop Lenovo Legion 5P 15IMH05H. here's what under the hood if you'd like some details:

processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz.

RAM: 32GB with Kingston KF2933C17S4/16G (upgraded manually by me, originally had 16GB).

storage: Samsung MZVLB512HBJQ-000L2 (512GB), upgraded by me with additional 1TB of Kingston SFYRSK1000G.

graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB).

i also have an external monitor (Samsung S27B610EQI 27").

if we talk colorwise, when byung a laptop, you need to focus on a good internal monitor (display). you need to know its:

type (TN, IPS, VA, or OLED) – do a research and see what's good for you. mine is IPS. TN is usually the cheapest but i'd say avoid it at all cost, it's dull and tends to make pictures way more purple than they actually are. i've never used/tested VA or OLED but i know that they can be good (OLED is too expensive though and i don't think it's even used in laptops).

resolution and ppi (pixel per inch) – if you have a bad resolution/ppi ratio, you can get either pixels too big you'll see gaps between them (it looks like an annoying mesh on your screen) or too small and packed too tight so everything (both text and images) will be teeny tiny and it'll make your eyes hurt. my advice here would be to not get 2K or 4K resolution for a regular-sized laptop (e.g. 15-16") cos with anything more powerful then 1920x1080 (full hd) you won't see shit with a 100% scale (even for a 1920x1080 screen it's usually recommended to use 125% scale but in most laptops any scaling is blurry).

brightness – mine is 300 nits. seems like 300 is the gold standard for laptops these days. you can tell if a gif maker uses an apple laptop by their gifs since on any non-apple device such gifs look kinda dark cos apple displays have brightness up to 500 nits in SDR mode (and 1000-1500 with HDR).

color gamut – probably the most important part of your screen if you'd like to have true-ish colors. most browsers use sRGB color space so 100% sRGB will be more than enough for gifs and stuff. not all laptops have 100% (some can be e.g. 61%) so read your display specifications carefully.

also good to know/have: built-in color calibration (mine is provided with the X-Rite Pantone factory color calibration) but i don't think i've seen a lot of laptops actually having any. you can (and should) calibrate your screen yourself, google will help a lot here.

also good to know but not that important if you're not a gamer: refresh rate (i have 144Hz for my laptop and i believe it's 75Hz for the external monitor). and you don't need HDR for any internet content since most users have SDR on their end.

hope it helps! (lmk if you have any questions)

[jvsons]

I just saw ur requests r open!! I am absolutely in love with ur works. May I request a fic where reader and jason are in a library after hours, just hanging out together? preferably gender neutral reader! and idc if reader and jason have an established relationship or not. Tysm :)❤️❤️

DIMMING LIGHTS

Jason Todd x gn! reader

MASTERLIST

WARNINGS • none

CATEGORY • fluff

SUMMARY •

“You’re gonna scare me to death one day, you know?” A smile crept up on your face as Jason chuckled, prepping a light kiss on your cheek before settling down into the seat beside you.

“Maybe, but I think you can handle it.”

AN • Thank you so much for the request! You’re so sweet and a huge thank you for enjoying my writing!

“Y/n.. you know it’s after hours. What are you doing here?”

Shit, you’d been discovered already?

Turning around, you spared a sheepish smile towards your amazing friend who just also happened to take night shifts at the library. She swung the laniard holding the main keys in her hand, giving you an unimpressed look back.

“Listen, Cass.” You lowered your hand to tap your bag. “I really need tonight, super important secret vigilante work, you know?”

Although she was still stiff, you could tell that same old persuasion tactic was working. Soon enough, she spun her laniard one last time for the night and threw it to you.

“If you ever make me lose my job, you owe me a new one.”

“Thank you!”

Smiling, you hurried over to the nearest table to set down your materials. Then, you made a quick trip to the back of the register, flipping the control panel up and dimming the lights halfway.

Now, it was time to work.

Pulling your laptop from your bag, you got straight to work. Tonight, you tasked yourself with pinning down a small time drug-hustling group’s location. A job like this required your utmost attention, which is why you had to ditch your screaming neighbors and settle for the library.

“Huh, seems like these guys like to leave tags only visible to certain calibrations.”

Your eyes perked up at a small rustle to the bookshelf behind you.

“They do? Seems like you’ll have no problem tracking them down, then.”

You let out a sigh as a book was set down next to you, following a pair of hands leaning down on your shoulders.

“You’re gonna scare me to death one day, you know?” A smile crept up on your face as Jason chuckled, prepping a light kiss on your cheek before settling down into the seat beside you.

“Maybe, but I think you can handle it.”

You ignored the obnoxious wink that followed and continued to tap on your keyboard. The soft flipping of pages accompanied your analysis, soon joined by a series of rustling as Jason leaned down on the table, book in one hand while the other supported his chin.

“Watch’a reading?”

“Crime and Punishment.” He turned the next page slowly, sparing a glance in your direction. “This guy is pretty crazy, but he’s also pretty good at telling you about the crazy shit that happens in Russia.”

“Since when were you interested in Russia?” You snorted, taking a blind flick at his arm.

“Since now! Dostoevsky has changed my way of life.” Jason defended, reflecting your hit with the book’s cover.

You let out a devastated groan, waving Jason off before getting back to work. The more tags you deciphered, the heavier your eyes got. Jason seemed to notice, as he eventually got up to reshelf his book, which also happened to make you shoot up at the noise.

“I’m sure you got a hell of a lot of work done tonight, but I think you’re getting a little tired.” Jason’s voice rang out from behind you, softly suggesting you to nod and turn off your computer with a yawn.

“Would you like me to take you home?”

You grimaced at his offer, which only roused a look of confusion from him as he helped you up.

“I’d have better luck sleeping here, knowing my neighbors.”

Jason cursed your neighbors under his breath before sliding the laniard from around your wrist.

“You can stay at my place, then. As long as you promise to sleep.”

You rolled your eyes as Jason disappeared, allowing him to take your bag when he returned. Even though your eyes were half closed, you could see a hint of a smirk on your boyfriend’s face before he hauled you into his arms.

“So, what’ll it be darling?”

A small nod only answered his question, as you were too hot in the face to even answer.

Tags (if you would like to be added ask!) - @coffee-latte-sprite @homosensations (so sorry if this tags you twice!)

[decayandfanfics]

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut later.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

__________________________________________________________

Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

An intelligent enemy rather than a stupid friend.

True to his word, Jin treats you like a friend. He makes his best to make you feel a little more comfortable, knowing that you are probably scared to death. So, he engages with you, tries to help you with the cleaning and laundry. So does Compress, ever a gentleman he makes himself useful by being chivalrous. Of course, this doesn’t make you forget your own precarious position, but at least you use it in your favor and suddenly you are delighted at the sight him washing dishes.

After three days of their invasion, you find yourself folding some clothes when he asks you.

“board games?”

“yes” Compress smiles at you “since Shigaraki and Spinner have appropriated your tv and laptop, I thought it would be fun to play something, don’t you agree?”

“well…I’m afraid I only got a chess board.”

“It’s fine, dear. Will you play with me? I’m a little rusty, but I’m sure it would be fun.”

You look for the board, stored in some dark dusty corner of one of your closets as Compress prepares the little kitchen table for your game.

Seven matches later, you sight already getting bored of your constant wining. To be honest, Compress isn’t that bad, but there is no point in comparing you two when you spend playing your first two years in college.

Toga and Twice had gathered around the table to cheer, without really understanding what was happening, and not long after that Dabi and Magne were watching too.

“That was pretty impressive, dear!”

“you aren’t bad either, but I was in the chess club in college a few years ago. I learned a lot in there.” You say moving your eyebrows in funny gesture.

Compress stands giving you a bow and before you begin to gather the pieces to store it again, Shigaraki sits in front of you, putting each black piece in its place.

“Tomura -kun is going to play! You think he can beat her?” Toga whispers to Compress, before Magne answers from behind “Shigaraki is very good at this kind of games, my bet is on him.”

Shigaraki gives you a defiant glare, and you gather again your own pieces. Once you are ready, his ungloved hand points your turn to open the game.

He seems sure of this, a cocky smirk twitching his dry lips up, so you decide you will play seriously this time.

You open by moving your queen’s pawn, and he follows your movement just as you expected. Your king’s knight moves to protect your pawn, and again he reflects. The moment your bishop moves, you have control of the board.

You smile and his smirk turns into a feral grin stretching across his face.

“Smart girl…” he states amused before moving, and then, the game is his. “but you better try harder.”

You wrinkle, the tip of your teeth showing briefly before such challenge.

“Then, better not to disappoint.” Your answer sounds as playful as his defiant statement.

Forty minutes into it and you are completely invested in the game.

The back and forth is tight. For every strategy, he just counteracts your wits with something better and more difficult than the last. At the same time, every time he thinks he already got you, you manage to scape his control and get ahead again.

Its…weirdly exciting, to say the least.

Shigaraki’s eyes burn through your own, trying to read your expression in an attempt to predict your next movement and for a brief second you think about their color and the way his mouth twist upward whenever he fails to trap you.

He’s every bit the strategist you would expect from a ruthless leather, and you wonder how the media managed to paint him to be so childish and immature before, when you see nothing but a skilled hunter.

You feel surprised. Having never really thought about his clever ways or how he just seems to organize the league like a perfectly calibrated weapon, but seeing him now, you can trace every time, every word and every motion that gave away his intricate thinking pattern.

Surely, he’s bat shit crazy with the hero drama and such, but surely that’s not intelligence exclusive.

Your hand travels to your chin, a finger gently taping over your lower lip as you think your next move in one of your classic hard thinking gestures.

With your eyes fixed in the game, you don’t see the dragging look he gives to your lips.

You blink concentrated in trying to disarm his attack, unaware of his brief thoughts. Unaware of the fluttering motion of the eyelashes that crown your clever eyes, fanning softly over the smooth skin of your cheeks.

Just a mere second of self-indulgence and an intrusive flashing idea creeps out of nowhere between his destructive thoughts like a whisper of something unfathomable to him.

She’s very pretty. He thinks as he absorbs every angle of your face, trying to imprint in his brain the way light reflects over your cheekbones and between your lashes.  

You move you tower, and his attention draws back to the game, knowing he already won.

You watch it in slow motion, slapping yourself for not seeing it coming. His slender fingers taking his bishop, striking down your tower and compromising your king. That’s it, you lost, but the moment gets buried under the sudden butterflies in your belly when he arches his brow smugly and smiles softly as the “jaque-mate” leaves his lips, and in a brief defining second the thought takes form in your brain, gluing itself to your skull.

He’s quite handsome when he smiles like that.

Half feral, half childish, and every bit a smart ass.

Yeah. He looks handsome like this. Comfortable in his own skin…youthful.

Confident.  

He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed in yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.

A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing your name the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.

A clever pretty girl.

“Again?” he offers quietly, lowering his gaze because something in him just cannot stand your sweet defiance in a way he never thought possible.

Out of nowhere, he feels…

Embarrassed?

What the fuck.

Of what? He doesn’t know, but he knows he feels his blood creeping neck up and warming his face and he hates you for it, yet he can’t help the need to keep playing with you, just to feel there is something in you that relates to him.

The rest of the league cheers, about it. Magne, Compress and Dabi (surprisingly) engage in the game making bets and pointing moves.

Two games after and he has won two to one (yet in his mind it feels more like a draw after hours of relentless back and forth) when you finally call it for the night before standing, ready to just go to bed.

You give them all the good nights, your eyes lingering on his briefly, like trying to convince yourself that something weird just transpired between the two, just to disappoint yourself when he denies you the pleasure of his attention, seemingly distracted with the little tower between his fingers.

You brush it off like maybe it's only your imagination, maybe that's his way to get competitive and you saw something out of sheer loneliness and stress. You even tell yourself a joke about Stockholm syndrome, completely unaware of how later that night a lanky shadow slither through your bedroom door and watches your sleeping form, just to confirm again that you were, in fact, very pretty.

Chapter 6

[katieurah]

Screening Hearts - Part 3

So, I figured on 3 or 4 parts to this originally. Now, it’s maybe 5? Who knows. These two just keep being ridiculous, so I keep writing. We’ll see and cross our fingers I can make this hot mess into something. 

Also, I apologize for the number of times “check” appears in this one. Quarantine has me making lists of all the things, so I think Elide must make all the lists, too.

Let me know if you want tagged!

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Elide very carefully swiped her marker over the dry erase calendar above her desk. This is what it feels like to have finally lost it, she thought as she perfected the month and dates in the little black squares. She’d spent all last night rearranging her home office space, expanding the area to house more notebooks, a new-to-this-space jar of pens (which all work after extensively scribble-testing them), her laptop along with the desktop setup that was already there, a wall space for sticky notes, the newly mounted HD webcam, and her favorite chair. Check that off the list.

She was going stir-crazy.

It was bound to happen eventually, right? Her small apartment in a suburb of Orynth was 20 minutes from the office in a downtown business district of the city. Which she hadn’t been to in a week. She hadn’t been outside of her suburb for 5 days. She hadn’t been out of the apartment for 3. Stupid mayor. Stupid politicians. Stupid city limit rules. Stupid apartment in the crap-side of town.

Elide would feel so much better if her boss would actually contact her and give her feedback. She’d feel so much better if she were actually working with her team and not just video conferencing. She’d feel so much better if she could go blow off steam at her favorite pub. She’d feel so much better if Lorcan wasn’t the only consistent contact she’d had.

Aelin and Rowan had Elspeth and were on an extended holiday they’d planned before the merger and were now stuck due to travel restrictions. A cabin in the Staghorn mountains seemed great until you were stuck with limited internet.

Lysandra and Aedion were all the way in Rifthold where he was stationed and she was in between jobs. There were only so many video calls they could do.

Manon and The Thirteen were coordinating relief efforts in the Wastes where travel restrictions hit hardest. Dorian, of course, was there, up Manon’s butt and around the corner. She got sassy when she was stressed and anxious. And maybe a little immature, too.

She’d been organizing and creating checklists for almost two days. She kept going through her mental list of her people, adding Yrene and Chaol, Fenrys and Connall, Gavriel, Vaughn...Check, Check, Check. More people she’d had contact with, but no one to talk to. At least she knew where they were. Another thing to check off the list.

Elide hung the calendar up above her work area and booted her computer system up. She wanted to triple check that it all would work seamlessly whether she added her laptop in or not.

“Cable there...check… settings….check...audio detect...check…check, chickity-check…. check yo self before you wreck yo self….Chickity-check yo self before you wreck yo self….Yeah, come on and check yo self before you wreck yo self!”

Head bobbing and hands scratching imaginary DJ setups while she waited, Elide was so lost in her thoughts that when the video chat tones went off and startled her, she tipped over in her chair as she reached over to answer the call without thinking.

“Uh, Elide? You okay?”

Shit! Of course, she actually would have answered the dadgummed thing. As she fell over. On a chat with Lorcan. …

Lorcan watched with amusement as Elide closed her eyes and took a deep breath, righting herself in her seat and glaring at him.

“What do you want, Salvaterre?”

He struggled to keep his face straight, biting the inside of his cheek before answering. He honestly had no real reason for video calling her on Sunday evening. They weren’t even supposed to talk until after lunch tomorrow, but he found himself making up excuses anyway.

“I was just testing a new set up and wanted to make sure everything worked right. Just lucky I guess that you were available to be my guinea pig,” he teased. She regarded him suspiciously, like she didn’t quite believe his story.

“Well, you tried it. So, bye,” she quipped and began to reach to end the chat. She still looked flustered. She probably didn’t want to admit she’d been doing the same thing to her system and that’s why she could answer. And that he’d seen her wipe out at the beginning of the call.

“Hold on there, sweetheart. I have to make sure the audio is calibrated just right and that we don’t get dropped.” He adopted an arrogant tone, knowing it’d irk her and keep her on longer.

“Don’t call me that,” she hissed.

He chuckled, reading her face just fine over the screen, noting her little tells of irritation, how her nostrils flared when he got under her skin.

“First,” she continued, gritting her teeth, “you can run diagnostics with the system, you don’t need me. Second, you’re a morning guy. Why are you on here at 6 on Sunday night? Heck, we could even be doing this tomorrow before we dive in.”

“Oh, come on, El. You know as well as I do that testing systems works better with another person. And what else is there to do since we’re all kind of stuck? Perranth officially cut off travel on Friday until the tox results come back on that dinner.”

“I know… it’ll be another week before we know if we can even go back to the office,” she whined. Then she looked caught off guard “Wait… you’re in Perranth? I thought you’d be in Doranelle at headquarters?”

Damn. She didn’t know he was back in the country, then. “Rowan wanted some security updates done at the branch office here, so I stopped off on my way to the summit. Then the shit hit the fan, so I’m here until they ease up.”

“Oh. Well, that stinks...Wait, if you’re only in for that, are you seriously set up in a hotel right now?”

“Gods, no! That’d be the worst. I’m at the cottage,” he replied, referring to the second home Rowan and Aelin had purchased. Since everyone traveled so much, Rowan had set up an office for the security firm in that house. It was also a frequent place for layover flights, pit stops, and long weekends, making it a nice retreat while he was stuck.

“You didn’t seriously pack your coffee, the grinder, and the whole system with you…” She said, staring at him flatly.

“Damn straight. I wouldn’t be able to live on that cheap single-serve crap Aelin keeps here. Must be why she’s always so bitchy…”

“Hey! That’s my sister-cousin you’re talking about! And I doubt it’s the coffee’s fault...” Elide jumped to defend Aelin, even while chuckling and agreeing. She knew A could be a real piece of work.

Lorcan smiled, eager to keep up their banter. He was relaxing and it felt nice to be back to how they were. “El, I-”

“Well, it’s late and I’ve gotta get a few more things done before tomorrow. Bye, Salvaterre.” Elide rushed as though trying to stop him from speaking any more and ended the chat abruptly.

Lorcan stared at the screen, trying to catch up. He hadn’t even said anything. Had he? Even she was laughing at his rather mild jab at Aelin. Sure, A got on his nerves sometimes and their history wasn’t always good, but she was family.

He dropped his head back, rubbing his face with his hands. He let out a frustrated growl before stalking to the kitchen. Maybe there was some whisky somewhere. ....

Elide slumped over the desk, banging her head as she whined. She had to stop. Their banter was nice. She wouldn’t admit to craving it yet, though. She wasn’t so stir-crazy to go that deep into navel gazing… yet anyways. She needed distance. She had to remember that Lorcan was a self-absorbed, arrogant, dill hole. She had to remind herself of that. She brought back memories of That Night to reinforce those thoughts as her heart tried to betray her again.

She’d been upset and angry at another jerk who’d tried to get in her pants and wasn’t mature enough to handle no. Sure, he’d been a fun date and was attractive, but she just didn’t feel that urge with him yet. So she said no, he’d ghosted for a week, and then sent a text saying he thought they should see other people.

Aelin had handed her a glass of wine and cheered her up a bit, making her laugh over horror stories from past dates. Dating was hard. Elide was a catch. Guys were dumb. Then they started talking about Lorcan. “El… have you thought maybe you and Lor should try it?”

Elide had stared open-mouthed, trying to formulate a response coherent enough. Was she that obvious? She thought she hid her feelings pretty well, but… And Aelin recommending it?

“Come on, E, you two are great together. And I know you. I’ve seen you staring at him several times. Just, think about it? And that you’ve got options. This loser isn’t worth any more tears.”

“True,” Elide had agreed. “Maybe I’ll ask Lorcan for coffee or something later. But tonight I just want to finish this wine and snuggle Ellie.”

Just then, Lorcan walked in and ruined it all.

Right. He ruined it. No going back.

Elide left her mental checklist behind in favor of repeating bad things about Lorcan to herself. Even as she pointedly ignored the realization that talking to him helped she felt more grounded than she had earlier. She also ignored the realization that she’d probably fall asleep convincing herself that his laugh earlier was grating and not the best sound she’d ever heard.

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@nalgenewhore

[abeautifulblog]

12 and 6 for the writing asks?

Yassssss~

12) My favorite place to write is our courtyard patio:

We live in the literal desert, so it gets too hot to be out there during the afternoon, but it’s lovely in the mornings and the evenings, and I’ve got my chair set up with a little rolling desk I built for my laptop. It’s also enclosed, so it’s safe for my blind & stupid cat  to come enjoy the outdoors with me. (No really, I love her but she’s an idiot and also completely blind.)

(And yes, I gave Gene my own hobby when I wrote him as a gardener.)

*

6) Hardest story to write: haaah, I think you guys can probably guess the answer to this, based on which installments took the longest to get out – “Bodies in the Lake” and “Love Like Light.” And the common denominator there was making those nerds bone.

So yeah, now that I can finally talk about what was going on behind the scenes – why did those take so long?

Part of it was just that as the fic came to an end, there were fewer things left to write, so if I got stuck on one thing, there was really nothing else for me to work on in the mean time. “The Old College Try,” for instance, had been in the works since “This House,” but when I was blocked on it, I could put it on the backburner and write six billion remixes of the bake sale instead.

So after the Thanksgiving chapter, when they finally clear the air about Robert’s mental illness, the next item to check off the list was “nerds get sum fuk” – and I really thought they were ready to get down to it. I was planning a comedy romp at a bigfoot-themed ski lodge that would end with them hopping in the sack. I thought their issues were resolved already.

And then it just.

Wasn’t.

Happening.

Was the setting wrong? I’d chosen to put them on holiday as way to shake up the scenery, get them out of their usual (sexless) routine and perhaps embolden them to try something new. Should I have left them at Gene’s house, where Robert feels safe and comfortable? But then what’s the catalyst that makes them do it NOW, when they haven’t done it BEFORE? What makes Robert decide that now is the “right time”? How do I signal to the readers that it’s okay for them to have sex now, when earlier (like in “Ghosts in the Attic”) it would have been disastrous?

But yeah, I had been trying to make them fuck since chapter 18. It’s why that chapter is shot through with sex, why Robert has a boner for basically the entire first half – and not in the freaky-dissonant way that he did in “Ghosts in the Attic,” but as a natural, healthy reaction to his beloved boyfriend rubbing up on him in slinky yoga pants. It was to telegraph that sex is on the agenda, so that it wouldn’t be coming out of left field when they consummated at the end of the chapter.

It’s why the working title for “Bodies in the Lake” was sex_happens.doc – until it became clear that sex wasn’t going to happen. That the issues raised in “Ghosts in the Attic” were still completely unresolved. Indeed, Gene still didn’t even know those issues existed.

Gene is very good at handling Robert’s crises when it’s something he’s been through before with Alex – but when Robert steps off-script, Gene’s suddenly winging it, and it shows. Alex had a lot of sexual partners in the past too – as people who are outgoing and bisexual and dtf often do – but he never did Robert’s brand of self-destructive, self-loathing promiscuity, and so Gene has no understanding of the psychology behind that behavior, or why it’s different from Alex’s form of slutting around.

And then Mary was supposed to just smack some sense into him and shove him back into Gene’s loving arms, but holy shit, did that conversation get derailed. And as an author, when a character looks you in the eye and says, It’s time to talk about this, you let them talk.

That was when my housemate-beta, who’d been there for all my agonizing over how to make them fuck, said, “You have to break this up into two chapters. This conversation here, it’s the emotional climax.” And she was absolutely right, but that’s why the sex got delayed another year. 😫

(I had not, going into that chapter, intended for them to have that conversation. I thought I was showing their character growth in the gym scene at the beginning, which features a number of deliberate callbacks to the first chapter except for all the ways that they’re healthier now, drinking smoothies instead of mimosas and actually TALKING about feelings. I had not realized they were going to DOUBLE THE FUCK DOWN on character growth later.)

So that was “Bodies in the Lake” finally out, after only eleven months (and I do consider that chapter a conscious bookend to “Ghosts in the Attic”), but I still had yet to make them fuck.

(I feel like some exotic zookeeper – like, I have created the perfect conditions for you, have I not, so why won’t you two just fuck already??)

Because it’s not just about being horny and wanting to get their rocks off (anyone with a sex drive knows how to take care of that on their own), it’s about the profoundly intimate connection that sex can be for sexual people. (The misunderstanding around this is something I find distressing in asexual discourse, when it reduces sex to a one-dimensional, even selfish, urge. I understand that not everyone experiences sex the same way, but there’s nothing selfish about wanting to feel that kind of connection with your partner.)

Not to mention that the hard ban on sex would inhibit other forms of intimacy too – that Robert can’t do ANYTHING without part of his brain keeping track of whether it’s okay or not, worrying how far is too far, knowing that there’s a stopping point coming up. It feels analogous to how queer celebrities, before they come out, seem to have almost no public personality whatsoever – Anderson Cooper and Kristin Stewart are the ones who come to mind here – because they’re having to police themselves so stringently lest anything ‘kinda gay’ slip out, that they wind up clamping down on themselves far beyond that. (And then when they do come out and are free to be themselves, it turns out they’re smart and snarky and all-around cool people!) I feel like after the sex barrier’s been broken, Robert would become a lot more relaxed and uninhibited with non-sexual intimacy too.

I’d had the first half of that chapter written for ages – the conversation after Robert comes back to the house and he explains that period of his life to Gene – but I couldn’t seem to give them that final push. I made a lot of attempts, tweaking my approach in subtle ways, but nothing quite rang true.

It was my friend Sam (dude who wrote the Craig fic) who finally said, They need to fight.

(And also that Gene needed to get pushed off his pedestal – “Because I have BEEN that endlessly patient and supportive boyfriend, and it gets old.”)

And as soon as he said it, I realized he was right – I’d done the thing, the thing that every guide on writing sex tells you not to do, which is to neatly wrap up all the characters’ interpersonal issues and tie them off with a bow and then let them fall into bed. It’s what feels logical, but it is death to drama, because then there’s no tension, and no reason for the reader to pay attention during the sex scene that follows, because there’s nothing going to be accomplished in it.

…Buuuut, when I’d spent 100k words writing a love story about careful consent, and a protagonist who doesn’t have a good handle on his own desires, there was no way for me to let them barrel through sex on a full head of passion and talk about it afterwards. It’s why they had to stop halfway through and dial it back a bit, touch base and explicitly confirm that yes, I want to proceed, bring them back from the edge for a while so it clearly wasn’t just their downstairs brains doing the decision-making.

The result is that it’s not as sexy as I might have hoped for, and while I’m a little disappointed about that, it’s checked by the knowledge that – realistically – there’s no way it could have been. Scorching hot sex requires the participants to be uninhibited, and Robert and Gene can’t afford to throw caution to the wind when they’re venturing into a known minefield. They’ll be able to relax into it later, for sure, but for their first time, they had to be mindful and deliberate about it.

(And also hearkening back to a thought Robert had in “Ghosts in the Attic,” that he wanted to make Gene smile and laugh during sex. In essence, that his vision for them, what he wanted out of sex, was more for it to be intimate than for it to be hawt.

Ah well. Stay tuned for the hookup AU – basically, all the scorching-hot sex they weren’t having in Beautiful Day wound up in the hookup AU instead)

So yeah, getting them to bone was definitely the hardest part of this fic. There were so many factors involved thanks to Robert’s various issues, that required a lot of careful calibration – and in the end, he still had to take a leap of faith. And while it’s not my favorite part of the fic, now that it’s done I can get on with finishing the rest of it. The final chapter doesn’t have anything really fraught (that hasn’t already been written), so I’m optimistic that it’s not going to give me as much trouble as the previous two chapters.

[matesclever218]

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Sep 21, 2010

OK, so in July I returned to Apple with the purchase of the MacBook (modified bliss on that front) and I have now splurged the extra bucks for the new Wireless Mighty Mouse. Learn how to change the double-click and scrolling speed of your Apple Magic Mouse, Apple Magic Trackpad, or the built-in trackpad on your Mac. In Apple Support Communities. See all questions on this article See all questions I have asked Apple. Adjust double-click and scrolling speed of your mouse or trackpad. More ways to. Home Forums > Parallels Desktop for Mac > Windows Guest OS Discussion > HELP, having issues with mouse/pointer in AutoCAD running in parallels Discussion in ' Windows Guest OS Discussion ' started by Evan_T21, Sep 20, 2013. I know this isn't really related to what this forum does, but I don't know where else to look for help. I bought a new computer (HP notebook G62) and the mouse is off by 1/4 inch. If this has already been posted, I appologize. I did search this forum first. It seems that my Parallels always is 'losing' the mouse. It is specifically bad within Internet Explorer but happens in other windows within Parallels as well. How can I calibrate a joystick on a Mac? Ask Question. How can I emulate keyboard and mouse commands with a game controller? How do I calibrate a Gamecube controller? How to charge my PS3 SixAxis controller? Can't calibrate generic usb gamepad right thumb.

Yesterday, I have downloaded Parallels Desktop to my Macbook Pro, and my brother brought a CD of Windows 7 to install there. At first, in the coherence mode, the taskbar was working amazingly until I turned off my computer. When I turned it back on, Windows 7 started to run, and the taskbar started to disappear and reappear after awhile. Then I restarted Parallels, then the taskbar completely disappeared. I have tried to modify its settings, and it still didn't work. So, I changed the coherence mode to window one, the taskbar was there. And then I changed it back to coherence, it disappeared again. What should I do to get it back in the coherence mode?

Windows On Mac :: Mouse In Parallels With Two Cursors

May 8, 2007

I've never used Parallels, but my girlfriend has it on her iMac. I installed Theme Hospital for her but when you try to play it the mouse goes absolutely crazy, flying from edge to edge. When I put Parallels in a window I could see what was happening. There were two cursors on screen; the Theme Hospital one and another one. Whenever the other (normal XP style) one hit and edge of the window the Theme Hospital one would jump to there, and then they'd swap around a bit when I moved it back. Also, is there an easier way to put Parallels in a window? The only way I know so far is to drop the resolution from standard in XP, then press cmd+Q and cancel.

Hardware :: Mighty Mouse Pointer Stopped Responding / Green Light On Bottom Of Mouse Flashing

May 1, 2009

I know that the general consensus here is that the Mighty Mouse is a piece of shit. That notwithstanding, I'd appreciate posters refraining from engaging in further elaborations on that concept when replying to this topic (i.e., no comments like 'Buy a new mouse,' please). At any rate, I purchased a wireless Mighty Mouse about a month ago and was very happy with it until the batteries apparently died. One day the pointer simply stopped responding and the green light on the bottom of the mouse was flashing. I replaced the batteries and the mouse resumed normal operation. Then, a few days later it happened again. I have yet to re-replace the batteries and have reverted to using my now eight-year-old Logitech dual-optical mouse (possibly the finest peripheral I have ever owned). Has anyone else encountered this issue? Is this mouse having internal hardware or software issues or is it normal for it to devour batteries at this rate? System Preferences says that Bluetooth is maintaining the connection properly, so I am ruling that out as an issue. I would just say to hell with it, and use my Logitech mouse full-time, but my wife hates it and I payed seventy goddamn dollars for the Apple product.

Windows On Mac :: Wireless Keyboard & Mouse Recommendation For OS X - Parallels - Bootcamp?

Nov 19, 2009

I am looking for a wireless keyboard/mouse to replace my current USB wired to fulfill the following requirements: 1) Must Work with OS X, Bootcamp and Parallels. 2) Work with Windows XP (currently) and Windows 7 in future. 3) Whatever wireless technology, I only want ONE receiver for both KB and mouse. 4) bluetooth or NANO or other 5) Keyboard MUST be high contrast (example-black keys/white letters). This precludes current Apple keyboard. 6) Would like NOT to mix and match brands.

IMac :: Mouse Pointer Moves By Itself?

Mac Cursor

Aug 26, 2008

I just got my iMac, and I have a problem with mighty mouse. Sometimes, when I move the mouse just a little, the pointer will 'jump' to one side of the screen... it's very frustrating. Is it due because my mousepad has different colours on it ? That's my only explanation. Maybe the mousepad different colours cause reflection on the pointer that make it jump all over the screen...

MacBook Pro :: How To Use Black Mouse Pointer

Jun 30, 2009

The story behind it - I used it a bit at home, connected to the AC adapter, then closed it and put it in a laptop bag (quite tight on both sides - like a sleeve [you have to slide the computer out - it doesn't open]). Then it was in the bag for 10-15minutes, I took it out, opened it up and this came up! (while it was like this, I could see the black mouse pointer and move it about just fine) I did a hard restart, and then everything was fine.

OS X :: Icons Get Stuck To Mouse Pointer

Jul 18, 2010

Sometimes, if I click an icon (usually on my desktop) it'll just 'stick' to the mouse pointer, it'll appear as if I am still clicking and holding the icon, and it drags around. I also can't trash, drop or do anything with it. Other programs on the computer can't be used either because it's still using that icon. I'm forced to use keyboard commands to restart Finder or press the 'esc' key, which works until I click any other icon again. This happens with text and pictures also.

Mac Mini :: How To Change Mouse Pointer

Apr 22, 2012

I would like enlarge or change the color of the mouse pointer. Info: Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

OS X :: Icons Stick To Mouse Pointer But Won't Drop

Apr 23, 2010

Somehow I can't drag and drop files/programs/icons any more. Not on my desktop, not within my dock. When I click on an icon to drag, it will stick to my mouse pointer, but only as a ghost. When I try to release it, it won't drop to the designated area or folder. The icon just keeps sticking to my mouse pointer, where ever I take it. Only after using esc and clicking. I using Mac OS X 10.6.2 iMac iMac8,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 3,06 GHz

Hardware :: Mouse Pointer Freezing - Need To Unplug

Feb 7, 2010

I have a IMac G4 mod. Power mac4,2 operating system osx version 10.411 processor 800 MHz 768 MB SDRAM. Every now and then my mouse pointer freezers up and I have to unplug the mouse and it starts working again. If it does not unfreeze I have to restart. Then I am back in business. Some times the whole screen goes gray with a black square-telling me to shut down and restart.

Mac Pro :: Won't Work / Mouse Pointer Screen Freeze

Jun 14, 2008

I have just installed a new Mac Pro. Everything works except I get occasional mouse pointer freezes. They last for about 1 second each time and seem to occur randomly, on average with 1-2 min intervals. The only things I have installed on top of OS X so far driver wise is MouseWorks to power my Kensington trackball. I use my older large full-keyed white Pro keyboard and only use the smaller wireless one remotely. I have tried deactivating Bluetooth but the mouse freezes still persist.

IMac :: Mouse Pointer Out Of Control - Not Allow Clicks

Apr 27, 2009

Today I was working with my iMac without any problem, suddenly the mouse pointer start behaving very odd, when I tried to click an icon, menu or whatever the mouse start moving not allowing me do the work, I changed the wireless mouse suspecting was a hardware problem but when I connected the USB mouse I got the same problem, then I shutdown the iMac but after starting I got the same problem. I suspect is a trojan virus but I heard that Leopard operating system is very robust and virus is not currently a problem.

OS X Mavericks :: Mouse Pointer Not Always Changing On Mouseover

Sep 6, 2014

I have an issue with my mouse that started a few days ago. My cursor doesn't always change properly when I mouseover certain things. For example, when I hover it above a link, it turns into a pointing hand like it should, when I navigate to the URL bar, it will stay as the hand even after clicking for a short while before changing to what it's supposed to become (the thin bar.) Sometimes it will remain a thin bar when it's supposed to be a black arrow, and so forth. I've tried troubleshooting the issue, but I haven't found much of relevance. One user seemed to be experiencing the same thing albeit only in some pro software I don't use. Mine is system wide. I'm using the trackpad on a 2014 baseline 15' rMBP running Mavericks 10.9.4. Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

MacBook Pro :: Mouse Pointer Missing On The Screen?

Jun 29, 2014

I am using macbook pro 15' with latest Maverick OS.Lately, I find that after I log in, the pointer goes missing from the screen and as a result I am unable to click on any icon.I have tried plugging in a USB Mouse, mouse pointer again does not show on the screen.When I force switch off from the power switch,and switch on again I get the pointer.Some times I have to repeat the process.

IMac :: Mouse Pointer Tracking Speed Very Slow

Mar 17, 2009

I just opened my brand new 2009 24inch IMac! The Mouse pointer speed is very very slow. I adjusted the tracking speed to the fastest possible, but this is still under par. I typed my question in google and it directed me to download a program called 'Mouse Zoom' which was downloaded onto my... 'Desktop.' I didn't click the icon to run it because I am afraid of a virus. Is 'Mouse Zoom' safe to click on? Will it fix the problem, or is there an alternative to this issue? I cant imagine something so nice being crippled by something as simple as mouse speed.

MacBook :: Mighty Mouse Pointer No Longer Working?

May 6, 2009

I've been using my M Mouse successfully with my MacBook until recently when the Mouse Pointer no longer moves. The button does engage the dashboard and if I position the cursor using the MacBook trackpad, then the click function of the mouse does work. I have tried changing the batteries. It appears I am having a similar problem when I use a wired mouse. Just in case it's connected, I run Parallels and did recently upgrade Windows software.

Hardware :: Making Mighty Mouse Pointer Use More Precise?

Oct 31, 2009

I just made the switch to Mac. I just got the new macbook pro 15 inch. The only thing is that I bought it mainly for graphic design and I am struggling to use the might mouse. I feel like I have to work so hard just to get the mouse over the icon or tab that I want to select. When I was using a PC the mouse was so much more precise if I wanted to select something or click on something small it was easy. Is there a setting or something to make it easier on the mac using the mighty mouse?

Software :: On Clicking Icons Get Stuck To Mouse Pointer

Jun 24, 2009

Occasionally if I click an icon (usually on my desktop) it'll just 'stick' to my mouse pointer, it'll appear as if I am still clicking and holding the icon, and it drags around. I also can't trash, drop or do anything with it. Other programs on the computer can't be used either because it's still using that icon. I'm forced to use keyboard commands to restart Finder, which works until I click any other icon again.

MacBook Pro :: Remove The Green Circle On Mouse Pointer?

Mar 14, 2012

How do I remove the little green circle with a white plus tied to my mouse pointer Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), iOS 5.1

OS X Mavericks :: Bluetooth Mouse Pointer Works But Can't Land Anywhere

Jun 5, 2014

It is happening more and more often: When I start my iMac the mouse pointer is moving normally but when I click on, say, Finder nothing happens, or when I click on the Dock nothing happens. It will not stay or land on any app. It is just hovering and nothing seems to be affected by the mouse pointer. I turn the mouse off and back on and it works fine. So it is an erratic behavior which baffles me. I have read numerous cases in the discussions and all point to a PRAM reset. Will a PRAM reset delete or revert modifications I have made to my iMac, such as disabling the startup sound, via sudo? I don't mind restarting the mouse but it is a hassle Info: iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

MacBook Pro :: Trackpad Keeps Bouncing The Mouse Pointer When Tap To Select

Sep 4, 2014

had problems with the trackpad - when I tap to select an item the mouse pointer 'bounces' off the item I'm trying to select. It happens randomly - not every time. I migrated all my data and settings from my old Mac Pro (2011 model, also running Mavericks) via Time Machine - could that have an impact? Not using any non-Apple power supplies or other devices. Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

OS X :: Mouse Pointer Converted Into Black Square After Sleep Mode

Jun 22, 2006

A bizarre thing: when I wake my Cube from sleep, the mouse pointer seems to have converted itself into a black 1' square. As soon as I click in a program it changes back to an arrow.

Software :: Mouse Pointer Freezes When Multiple Applications Are Open

Oct 16, 2008

My mouse continuously freezes when I have to many applications open. I have the mirror door G4. When it freezes I can access the F11 and F12 buttons on the keyboard, but have to restart the computer. I have switched the mouse, but it does not fix it. The more I use the computer the less it happens. It appears to happen more with multiple browser windows open in Safari.

Mac Mini :: Mouse Pointer Disappear And Webpages Drop To Bottom?

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Mar 23, 2012

My mouse pointer disappears when still, if I open a webpage or app store the page drops to the bottom and I cant get back to the top with the mouse. I have tried six different mice (blue tooth and wireless including mac magic mouse) , all the same. Also when the sound is on and the system starts up there is a low buzzing sound until I move the mouse or open something up. Should I just restart the whole os as this is only one week old and I am over it already! Info: Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

MacBook :: Get The Colorful Circle Thing On The Mouse Pointer Every Time?

Mar 25, 2012

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I have a 2008 Aluminum Body MacBook and recently its been working extremely slow. I always get the colorful circle thing on the mouse pointer every time I try to click on anything. I was wondering if anyone had this problem before and what you did to fix this? Or if anyone knew how to fix this problem. Info: MacBook, iOS 5.1

Intel Mac :: How To Stop Scratching Sound When Moving Mouse Pointer

May 6, 2012

For approximately one week I have been getting a scratching sound when I move the mouse pointer accross desktop no matter what program I am running. Current OS is MAC OS X 10.7.3. Sound continues when I turn sound off. Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

MacBook Pro :: Track Pad Doesn't Work Properly And Mouse Pointer Is Jumping All Over Screen?

May 19, 2012

it feels like someone else is controlling my mouse. This just started happening. My trackpad doesn't work or works sporadically. While typing the pointer is scrolling all over my screen.

OS X V10.7 Lion :: Why Doesn't It Give Us The Possibility To Change The Mouse Acceleration Or Pointer Style

Jun 21, 2012

as a former Windows user I really miss the option to tune the mouse pointer acceleration or to change the pointer looking!why can't I simply use my trackpad for my iPad supporting the multitouch gestures available on the iPad's OS just on the track pad? Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

MacBook Pro :: Mouse Pointer All Of A Sudden Started To Move Slower With A Small Delay

Jun 30, 2014

my mighty mouse pointer all of a sudden started to move slower with a small delay. I have checked the battery but it's 100%. Macbook Pro 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 751 SSD

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Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac

Virtualization

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When I last reviewed virtualization software in 2008, I found Parallels Desktop 4 for Mac effective, but saddled with a bit of bugginess and lacking some DirectX support. Parallels 5 Desktop for Mac (I tested build 9308) solves both problems, while adding features and improving performance.

Among the most notable of those new features: a much-faster virtualization engine; automatic compression of Windows’ hard disks; a new virtual machine manager; and a new lockdown mode, which requires a password to exit full screen mode, make changes to the virtual machine state, or manage snapshots (perfect for system administrators who don’t want end-users mucking up their machines).

Installation, setup

I tested Parallels Desktop 5 by using it to install Windows XP Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), and Ubuntu Linux 9.10 on my Mac Pro (2.66GHz quad core with 8GB of RAM, running OS X 10.6.2).

Installing both Windows and Linux is easy in Parallels; it has assistants that automate the process for both. It also installs Parallels Tools, which handles the task of mouse integration between the guest OS and Mac OS, as well as allowing easy guest desktop resizing by resizing the guest OS window.

There are a couple aspects of installing guest OSes that could be improved. First, every time you create a new virtual machine, Parallels creates an alias to that virtual machine on your OS X Desktop. There’s no way to avoid this, so if you find the aliases useless (as I do), you have to manually remove them each time you create a virtual machine.

More troubling is that, when creating a new Windows virtual machine, the default settings are for full integration of the Mac OS and the Windows guest—the default even sets the Windows’ user folder to the Mac’s Users folder. As someone who has personally experienced Windows malware infections, total integration is not something I recommend for most virtual machine users, and yet it’s the default behavior in Parallels.

Parallels also defaults to booting Windows virtual machines in the fully-integrated Coherence mode, where the Windows desktop vanishes, and Windows’ windows are intermingled with those of OS X. For someone expecting a standard Windows interface after installation, this can be disconcerting.

The basics

Like Fusion 3, Parallels 5 now supports Windows Aero in Windows 7, and also includes OpenGL 2.1 acceleration in both XP Pro and Windows 7 (Fusion only supports OpenGL 2.1 in Windows XP Pro). In addition, OpenGL acceleration is included in Linux guests, enabling full visual effects (such as windows that deform when dragged) in Linux systems such as Ubuntu 9.10. More usefully, you’ll also be able to run Linux programs that require OpenGL acceleration. Parallels is alone in its support for OpenGL 2.1 in Linux and Windows 7. I found the Aero effects worked very smoothly in Windows 7 on my Mac Pro.

As with its competitors, Parallels handles typical office productivity applications with ease, in both Windows and Linux. Microsoft Office (Windows) and OpenOffice (Linux) both ran well, and had no troubles with the mixture of spreadsheets and documents I tried opening and editing in both. Web browsers and e-mail clients also performed well; if this is the extent of your virtual machine needs, Parallels 5 will easily meet your requirements.

Parallels 5 was also the fastest of the three programs I tested in the vast majority of the benchmark tests I ran—including the all-important real-world tests. Whether it was copying files to or from the Mac, or expanding zip archives, Parallels easily outpaced its competition. As one example, copying 2.5GB worth of files from the Mac to a Windows 7 machine via a shared folder took just over a minute in Parallels. That same task took nearly two minutes in VirtualBox, and about a minute and a half in Fusion.

Suspending, waking, booting, and shutting down were all quickest in Parallels, too. There’s a small caveat there, at least with suspending. When I tried sleeping the machine while a 3D game was running, it worked, but the game didn’t work after waking from sleep. In Fusion, the same experiment worked just fine—so one tradeoff of the faster sleep time in Parallels is, at least in my testing, an inability to sleep and then resume a 3D game. As a user, you’ll have to decide whether the faster suspend times in general are worth this tradeoff when trying to suspend an in-progress 3D game. (This may not be an issue with all games, but it was in the two I tested with.)

Like Fusion 3, Parallels 5 offers improved multi-monitor support, treating two displays as separate monitors in Windows, and as one large gargantuan display in Linux. Adding a third screen to the mix worked perfectly in Windows. In Linux, however, the third screen was seen by the system (the horizontal resolution reflected its existence), but it was all white, and I couldn’t see anything that I dragged onto that screen.

To make working in full-screen mode easier, Parallels 5 lets you specify behaviors for mousing into the four screen corners—you can switch to one of the other available view modes, or show the Parallels menu bar. Once you’ve set a behavior for a corner, moving the mouse into that corner will “peel down” and reveal a bit of your OS X desktop. Unfortunately, there’s no visual indication of what happens if you then click the mouse, so you’ll need to remember which corner you’ve assigned to which task.

New looks for Windows

Parallels 5 features a new view mode, Crystal, along with a new Mac-like theme for use within Windows. Crystal view mode takes Coherence mode one step further. You won’t find the Start menu or task bar anywhere in Crystal mode—in fact, you won’t even see the Parallels Desktop icon in your Dock. Instead, a menu bar icon lets you change view modes, see the Windows Start menu, or work with attached devices. You’ll also find your task bar icons (optionally) in the menu bar, and Windows Applications folder in your OS X Dock. Any open windows will be integrated with your OS X windows, as in Coherence mode.

Crystal mode works reasonably well, though you can’t Command-Tilde to toggle between multiple windows of the same Windows’ application, nor can you use Snow Leopard’s Dock Exposé mode with Windows’ windows. Both of these features work as expected in Fusion. I also found that dragging windows around in Crystal mode, when using an Aero theme in Windows 7, was quite laggy on my Mac Pro. I had much better results after I disabled Aero in Crystal mode (you can control this in the virtual machine’s Settings).

I experienced some strangeness when I had Windows Media Player window open in Crystal mode, and then used Exposé’s All Windows mode. In addition to the opened windows, I also saw three “ghost” windows for Windows Media Player, and some visual distortion was visible in the Excel window.

Selecting any one of these “ghost” windows would simply switch to Windows Media Player, so it wasn’t a critical issue, but it definitely looks odd when using Exposé.

The second new look for Windows in Parallels is MacLook, which is actually an OS X-like theme for Windows (XP, Vista, and 7). You apply MacLook via the View menu, and Parallels then works for a minute or two to install the theme. The objective is to make Windows less visually shocking for someone switching between the Mac OS and the Windows OS.

While that’s the idea, I think MacLook fails fairly badly in achieving the goal.

Because not every element in Windows is themable, what MacLook winds up giving you is a series of different-looking windows within Windows—some look something like OS X windows, others look like native Windows windows, and still others look like some strange Frankenstinian mixture of the two.

Some windows are square, others are rounded; none seem to have shadows and some are missing edge borders; some have the red/yellow/green buttons from OS X at the top right, some at the top left, and others lack them completely.

I can’t imagine that anyone who likes and uses the OS X interface regularly will find MacLook to be an improvement over the stock Windows theme—at least there’s some consistency there, and the windows all mostly look the same.

When I unchecked the MacLook entry in the View menu, which should disable MacLook, I had some issues in Windows 7—the uninstall process didn’t quite complete, leaving an even odder mix of window appearances. I was able to resolve that issue by using the Personalization section of Windows preferences to pick a stock Aero theme.

Graphics and gaming

Parallels Desktop 5 has a very good engine for gaming. I had excellent results with older games, and very good results even with more-recent releases. The demo version of Call of Duty 4, which I was unable to run with decent frame rates in Fusion, ran acceptably (albeit at minimum levels of detail) after some tweaking in Parallels.

With OpenGL acceleration in all main versions of Windows (and Linux), Parallels can handle programs that the other two virtualization apps just aren’t capable of running at present. In addition, Parallels’ OpenGl implementation, as measured in the Cinebench benchmarking test, was the fastest of the three programs in any version of Windows. (All game tests were done in Windows 7, to stress the virtual machine as much as possible.)

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Parallels also does an admirable job with DirectX games in Windows. For example, I was able to play the MotoGP 08 demo with good frame rates in a 1024x768 window, though the audio did stutter a bit.

More impressively, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, a program that just a few years ago required a high-end PC to run at all, ran admirably well in Parallels. The audio was mostly stutter free, and the frame rate in a 1024x768-sized window was more than acceptable in the missions I tested.

That’s not to say I was getting anywhere near the frame rate I’d get if I were to reboot my Mac and run Flight Sim X natively via Boot Camp. However, for someone who doesn’t need every bit of speed in their games, the loss in frame rate may be worth the convenience of not having to reboot.

Most older games run very well, so much so that there’s no reason to reboot via Boot Camp to play “vintage” titles. Note that some older games may need to run on older versions of Windows; Windows 7 won’t run all your older games.

Given what was possible in gaming and graphics with the first version of Parallels a few years back—basically nothing—it’s amazing how much progress has been made in a very short period of time.

Multimedia performance

To test Parallels’ media handling, I watched a 1080p Windows HD media file in full screen mode in each version of Windows. I was watching for visual glitches, listening for any disruption in audio playback, and tracking CPU usage to see how each virtual machine handled the task.

In short, all three of the Windows OSes handled the HD video file without any major issues. The one-CPU Windows 7 box had a bit more variation in frame rate than did the two-CPU machines, but it was very hard to spot unless watching the video back-to-back (which I did, many times).

Other features and observations

This version of Parallels cleans up the installation on a Mac—in prior versions, Parallels’ virtual network drivers were visible in the Network System Preferences panel. In Parallels Desktop 5, those drivers no longer appear, preventing possible user confusion.

Also new in Parallels 5 is support for Apple’ multi-touch gestures (swipe, rotate, pinch) using an Apple Magic Mouse or the trackpad in a multi-touch capable Apple laptop (you can also use an Apple Remote for some basic control, if you wish). Parallels Tools takes care of the communication between the mouse/track pad and the guest OS, so there are no special requirements on the Windows side—gestures simply work in Windows XP and newer.

I tested this using XP Pro on my MacBook Pro, and it worked as described. I was able to use pinch to zoom in/out on images in Microsoft’s Picture Viewer, and to change the size of the text on an Internet Explorer page. Rotation gestures also worked as expected on the images. If you’re a laptop or Magic Mouse user, this is a nice addition to your Windows virtual machines.

Mac Mouse Cursor

As you can probably tell from the features described in this review, Parallels is a feature-rich program. Sometimes, though, feature overload can lead to a complex user interface, and there are spots in Parallels where that’s the case.

Take the virtual machine Configuration panel, for instance, which contains 15 separate sections. Or the Preferences panel, which includes 11 separate tabs, some of which contain a large number of items that can be configured. While these sections and tabs are relatively well laid out, the sheer number of choices can cause confusion.

For example, you might think that defining how Mac and Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts coexist would be found in the virtual machine Configuration panel…but that’s not the case. Instead, you define the shortcuts in the Preferences panel, where you can set up definitions for Windows, Linux, OS X, and generic guests.

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac

Pros

Multi-touch support

Very fast in all facets of use

Very good DirectX and OpenGL support

Cleaner installation than prior releases

Feature rich

Cons

Sleep mode may prevent resuming 3D games

MacLook theme for Windows isn't all that good

Features add complexity

Defaults to fully-integrated OS X/Windows mode

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The latest version of VirtualBox supports multiple CPU cores and accelerated DirectX graphics in...

[fanfics-await-you]

It’s Nothing...

Prompt: this post by @ly--canthrope

Pairing: Cassian Andor x Reader

Summary: You are more than Cassian had ever hoped for.

Tags: !married, fluffy, Cassian needs a break from angst and this is it

Notes: this is so cute omg. cassian is utterly head over heels and i love it. kinda short but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, also i'm not entirely sure how ‘to science’, so it kinda turned more to programming? forgive me.  

Word Count: 859

“Well, I guess we reset the calibration.”

“That will add an estimated -“

“The router’s jacked. We need to do it now or the system will overload and I’m not going to be the one who tells Command that their precious network’s gone critical.”

“… The calibration is now underway.”

“Thank you IO-29.”

Cassian had just been passing through, honestly. He had heard your voice drifting through an entrance and had wanted to see you. You were angled away from the door but he quickly realised that it didn’t really matter; you were distracted in a world where he couldn’t follow and you looked absolutely vibrant.

“Holy shit, we got new isolators?! Why did no one tell me?? This changes everything! We can reroute all of System A and CX will get half the load! Fuck yeah!” You raise your hand, to which the droid good-naturedly returns the high-five.

Oh Maker, Cassian is so in love with you. Every time he looks at you Cassian feels like he’s falling all over again. It’s not the frenzied, finger-tingling buzz of new love, but it is so much better. It’s warmth when he spots you in a crowd and yearning to speak to you no matter who’s in the room. It’s waves of calm brought on just by your voice and an unshakable sense of safety in your arms. It’s teasing touches that make Cassian breathless in the best kind of way and shared glances that tell whole stories. It’s home being a person and the unfaltering knowledge that he will follow you through hellfire if you would only ask. Fuck, he’d follow you anyway.

“F-Alpha-Romeo is go.”

“Captain Y/N, I do not believe that-“

“Crap, that’s not supposed to happen! … What the shit?”

Cassian just leans against the doorway and admires you as you wheel around the room on your stool. You zip from station to station, occasionally yelling figures at your droid. There is a fervent, bright energy to your movements, and in this moment Cassian would bet anyone that your eyes were ablaze with excitement. He has never found any interest in this arena of technology and numbers, but you adore it; binary is your language and coding is second-nature. Sure, you can command or fight, but this battlefield is where you truly shine.

Once, when the two of you had just begun dating, Cassian had watched you raze an entire Imperial facility just with a laptop and a router. He would never forget the feeling of utter awe that had washed over him alongside the shockwaves or the look on your face when you cracked it, a conflicting mix of pride and distress. While Cassian had taken you into his arms as the echoes of collapse surrounded you, something in him had decided that you were the one for him. Sure, it had taken a little time for the rest of him to catch up, but he got there in the end.

“Oh! Hello my darling!”

You’ve noticed him. Maker knows how but, like always, there is a smear of grease spanning your cheek. You’re wearing that awfully dorky cap that a friend had given you three birthdays ago; from beneath the emblazoned ‘I turn coffee into code’ countless curls of hair are escaping an unruly ponytail. There are bags beneath your eyes, your face is flushed from rushing about, and your sweater (that you stole from Cassian) is two sizes too big. Cassian just wonders how it’s possible to love one person so much.

———

He has been staring you for a few too many beats. You absentmindedly allow IO-29 to go on its way and then tilt your head in question. Cassian walks up to you, takes your hands and then slowly lifts you to standing. Your eyebrows crinkle in confusion but you’re not worried; in a life of such violence, both of you sometimes just need to take a second with the other. He presses a kiss onto your forehead, and then one to your hairline, and then he’s just kissing all over your face. You giggle and grab his shoulders as he dips you backwards. From the stance of mock-dancing you survey his face, checking for his telltale signs of worry and stress. Finding none, you relax and lean upwards to kiss him.

He pulls you back to stand and you cradle his face, “What’s all this about? Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

Your voice is soft in the hush of the lab and Cassian smiles broadly at your apparent reverence for the space. He takes your hands from his face and regards them for a moment as if he’s learning something new with every changing angle. Then, he raises your fingers to his lips and ghosts over them before placing a tender kiss on each of your palms. Cassian brings your right hand to his shoulder before leisurely turning over your left. After brushing his lips over your engagement ring, Cassian settles it directly over his heart.

“It’s nothing, I promise. I was just falling in love with my beautiful wife all over again.”

[gabbygumswrites]

Can you fix this? It's a broken heart. - A Voltron Fanfiction

Can you fix this? It's a broken heart.

Fandom: Voltron

Rating: PG13

Tags: 5 Times, Hugs, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Team as Family, Team Bonding, Pre-Slash, Canon Compliant, Episode Fix-It

Summary: Five times Lance gives his teammates a hug, and one time he gets one.

Notes: EDIT: Title taken from the song Family by Dar Williams.

This is not a shipping fic per se, but you can see some Allurance if you squint a bit.

You don't have to squint that hard to see the Klance.

This fic takes place during season 3, so spoilers for everything up until and including episode 6.

I started working on this fic a long, long time ago, when we still didn't know a lot about Lance's family, which is why that part is not canon-compliant, as I didn't know better at the time.

I'm using the pronoun 'she' for Pidge. I believe she won't mind.

AO3 Link

You can read the fanfiction on AO3 (see link above), or you can read it below. Feel free to share it but please link back to either my AO3 account or my tumblr account . Enjoy!

I. Keith

The Black Lion is empty. Shiro is gone.

They all stand there, staring at the empty seat for about ten seconds before everyone goes into a frenzy.

“I’ll scan the lion for anomalies!” Pidge says and runs off the lion.

“I’m coming with you!” Hunk shouts and hurries after her. The other’s follow them, tripping over each other and their own feet in their hurry to get off the Black Lion.

Lance doesn’t know what to do.

He is standing there, rooted to the spot right next to the empty chair, staring at the abandoned bayard. He is faintly aware of the voices tumbling over each other over the comms.

“Coran, can you see anything on our readings?”

“No, princess! There is nothing!”

“I can’t pick up anything on the Black Lion, either! Hunk, can you see anything?”

“No, absolutely nothing!”

“Check again!”

“Will do!”

“Coran, get us back, now!”

“But Keith, we...”

“For fucks sake, just do it!”

Lance jolts awake from his stupor when the hangar opens and the Red Lion flies out into the darkness.

Lance stumbles out of the Black Lion and right into Pidge and Hunk, who are hunched over their equipment. Pidge is tapping away on her laptop, checking and calibrating goodness knows what, while Hunk checks numerous other devices. Lance feels a bit dizzy from the speed at which they both work.

He stands behind them, feeling lost. He doesn’t know any of the technical stuff to be of any help, and he doesn’t dare distract them. That is a first for him, no doubt.

Lance thinks back to what had happened not even one varga ago, trying to comprehend everything. They fought Zarkon. They didn’t defeat him, but they had managed to wreck a lot of havoc; that was more than they had managed to do in the past. It had all happened so fast – and then Shiro screamed, and suddenly he was gone, and they were standing in the unresponsive Lion.

While Lance was trying to wrap his head around all of this mess, Pidge and Hunk had apparently been unable to find anything. They leave Lance standing there, saying something about going to the bridge. He doesn’t really catch it.

Lance knows he won’t be of any help on the bridge either, so he decides to search the Lion again. He isn’t deluded enough to hope to find Shiro cowering in some dark corner of the cockpit. He isn’t that stupid after all. But maybe there is something no one had picked up on.

Lance searches the Lion from top to bottom, inside and out. The only thing that strikes him as odd is the fact that Shiro’s bayard is still stuck to the bridge. And the fact that there is, otherwise, no clue to what had happened. To where Shiro might have disappeared to.

With an exhausted sigh, Lance plops down next to Blue, putting his helmet on the floor next to him.

It is only then that it sinks in that Shiro is gone. And they don’t have a clue where he is.

Lance may be boisterous and quick to voice his opinions, but he had never told Shiro that he looks up to him, that he became important to Lance during their time as Voltron.

Lance had known, form the very start, that this whole mission was more dangerous than any of them would like to admit. Death was waiting around the corner any time – heck, Lance already came close to dying at least twice; but he had never fully realized that loss – death – was something they could face any time they faced Zarkon or some of his cronies.

Shiro might never come back.

Lance’s breath hitches. It is very hard to breath all of a sudden.

Lance has the sudden urge to tell all of his teammates that they are important to him – yes, even Keith. Because, even if Keith still annoys him like hell, what would Lance be without his rival? What would Voltron be without each and every one of them?

What will become of Voltron now that Shiro is gone?

Lance scrambles up to his feet and grabs his helmet. But before he can rush to the bridge, the hangar opens again, and Red flies in.

They must have returned to the battlefield without Lance noticing. Before he can think more on it, he runs off to Red, positioning himself right in front of its mouth.

Maybe it was all just a bad dream. Maybe Keith found Shiro.

But when the Lion’s mouth opens and Lance sees Keith descending, all the hope that had dared to creep into him leaves him again. Lance suddenly feels very, very tired.

He looks up at Keith. Keith looks down at him. He looks like he is carrying the whole world on his shoulders, as if the weight is to heavy for him to keep going. And Lance can see the same sadness in Keith’s eyes that he himself feels in his heart.

Their eyes had locked for less than a second, but Lance could see all of this clear as day. Keith quickly looks away and makes his way down the stairs, avoiding Lance’s gaze. He seems to make an effort to appear normal, but he drags his feet, as if his whole body is slowed down by the loss.

He walks past Lance. Lance whirls around, feeling that he has to say something.

“Keith,” Lance says, and Keith stops in his tracks. He doesn’t turn around.

“Nothing,” Keith says. It is all there is to say.

Lance looks at Keith’s back, at the tension between his shoulder blades, and he knows that Keith will suffer more than anyone else on the ship.

Before Lance can think it through, he takes the two steps that separate them and grabs Keith’s arm. Keith starts and turns, ready to throw Lance off. Then Lance envelops him in a tight hug.

Lance can hear Keith’s surprised gasp and feel the tension throughout his whole body. To his own surprise, it doesn’t take long for Keith to relax into the hug. His arms hang uselessly at his sides, and he lets his head drop to Lance’s shoulder.

If this is what Lance can do in this shit situation, it is all that matters.

They stand there for a few ticks, maybe even a few vargas; Lance doesn’t know. Neither says anything. He decides that, for the moment, he would forget that Keith is still an annoying asshat.

II. Hunk

“Do you think this tastes like a cucumber?”

Hunk shoves a strangely shaped, purple something into Lance’s face. Lance grimaces. It smells weird, and he really does not want to taste it. But he also doesn’t want to eat more food goo, so he opens his mouth and bites off the tiniest amount of weird alien plant possible. He chews carefully with Hunk observing his reaction. Lance is surprised when he realizes that this purple something actually does taste like cucumber.

Hunk smiles when he sees Lance’s facial expression shift. “They will be perfect for my canapés!” He turns around again and starts working on his ingredients, hacking away expertly on the purple cucumber and something that looks like a heart shaped tomato.

After Lance and Hunk came back from their mission and announced that the ambassadors of Puig would like to meet with Allura and the Paladins, everyone had made themselves busy to prepare. It was their very first meeting with another alien race, and Allura had made it very clear that she wanted it to go smoothly. Allura had then vanished to rehearse some lines and dress up (not that she needed to, Lance thinks), while Coran and Pidge did something to the ship. Lance wasn’t quite sure what those two were up to when they vanished into the depths of the engine rooms.

Hunk had offered to provide some food for the meeting – or, as Lance sees it, he had become very excited about the various foods he had picked up on Puig and just wanted to make some real food for a change. Lance had tagged along, as he didn’t really know what to do with himself. He was already looking his best (as always), and he really didn’t want to be bored by Pidge’s and Coran’s tech talk. And food always sounded like a good idea.

So there he was, leaning against the counter of Hunk’s makeshift kitchen, watching him hack away on weird alien vegetables and assembling them in a careful manner that only Hunk seemed to make sense of.

Hunk produces another something from his pocket, and Lance bursts out laughing. “Oh my gosh, Hunk, this looks so much like a –”

“I know, stop it!” Hunk says, going all red in the face, but the corners of his mouth are turned up. “It looks weird, but I think it’s like our carrots.”

“Aw man, I love carrots. My mum used to steam them for me when I was a kid.” Lance smiles at the memory. He had never really liked vegetables as a child, so his mum had tried everything to make them more palatable for him. The only thing he ever really liked to eat were steamed carrots with butter drizzled over them. He hadn’t eaten that in years – he was much to grown up for that now.

“Really? My mum always cut them into little sticks so I could nibble on them while she read to me.” Hunk smiles, then begins to carefully skin the alien carrots.

They both go silent, and Lance notices that Hunk’s expression has become sad.

“I really miss real food, you know?”

Lance huffs. “Well, I’m not surprised, given that we have to eat food goo all day.” He indicates the vegetable in Hunk’s hand and the almost finished canapés right next to him. “But you are making real food right now, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not what I mean.” Hunk finishes his task and places both vegetable and knife on the table in front of him. He doesn’t meet Lance’s eyes. “I mean I miss food that looks like actual food. Not that this doesn’t look like food. But I miss tacos, and pizza, and chicken wings. I even miss my granny’s weird pies and they were all horrible.”

Lance doesn’t really know what to say to that. He misses real food, too. He misses his mum’s famous enchiladas. He misses the surprise pizza Thursdays at the pizza shack. Heck, he even misses the food at the Garrison sometimes, and that canteen food was something else. In a really bad way.

Lance thinks for a moment, then he asks, “If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?”

“Apple pie,” Hunk says, without missing a beat.

“With cream on top?”

“No, with vanilla ice cream melting on top.”

“Ugh, vanilla ice cream is the worst, how can you eat that with apple pie?” Lance says, exaggerating his affronted expression.

Hunk plays along, giving him a look of utter disbelieve. “You have no idea what’s good, do you? There is nothing more delicious than ice cream melting on top of some fresh hot apple pie.”

“I’d take cream over ice cream any day of the week.”

Hunk laughs, and Lance joins him. When they calm down, Hunk’s expression becomes distant again.

“You know, my dad makes the best apple pie in the world. I’m not kidding, that's the actually truth,” Hunk adds with a smile when Lance is about to interject. “He made some before I left for the Garrison, and he promised to make another one when I graduate. He only makes that pie for special occasions.”

Lance sees the expression on Hunk’s face shift, and he suddenly becomes very aware of the fact that his best friend might burst into tears any moment now. And the more disturbing fact is that he feels like joining him.

“I was so looking forward to that, you know. And now I don’t even know –”

Lance doesn’t let him finish that sentence. He doesn’t even want Hunk to finish that thought or even think of it ever again. Instead, he envelopes Hunk in a tight hug. He hears an “Oof!” and feels Hunk exhale in surprise by the sudden motion. However, Hunk’s shared so many bro-hugs with Lance that even in his state of surprise his arms automatically wrap around Lance.

“You will eat your dad’s pie again,” Lance says. Hunk tightens his grip and sniffs.

They separate quickly, and Lance gives Hunk his biggest smile. “You know what, I totally want to try that best pie as well. You definitely have to invite me over for that.”

Hunk smiles back broadly. “Will do.”

“And in the meantime,” Lance says, looking at the abandoned ingredients, “I think we should finish making these.”

“You mean, I have to finish making these. You did nothing.”

“I am giving you emotional support, you know? That is also a very important task.”

Hunk rolls his eyes, but he is smiling again. Lance thinks that that is an improvement.

III. Pidge

Lance finds Pidge furiously hacking away on her computer in some corner of the engine room. She is sitting on the floor, surrounded by stray tech and cables that Lance doesn’t want to know what they are for. He only knows that if anyone can built anything from all that crap, it is Pidge.

She never really leaves this place unless someone – mostly Coran or, before he disappeared, Shiro – makes her to get at least a few hours of sleep. Lance wonders how she manages to survive on less than six hours of sleep a night (or whatever counts as a night here in the middle of space). He doesn’t want to think about how his own unregular sleep pattern will affect his skin. But being a Paladin of Voltron, there really is not a lot of time to think about your beauty sleep.

As Coran was busy doing something productive (Lance has given up asking, because he never understood a word Coran was saying), Lance had been tasked to get Pidge to go to bed. After their more or less successful fight with Lotor, they were all tired and needed to rest. Even Keith, who had been particularly grumpy about their failed mission, had retreated to his room rather than beating up some bot on the training deck.

“Hey Pidge, what’re you up to?” Lance says, sidling up to her.

She doesn’t look up when she answers, “Going through all of my data to find something on Lotor.”

Lance puts his hands in his pockets and bends down to look over her shoulder at the screen. The words, both in Altean and Galra, fly over the screen, the pictures accompanying them only blurry specks of colours. Lance gets dizzy and looks back at her again. “Any luck?”

She sighs. “No. Nothing.”

Lance nods, even though she doesn’t see it. “Well, how about you try again tomorrow and go to bed now? Everyone else is already asleep.”

“Yes, yes,” she says, flapping her hand dismissively at him. “In a minute, I’m almost done.”

“You know I hate to be the voice of reason –” Lance begins, at which Pidge actually looks up at him with a raised eyebrow, “but I think you should go to bed.”

They look at each other, and Lance has trouble holding Pidge’s gaze. She can look terrifying when she wants to. Especially when she is pissed off.

To Lance’s surprise, she sighs and looks at him in defeat. “Give me five more doboshes.”

“Okay,” he says, then sits down next to her. “Five more doboshes. I’ll wait just in case you forget the time.”

He gives her his most dashing smile, and she pouts at him before returning her gaze to the computer screen.

Within thirty ticks Lance is bored. He had never been good at sitting still for an extended period of time. Even if that time was only five ticks. He twiddles his thumbs, looking around himself. He is impressed at the piles and piles of space garbage Pidge has managed to accumulate over time. He looks at weirdly angled pipes, and something that looks a lot like a satellite dish. Do aliens have cable as well? He really misses watching TV. He is probably way behind on all of his favourite shows.

His gaze wanders to find a casket. Lance is amazed that Pidge deemed it suitable for her little pile of trash, but when he looks closer, he might imagine why she kept it. It isn’t big, probably only big enough to hold some smaller tools, and it’s made of something shiny that might be metal (or whatever aliens use around in this part of the universe). However, unlike anything else he has seen so far, this casket is decorated with a tiny, intricate pattern of some sort of flowers. Lance has to squeeze his eyes shut and bent forward a bit to see it properly. They’re not flowers he knows, but they are beautiful. His sister would love it.

He thinks about Angelica, and about her little box of trinkets she likes to keep under her pillow. He had found the box in a dollar store – it wasn’t anything too fancy or as intricate as that, but she adored it. She likes to put strangely shaped stones and small seashells she found on the beach in it, but also letters from her friends and her small collection of brightly coloured paper-clips. She always told him that one day, when she was grown up, she would remember all the happy times she had when looking at her box of trinkets. Lance had asked her how paper-clips would remind her of anything, but she had only laughed and ran away to collect more stones. When she said things like that, Lance always thought she was way more mature than any other child her age. He wonders how she is doing. He should probably pick some funny stones when they next land on a planet. She would love that.

With a start Lance realizes that he had been spacing out. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but he is certain that five doboshes were definitely up. He turns to look at Pidge and opens his mouth to tell her to shut down that damn computer, when he sees what she’s staring at.

Her hands have gone still on the keyboard, her eyes fixed on the picture on the screen. Lance has never met him, but he knows that it is her brother, Matt.

“Pidge?” he says, his voice unsure. She jumps, then hastily closes the file.

“Yes, time’s up, I’m going to bed,” she says, avoiding his gaze. She closes the lid of her laptop with a loud thud, but doesn’t move.

She sits there, staring at the computer in her lap. Lance thinks that she is about to say something, so he stays quiet.

“Before Matt went on the Kerberos mission, he always came into my room to tell me to go to sleep.” Her voice is quiet, and there is the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “I always forget the time when I'm working on something, and Matt always made sure I got enough sleep. He always says that, with a good nights sleep, you can do anything the next day.”

“And right he is,” Lance says. “And I bet he would say that right now, too.”

Lance notices that Pidge’s eyes are a little watery. She tries to hide it and wipes her face on her sleeve.

Right at that moment, Pidge reminds him so much of his little sister that his heart starts to ache. He doesn’t exactly know what it is; Pidge doesn't even remotely look like Angelica, who has long dark hair and the exact same eyes as Lance. But something about Pidge’s dejected posture and her sad face reminds him of a sad Angelica. He misses her so much. Just as much as Pidge misses Matt.

Before Pidge can say anythiny, Lance reaches out and envelopes her in a tight hug. She squeal in surprise for a moment, her arms flailing to keep her balance. Lance doesn’t let go. Before long, Pidge buries her face in his t-shirt and clings to his jacket. She is shaking, and Lance can feel his shirt soaking with her silent tears.

“If anyone can find him, you will,” he says, rubbing her back. “And we will help you.”

IV. Coran

Today had been an absolute disaster. Or yesterday? Lance wasn’t really sure; maybe time moved differently behind the rift, in this other dimension.

Lotor had the stupid comet. The one thing that might actually enable him to overpower Voltron. He got away with it. Just like that.

It is a disaster. Lance knows that. Everyone in the team knows that, and they all feel guilty and angry and so fucking done. At least Lance is sure that he isn’t the only one feeling this way.

He knows, without a doubt, that Allura blames herself – and only herself – for this. And, if Lance is completely honest, this is what saddens him the most. That Allura is hurt.

She had been so happy, so damn delighted, to have found Alteans on the other side of the rift. Lance had never given it too much thought (for which he really would like to kick himself), but when he saw Allura’s face brighten in light of their discovery, he suddenly realized how lonely she must have felt. How lonely she had been, as one of the only two surviving Alteans.

And seeing that hope crushed by their realization that the Altean’s had their own version of the Empire – something as bad as the Galra Empire in their own reality – the light dropping from her face and her features altogether, had broken something deep inside of him.

When they had all regained consciousness and realized what had happened to the comet, it had already been too late to follow Lotor. The Lions were weak; they just didn’t have a chance.

Back in the hangar, after they had updated a very confused Coran, Allura immediately left, stalking down a corridor, her long hair trailing behind her. Lance didn’t really register anything that Pidge nor Hunk said, who both shuffeled off into another direction. Possibly to distract themselves by working on their latest scientific project.

Lance stands in front of Blue, looking after Allura’s retreating figure. He is about to say something, to keep her from leaving, from running into her pain, when he hears Keith clearing his throat. Lance looks up. His and Keith’s eyes meet. Neither says a word, but Lance completely understands. He gives Keith a curt nod, and then Keith is rushing after Allura.

“I, er, should get back to my work,” Coran says, somewhere behind Lance. His voice sounds flat. There is something, like a small hitch in how he says it that catches Lance’s attention. He turns around to say something, but Coran has suddenly disappeared to somewhere, doing something only he can understand.

Now Lance is alone in the hangar. The Lions loom in the semi-darkness, silent but ever-present observers. Lance looks up at Blue. She looks down at him, and Lance can’t help but feel soothed by her presence. Even though Allura is now the one piloting her, he still feels most connected to Blue.

He really wishes Blue would still want to have the same bond with him. Maybe, just maybe, she could then give him the advice he so desperately needs right now.

“How can we fix this mess?” he says, looking up into Blue’s dark eyes. She doesn’t answer. The hum of the ship around him is all that Lance can hear.

Shaking himself, he turns on the spot, and starts walking down to the engine room. He cannot shake the feeling that something is up with Coran. He wouldn’t say that Coran being something other than chipper and overbearing (which, to be honest, is his default mode) was completely out of this universe; everyone had their bad days, and that was also true of Coran. However, Lance is certain that this time, something is up.

It doesn’t take long for Lance to find Coran. He is, as Lance had expected, in the engine room connected to the Teludavs, tinkering away on some console.

Coran has his back to Lance. He watches him for a while, standing in the door frame, uncertain of what to do.

“Hey Coran, whatya doing?” Lance says eventually.

From the way that Coran jumps and drops several of his weirdly shaped tools on the floor, Lance can tell that he really didn’t hear him coming, which is unusual.

“Gosh, where did you come from?” Coran says and turns around to look at Lance, his eyes huge.

“The hangar,” Lance says, matter of factly, waving his helmet around before placing it on one of the consoles next to him. It doesn’t seem to be operating, so Lance hopes he doesn’t accidentally push the self-destruct button (which would just be their luck, honestly).

Coran watches him, but doesn’t reprimand him, which is a good sign.

“Aha,” Coran says. He bends to retrieve his tools, then turns around to keep on doing whatever he was doing. Now that wasn’t a good sign.

“Don’t you want to get changed? Or train? Or something?” Coran says, his back still to Lance.

Lance arches an eyebrow. “I thought I could help you out,” he says, even though both him and Coran know that he is no help at all, ever.

He walks up to stand next to Coran, peering at what he is doing. Coran has removed the cover of the console. The wires on the inside, which are coloured in every colour of the known universe, are pouring out to each side of the opening. Coran is holding something that might be pliers, but the ends look wrong, and Lance has no clue what he is doing.

Lance doesn’t know anything about the ship’s mechanics, but he is absolutely certain that there is nothing on the ship that is so badly malfunctioning that Coran needs to attend to it right this moment.

When he looks up, Coran is not looking at him. He looks down at his work, his eyebrows slightly furrowed in concentration. Or the effort to avoid Lance’s gaze.

“What do you need?”

The question hangs in the air between them. Lance leaves it up to Coran to decide what it means.

For about a dobosh, he doesn’t say anything. Then, without looking up, he extends his free hand, palm up. “Pass me the vrorlos.”

Lance blinks. “The what?”

“The vrorlos. The red thing right next to you.”

Lance turns around and spots something that looks like a screwdriver, but all flat on top. He picks it up and hands it over to Coran, who wordlessly takes it and pokes it into the console.

Lance doesn’t know anything about machines and tools, but he really can’t see how that silly thing can actually do anything. It looked all wrong.

For a while, they just stand there, Coran working away on the console, and Lance watching him. The silence between them is only disrupted by the clinking of metal on metal and Coran’s instructions to get him even more weirdly shaped tools.

Lance watches as Coran pushes the wires from side to side, making them all glow a deep purple, then different shades of blue, before they go back to their multicoloured state.

Lance doesn’t know how long they stand and work like this. It might be a few doboshes, or maybe even many vargas; he only knows that the quiet humming of the ship, the soft blue light in the small room, and their companionable silence is soothing.

Even though no one comes looking for them. Even though they are alone.

Lance doesn’t feel like it is his place to break the silence. They both are really not themselves today, he muses.

Coran had been rummaging through the console with another ridiculous tool for quite some time now, and Lance suspects that there actually is nothing to fix. His suspicions are proven correct when Coran suddenly speaks up.

“The Alteans...the ones you met...what were they like?”

Lance has to think about this for a moment. “Well, they seemed kinda nice at first but….well, they sort of turned out to be like the Galra.” Lance immediately regrets saying this and hastily adds, “I mean, they were different than the Alteans in this reality, obviously. And they definitely weren’t as bad as the Galra.”

“From what the princess said, they sounded even worse.”

“I don’t know,” Lance says, trying to grasp for the right words. “I don’t think it makes sense to compare one reality to another. In the end, every choice ever being made can lead to another reality, and we just have to accept the one we are living in without constantly asking ourself ‘what if’.”

Coran’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline, and he turns his head to stare at Lance. Lance can feel his face go red.

“I didn’t know you were so intelligent!”

“I have my moments,” Lance says, grinning up at Coran. If anyone else had been around – especially Keith – Lance would not have owned up to this. But this was Coran, and Lance knew he didn’t mean it as an insult.

Coran huffs a laugh in response, then goes quiet again. He looks down at the console. His hands have stilled, one resting on the wires, the other clutching a tool (a tagnal, if Lance remembers correctly).

The silence between them stretches, but when Coran speaks up again, his voice unusually quiet, it feels so much louder.

“Before the war started, there was this girl...and no, this is not the way you think it is.” Coran shoots Lance a quick glare, just as Lance was about to say something. Coran really knows him a bit too well.

Lance closes his mouth, but he cannot keep from smirking a bit. “What was her name?”

“Nafori,” Coran says, and looks down at his hands again. “She was one of the maids. About your age, and orphaned. I knew that Allura’s mother, the queen, had insisted on employing her. She wasn’t good or bad at what she did. She was just one of the maids, nothing more.

“At least that’s what I thought until I found out that she had a knack for engines. She was good at repairing them – so good, I still wonder where she got it from. She never wanted to talk about her family, but I always assumed that she must have learned something from them. Or maybe she was just a particularly gifted young woman.”

“Or both,” Lance interjects. Coran’s answering smile is weak.

“I had left one of my latest projects unattended...actually, I cannot really remember what it was anymore...but when I returned, I found her pottering about it. At first, I was shocked, but when I found that she had fixed the problem I had been struggling with for weeks, I immediately took her under my wing.”

Coran has removed his hands from the console. He is still looking down at his hands, toying with the tagnal, turning it this way and that way. There is something unbelievably sad in Coran’s face, it actually scares Lance. He has never seen Coran so vulnerable.

“I trained her. She was a very intelligent, very bright and enthusiastic student. It didn’t take long for her to learn everything she needed, and more. Soon, she accompanied and assisted me in almost every project. We grew close.”

At the last sentence, Coran’s voice almost breaks. Lance feels his own heart breaking. And he feels shame and guilt creeping up the back of his neck.

Lance had never stopped to think whether Coran had lost someone to the Galra empire. Allura had lost her father. Heck, they had both lost their entire race. They were the last Alteans alive. That was bad enough. But he had never thought to ask Coran if he had lost someone important to him. Lance had never thought twice, as Coran had always seemed so chipper and ditzy. It just proved that Lance should never judge a book by its cover, and that he should never, ever, take Coran for granted.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says. It’s dumb, and it is not enough, but is the only thing he can think of.

“When I heard that you found Alteans, I thought that, maybe...” Coran doesn’t finish his sentence, but he doesn’t have to. Hope can be such a cruel thing sometimes.

Lance looks at Coran’s profile, his sad eyes, his slumped shoulders, and his arms that hang uselessly to his sides. He looks completely beaten. So lost and lonely.

With a sharp twinge in his heart Lance is painfully reminded of his own family. He misses them so terribly. What if something had happened to one of them while he was gone? Would he meet all of them when they (hopefully) went back to earth? Would they have changed? How much would the twins have grown? Would Angelica still keep her box under her pillow? Would they still live in their house by the beach, with the sea in their back garden?

With a sudden jolt of panic, Lance has another thought; do they know that he is still alive? What did the Garrison tell them after his disappearance?

Suddenly, there are tears in Lance’s eyes, and he has trouble from keeping them welling over. Within just a few ticks, Lance feels like all his homesickness, all his anxieties, and all his sadness surfaces and threatens to burst out of him, cracking the shell of his all too human body, flooding the engine room, drowning him in it’s tidal madness.

He looks up at Coran, expecting him to recoil from him, from the sheer amount of emotion that Lance feels he is emanating now, but Coran is still standing next to him, looking so lost. And it is that image of him that, oddly, calms Lance instantly.

He is not alone.

Lance needs Coran to know that. That they both feel alone. But also, and it hits Lance hard, and with a force that almost knocks him off his feet, that they have each other, that they have the Lions, and Allura, and Pidge and Hunk and Keith. They all have each other. And nothing will change that.

Lance grabs Coran by the arm and pulls him into a tight hug. Coran gives a tiny huff of surprise, but then his arms come up to reciprocate.

Lance cannot even pretend to imagine how it must feel to loose ones entire race, or how it feels to loose a loved one; but he hopes that Coran understands, can comprehend all the tangled emotions and thoughts and feelings Lance has towards him, Allura, the Paladins, heck, even the mice, when he says,

“You are not alone, Coran. Never.”

Coran’s grip tightens. He doesn’t say anything. He just holds unto Lance for a few more doboshes.

V. Allura

It is still way too early when he hears a knock on his door.

Lance buries his face in his pillow and pulls the blanket over his face. Just five more doboshes.

It knocks again. And again. Lance groans.

“Lance?” Her voice is muffled, but it is without a doubt Allura.

Suddenly Lance is throwing off his blankets and jumps out of his bed. He almost trips over his lion-slippers on his way to the door.

“Good morning princess,” he says, flashing Allura his most dashing smile. “How can I help you so early in the morning?”

Allura’s eyes flit down his body for a second. She raises her hand, and coughs. “Good morning Lance. I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“Oh no, you didn’t...” Lance begins, but then he realizes that he literally just jumped out of bed and is still wearing his pyjamas. His very, very unmanly, unflattering pyjamas.

He looks up at Allura, and sure enough she is trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Her eyes are betraying her, though, which are twinkling up at him from under her long lashes.

Lance immediately goes completely red.”Give me a tick,” he says and rushes back inside his quarters and throws on his clothes.

When he comes back Allura is still standing where he left her, playing with one of the mice sitting on her shoulder. He didn’t notice the mice were with her before.

“So, Allura, how can I help you?” he says, smiling again. Not as radiant, but he hopes he can cover up the utter shame he is still feeling from having Allura see him in his pyjamas.

“I know it’s still early, but I thought you could help me out,” she says, meeting his gaze. Even though she is smiling at him, Lance can immediately see that it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What with?” He steps out of his quarters and lets the door slide shut behind him. He would love to invite Allura inside to discuss whatever she wants to talk about – he really wouldn’t mind that at all – but something tells him that now is not the time to flirt with her. Plus, his room is an absolute mess.

“Well, you know that I haven’t been flying the Blue Lion for that long,” she begins, averting her gaze. “And I thought you, as the former blue paladin, could give me some advice? Some secrets I should know?”

She looks up again, her eyes searching his. He isn’t exactly sure what she expects him to do. If he was completely honest, he never really found out anything significant that the others didn’t know of. He and Blue did have a bond, he would never claim anything less – but secrets? He never found out anything, despite the thing with the bayard; but that was hardly anything that he had to tell Allura about.

He is also somewhat confused because Allura is no doubts the fastest learner of all of the Voltron paladins. If anyone needed some pointers on being a better paladin, it is definitely not her.

So, what should he tell her? That he couldn’t help her? That she already knew more than he ever did? That she was the most kick-ass woman he ever met and definitely didn’t need help from a former fighter pilot cadet who barely made it through the Garrison program?

But looking at her huge eyes, which expectantly look up at him, he just can’t say no.

“Absolutely!” Lance exclaims, maybe a bit too loud.

“Brilliant!” Allura claps her hands and smiles at him. The mice sitting on her shoulder are momentarily dislocated from their seat, squeaking angrily while trying to cling to her suit.

“Sorry,” she says, helping them get back on her shoulder. “So, should we go down to the hangar?”

Lance nods. They start walking down the hallway, side by side. Lance hasn’t been alone with Allura often. He can feel his palms getting sweaty. He tries to wipe them on his trousers without her noticing.

“Have you slept well?” she asks.

“Er, yeah. You?”

“Yes, I did.”

She coughs. The silence between them is awkward. Especially because he knows they are both lying.

The rest of their walk down to the Lions is quiet, neither meeting the others eyes. Lance can hear the mice squeaking something he cannot understand, but he likes to imagine that they have a very heated conversation about which kind of cheese is the best one out there. Lance would support the one pleading for cheddar. Cheddar’s the best.

When they reach the Blue Lion, they step inside and climb up to the cockpit. As soon as they enter it, Lance starts talking. Just talking. He points out everything that he can see, telling Allura what he knows. He points out the screens, the handles, the chair; he shows her the place where the bayard goes; he tells her that she probably should put on her seatbelt when piloting Blue.

Allura, of course, knows all of this. Lance knows that. But she doesn’t say anything; she just smiles, inspects everything he points out, and nods along. She doesn’t say a word.

Her smile, however, is tense, and her eyes are unsmiling. Lance sees this, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he does what he knows best; talk and make jokes.

“You know, Blue is a tender one,” he says at some point, patting the console in front of the chair fondly. “She likes it if you talk sweetly to her. Don’t you, girl?” He pats the console again and smiles. Blue doesn’t answer, but he is sure she hears him.

Allura chuckles. “She?”

Lance looks up, bewildered. “Yes, she. Blue is an ass-kicking lady.” He grins at Allura, wagging his eyebrows. “Just like her pilot.”

Allura roles her eyes at him, but she smiles. “Well, thank you for that, Lance.”

Allura has set the mice on the armrest of the chair. They are running around the arms and the back, chasing each other and squealing in delight. She smiles down at them, but her smile is quickly wiped from her face. She walks around the chair and sits heavily on it. She sighs.

“So, er, I think that’s everything I know,” Lance says. He rubs at the back of his head. He feels so very inadequate. He just doesn’t know what to say anymore.

They are silent for a moment. The mice are making the only noise in the tiny cockpit.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Allura blurts out.

Lance blinks. “What?”

“I don’t think I can be a paladin.”

Allura’s eyes are fixed on her lap, where she is wringing her hands. Her shoulders are tense. He can see the fabric of her suit ruffle up between her shoulder blades.

Lance blinks again. And again. Then he walks around the chair to confront her. She doesn’t look up at him.

“What do you mean you can’t be a paladin?”

Allura doesn’t look up, and her voice is small and quiet when she answers. “You all have been piloting the Lions for so long, and I just...happened to become a paladin out of luck. Because we needed a fifth pilot. I may be able to pilot Blue, but I don’t know...” She stops, swallows. Her voice is thick when she continues, “I don’t know if I am the right choice for this.”

Lance’s jaw drops. He just cannot comprehend how Allura, Princess Allura, pilot of the freaking Castle of Lions, overall bad-ass superwoman, can actually doubt herself.

When he looks down at her, she looks so fragile. So small, and helpless. He is having a deja vu. She reminds him a lot of someone. And that someone is himself.

He can remember it so clearly. It was shortly after he started his training at the Garrison. His first piloting test had been an absolute disaster. The lessons were hard, and somehow everyone knew so much more than he did. He only got by with his usual exuberant swagger. But on the inside, he was feeling so lost.

He had been so desperate that he had actually gone and visited Veronica.

He sat in her office chair, slumped over, just like Allura in front of him right now. He hadn’t dared to show any weakness in front of anyone – most notably Keith (and Shiro, gosh, he really misses Shiro) – but it was different with Veronica. With Veronica, he could be vulnerable. With Veronica, he could be the child that he still felt that he was.

She had been standing in front of him, arms folded in front of her chest, lips pressed into a thin line.

“What’s the matter, Lance?” she had said, her voice all soft. She never spoke soft to anyone. It was her special big sister voice. And Lance had really needed it. But at that point, it also reminded him of how small he was.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he had said, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t think I can be a pilot.”

She huffed. “Nonsense!”

He looked up at her, his eyebrows furrowed in question. She had put her hands on her hips and regarded him with a stern glare.

“Lance, are you trying to tell me you are giving up? The term hasn’t really started yet!”

“I know, I know! But I barely made it through our first test! And then there are so many others who are so much better than me, and...”

“Lance! That is all rubbish!”

Lance blinked up at her. “What?”

Veronica’s eyes were serious when she said, “When did you become someone who gave up at the very start?”

Lance was still blinking up at her. She sighed, then sat down on the chair right next to his. “What I mean is, you barely started your training and you are already thinking you are not good enough? Lance, you just started your training.”

Lance stared up at her. “But-”

“Uh uh uh, don’t even start,” she said, wagging her finger in front of his face. “I know it’s hard here at the Garrison, but I know you can do it. You’ve always wanted to do this. So you will do this.”

Then she had leaned over and hugged him. “You’re not giving up,” she said into his hair.

He hadn’t given up. He had pushed through, and it had gotten him here.

But, for all his bravado at the Garrison, he had always know that he isn’t the best pilot. He had managed to become an average one, but not a good one. It was only when he had become a paladin that he had somewhat improved.

Seeing Allura sitting in front of him now, her shoulders tense, he feels a strange kind of anger bubble up inside of him. Allura is such a talented pilot – she had managed to learn so much more than he had in double the time. She knows so many things, fights like a warrior, flies like a bird; how can she not see how amazing she is?

Did Veronica have the same thoughts, all those years back?

“Stop it,” Lance says, and his voice is unusually harsh. “You stop right there.”

Allura’s head snaps up. There is hurt written all over her face, but Lance ignores it.

“Allura, Blue chose you not because we were one pilot short, but because you were the right choice. Because you have everything, and more, that a paladin of Voltron needs.”

Hurt yields to surprise, and Lance watches this change in her eyes with a mix of feelings that he cannot pin down.

“But-”

“No,” he says decisively. Before he can think better of it, he grabs Allura’s hands and pulls her up and into his arms.

“Lance, what-” she says in surprise. He hugs her close, but she is completely rigid in his grasp.

“Don’t you dare doubt yourself. Because we will never doubt you.”

She relaxes and tentatively puts her hands on his back. She buries her face in his hoody and says, “Thank you, Lance.”

He smiles into her hair.

He wants to add that, if anything, he is the odd one out. But he doesn’t.

*

I. Lance

When the doors close behind Lance, it takes Keith at least thirty ticks until he realizes that he made a huge mistake.

He slaps his hand against his forehead, hard, and hisses at the pain.

“Shit,” he says, and runs out of his room.

Lance can’t have gone far; however, standing in the hallway in front of his room, Keith can’t see Lance on either end. He runs down the right hand side where he knows Lance’s room is.

It would just be like Lance to go to his room, play video games and wallow in his pain, Keith thinks. Wait, no, that was harsh. Lance doesn’t deserve this.

This time, Keith is highly aware that it isn’t Lance’s fault.

Lance had come to Keith to talk about his position as a paladin in the team. Keith really doesn’t know what he was on about. Why should Lance worry about something like that? And why did Lance come to talk to Keith, out of all people?

Keith doesn’t want to think about what Lance has said...about being the leader now...Keith pushes that thought far away. It’s not the time to think about that.

That wasn’t the point, anyway. Lance was troubled by something. Keith only fully realized this when Lance had already left. And instead of giving him comfort, Keith had made it worse.

He reaches the door to Lance’s quarters and bangs on the door. He waits. But no one answers.

“Lance?” he says, banging on the door again. “Are you in there?” No answer.

Keith curses under his breath. Where could he have gone?

He turns and runs down the way he came from. Maybe Lance went down to the training deck.

Keith is still puzzled that Lance came to talk to him, out of all the people of this ship who would have done a way better job at this than him. Wasn’t he really close with Hunk? Why didn’t he talk to Allura? Or Shiro?

Shiro had always been way better at handling people than Keith had. Keith himself was living proof of that. Shiro had always listened and given advice to each and every one of Team Voltron before he had disappeared. Well, Shiro hasn’t been back for long, and everyone is trying to ease him back into the team (which, Shiro being Shiro, he didn’t really accept and just threw himself back into action head first), but Keith had assumed that, should anyone want to talk, they would go and talk to Shiro.

Keith reaches the training deck, but it is empty. Well, if he thought about it, Lance was about the laziest paladin of them all; of course he wouldn’t be here.

Which isn’t true in the slightest.

Keith turns and runs down to the kitchens. It is almost dinnertime, maybe Lance went down early.

Keith had always been bad at reading people. He had always been bad at talking to people, let alone give advice or comfort. He is sure all of the others know that, but for some reason that was a complete mystery to him, Lance had deemed him the right person to talk to about his problem.

And Keith still doesn’t know what exactly the problem is.

But what he does know is that Lance never looked as crestfallen as he did when he left Keith’s room. He may have smiled at Keith when he turned around at Keith’s last attempt to say something, but it didn’t reach his eyes. And it had taken Keith way too long to actually register that.

Lance isn’t down in the kitchen. He’s also not in the hangar, not with Hunk or Pidge, or on the deck.

“Where the hell are you?” Keith pants, leaning against the wall of the ship to catch his breath.

Keith looked everywhere. Well, the ship is huge, so everywhere doesn’t actually cover each corner; but there is no other place Keith can think of where Lance could have gone to.

He slips down the wall, wreaking his brain. Where the hell could this idiot have gone to?

Why does he even bother looking for Lance? What could he even do to make things better? He doesn’t even know what he should make better, so how could Keith be of any help?

But then he remembers Lance’s face; the sadness in his dark blue eyes. Lance was never like this. He was never sad, not like this, and something about that really bothered Keith. He didn’t like that look on Lance’s face. Something deep inside of Keith tells him that he has to do something about it, even if he doesn’t know what that something is.

He sighs, pushing his fringe out of his face. He looks up at the blank ceiling. And then it hits him.

The observatory!

Keith jumps up and runs down the corridor. He might be wrong altogether, but something tells him that Lance is there.

When the doors to the observatory slide open, Keith can immediately see Lance. He is sitting on the floor, right in the middle of the room. The room is dark, and Keith can only make out Lance’s shape. He would recognize that profile anywhere.

Lance doesn’t look up when Keith enters the room and the doors noiselessly slide shut behind him. In fact, he seems to be looking at something on the floor right in front of him. Keith hesitates. Does Lance even want him to be here?

Keith swallows his uncertainty and walks over to Lance. In one swift motion, he sits down right next to him.

Lance still doesn’t say anything, or looks up. Keith can now see that Lance is looking down and playing with the mice, who seem to be fighting over a snack.

Keith doesn’t know what to say. He was adamant to find Lance, to do something; but now, sitting right next to him in the dark, his mind is completely wiped blank. He was sure he’d had some kind of plan earlier, but that was now completely gone.

The silence between them stretches. Lance, who is normally filling every quiet second in his life (and everyone else’s, for that matter) with meaningless chit-chat, is so uncharacteristically quiet, Keith is honestly concerned.

Keith is getting more and more nervous. He can feel his hands getting all clammy. Gosh, what the hell is he supposed to do now? He wishes he could just stand up and flee, run back to his room and hide under the blankets. But that would be weird, so he stays, and stares straight ahead of him to the stars.

Keith wonders which ones they have already visited, and which have already been destroyed by the Galra Empire. You never knew; a sun sends it’s light into the universe and it will burn for a thousand deca-phoebs, even though that sun has died a thousand deca-phoebs ago. How would they know which star was still salvageable, and which not? Which died of natural causes, and which has been exterminated by the Galra?

As a child, Keith had often looked to the stars. It calmed him. Knowing that there was so much more out there than the tiny shoe-box minds of people. It gave him a sense of belonging; and a yearning for the stars that shone so brightly during the night. He imagined, back then, that each star held an adventure all of it’s own, and they were just waiting for him to find them. That was, in fact, the reason he went to the Garrison, even though by then he already knew the actual fate of the stars. He still wanted to reach beyond the earth’s horizon, reach for the millions of suns and get lost in the black emptiness of the universe.

He would have never dreamed, after being kicked out of the Garrison, that he would actually achieve this dream. He felt more at home in the Castle of Lions than anywhere on earth.

The thousand suns beyond the window pane softly illuminate the observatory, and Keith’s eyes slowly adjust to the darkness. Keith peers over at Lance. Lance wears a solemn expression, and he looks oddly fragile. Keith doesn’t know what it means, but something about this pulls unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach.

The mice to Lance’s feet squeak in delight over their snack, but then the biggest one gets a hold of it and runs off, the other mice hot on it’s tail. Lance let’s his hand fall into his lap, and he looks up to the stars.

“Why are you here?” Lance suddenly says. His voice is quiet for his standards. Keith jumps a bit. He hadn’t expected for Lance to speak up first. Then again, he hadn’t really planned on saying anything himself soon.

Well, why was he here? That was a really good question. Keith doesn’t know the answer. He just knows what he really needs to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

What for indeed? Keith is still unsure. And he doesn’t want to give Lance a half-baked answer. So he shrugs.

Lance sighs. He doesn’t say anything else, but he leans back on his hands and stares out of the window.

“You don’t have to sit here and pity me,” Lance says eventually.

Keith turns his head to properly look at Lance. There was no bite in his words. Just hurt.

Suddenly, Keith has this very strong impulse to tell Lance what he thinks of him. Tell him exactly what he has been thinking for a couple of movements now (or however long they have been on this ship).

He wants to tell him that, since his dad died, he had never had a proper family. No Foster Home he had been subjected to had ever welcomed him. Only when Shiro came along and took him under his wing – almost quite literally – he had someone to call his family.

Then, when Shiro disappeared, and reappeared a year later; when Hunk, Lance and Pidge had almost prevented him from saving Shiro; when they had found the Blue Lion; when they found Allura and Coran; when they became the paladins of Voltron; when they fought for the Galaxy and beat Zarkon; suddenly, when Keith thought of ‘Home,’ it wasn’t just space and Shiro’s face that came to his mind. There were also Hunk, and Pidge, and Allura and Coran.

And Lance.

They all had become his family. They all had sneaked themselves into his life, without him knowing it.

And that is why he will never stop looking for Shiro. He will never stop fighting the Galra, who threaten his home. He will never stop doing what he has to do to fight for his family.

He wants to tell Lance that this weird family would never be complete without him, and that he, and the others, need Lance very much. Voltron will never be Voltron without Lance.

And maybe that is exactly what Lance needs to hear.

But Keith doesn’t know how to handle people, and he doesn’t know how to comfort people. All the emotions he feels are stuck in his throat, bundling up into a ball that almost chokes him. He can’t get it out, but he doesn’t seem to be able to swallow it, either, but he knows that he has to do something. So he does, in a moment of inspiration and sheer madness, the only thing that Lance will understand.

Keith slips closer to Lance; then, pushing all his anxieties to the back of his mind, throws his left arm around Lance’s shoulders and draws him close.

Lance gives a weird sort of squeak, but Keith ignores it and tucks Lance’s head under his chin and brings his other arm up to hold him tight to his chest.

Lance is completely rigid in Keith’s grasp. Keith himself feels a bit stiff and odd doing this, but he won’t back down now. He will hold unto this idiot until he knows that he is wanted, that Keith needs him.

This thought shoots through his brain, and he doesn’t really know where it came from. He can feel his face heat up, but he ignores it. This is not important; not right now.

After what feels like an eternity, Lance scoots a bit closer to Keith, and his arms come up to hold unto his back. He buries his face in Keith’s shirt, and Keith is sure he can hear Lance give a relieved sort of sigh.

Suddenly, their embrace doesn’t feel odd or stiff or weird anymore. Lance melts into Keith, and Keith holds on a little tighter.

Neither says a word. The room is quiet, and completely dark. Only the stars beyond the Castle of Lions cast a soft light on their entwined bodies, and they shimmer and flicker and Keith is sure they sing a song of home to them. Because, right here, right now, they are exactly where they need to be.

Home.