#or have we like finally settled on plance

[hailqiqi]

Here

Look who’s back from a three month writing slump!

So I saw this picture by the incredibly talented @artemisarya and... I had to fic it.

This is really more platonic than shippy. Even though they’re naked.

Quick shout-out to @astraearose for the impromptu title help.

1,244 words / Hurt/Comfort

On AO3 here.

The shrill scream brought him back to himself with a rush of heat and steam and sound.

“Shit!”

His back hit the cooler side of the bathroom door seconds later, the image of a naked Pidge with shampoo in her hair bringing him more self-disgust than arousal. They’d been using the Castle’s shared bathroom for over a year now. How the fuck had he managed to miss the sound of the shower?

The same way he’d managed to miss—

“Lance?”

Pidge’s voice was gentle, and not nearly angry enough. Lance closed his eyes. Maybe he could pretend he’d left already, and then he wouldn’t have to face her. He could grovel in the morning. They could pretend everything was fine.

That plan went to hell when the door slid open. He flopped backwards with a cry of surprise, saved from an untimely meeting with the metal flooring only by the girl herself.

“Are you okay?! What were you doing on the door?”

“I…” Lance let her help him to stand upright before turning around, careful to avert his gaze from how she clutched at a towel to protect her modesty. “I...I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

I guess I’m good at that.

Pidge blinked at him, concerned. “Right. Look, you obviously need to…” she trailed off, glancing briefly at his chest before continuing. “Ah... shower, and I don’t mind waiting, so you go first, okay?”

Her words didn’t make sense. “I go first…?” he repeated. “But you’re already…”

“Yeah, but, obviously you need to wash more…” She gestured vaguely at his bare torso with her free hand. “And I’m like, half-clean already, so I don’t mind just calling it a night.”

Oh. Right. The blood.

She was already inching her way around him when he found the wherewithal to respond, something unpleasant curling in his gut. “No, you stay and finish. I’ll just wait.”

“Look, Lance, you obviously need to—”

“Stay,” he said firmly, grasping her shoulders and moving her back in front of him. “Please. I’d feel worse if I knew I’d kicked you out of your shower after barging in on you like that.”

Her mouth fell open, as if to argue, and he cut her off. “You wouldn’t be doing me any favours.”

She stared at him, disbelieving, and he looked away rather than meet her gaze. Wisps of steam floated in the air behind her, and the only sounds were the low humming of the ship and the steady drip, drip, drip where Pidge obviously hadn’t turned the water off properly.

Warm fingers curled around his. “You can join me, then.”

His gaze snapped to hers. “What—?”

“Don’t make it weird, Lance,” she huffed, already tugging him into the room and closing the door behind them. “C’mon. I’ll help you wash all that off.”

A part of him was grateful that she hadn’t said the word. The rest of him was too numb and overwhelmed to respond, his brain having given up the fight somewhere between ‘becoming a mass murderer,’ ‘almost dying,’ and ‘seeing his first naked woman in real life’.

It was shaping up to be a really weird day. Probably would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t for the screams still echoing in his skull.

He didn’t protest when Pidge cast her towel aside and reached for his, her fingers making quick work of the knot at his waist. Then she pulled him towards the shower, pushing him towards the middle as she keyed in the settings for a shower like the ones they had at home.

Hot water hit his skin and he turned his face to meet the spray, the hissing of the shower muting the screaming to a dull buzz and washing away the last of his bravado. Behind him Pidge murmured a warning and he nodded mutely, barely acknowledging when her hands began smoothing soap over his skin.

Pidge cleaned his back slowly, her motions unhurried and meticulous. He could only imagine the mess his back was — from the way she scrubbed at patches, the blood must have been caked on thick — but Pidge made no comment, and Lance wasn’t brave enough to look down and see the red swirling down the drain. Lifeblood lost twice, now, because of him.

Instead he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the physical. The here and now. He’d always loved hot showers, even on the hottest of summer days, and despite the mission he could feel the weight in his heart slowly evaporate with the steam. The presence at his back and the gentle kneading of warm fingers against his taut muscles eased a small part of the tension knotting in his throat, and he was suddenly very, very glad that Pidge was with him.

“Thanks, Pidge.”

Her motions paused. “What for?”

“Just…” He lifted a hand over his shoulder, catching her fingers in his and holding them briefly. “For this.”

“Oh.” She chuckled softly, then pressed a soft kiss against his back. “Anytime.”

She resumed her work, steadily working her way lower until she finally nudged him to turn around so that she could work on his front. All he could do was admire her, drowning in an almost overwhelming wave of gratitude as she slowly cleaned the evidence away, treating his body with all the care and focus she bestowed on her beloved robotics. More, even. Clearly, more. He’d seen her work on countless robots, and she’d never looked quite like that, never so attentive and compassionate and caring.

He didn’t deserve it.

Her hands moved back up to his collarbone, a flash of red in his peripheral vision, and the knot in his throat suddenly became too much to bear. “Pidge, stop.”

She froze, hands still against his skin. “...Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“I…” No, no, not that. Never that. He removed her hand, letting it drop by her side instead. “I— I don’t deserve this. I missed.”

Pidge took a half-step back, her lips parted in a little ‘o’-shape as she studied him. Her eyes were full of concern — concern for him, but it was wasted. Who was he to stand here and accept her care? She was allowing herself to be naked before him, to be vulnerable before him, and he couldn’t even save—

The shower wasn’t helping anymore.

“Pidge, I missed,” he repeated, hoping she’d get the hint and leave because he didn’t think he had the strength to leave her. “Pidge, I missed.”

“I know.”

“Pidge, I missed.” She wasn’t leaving. Why wasn’t she leaving? “I missed, and they all died. All those kids died, because I missed the guy with the bomb.”

It was an easy shot. The sky had been blue, the weather perfect, but somehow he’d missed and then the next thing he knew the world had exploded in heat and noise and pain and the only thing he could process were the screams the screams the screams.

Pidge stepped towards him, gentle hands wrapping around his back and pressing him to her, pulling him back from the edge before he could fall too far. Lance sucked in a breath and they stood, frozen, echoing screams slowly fading into the sound of falling water.

When he couldn’t hear them anymore he swallowed, trembling, his voice barely a whisper.

“Pidge, I missed.”

She only held him tighter.

“I know, Lance. I was there.”

He buried his face in her sodden hair and cried.

[seeds-of-the-garden]

PLANCE SOULMATE AU PLEASEEEE

@ziawushere did you order angst with a side of bi Pidge? Cause uh, that’s what came out of the kitchen.

Happy New Year! Kicking off 2021 with an extra long seed to make things bright.

The ‘Might Be’s and the ‘Hasn’t Been’s

Tequila wasn’t her poison of choice — and drinking alone at the Garrison bar definitely wasn’t her thing — but today, maybe it was needed.

Isabella Anderson. The pale grey letters curled around her wrist, spelling out the name in a beautiful cursive Pidge could never hope to achieve herself. She’d traced the curve of each letter over and over every day for decades, wondering about the woman who wrote it, but they’d never met. Pidge had been in space, fighting a war, and Isabella had been on Earth...dying in it.

She should feel something, right? Heartbroken? Sad? As a paladin, Pidge was one of the few people who could stop the war, so technically it could be classed as her fault. Where was the sting of failure?

Another sip, and the burn made her wince.

Maybe she should feel relieved. She’d never been one for the whole soulmate thing, and it hadn’t stopped her dating in the past. Now she could throw herself into relationships judgement-free. That was a good thing, right?

Instead she just had this weird lump in her chest, and she didn’t know what it was.

“Pidge?” She glanced up in surprise to see Lance slipping on the stool next to her, surprise evident on his own face. “What are you doing here alone?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

He shrugged and signalled the bartender for a beer, settling in with a shrug. “I was meant to be meeting a date outside but got stood up. Was about to head home when I saw you.”

“Oh,” she said, furrowing her brow. She didn’t know who his date had been, but it must have been fairly important — he was dressed pretty nicely in slacks and a button-down, and Lance cleaned up good. Miss Flake didn’t know what she was missing. “Are you okay?”

“It was a blind date.” He took a sip of his beer, then grinned and nudged her elbow. “Besides, now I get to hang out with you.”

Pidge just rolled her eyes and took another sip, trying to hide the wince. “Awesome.”

Something in her voice must have given her away, because Lance’s expression immediately shifted into one of concern. “Hey, are you okay?”

Damn him and his perceptiveness. She shrugged, considering. It wasn’t like he’d understand — not when his own soulmate had walked away in front of them — and maybe it would just bring up old wounds? It wasn't exactly something talking about could fix, either.

"Pidge?" 

He touched her hand, gently, his sleeve cuff grazing her mark, and suddenly she needed to say it.

"I checked the database earlier," she blurted out, fingers tightening around her glass. "The soulmate one they set up after the war."

Understanding flashed in his eyes and he squeezed the back of her hand with a chuckle. "Finally," he said. "It only took you what? Five years?"

Pidge snorted. "Four."

"Still." He took a sip, then looked at her expectantly. "And?"

And? Good question.

Lance was quiet, watching her patiently as she lifted her glass to her lips and forced the liquid down. He wouldn't push her — he never did. In the years since his return he'd been there for every heartbreak, every setback at work, every passing crush on whichever guy or girl took her fancy. And he'd never pushed.

The lump in her chest was still there, heavy and choking, but having Lance with her made it feel more manageable. Stronger. Less alone.

Thank quiznak for his missing date.

When the glass was empty, she grimaced and put it back down on the bar with a soft thunk. “Dead. Died in the first wave.”

Lance made a sympathetic noise beside her.

“I’m not sure how I feel,” she admitted, her eyes trained on the bar-top but one foot absently knocking against his shin. His tap in response was immediate, and she sighed as some of the tension drained away at the contact.  “Am I supposed to contact her family? I should be sad, right?”

What would she even say to her family? 

A glass of water appeared in front of her and she glanced up, offering him a small smile. “Thanks.”

“No worries.” A moment passed and then he shrugged and lifted his own glass, draining the whole thing before slamming it back down on the bar. “Alicia Thornbottom.”

“What?”

“Alicia Thornbottom,” he repeated, avoiding her gaze and signalling the bartender for another. “She died in a camp not too far from here, about a week before we made it back. She was my soulmate.”

Pidge stared at him. “I thought Allura was your soulmate?”

“Nope.”

“But you always said Allura was your soulmate. All those years on the castle, you said it was Allura.”

It had been one of the reasons why she'd never asked him out back then. You don't ask your crush out when their soulmate's right there.

“I lied,” he said simply, apparently happy to ignore her internal blue-screening in favour of watching her over the top of his new beer with a glint in his eye. “You can check if you want.”

“I—” Pidge paused, suddenly realising that she’d never actually seen his soulmark. “Where is your soulmark, anyway?” 

A devilish smirk took over Lance's expression and he waggled his eyebrows at her. “I’ll let you see it if you really want.”

She lifted an eyebrow dubiously. She knew that look.

He winked, making sure he had her attention, then oh-so-slowly tapped high up on his inner thigh. “You only have to ask.”

“Lance!” Heat rushed to her face and he burst out laughing. “What the quiznak!”

He only laughed harder in response, a deep, warm sound, and Pidge found herself laughing along despite herself.  Nine years on and he was still as big of a pain in the ass as when she’d first met him. At least he was better at picking his audience.

“I like to think,” Lance said when he’d calmed down, straightening up in his seat again, “that a girl with a name like Alicia Thornbottom would find me much too crass for her tastes.”

The idea was irritating. “She’d have poor taste, then.” 

If anything, Lance would have been too good for her.

He tipped his glass in thanks. “Nah, she’d just be way above my station.”

“You dated a princess.”

“I did,” he said, nodding sagely, “but Allura would have thrown me across the room for cracking a joke like that. Lady Thornbottom would have had people to do that for her.”

Pidge snorted, her eyes falling on her own mark again. “I never thought that much about mine. Just that I like her handwriting.”

Speculating too much had always felt like a recipe for disappointment, and Pidge worked on facts anyway. The data points she had were few — Spanish forename, English surname, local to the area according to the database, and likely a master calligrapher. Extrapolation pointed to a mixed-race artist, but beyond that it was anyone’s guess. 

And now she’d never know. “I never liked the idea of soulmates, anyway,” she mumbled, eyes still on her mark. “It felt so…”

“Superficial?”

She raised her eyes to meet his, surprised to see understanding there. Though perhaps she shouldn’t be, given what she’d just found out. “Yeah, superficial. Love is supposed to grow naturally, not because some higher power decreed it.”

“Exactly," he said decisively. "My parents aren’t soulmates, either. Maybe I would have loved Alicia. Maybe not. I don’t get to find out, but that doesn’t mean I’ll never fall in love. It just means I’ll have to figure it out for myself.”

Pidge took a sip of water and considered his words. Figuring it out herself hadn’t been going well. “I don’t think you’ll get very far if your dates keep standing you up.”

“Eh..” He shrugged, flashing her a cryptic smile. “I told you, it was just a blind date. Nadia set it up. I’ve actually had my eye on someone else for a couple of months.”

She frowned. Since when? He’d taken up a good chunk of her free time in the last few months, and he’d certainly never bothered to mention anyone over 2am tacos. “Oh? Someone from work?”

“Yeah,” he said carefully, watching her over his glass. “I’ve been thinking about asking her out, though. Gave myself a deadline of next week.”

Pidge’s heart sank. She should be happy for him — she really should — but next week was her birthday, and that would mean he’d be too busy being lovey-dovey to spend it with her if his mystery girl said yes. 

Maybe she should get another drink.

“Why next week?”

Lance drained the rest of his glass and stood up, throwing a few notes on the bar. “Cause it’s her birthday next week. Come on.”

Pidge froze.

She had a mental file of most of the people they worked with, and she couldn’t think of anybody else with a birthday next week. Was there a new girl? No, he would have mentioned a new girl.

That meant he could only be talking about her.

“Come on.” He nudged her elbow, prodding her to stand up too. She lifted her eyes to his, heat blooming across her cheeks, and was surprised to see a blush darkening his own cheeks. “I’m all dressed up to take a pretty lady out to dinner, and there’s a pretty lady right here. Plus you probably really need someone to take you to dinner right now.”

“I, uh…” She was flustered, why was she flustered? This was Lance. “I’m...I’m not really dressed for a date.”

He held out a hand, then hesitated — nervous, she realised. Anybody else might have missed it, but she knew Lance well enough to know when the bravado was a front — and then dropped it with a sigh. “You just found out your soulmate’s dead, Pidge. I’m not going to ask you out on a date tonight. You need some comfort and a distraction.”

That made sense, but she couldn’t help but point out: “Dates are a distraction.”

Lance snorted as she slid from her stool and packed up her handbag. “And maybe I’d want our date to be more than a distraction?”

She looked at him, wondering. Maybe she wasn’t that far off figuring it out after all. 

“I guess I’ll find out next week, huh?” she asked coyly, a smile playing on her lips as they walked towards the door.

He beamed back at her.

“Yeah. You’ll find out next week.”

[izlaria]

Someone you like (part 1, updated)

After uploading the first part of my plance fic here, I ended up writing more on that same period of time. It’s not much, but I thought I would add it anyway.

This fic is based on the “Someone you like” animatic by honestlyprettychill. Their work is super bomb, so I ask you guys to go check it out and give the artist some love. With this update, I’m hoping to have wrapped up on the pre-Garrison time period, and I have already started writing Pidge’s pov of their time as students, so you’ll have that to look foward to, if you end up enjoying this fic. My other post has more disclaimers, so you can find it here. This story is also available on AO3.

The part I added comes after the -- that I used as a page break.

Thanks to everyone who has liked and reblogged this verse. Feel free to add comments in the tags or to straight up come talk to me. I love feedback.

Spanish to English translations at the end.

14 and 12 years old

The truth was that Lance went to Space Camp because Veronica could be a little pest. She knew their parents wouldn’t let her go alone and so had enticed her younger brother with the promise of travel and foreign girls and no parental supervision.

Veronica had obviously left out the fact that they were essentially going to school on steroids for a month, smack in the middle of their summer break. Cool as Miami might seem, Lance wasn’t exactly excited for all the extra work the camp would entail.

“No es un acampamiento,” his sister repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. He wasn’t listening anymore. “Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” he shot back, defensive. Veronica didn’t dignify that with an answer.

As much as Lance might like to think himself very smooth, there were still times when he stumbled over his words, especially in English. More than once he’d meant to pay someone a compliment and had accidentally started an argument of some kind.

Veronica looked impatiently at her watch. “Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.”

Lance pouted at her, arms crossed over his chest. “Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.”

His sister snickered, but it was as much of an acknowledgement as he was going to get. Veronica pressed a quick kiss to his hair, already turning to go into the main building.

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!”

In all honesty, Lance wasn’t as irritated as he made Veronica believe. He knew that a summer program in Miami was a really good opportunity, especially if he wanted to get into the Garrison in the following years. It was just difficult.

He was diligent and studious, but not as naturally gifted as some of the other kids. Besides, he hadn’t been to the US in a couple years, since his parents had mostly settled down in the family farm, which meant he still had to fall back into his English, a task made even more frustrating by the xenophobic comments from one of the boys in his AP geometry class.

The teacher had put an end to it right away, but the words stuck with Lance, for some reason.

With how much humanity had progressed in terms of technology, one would think they would be able to get past petty rivalry between nationalities and usually that was true, but the influx of foreigners following the establishment of the Galaxy Garrison in the US desert still annoyed some people, despite its existence as a multinational center for space exploration. It irritated Lance to no end, especially when so many of these scientific advances came from international collaboration.

If only he could shrug off the inadequacy that now grew in his chest.

Straight ahead, there was a path that led to a green area in the middle of the campus. The other students had taken to calling it the Woods, though it was more of a middle-sized park, with benches and picnic tables where anyone from the Institute could go to relax. That’s where Lance went, mind too full to really focus on homework.

He wondered if people would react that same way if he ever made it into the Garrison. He didn’t know how Veronica dealt with it all, especially when she was alone in Arizona most of the time. Barely a week had passed and Lance already missed his parents, the tenderness of home-cooked food and well-intended lectures.

No, he had to believe that Billy Underwood was an exception. The other kids hadn’t joined in on his taunts, even if no one had moved to defend Lance. It was still too early to make conclusions on his colleagues, especially when everyone had seemed so charmed by him before then.

Lance was so lost in thought that he didn’t realize he had been standing in front of one of the benches until a new voice broke through the peace of the park.

“Are you just gonna stand there?”

The words were somewhat harsh, but when Lance lowered his eyes to their source the girl winced, grimacing. She seemed to have spoken impulsively.

“Hmm, yeah.” Lance blinked at her for a moment, before finally sitting down on the bench. He made sure to leave space between him and the girl, not wanting to make the situation even more awkward.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” the girl said after a moment of silence. She looked at him sideways and her brown eyes seemed almost golden in the sunlight. There were freckles spread across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, and the green ribbon in her hair swayed in the wind. It was a soft sight, a contrast to the steeliness of her posture and gaze.

“It’s fine,” Lance hurried to assure her. She looked young, but so did he, and talking to complete strangers never failed to make him nervous. “Nothing like a little girl yelling at me to bring me back to earth.”

He gave her his best grin, the one reserved for first impressions and fancy parties. It was supposed to project confidence and kindness, even though Luis said he ended up looking a bit smug.

“I didn’t yell,” the girl pointed out with a light frown. Then her eyes shifted into a more calculating look. “You’re a bit of a goofball, aren’t you?”

“I prefer the term good-humored,” he replied jokingly.

She continued to stare. Lance got the feeling that the girl did this a lot. She had an untamed intelligence to her that Lance couldn’t completely understand. It was the sort of air that teachers sometimes carried, as if they could see something deeper in you if they looked long enough.

“It didn’t seem like you were feeling all that good-humored just now.” She tilted her head to the side, letting the words hang between them.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” Lance found himself saying.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” She looked so doubtful that it almost made Lance laugh. The feeling, however, was overcome by the relief of finally having someone who would listen.

He had spent the week trying and failing to explain to Veronica what was truly making him feel down. She was too busy or too happy for Lance to tell her the truth, especially when it left him so vulnerable. After all, Veronica had taken to her work on the Institute like a fish to water. Lance was supposed to be more adaptable than this.

With the rest of his family away in Cuba, he felt unbearably lonely.

“Yes! Thank you!” Lance shifted in the bench to face the girl. She was taken aback by his enthusiasm, but didn’t move away. “There’s this cabrón in my class, who thought it was a good idea to mess with me, just ‘cause I said fábrica instead of factory in our first day here. He hasn’t really left me alone since…” he whined. “I speak two languages but somehow I’m the uneducated ass here!”

The girl nodded, eyes downcast. “I know what you mean.”

“You do?” He eyed the fairness of her skin and the almost ginger of her hair. “Sorry, but you look white.”

Lance’s comment must have taken her by surprise, because she actually laughed.

“I am white. I’m also Italian.” She rolled her eyes, but there was amusement in the tug of her lips. “I can be both.”

“That’s true.” Lance grinned sheepishly. It was good that she wasn’t offended by his lack of filter. “You don’t have much of an accent, though.”

“Neither do you,” the girl bit back, no real animosity in her tone.

He shrugged. “My family spent a lot of time in the US when I was younger. It used to be second nature to me. Now, I keep feeling like I have to hold back the instinct to roll my R’s.”

“I get that. My parents moved here right after I was born, but we used to speak Italian in the house.” There was a pause here, something that she couldn’t bring herself to say. “I think it’s cool that you can speak Spanish. It’s useful.”

“Yeah?” Lance sat up straight, feeling suddenly boastful.

“Sure!” she continued, encouraged by his interest. “The Bouman Aeronautics Research Institute really values multiculturalism! It is a hob of different nationalities and perspectives, created to foster new minds from around the world! Or that’s what my brother says, at least, and he is rarely wrong.” She gave him a smirk that quickly shifted into a grimace. “Don’t tell him I said that or he will never let me forget it.”

“Older brother?” At her nod, Lance smiled. “I got older siblings too. Sort of the reason I’m here in the first place, actually. One of them was accepted as a researcher and she tricked me into applying too.”

“Same, actually.” She seemed startled for a moment, pulling out her cellphone. “Freak, I have to go! I completely lost track of time while reading.” She got up to go, collecting the book she’d apparently put down to talk to him. It was a thick volume with numbers on the cover, but it didn’t look like math.

Another green ribbon fluttered to the ground, having escaped the pages of the book. Lance bent down to pick it up.

“Here.” He stretched it out to the girl. “Wouldn’t want to lose its pair,” he said with a wink.

“Thanks for reminding me!” She grabbed the ribbon hurriedly, then paused, turning back to Lance. “And for the conversation, I guess.”

Lance grinned at her. She was a little awkward but in an endearing way, like she wasn’t used to having the attention of others on her. Given she empathized with his circumstances in the Institute, it wasn’t that big of a leap to assume that she had trouble making friends.

“Bye bye, Italian girl.” He waved, glad that he could spend these few minutes with her.

“Farewell, Spanish boy.”

Lance meant to correct her about his nationality, but she took out running, clearly late for something. He laughed at the way she stumbled across the uneven ground, careless like a little kid. It was a strange juxtaposition: the thoughtfulness of her earlier words and the childishness of her smile now.

He settled back into the bench, feeling much more content than he’d been earlier. It was nice to talk to people outside of class, for a change.

And, well, Italian girl was pretty. A bit young-looking for him, but he thought guys her age should be tripping over their feet for a chance to talk to her.

“Hey, you’re Lance, right?” A boy had approached while Lance observed the girl disappear from sight. He was tall and robust, with shortly cropped hair, but his expression was friendly. “You’re in my Analytics class.”

It took Lance a second to place him. Analytics was one of the classes Lance struggled with the most, so he hadn’t had as much opportunity to joke around there.

“And you’re Hunk!” Lance snapped his fingers, smiling. “Sit down, man! What can I do for ya?”

--

“No, I promise you, she’s a cutie!” Lance exclaimed, hands waving around in the air. Hunk chuckled at his exuberance.

“I believe you, Lance.” His friend’s tone was fond and amused, which brought a smile to Lance’s face. “You’ve told me about Italian girl a hundred times already. Why don’t you just approach her again? You said you saw her on campus.”

It was true, he had seen her: running across the woods with her arms full of books; sitting by the big windows in the cafeteria, papers spread across the nearby seats; standing under an oak tree with her face turned towards the wind, her long hair escaping from where she’d tied it back.

Lance pouted at Hunk. “She hasn’t spoken to me since…” he mumbled.

“Well,” Hunk scrunched up his brows in thought, “you did say she seemed younger than us. She’s probably just embarrassed about venting to a stranger out of nowhere.”

Lance threw himself onto his bed so that Hunk wouldn’t see his face contort in a grimace. He hadn’t meant to twist the story so badly, but he had already started talking about Italian girl before he realized he didn’t want to share his insecurities with the other boy. Hunk was almost excessively easy to talk to, but they’d known each other for too short a time.

“She didn’t seem like the shy type,” he retorted, arms spread over his head. “Too snipy.”

Hunk had gotten up from his place at the desk and moved to sit on the bed, shaking his head at Lance. He had kind eyes, something that Lance hadn’t really noticed on that first week in the Institute. Some things just got lost amid the noise, he reasoned.

“For someone who feels no shame hitting on random girls, you sure are hung up on this one.” Hunk poked him on the ribs and Lance recoiled, twisting away.

“It’s not like that!” Even as he said it, Lance could feel his neck grow warm. He wasn’t really attracted to the girl, but there was something pleasant about her that did leave him faltering. “Seriously, dude, she’s probably the same age as my little sister!”

Hunk hummed in acceptance. “If you say that’s not it, then I believe you. You just talk about her a lot for someone who you only met once.”

Lance sat up to look Hunk in the eyes. It was true that his mind kept drifting back towards that girl, but he didn’t think the emotion she awakened in him was romantic.

“I’ve just never clicked with anyone like that,” he confessed, bringing his knees up to his chest. “And maybe that’s also why I haven’t talked to her again. ‘Cause what if it was a hoax?”

“So you don’t want to ruin the memory of it?” Hunk put a finger to his chin in a considering motion. “That’s fair.”

There was more to it, but Lance didn’t feel like explaining himself further. Several times he had gone by Italian girl in the library, even stopped to look at her, considering, but whenever she raised those amber eyes to meet his, Lance froze. He blushed and blustered and eventually left.

It was nice to see her smiling, though, even if it was at his expense. She was always alone when Lance saw her and it reminded him of how isolated he’d felt before befriending Hunk.

Italian girl was clearly smart, probably smarter than almost anyone in the institute, given how fast she went through those complicated-looking books. She also spent a lot of time in the library, because it was where Lance most ran into her. It was always her and her astronomy books and her ribbons.

Maybe he was projecting. Luis said he did this a lot.

“I just hope she found a friend here,” he said, more to himself than to Hunk, “someone who will also end up a little late just because they want to hear her out.”

Hunk studied his face, making Lance shift his position in discomfort.

“Who could have known?” the boy started teasingly. “You’re actually a good guy behind all that arrogance.”

Lance used his elbow to push Hunk off the bed, complaining more dramatically than was truly warranted. His friend laughed as he got up, only to throw himself back onto Lance to mess up his hair.

“What the hell, dude? Going for my hairdo?” He tried to free himself from Hunk’s arm around his neck. “Friendship over! We are no longer rooming when we get to the Garrison!”

Hunk didn’t let up and the two continued to laugh well into the afternoon.

Their time in the Institute would end in a little over a week, and Italian girl would drift to the back of Lance’s mind to become a lovely memory, just the afterimage of someone who could have meant more to him.

Translations:

“No es un acampamiento.Tú sabes que el campo de explotación espacial no está muy desenvuelto en Cuba. Si realmente quieres trabajar con eso, entonces simplemente cállate y no insultes a nadie.” - “It’s not a camp. You know that the field of space exploration is not very well developped in Cuba. If you really do want to work in this area, then simply shut up and don’t insult anyone.”

“¿Cuando he insultado a alguien?” - “When have I insulted anyone?”

“Mira, tengo una reunión con mi orientador. Y tú tienes por lo menos dos artículos para leer para las clases de mañana, ¿por qué no vas a la biblioteca para trabajar un poco? Prometo comprarte una hamburguesa después.” - “Look, I have a meeting with my coordinator. And you have at least two articles to read for tomorrow’s classes. Why don’t you go work for a bit in the library? I promise to buy you a burger later.”

“Me debes más que una hamburguesa y lo sabes, Ronie.” - “You owe me more than a burger and you know it, Ronie.”

“¡Gracias, hermanito! ¡No te arrepentirás!” - “Thank you, little brother! You won’t regret it!”

Cabrón - Bastard

[numbah34]

True Genius

A little Plance!family drabble, inspired by a quote from my own daughter

Her daughter had called her a genius.

“Mommy, you are a genius! You get a prize!”

Pidge didn’t know how to feel about this.

“Lance... what have I done with my life?” She lay on their couch, gazing at the ceiling contemplatively.

He considered for a moment, thoughtfully stroking her hair as he kept an eye on their brood, quietly (well... mostly) playing on the carpet. Dinner finished and dishes sorted, their family had settled into their usual post-meal evening routine.

“Do you mean apart from producing a gang of catastrophically precocious children?”

She rolled her eyes if only slightly. “Well of course that counts, but I meant more along the lines of... achievements.”

“Well, let’s see; I mean, there’s the obvious stuff, like piloting Green, and helping save the universe, but if you want me to name some more personal accomplishments...” he raised an eyebrow, casting a glance at his wife. She hummed in affirmation. He went on, “then there’s the time you created a television out of spare parts you found around the castle just so we could play a video game...”

“You would name that first,” she snorted, amused.

“Well, it personally affected me in a good way,” he smiled, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “But going on, you also hacked I don’t even know how many robots, as well as one evil-cyborg-arm, that was pretty cool, too...”

“I’d be lying if I said I don’t still think about the moral implications of that last one, even though I’m glad everything more or less worked out in the end,” she sighed, “but continue.”

“You created and programmed Chip,” Lance turned his eyes to the corner of their living room, where the aforementioned Android was studiously playing their eldest in a game of chess. “And you finally convinced me that he’s not at all creepy,” he added.

“You agreed he was just as cool as Funsentry, as I recall.” It was Pidge’s turn to raise an eyebrow at her husband.

“Yes, yes, I know.” It was Lance’s turn to playfully roll his eyes at her.

“Anyway, you were saying?”

“...Do I really need to list all your accomplishments and accolades from the Garrison? We could be here all night.” He thought for a moment, then added, “...and on into the next day, as well.” He looked fondly at their children. “I think our little sprouts would be all too happy to take advantage of Mommy and Daddy’s distraction.” He cast a sidelong glance at her, “I mean, we only just settled things with the HOA after... last time.” A faraway look that was a combination of mild horrification and impressed wonder crossed his features.

“Fair enough,” Pidge sighed, reaching up to give his cheek an appreciative stroke. He caught her hand and held it there.

“Any reason you wanted me to recite the highlights from the ‘Pidge Hall of Fame’?”

She pulled herself up into a sitting position, turning her body so she was facing him. She gave him a serious look. “Our daughter called me a genius.”

Lance returned her look, then looked at their daughter, happily building with legos on the carpet. He noted, impressed, that her project of building the “tallest tower” had, somewhere in the last 15 minutes, turned more into a to-scale recreation of the leaning tower of Pisa. He looked back at Pidge. “I mean, she’s not wrong,” he said, gesturing to Pidge. “You definitely are; so what has you so concerned?”

Her mouth had pulled into a firm, flat line, and her eyes betrayed her feeling of consternation. “She called me a genius... because I put more watermelon on her plate.”

Lance, to his credit, managed (with near Herculean effort, he would tell Hunk later) to hold back the bark of laughter that begged to be released. He swallowed, succeeding in not guffawing, but having significantly less success with keeping the mirth from his eyes. “Well... she is four; her bar for what qualifies as ‘genius’ is going to be set a little lower.” He smiled. Pidge frowned slightly, a mixture of amusement and disgust. Lance pulled her into a hug, resting his chin on top of her hair. “Don’t worry, Pidge; she’ll know what genius means sooner or later, and then she’ll also know what I didn’t have to be a genius to realize.”

She pulled back enough to look him in the eye, a small smile playing at her lips. “Oh? And what’s that, Lance?”

His face lit up with warmth and affection. “That her mom is pretty amazing.”

[voyager-into-the-unknown]

Here’s the final chapter of the Pikelavar fic I have been writing! 💙💚

There’s a bit of Hunay and a lot of Kallura in this fluffy Plance fic based on their characters from “Monsters and Mana.” AO3’s PlanceGardener21 proudly presents

“All I Want for Midwinter Is Meklavar”

Chapter 7:

Festival

When Meklavar’s family had finally left their bedroom at the Green Lion Inn, she and Pike made haste to get ready for a day of travel. Servants had delivered their clean clothes, and while Pike was behind the privacy screen to relieve himself and have a quick wash, Mek, who had already done these things, had hasilty combed her hair, removed her robe and sleeping tunic, and changed into a modest green bandeau with matching briefs. She was just putting on her warmest pair of socks when Pike stepped back into their bedroom, clad only in his brief blue underpants. They blushed at each other, but continued to quickly dress, both of them donning warm trousers, heavy under tunics, woolen outertunics, boots, belts, and cloaks. Mek didn’t bother with her armor, but had it carried down to her parents’ sleigh along with their traveling packs. Downstairs, they sought out the Innkeeper to make sure their bill was paid in full, but Meklavar’s parents had already taken care of everything. Breakfast was in the common room with Lord and Lady Holt and Mek’s brother, who had already eaten. They were content to have some more hot tea before departing, sipping it slowly while keeping Pike and Meklavar company as the young couple dined upon hot buttered bread, bacon, porridge, fruit pastries, and tea. Lady Colleena was already planning the wedding, hoping to have a huge celebration with every noble in the land in attendance at Holt Manor. And of course, she intended to have the most elaborate wedding gown imaginable designed for her daughter, but Mek wouldn’t hear of it, preferring a simple ceremony for just their close friends and family members. She would have been content to wear her armor for the ceremony, but her mother protested, claiming that Pike would rather see her in a gorgeous gown that showed off her feminine attributes.

“I’ll bet Pike has already seen most of her feminine attributes by now,” Matthias mumbled softly, hoping his mother would not overhear. However, Lord Samuel did hear his son’s comment and nearly choked on his tea. Pike blushed and looked guiltily down at his plate. Meklavar continued to argue with her mother about the wedding gown, but they stopped when Pike finally spoke up and said, “I think she will look beautiful no matter what she wears, even if she chooses to wear her finest armor, but I must confess I haven’t ever seen Meklavar in a dress, and I think she would look lovely in the gown that you’re describing, m’lady. I think that seeing her arrayed in beads and silks like an elf princess from an old faerie tale would leave an indelible impression upon my memory.”

Meklavar gaped at him and had not another word to say to her mother about the dress.

When Pike and Meklavar had finished their breakfast, the little group made their way outside into the cold where a spacious red sleigh awaited them. The servants had securely fastened their traveling packs and Mek’s armor and axe to the luggage rack at the rear of the sleigh. In the center of the vehicle were tall, upholstered seats and thick, warm blankets, and in front, a driver’s seat with reigns that were connected to a team of large shaggy snow deer. Matt vaulted into the driver’s seat and waited for his passengers to settle into their seats behind him. Lord and Lady Holt shared one of the heavy blankets in the front seat. Pike sat beside Meklavar on the back seat, arranging one of the heavy blankets over their laps, and draping one of his long arms around her narrow shoulders in an all-too-familiar way. She smiled at him and leaned into his side, wrapping her arms around his torso. He kissed the top of her head, and off they went with sleigh bells jingling, gliding smoothly across the snowy ground in the direction of Block’s village and the Midwinter Festival.

Travel by sleigh was much faster than travel on foot, and they made it to the town by mid-morning. Mek stood up and called out the directions to Block’s new home, and when they arrived, Block barreled down the front staircase of the enormous house and out onto the street to greet them, crushing both Pike and Meklavar in a mighty hug, kissing the hand of Lady Colleena and shaking hands with Lord Samuel. Matthias had lept down from the driver’s seat to hug Block as well, and he pounded Matt on the back so hard that he nearly fell over. “My friends! It is so great to see you all!”

“We’re happy to see you, too, Block!” Meklavar exclaimed, hugging her friend once more.

“We’ve missed you, buddy!” said Pike, patting him on the back. “Thanks for inviting us over for the festival.”

The front door opened once again, and Jiro and Thunder descended the staircase to exchange cheerful greetings with Pike and the Holt family.

“We’ll help with your luggage,” said the tall Paladin as he and Block began unloading their things.

Thunder looked at Matthias. “The stable is this way. I’ll help you tend to your animals.” And off they went with the empty sleigh and exhausted reindeer. The others followed Block into the house.

In Block’s spacious parlor was an enormous fir tree that Valayun and Romella were busy decorating with fairy lights, glowing baubles, and gilded pine cones. They paused in their work, turned to the guests, and dashed to embrace them all in turn.

“You must be freezing! Come and get warm by the fireplace,” said Romella.

“You can hang your cloaks over here,” said Val, indicating a nearby wall with pegs for many traveling cloaks.

“Lord and Lady Holt, your guest room is this way,” said Jiro, who was carrying their trunk upstairs. They followed him.

Block had set down Pike and Meklavar’s gear. “The girls are sharing a room, and so are Jiro and Thunder. There’s room for Pike there as well, assuming Mek is willing to share a room with her brother.”

Matthias and Thunder returned from the stable just then, and listened in on the conversation.

“Actually, could you ask my brother to stay with Jiro and Thunder?” Meklavar said, her cheeks pink, and not just from the cold.

“But that would leave only one room left for you. Where would Pike be sleeping?” Block asked.

Pike exchanged glances with Meklavar, and grinned a bit sheepishly. “Block, remember that cabin near the edge of the forest that you told us about?”

Block’s eyebrows lifted. “Nice place. Wait, did you two spend the night there?”

“Three nights, actually,” Pike said with a sly grin. “And there’s only one bed.” He waggled his eyebrows. Val gasped, scandalized, but Romella squealed with delight.

Thunder made a face of disgust. “Ugh, please tell me you didn’t invite Pike to share the bed with you.” Matt cackled at this remark.

Block’s jaw dropped. “Ohmygoodness! Are you two—? Have you been—? Mek, do your parents know?”

Meklavar laughed. “Yes, we are together. No, we haven’t been having sex. And yes, my parents know that we have started the rituals. Pike is my Intended.”

“We have received their blessings just this morning,” Pike said proudly, his arm around Meklavar.

Block and the girls cheered and shouted words of a congratulatory nature at the young couple. Thunder clutched his belly and pretended to retch. Matthias continued to laugh.

“You should have seen the looks on their faces this morning when Mom and Dad caught them in bed together at The Green Lion Inn. Pike had his shirt off and the top fasteners of my sister’s sleeping tunic were undone,” Matt said with a wicked gleam in his eye.

Pike’s face went scarlet. “It was all very innocent! Nothing inappropriate happened!”

“It’s true. Pike has been a perfect gentleman,” Mek said, coming to his defense. “Anyway, we are not consummating until after the wedding ceremony.”

“Yeah, but she gave him the ritual bath last night. All the servants at The Green Lion were gossiping about it this morning, like it was something from one of those bawdy bodice-ripper tavern songs. Apparently they think my sister’s boyfriend is some kind of feline sex god.”

“Me-Ow!” teased Romella.

Block roared with laughter. “A feline sex god?” He wiped away a tear. “Stop, Matt, you’re killing me!” Pike glared at his friend. “Sorry, man,” Block said, wiping away another tear of mirth.

“Meklavar, it isn’t too late to get him neutered,” said Thunder. “Do you really want to have kittens with this guy?” Matt howled with laughter at that comment.

“Mind your own business, Blunder.”

“I was just teasing, Puke.”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough you two. I really need to get back to work on the feast, so try not to kill each other while I’m away. Lunch is almost ready. Make yourselves at home,” said Block as he headed towards the kitchen.

“Allright, truce,” said Thunder. “It’s the holiday season, after all. So in all seriousness, congratulations to you two.”

The black-haired half-elf extended his right hand. Pike shook it. “Thanks.”

“I’m only being nice for Meklavar’s sake.”

“I know.”

Thunder smiled at them, and picked up Meklavar’s traveling pack. “Come on, you two lovebirds. I’ll show you to your nest.” They gathered the rest of their belongings and followed him upstairs.

After the travelers unpacked and settled into their rooms, then placed all of their brightly wrapped packages under the holiday tree, everyone met downstairs in the dining hall. Meklavar helped Val set the table, and as soon as everyone was seated, Romella, Block, and Block’s girlfriend, Shea, had appeared with platters of food from the kitchen. They sat down to a feast fit for a king: baked ham, turkey, jellied fruit sauces, stuffing, seasoned vegetables, and a selection of berry and nut pies.

“Block, this is the best Midwinter Feast I have ever tasted!”

“Here! Here! A toast to the chef!”

“All hail Block, greatest cook in the three lands!”

“Cheers!” They exclaimed as they clinked their glasses together.

After they finished their desserts, the group sat in the parlor to open the gifts that they had placed under the tree. Mek had been eager to give her parents and her brother the gifts she had been carrying in the bottom of her pack for over a month: perfume from the Southern Isles for her mother, an enchanted miniature precision timepiece for her father, and a copy of a rare treatise on arithmancy for her brother. Block was having a bit of fun with the spring of mistletoe that Pike had saved from the day that he kissed Meklavar for the first time. Block enchanted it to float around the room, following a chosen target until they received a kiss from a loved one. So far he had gotten Lord and Lady Holt to kiss once, Pike and Meklavar to kiss twice, and he had even managed to steal a kiss from Shea three times. The enchanted mistletoe followed Val around, but every time Matt came near her, she fled, which resulted in laughter around the room from everyone except Thunder, who watched Val with interest, but looked away every time she looked at him.

Block loved the new belt pouch Pike had given him, and the unbreakable crystal potion flask the Meklavar had chosen for him fit perfectly in the new belt pouch, as if they were meant to be together. He had new sorcerer’s robes from Jiro and Thunder, and a fine pair of seven league boots from Val. Shea had bought him new cookware for his excellent kitchen, and Romella had gifted him a rare book of elvish recipes.

Val was delighted with the magical summoning and healing arrow heads Pike gave her, and she gushed over the sparkly hair comb that Mek had picked out for her. She wore it in her hair for the rest of the day, and Thunder commented that it looked beautiful because it brought out the sparkle in her eyes. Val blushed at the handsome half-elf’s compliment, and blushed even more when he gave her his gift, a pendant with a pink stone in the shape of a heart framed by clear, shiny crystals. The spring of enchanted mistletoe which had been floating around the room hovered over Thunder’s head, and Val took advantage of the perfect moment to grab him and kiss him softly on the lips. Everyone else cheered, even Pike. Thunder was pink-cheeked but smiling. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Val for the rest of the afternoon. Thunder thanked Pike for the lightweight elven cloak Pike had given him, and seemed even more pleased to receive the silver knotwork brooch that Meklavar had presented him, especially when Val pinned it on him and told him he looked “quite handsome” in his new attire.

Romella had received an assortment of new hair ornaments and bracelets and tunics from her friends, and Shea had a fine new belt, purse, anklets and wristlets among her gifts. Jiro loved the food pouch that Pike and Meklavar had given him, and the excellent new belt and scabbard for his sword that had been a gift from Thunder and Val.

When nearly all of the presents had been opened, Pike cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “As you know, Meklavar has chosen me to be her Intended, and we have begun the traditional dwarven rituals of courtship. But what everyone should know is that my people have their own customs with regards to marriage. Meklavar—“ he handed her a small, carefully wrapped box and knelt before her. “Open it.”

Meklavar opened the package nervously, knowing that every pair of eyes in the room was upon her. When she opened the little box, there was a ring inside of it, with gleaming blue and green stones...

“This is the ring that I was admiring in Talarian City...” she began to cry. “Pike, you must have spent nearly all of your gold on this.”

He smiled and nodded, embarrassed.

“It’s too much... the gems...”

“Blue for my clan and green for your House,” he said simply.

“This metal, Pike, do you understand what it is? What this means?” The Holt family apparently did, for they were all wide-eyed with disbelief.

“I thought it was some type of silver,” he said, “but—“

“Mithril.” Her cheeks were damp with tears of happiness and wonder. “The most rare, sacred, and precious metal of my people. A vow sealed with mithril is unbreakabke. Pure. Eternal.”

Pike’s eyes were now overflowing with tears. “I-I didn’t know. I just saw you admiring it. I wanted to get it for you because I just knew it was meant for you. It may be magic because I felt it calling to me. This was before you chose me to be your Intended. I didn’t know how you felt, I only knew what I felt. I have loved you for a such very long time, Mek.” He paused to wipe his face on his sleeve. “I knew only that I wanted to give you this ring. That maybe, when the time was right, I would ask you—“ He choked back a sob. “My people have a tradition...” He was so emotional that he couldn’t finish.

Block, who was looking at his two best friends with shining eyes, knew the lore. “Go on, Pike. Ask her,” he said softly.

Pike swallowed, summoned up his courage, and then took the ring from its little box and held it up to Meklavar. “Mek,” his voice cracked. “Will you marry me?”

Mek sobbed harder than ever before, and then exclaimed, “Yes!” Pike slipped the ring on her finger with trembling hands, and she kissed him passionately on the lips. There was an explosion of joy in the room, a roar of cheering and clapping. When Pike and Meklavar broke apart at last, he stood and helped her to her feet, then lifted her face to his to kiss her again as the enchanted mistletoe hovered above them.

After many congratulations were made and hugs were exchanged, Pike suggested that they head out to the village square for music, dancing, and the fireworks display. “Not yet, Pike,” Meklavar said. “I haven’t had a chance to give you my gift.”

“I am sure that I’ll love whatever it is Mek, but I already have exactly what I want.” He put his arms around her.

“Oh really?” She looked up at him.

Pike smiled at Meklavar. “Yes, really.” He cupped her cheek. “All I want for Midwinter is you.” He kissed her, knowing that he had received the best Midwinter present of all.

@pikelavarforest @defendersofaurita @suemaryrakocy @rueitae @kallura-juniblade @nessajjewell @ilovepidgance @cyangarden @animejunki5

[dreams-of-kalopsia]

Fictober Prompt 2

“Just follow me, I know the area.”

Voltron fanfiction (Plance)

No warnings apply.

Read it on AO3.

____

Part 1 (Pidge): Timing

Part 2 (Lance): Intuition

“A full meal, then.”

A full meal.

A full meal.

A full meal.

What did she mean by a full meal?!

In the literal sense, of course, Lance understands what Pidge meant. But her delivery… The way she stepped back to eye him up and down, the lip-biting, those four words, that last longer-than-normal look before turning—

There’s just no way he can take that literally!

It must’ve been a joke. Something to rile him up and mess with his mind because… just because. Pidge is more of a pun type of person like Hunk, not the pick-up line type like Lance, so it was most likely a poorly timed joke she just forgot to clarify as a joke. Uh huh. A joke.

That’s all it was, Lance determines, if only to stop himself from blushing every time he thinks about it.

When she shows up to breakfast the next day, he nearly falls from his seat out of shock. So do Hunk and Keith, who’ve never seen her awake before 10:00 unless absolutely necessary. When she shows up to lunch, he scoots over to give her space, glad that she’s finally eating healthily but perplexed with the drastic change. When she shows up to dinner still, he exchanges confused glances with Shiro, Keith, and Hunk. A Pidge who sticks to a proper eating schedule is a Pidge they’ve yet to meet. Well, until now.

Then she does the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next.

For a whole month and counting since that… that… since then, Pidge has been present at every mealtime, and Lance is bewildered.

But it’s not her perfect attendance that makes him feel like spontaneously combusting thrice a day; it’s the fact that their eyes always seem to meet at the most awkward times. Like while the spork slides between her lips as she pulls it out of her mouth. Or the exact moment she takes in a sporkful of food. Or when she says, “Thanks for the meal.”—which she never used to do. Or as she’s licking peanut butter off of her spoon, that one time Hunk gathered enough ingredients to make her some.

Lance knows he’s overthinking things. Really. He feels silly for every overreaction, especially since Pidge isn’t remotely affected by what she said, whether she was aware of its implications or not.

But what the heck did she mean by a full meal?

One month and counting, and he still has no idea.

One month and counting, and all the speculating is slowly driving him crazy.

“She said that?” Without really waiting for an answer, Hunk bursts into belly laughter. He shakes his head, still chuckling. “Oh boy.”

It’s not a laughing matter, Hunk.

“What does that even mean?” Keith asks back, the context of Lance’s dilemma completely lost on him.

Shouldn’t have asked this guy.

“A meal, you say?” Coran strokes his mustache thoughtfully while Romelle tilts her head sideward, index finger to her chin. “Does Pidge want to eat you, Lance?”

Romelle!!

“Why don’t you ask her about it?” Shiro suggests.

And look stupid and assuming? No way. Lance isn’t that kind of person anymore.

“Does it matter? You like the alien princess, don’t you? She seems to like you back.” Veronica’s point sobers him up, like a splash of cold water dousing the flustered flush that constantly warmed his cheeks the past month.

She’s right.

He likes Allura.

If Pidge means anything other than the literal sense… he’ll have to turn her down, won’t he? For some reason, that scenario settles as heavy lead in his stomach. So Lance chooses the scenario that doesn’t: Pidge was definitely joking.

* * *

It was just a joke, and yet his hyperawareness of Pidge intensifies over the following weeks. Mealtimes have become the least of his troubles. The bigger ones are the times he should’ve been acting normal around her but ends up failing.

In short, all the time.

Pidge will ask him to hand her something, and he’ll freeze up, losing his grip on the thing whenever their fingers accidentally brush.

“You should get your hand checked,” she’ll say with a frustrated sigh before picking up whatever he’s dropped.

His hand is fine, thank you.

A fan will ask him if there’s someone he likes, and his eyes will steal a glance at Pidge’s reaction first instead of searching for Allura in the crowd. He’s not sure why he does it; Pidge is looking the other way or talking to someone else every time.

He’ll see her face light up before running towards him, and his heart will stop for a beat, only to continue in a sluggish, disappointed rhythm when she passes him by to greet Matt. Or her parents. Or Shiro. Or anyone from Team Voltron not Lance. (Not that he’s feeling left out. Not at all.)

She’ll pull him into a celebratory hug when they beat another pre-Galra invasion videogame, and he’ll pull away a little too early, a little too quickly. He’ll berate himself internally each time, but… he does it again and again. It’s hard not to, okay? Hugging a friend in a dimly lit room can make anyone think weird thoughts.

He hears her voice or catches a glimpse of her, and he feels like bolting in the opposite direction. He doesn’t hear or see her, and he wonders where she is. He’s worried she’ll start acting weird but is unsettled that she isn’t.

At this point, there’s no use denying that this is a problem. This is a Lance problem, stemming from his misinterpretation of four harmless words. Turns out he’s not as over that issue as he thinks.

And it’s not fair. To himself, to Pidge—his friend, and to Allura—the person he likes.

That’s why he’s trying to track Pidge down. Trying, because she’s not with Green, her family, Beezer, Allura, Coran, Romelle, Shay, the other Paladins, or the Olkari. She’s not in the engine control room, the bridge, the mess hall, the Komar robeast’s research lab, the briefing and conference rooms. Heck, she’s not even in her room!

He’s just about to consider borrowing Matt’s scanner when he finally finds her.

Sneaking into the Atlas’ hangar containing the regular pods, big backpack and all.

The wave of déjà vu takes him back to the night Team Voltron first assembled. More than a year later, and he’s sneaking in after Pidge again. Lance’s eyes narrow. What is she up to now?

Pidge has her headphones on and seems to be deep in thought. He approaches with stealthy steps, curious about her intentions, but an elbow shoots up towards his sternum, its owner pivoting on one foot to adopt a defensive stance. If he hasn’t been training as a Paladin for as long as he has, he wouldn’t have the reflexes to deflect it. And he’ll probably drop to the floor, like, five seconds ago.

“Lance,” she says, quickly straightening up.

He forces himself to ignore the breathy way she called his name.

She clears her throat. “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that. What are you doing in the pod bay?”

Her expression turns into one that’s obviously calculating how much of the truth she can get away with hiding.

Well, he’s not accepting anything less than the whole truth. He crosses his arms and raises an expectant brow to tell her so.

The message gets across; a resigned sigh escapes her. “Fine. I’m here to borrow a pod. Dad, Shiro, and Keith have just settled on a launch date, and I uh…” At this, she looks out to the rows of pods to her right. “I wanted to see a sunset before we leave for space again. Incognito.”

Her answer sends a shock through him. Pidge and sunsets? The world must be ending. Oh, wait. The universe is at risk of ending because of Haggar. Right.

Still, his legs move by themselves, walking briskly to the nearest pod before his mind can consider whether Pidge wants him to accompany her or not.

“Where are you go—?”

“Just follow me. I know an area.” He takes the pilot’s seat and waits for her to settle into the adjacent seat.

She shoots him a sly smirk. “You just want to show off your hometown, don’t you?”

“Who cares?” He shrugs his shoulders uncaringly, maneuvering the pod for launching. “It has the best sunset view on the planet, anyway.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Great. That way you’ll have no choice but admit it to me out loud.”

“—Admit what?” The eerie calmness of her voice catches his attention. He studies her in the ten seconds it takes the launch sequence to finish: body tense, face blank but pale, clenched fists turning her knuckles white. It’s clear she’s misinterpreting something in his words.

“Admit I’m right and sunsets are as beautiful as your mathematical codes,” he clarifies.

“Oh.” Her whole body eases up in an instant, and she relaxes into her seat as they take off for Varadero Beach.

The pod is quiet save for the hum of its engines. With the flight path set, pod on autopilot, and Pidge adamantly silent, there’s nothing for Lance to do but contemplate on things.

Misinterpretations. These past months have been one misinterpretation after another. Lance wishes he wouldn’t read too much into anything Pidge does, and yet even as he repeatedly tells himself that he’s just misunderstood her joke, the niggling feeling that he hasn’t remained dormant somewhere in his mind. Is that why he can’t stop thinking about it? Is it his subconscious that spurred him into tagging along with Pidge before he can hesitate and back out of talking to her? He doesn’t know. It’s all so confusing!

Whoever said that ignorance is bliss is a liar.

“What’s our ETA?” His head swivels towards Pidge.

“Huh?”

“Our ETA,” she repeats. “We’re chasing a sunset. It’ll be pretty useless if we don’t catch it, you know?”

Lance sniffs. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I know the place. We’re almost there, actually.” True to his word, the autopilot sign blinks out. He grasps the controls, beginning their descent to his favorite place on Earth.

The familiar blend of turquoise, sapphire, and aquamarine waters greets them from below, cresting waves sparkling like precious stones under the afternoon sun. Swaying palm trees speckle the white, sandy beach lining the town; Lance can already smell the salt in the air despite the pod’s air conditioning. Varadero Beach is as beautiful as he remembers. Only the few remaining fragments of Galra ships and the new alien establishments indicate how much it has changed.

But he’s back now, and he has all plans of reacquainting himself with his hometown.

“Welcome to Varadero, Pidge,” he says proudly as he prepares to land. “Any first impressions?”

“The sun is everywhere and I’m glad I brought sunblock,” comes her dry response, but her bright eyes and wide grin betray her excitement.

Lance can’t help grinning back. He powers down the pod and leads Pidge out onto the sand. “Let’s explore a bit before sunset, then.”

This far away from the Galaxy Garrison, where most of the people they know are based, humans and aliens take longer to recognize Pidge and Lance. Brush her hair for five minutes, ruffle his for two, and transfer her glasses to perch on his nose, and they’re practically under the radar wandering about town.

Business is in full intergalactic swing. Any worry Lance has been harboring since coming back to find Earth under Sendak’s control dissipates as the afternoon wears on. Witnessing Pidge aggressively haggle and buy everything that piques her interest helps lift his mood further. Her ability to fit the load of souvenirs into her already overflowing bag must be some sort of mathematical magic.

On a whim, he takes the now-heavy backpack from her and slings it over his shoulders. Pidge turns towards him. There’s pleased surprise arching her brows, softness lighting up her eyes, a slight flush tinting her cheeks, and gratitude widening her smile. It’s a look Lance has never gotten from her. Ever.

It takes his breath away.

And the Lance problem becomes a crisis.

The sirens in his mind wail that he can’t keep this up, and he agrees. He has to clear things up with Pidge before his overthinking puts their friendship in jeopardy. He’s not losing a friend because of some misinterpreted words.

“Is this it? Your aunts’ pizza shack?” Pidge asks when he sets her bag down. She takes out a large blanket from it.

“What used to be their pizza shack,” he corrects, glancing at the ruins behind them. Half of the foundations survived the Galra invasion, but his aunts haven’t decided when they’ll rebuild it, if at all. Right now, they’re with family, relishing the peace after three years of violence and oppression.

Pidge makes herself comfortable on the blanket. “Then this is the exact location of the best sunset view on Earth?” She resumes her inventory: sunblock, bottles of water, sandwiches with what seem like peanut butter and jelly.

“Yup.” Taking the proffered sandwich as permission, Lance sits down beside her.

They’re at the perfect place at the perfect time. This part of the beach is still under major repairs, and they’re the only ones for hundreds of yards on end. The late afternoon sun sits coquettishly over the horizon, making the blue sky blush a deep red. The sea breeze flutters Lance’s uniform and caresses his face, its salty tang tickling his nose. He closes his eyes.

This is his definition of peace. Sunset by the beach, warm zephyr blowing by, rustles of palm trees, crashing waves.

Rummaging noises to his left. “Aha!”

His eyes pop open. “Wha—” Then he sees the cause of Pidge’s triumphant cry. “Is that a camera?”

Pidge nods eagerly. “I built it specifically to capture a sunset, in case it turns out as beautiful as you insisted.” She mounts said camera on a tripod. “It’s a good thing you brought me here; I can take a new photo and return the one you gave me.”

His chest begins to twinge at her revelation. “You kept it?” It’s the last photo he took before leaving Cuba for the Garrison, which he gave her during their argument about sunsets in an attempt to prove his point. He’s always assumed it was left behind in the Castle or lost in space.

She blinks confused eyes at him. “Why wouldn’t I? It seemed really important to you.”

Pidge… cares about him? Wait, of course she does; they’re friends. But it’s never occurred to him that what’s important to him would also matter to her, or that she’d even notice things like that, or that she’d make an effort to see things from his perspective, or that she’d go an extra mile for his sake.

The twinging explodes into an overwhelming ache to ask her, talk to her. Lance takes off her glasses, purses his lips, and faces her fully. “Pidge, we need to ta—”

“No.” He flinches at the vehemence of her reply, and she shifts in her seat to tuck her knees under her arms. “Not now,” she continues in a softer tone, “I’m here to watch the sunset. This may be the last time I get to do it—at least in a long while.” A rather strong breeze blows past them, causing her to shut her eyes briefly.

Pidge is like those physics exam questions he just can’t solve. He can stare at them, read them any which way, but he always seems to miss something. If he stares at her long enough, will she start to make sense to him? Will he find a solution to this?

“The sunset’s on your three, Lance,” she mutters, gaze not straying from the setting sun.

He turns his head accordingly but continues to watch her from the corner of his eyes. The sun colors her in fiery shades of red and orange. A small smile tugs her lips upward, and her eyes have a sheen that seems to brighten the more the sun sinks below the horizon.

Eventually, the sky darkens to let stars shine through. Pidge moves to stand. Lance thinks he saw her furtively wipe her cheeks as she got up, but he can’t be too sure, so he helps her pack up without comment.

Though the trip back to the Garrison is as quiet as when they first set out, there’s a certain melancholy to the silence that pervades the pod this time. Maybe it’s from seeing the day end. Lance has always found sunsets beautiful but also bittersweet. Does Pidge think of them the same, now that she’s seen one? He adds the question to the list of things he’ll ask her once they talk tomorrow.

His fingers tighten around the controls.

Be proven right and reject her feelings, or be proven wrong and swallow his disappointment. Those are the possible outcomes of their talk. It can go either way. But if he has the liberty to choose the outcome, he’ll choose his disappointment over Pidge’s every time.

Well, that’s still for tomorrow. Until then, he intends to dispel the sad mood by surrounding himself and Pidge with as many people as possible. He goes left, into the hallway leading to the mess hall.

Pidge doesn’t follow.

She’s already headed down the opposite hallway when he turns back, and he reaches out just in time to grab her hand. “Whoa, Pidge! The mess hall’s this way.”

Her steps pause. He hears her exhale before facing him. “I think,” she begins, gently sliding her hand off of his, “I’ll skip dinner tonight.” She gives him a fleeting smile. “Thanks for tagging along today, Lance.” Then she leaves him at the hallway junction, his arm still outstretched.

Lance can feel that something’s shifted, but also that nothing’s changed.

More than that, he can feel that he’s losing Pidge. It’s the kind of feeling that wrenches at his heart and twists his stomach into a painful knot. A gut feeling.

And if there’s one thing he’s learned well while defending the universe as a Paladin, it’s that his intuition is almost always right.

The next day, Pidge doesn’t show up for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner.

Lance doesn’t see her for a whole week.

[stuffandnosense]

Even - Plance

This is entirely @rueitae ‘s fault, just saying. (And the fault of many other enabling friends on a particular server. XD)

Description: Plance vs bounty hunters. Oops. 

***

There are boots in front of Pidge’s face.

She isn’t entirely sure how they got there, or...where here is. Where is she and why does her body feel heavy like it does? Like…

Stunned, she realizes, through fuzzy thoughts. She’s been stunned. It isn’t the first time, and different stun technologies cause different side effects, but it’s never pleasant. This one seems to be making her nauseous. Oh joy.

Her limbs are being slow to respond, but she’s awake. Barely. She doesn’t know if their captors have noticed yet; particularly the one standing so close. She grabs onto his voice to pull herself back into the world. To focus. But she closes her eyes again; no need to let them know she’s listening.

“You put the inhibitors on them, right?”

Them? Who else…?

Lance. She was with Lance. They were...getting supplies? Red is so far...outside the city. Assuming they’re still IN the same city…Pidge swallows back a sudden lump of fear in her throat. Where is Lance?

Another voice, several feet away. Deeper. Far off the ground...tall. Taller than the one standing by her head. “We only have one!”

“We had two! What happened to the other one?”

Pidge cracks an eye open again, just to see if she can catch a glimpse of Lance. Beyond the orange cuffs of her sweatshirt and the legs of whoever is standing over her, she can make out dark green material. Jeans. Lance. Prone on the floor and unmoving, but she can see the subtle movement of his breaths, and some of the tension in her chest eases.

“It shorted on that last job! I told you your supplier was junk—”

“Those things are expensive enough without paying full price.”

A snort from the deeper voice. “Maybe if you paid full price you’d get units that didn't break so easily.”

The feet beside her shift, as if whoever it is is agitated. He certainly sounds like it. “Look, we can get as many as we want with the bounty for these two. At least tell me you put the one we have on the taller one. I doubt the small one could carry him.”

“Of course I did. I’M not an idiot.”

The one beside her answers with a growl, and the feet move quickly away toward the second voice. “Be glad you’re good muscle.”

With the legs out of the way Pidge can see more of Lance, on his side with his back to her and...there’s something on the back of his neck. Attached to it. His bunched hood is hiding half of it from this angle, but she’s almost sure it’s made of some kind of metal and circuitry.

She doesn’t realize her eyes have gone wide until a rough hand closes around her arm and yanks her upright.

“Looks who’s awake!”

Pidge instinctively tries to call her bayard from the pocket of her sweatshirt, where she knows she put it before they came planetside—not in armor, so as to keep a low profile—but nothing happens. They’ve taken it and she’s left staring at her empty hand.

“Looking for that fancy weapon of yours, or whatever it is?” A purple grin from the alien who has her. He’s at least part Galra then, even if he doesn’t look like he’s full-blooded. “We don’t know what they are, exactly, but we know who they mean you are.”

“Oh yeah?” Pidge scoffs. Trying to buy time to look around. To make a plan.

She has no idea what species the larger guy smirking from the open garage-like doorway is. He’s maroon and furry and probably as wide as their entire team put together, but he’s not Galra. And is this some kind of storage unit? The plain metal walls and roll-up door would suggest that. There are empty crates behind them in the back of the space.

But unlike a storage facility being used by a good number of people renting spaces, where she might be able to shout for help, all she can make out beyond their captors is an empty building and darkness. No signs of life. No help. Her stomach sinks, cramping with anxiety.

Even if they can get away from these two once Lance is awake, how far will they have to go? The farther away they are from other people, from somewhere they can disappear and make it back to Red, the higher the probability of being recaptured.

But she catches sight of a table out in the emptiness, and their bayards thrown carelessly on top of it with other goods these two must have collected from unsuspecting victims. That’s some hope, at least. Their weapons are still here, if they can get to them.

The alien who has her arm doesn’t answer, looking over her shoulder at the groans coming from the floor.

Lance.

“Ow my head..what?” The larger of the two aliens stalks over to pull the groggy human to his feet, but he isn't thrilled with that. “Hey! Who...what...let me go!”

Pidge almost smiles; Lance confused and trying to kick at the guy hauling him up shouldn’t be funny, even if the alien is several times larger than he is, but it’s just...Lance. Maybe it’s her brain trying to keep her from panicking; it doesn’t really make any sense.

But then she remembers the strange metal thing—probably the inhibitor they were talking about—clinging to the back of his neck, and that she has no idea what it is, and her stomach is right back to cramping again.

It doesn't really help the nausea, either.

“What’s...Pidge? Are you okay?”

Lance’s wide eyes settle on her, and she swallows. “I’m fine.” She glares at their captors. “What do you want?”

“Money,” the shorter alien smirks. Not that he’s actually short; he’s still probably taller still than Shiro. Not that those details really matter right now, but it’s something to keep her mind occupied.

“Good luck; we don’t have any,” Lance retorts.

“No, but we know who you are—paladins of Voltron. Do you have any idea how much some people would pay to get their hands on any of you after how long you’ve been gone? The bounties have gone up every deca-phoeb since you disappeared.”

Bounty hunters...they’re bounty hunters. Pidge should have put that together by now, but she didn’t really...want to, maybe.

The fact that anything is looking for them that way, that there are people besides the Galra angry enough, is just another reminder of how much they’ve lost. It’s not just the time. It’s so much more than that.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us where the others are,” the bounty hunter continues.

Lance snorts. “Of course not.”

The alien is only holding Pidge by one arm, still, as he reaches into his pocket, and part of her wonders if they could make a break for it. But there’s no way Lance could break away from the other one, he’s too big, and they need to find out what that thing on Lance is and how to get it off of him before they try to get out of here.

He’s noticed it now. He’s trying to reach for it, but the bounty hunter holding both of his forearms won’t let him get his arm high enough.

Another smirk from the shorter one, as he pulls out something that looks like a small remote. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

Lance catches her eyes. His are wide, his eyebrows high on his forehead as he licks his lips nervously.

Pidge swallows, trying to apologize with a wince. She can do nothing. She could reach for the remote, but the taller alien could easily snap Lance in half, really. If he wanted to.

And they can’t lead these bounty hunters to the others. They can’t.

Lance seems to understand. “We’re not helping you,” he growls.

A low chuckle from the monolith holding Lance, and his half Galra partner is still sporting that nasty grin. “Fine. We’ll need to be sure you two don’t get any ideas about going anywhere while we look for ourselves, then.”

Lance is tugging pointlessly against the hands around his arms when the other bounty hunter presses a button on the remote. His legs go out from under him almost immediately as he shrieks.

“Lance!”

The bounty hunter only lets the human dangle from his grip for a moment before just dropping him. Lance collapses, screaming, and it only seems to hurt him more when he curls in on himself. He flinches when the bounty hunter nudges at him with a foot, and that seems to make it worse too.

“What are you doing! What is it doing?” Pidge demands.

Lance is writhing on the ground, trying to get away from the pain, but every movement only seems to create more, sending him twitching the other way, gasping and never free of it.

Caught in it. She doesn’t think he realizes he’s making it worse. She doesn’t know quite how, but that’s what’s happening.

“Lance, stop moving!”

He isn't listening. Of course not; not right now. When Pidge finally manages to yank her arm free she stumbles, and strangely enough, the bounty hunters don’t stop her from throwing herself down on top of him and scrabbling for his arms to pin them still.

“Lance, stop! Be still and it’ll stop!” She thinks. She hopes.  “Lance, listen to me! You’ve got to be still!” Oh god, are they just going to leave this thing on?

He’s taller than her. His arms are so long. He’s stronger than he looks, but so is she. It’s a struggle to keep his arms from moving as he gasps under her, flinching and shouting in her ears, but somehow she manages. She has to flatten herself out on him to weigh down his legs and torso, too, but it tires him out more quickly than he would have tired out on his own.

A loud banging tells Pidge the door has been rolled down—that the bounty hunters used activating the device as a distraction—but there’s nothing she can do about that now. She doesn't even look up.

She has enough to deal with with Lance trembling under her.

“P...Pidge…” he gasps.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, just stay still, just breathe, okay?” Her voice catches as she lets her head rest on his chest; she isn’t sure she wants to look up. She doesn’t really want to know what his face looks like right now...how much he was hurting and still might be. She just wants to stop it.

“...the heck is...this thing?”

“I-I don’t know exactly. From where they placed it, it could easily be tied into your brain or spinal cord...I think somehow it’s turning any movement into something painful, right?”

As she watches, Lance tries to flex his fingers; even resting on the ground and barely moving them, he whimpers when he tries.

“Yeah,” he answers tightly.

Pidge winces. “Breathing doesn’t hurt, does it?” She almost holds her own waiting for an answer. If even that…

“I...uh…” His chest moves up and down beneath her. “No, it...that’s okay. It’s just…” He huffs in something that sounds like mild amusement. “It’s just a little...hard right now.”

Pidge blinks for a moment before that registers. “Sorry!”

She climbs off him, carefully, trying not to prompt any unnecessary movement from him. He still groans, but she doesn't know if that could have been avoided completely.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Lance sighs. He swallows thickly, his eyes following her as he tries to keep the rest of his body still. “Thanks…”

She pushes a clump of hair back from his face that is already starting to stick together with sweat. “Are you okay? Besides the obvious…”

“I guess? Just—” He cuts off in a small cry. “Have you ever...tried not moving a muscle? H-harder than it looks.”

Her hand moves as if to reach for one of his, splayed out at his side, but Pidge has to stop herself, remind herself not to, not to make him want to move. She has to ball her hand into a fist and let it fall to her side.

“Especially for you,” she teases. She tries to smile, and for a moment it works. Lance smirks back, seeming to take it for the fondness it was meant to convey, and for a moment the situation doesn’t seem so dire.

“Can you...get that door open?” Lance asks.

“Maybe...I hope so. If I can get to our bayards, we’ll have a better chance when they come back. Or I will. We can’t leave without that remote; we have to get that thing off of you.” He doesn’t look happy about that. “You know I’m right. I can’t carry you, and we don’t know what damage it could cause if we try to remove it incorrectly; where it is, it’s way too risky. It could kill you.”

Lance looks at her for a long moment. She can tell he wants to say something, maybe a lot of things, but all he says is, “Just...be careful.”

She nods and squeezes his shoulder gently. “I’m gonna see what I can do with this door.”

Before she goes, she slips a hand under his head and carefully lifts it to pull his hood up between it and the cold metal floor.

“Oh,” he says. “That’s better.”

“You’re welcome. Now be still.”

Pidge is sure he tries, but as she finds a panel to pry open and wires to tinker with, she can still here Lance breathing heavily behind her, and the soft grunts and cries when something moves anyway.

The sooner she can get this door open, the better. If she has to go looking for that bounty hunter herself to get to that remote sooner...maybe she will.

“You doing okay back there?” she calls.

“Yeah,” Lance answers. His voice is higher than usual, strained. “Never better.”

“You suck at lying.” Why she has to tease to keep herself from worrying to too much, she doesn’t know. She wishes she knew.

“Guess we’ll...be even after this, huh?”

Pidge pauses. “What?”

“The whole...shooting Sendak thing. When you get us out of here.”

It isn’t a lot of words—unusual for Lance, though she can understand why he isn’t talkative—but she understands what he’s saying. “I don’t think it matters, Lance. We’ve all gotten each other out of a lot of stuff since we left Earth.”

“Yeah…good point.”

Pidge shivers at the flash of memory. “Still...that was a nice shot, though.” It seems so long ago now, but she’s never forgotten it. How could she? “Do you even really remember it?”

“Not really; it kinda...kinda sucks. Apparently it was awesome.”

***

Pidge makes short work of the door and hurries to the table across the empty floor of the warehouse, near the entrance to what looks like several mostly-empty offices at the end of the building. A lamp shines from somewhere inside through the glass windows, reflecting off the few pieces of furniture and unmade mattress on the floor.

The bounty hunters must be squatting here. Or someone is. They certainly made use of the storage unit they left her and Lance in, and this table where they’ve piled their acquisitions.

Pidge swipes their bayards from the table and is nearly back to the open storage unit, turning a plan over in her head for the best way to lie in wait for the bounty hunters—the best way to take them by surprise—when a slight noise gives her just enough warning to duck and roll. Just enough warning to miss being hit with the stun beam that flies over her head and is absorbed harmlessly into the wall.

“Pidge!” Lance's voice, from the storage unit, followed by a shout because undoubtedly tried to move.

“I’m fine! Hang on!”

The half-Galra bounty hunter launches out of the shadows at her, raising his gun to fire again, but Pidge lashes out with her grappling to pull the gun from his grip. He makes a sound of protest, but doesn’t hesitate to attack her hand to hand.

Too close. Too close to get the grappling around him and shock him. Pidge dances back, avoiding his blows and ducking around him, looking for an opening.

She doesn’t find it. He finds one. In a moment she’s on her back, cursing herslf, an arm pressed into her neck and both her bayard and Lance’s several feet away, scattered over the floor.

She thinks he’s going to let her up. Knock her out. Restrain her. Something. But the bounty hunter just keeps pressing down on her neck, cutting off her air. Maybe he only wants to knock her out that way, but fear makes her struggle, desperately trying to pull in air and afraid he’s not going to stop until she’s dead.

“Pidge! Pidge!”

Lance is shouting, but she can’t answer him. Everything is going dim and Lance is screaming, but the bounty hunter laughing down at her doesn’t care.

I’m sorry, she thinks faintly. Her arms fall away from pushing at him, her legs go still.

A flash she barely sees in her dimming vision, and the pressure is gone. Through her wracking coughs, as she pulls in air, she can hear Lance’s screams dying away into sobs and her adled brain finally sorts that they aren’t cries of alarm, or relief now. Well...maybe some of that.

But most of it is pain. She doesn’t know how she can tell, but she can.

“P-Pidge,” he cries. “Pidge! Are you—?”

“Lance?” she croaks. “—’m okay. Don’t...don’t move.”

But when she finally manages to roll up onto her knees, she finds that Lance has definitely moved. He’s several feet closer, now, collapsed on his side, his bayard on the ground beside him rather than where she could have sworn it landed when the bounty hunter knocked it away from her.

Lance shot the bounty hunter.

The pieces click into place in her mind and Pidge can only stare for a moment, her pounding heart in her throat.

Lance called his bayard and shot the bounty hunter. He was screaming because it hurt him so much to move.

“Quiznak,” she swears. “Hang on, Lance!”

She digs in the bounty hunter’s pockets for the remote, nearly crying in relief when she finds it. Her hands are shaking as she scoops it and her own bayard up and hurries to Lance’s side. As she looks for the right setting. She doesn’t want to hurt him more.

“Hang on, hang on…”

Lance is trembling on the ground, his face streaked with tears, but she can almost see him relaxing when she finds the right button to turn off the device. He sobs, and she wants to. The lump in her throat aches as she reaches to the back of his neck to gently pull off the deactivated device. Thankfully, it comes away easy enough. She only catches a glimpse of the tiny filaments retracting into the base as it comes off, but it’s enough to make her shiver.

She drops the device on the ground beside them, her bayard’s blades glowing as she brings it down on the tiny, awful thing. The smashed pieces smoke as they’re singed beyond recognition, Lance looking on in tired satisfaction.

Pidge kicks the pieces away and gathers Lance up in her arms. He doesn’t protest. On the contrary, he seems content to cling to her sweatshirt and bury his face in her neck.

“You’re okay...?” he asks again.

“I’m fine. I’m okay. You…?”

“‘M okay...I’ll be okay…”

He doesn’t sound okay. Not yet. He’s still trembling even as she holds onto him, his body still trying to shake off the effects of the device.

“Pidge, the...the other one could come back…”

“If you’re trying to make me leave you, think again. We’ll wait until you can walk.”

He huffs against her neck, but doesn’t argue. Instead he calls his bayard from where it’s lying nearby, transforming it back into its blaster form again and clinging to the gun with shaking fingers as he eyes the door.

Pidge can’t help smiling. “You saved me again,” she murmurs. “Guess we’re still not even.”

Lance laughs. “At least I’ll remember it this time.”

[funtryandthepaladudes]

Ok, I suddenly had this idea. I know most of us are happily done with VLD now but I just had this thing nagging in my mind and I felt compelled to share it. So, most of us agree, that this last season was less than satisfying, particularly in some character development, or just plot threads. However, what if that was deliberate? What if there is one last chapter of this story they need to tell, and it's not in comics?

So, even at the time that I watched it, something struck me as odd about the closing scene. Sure I understood the significance of the Allura shaped Nebula, but it just seemed to have a different tone than everybody else's epilogue shots. And then it hit me, it felt like an after credit scene, and not just any after credit scene, but one that could be hinting at a follow up. Remember not to long ago, when a Voltron movie was discovered to be future project, what if this wasn't meant to be a standalone unrelated, and possibly live action, movie, but is supposed to act as an ultimate finale with a Search for Spock-esque plot? (Which, from what I've heard isn't the best of the Trek movies, but that doesn't have to be a factor here. )

Now, indulge me a bit as I break down what this film could look like. I will warn you in advance, this is going to be incredibly biased and self indulgent, so my story will contain Plance, Kallura and Hunay, but also some discussion about some plot stuff, like Keith's connection to quintessence, what's the deal with the entity, stuff like that. If you like it, cool. If you don't, I can't help you, but maybe instead of telling how much my pretend movie sucks and how much I suck, stuff I am quite aware of, why don't you share your ideal closer movie, with your otps and hcs? I would love to see what you would like to see, so long as it doesn't involve attacking anybody else with differing opinions. And now, this insanity.  Warning it’s reaaaaallllly long. 

Edit: Here’s a link to the Next part.

(Note: I wrote the above earlier this morning on the way to church, and the rest below later in the afternoon, and at the moment of writing this note, I’ve been working on this for about two hours, and I am nowhere near finishing it. So I will be finishing this post somewhere around the first act of my goofy pretend movie synopsis (Which is much longer than a synopsis should be because I keep going into more and more details.) and continue this undertaking in a future post or posts, provided this website isn’t shut down. (In which case, find me on Dischord under Dappie.)

I would open this with something I like to call creative recap credits, think Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 2. Once this sequence came to an end it would bleed into an actual scene, our Heroes are gathered together for Allura Day as per usual, just catching up. This is where I would bring the audience up to speed on their character development, and set up some Major and sub-plots. Hunk is gushing about his and Shay’s wedding, but he’s having trouble picking the main cook for the reception (He can’t decide between Romelle’s great instincts and Vrepit Sal’s experience and seniority. This should serve as a comedic subplot, and that’s all I’m going to say about it unless anyone asks for me to expand on it. Honestly, it’s probably something that would wind up scrapped for time.) Hunk is insisting that they better make it there, even if there is a world ending catastrophe. Now from everybody’s response, except Keith we’ll get to him, we get a little more insight into our characters. Shiro is content, but would secretly like to have a little more adventure. Lance seems to be flirtatious again, however his flirtations are focused on a single target. The target in question, Pidge, is receptive, yet hesitant. While this conversation goes down, Keith suddenly looks off in a random direction and asks the others if they hear something. Everybody seems confused, and they tell him that they don’t hear anything. However, Keith is not reassured and declares that something isn’t right. He walks away from the table, with Lance making a quip I’d imagine, and goes in search of the sound, at which point, we also begin to hear what he’s hearing. A woman humming. He as he approaches the humming becomes a little clearer and more familiar. In fact, so familiar that he begins to doubt it’s real. But Lo and behold, he turns that corner and there she is! Allura alive and well. Keith is completely shocked and begins bombarding her with questions, but she just keeps humming, as if she can’t hear him. This raises some red flags within him, and he cautiously asks again. “Allura, it is you, right?” To which the humming finally stops, and in a jump-scare like thing abruptly turns towards him and screams “We’re running out of time!” Suddenly, Keith is bombarded with visions of random parts of the galaxy, finally settling on the Allura Nebula. And then Keith wakes up. 

Cut to the interior of a bedroom, a communication device is ringing. The couple, Shiro and Curtis, groan in annoyance. 

Shiro: Why would anybody be calling us this late?

Curtis: It’s obviously your boyfriend.

Shiro: Hilarious. 

Curtis: This isn’t even my best material. 

After a little more better written exchange, Shiro finally picks it up. It is in fact Keith, and he’s calling to tell him about this dream he just had. We learn that he’s been having dreams like this for something going on a year now, and that the incident we saw in the Dream happened a few months ago, minus the whole Allura thing. Shiro advises him to maybe try to find out what exactly those flashes are, and although Keith is a bit doubtful, the recurring dreams do remind of the time he could somewhat sense the Blue Lion, only on a bigger scale. After their conversation end, Curtis asks if Keith had another cosmic dream. After, Shiro confirms this, he tells him about how Keith is finally going to try to find out what the visions contain, which might result in some kind of galactic road. Curtis asks him if he’s tempted to go, but Shiro denies that, claiming he’s had enough adventures to last a lifetime before kissing him and snuggling up to him. However, you can see from their facial expression that Shiro’s not completely telling the truth, and that Curtis doesn’t really believe him. 

In our next scene, we see Pidge welcoming a new batch of students to the premises. As she is making her grand speech she is suddenly interrupted by an officer, I’m thinking an alien, telling her that he is here to see her. She tells the officer that she’s in the middle of something, but the officer says that he told her say it was urgent. Pidge rolls her eyes as she sighs exasperatedly, and tells Chip to take over for her, who had seemingly been standing behind her the whole time. He eagerly takes over, and begins by asking who would like to try out the anti-gravity room? 

A note on Chip, I’d like to imagine him as a lovable little dink that instantly endears himself to all that meet him. He serves as Pidge’s little assistant, and is constantly updating his database on all scientific breakthroughs, but personality-wise is just fascinated by everything, and adores everyone, but none more than Dr. Pidge/Ms. Katie, his primary creator, and his Uncle Lance. My dream cast would be Sam Lavignino, aka CatBug, or someone with a similar energy and instant likability, slightly older sounding than the CatBug character. We’ll get back to him. Be afraid.

Pidge approaches the person who summoned by saying ‘For Quiznack’s Sake, you can’t keep on declaring an emergency every time you want to hang out with me, Lance! I had to make Chip take over my orientation tour for me. Do you know how irresponsible I’ll look to these new cadets now that dumped my job on my childlike android, right on the first day’

‘Well, if you don’t want me to pull the emergency card, then you should stop responding to it. And besides, you wind up having Chip substitute for most of the semester anyway, because you would rather be tinkering than lecturing. And they’re in good hands, he knows your material frontwards and back, plus he has better people skills than you.’

‘How dare you.’ she responds in fake outrage, at which they both laugh. ‘So why are you here. what’s the ‘urgent matter’ that made you abandon your farm.’ 

‘I’ll have you know, I’m here on official business too. You’re mother had another breakthrough in agricultural science, and I wanted to see if I could put this knew knowledge to use at my farm.’

‘Uhuh,’ she responds.

‘As for the urgent matter, I heard that some nerd was working on her birthday, which seriously comes into conflict with my plans to pamper and spoil her, and that’s just unforgivable.’

‘For the last time, I don’t need to do anything special for my birthday, I’m an adult!’ 

‘Then I guess you don’t want to see the ancient piece of technology, I accidentally unearthed.’ He says as he casually walks away.

‘You’re right, I don’t.’ She says as she begins to walk the other way. Only to turn around with the excuse, that she might as well have a look at it, since he brought it all the way here.

Lance shows her the tech, which may or may not turn into a macguffin later on, and Pidge is clearly impressed. It’s not quite as advanced as anything they have today, but definitely more sophisticated than its carbon dating (Is that a thing you do with objects?) would imply. She’s excitedly gushing about it, and tells him something to the gist of, ‘You didn’t have to do this.’ to which Lance responds something like, ‘I would do anything to make this happy.’ This suddenly makes everything a bit too real for Pidge, and her demeanor drops as she turns to have a solemn conversation that they had clearly had many times, when Chip comes around leading the group of cadets, who for some reason all have some kind sweet snack in their hands, and telling them general academic tour stuff in a cheery voice, only to drop everything and hug-tackle Lance once he sees him, all star-eyed and delighted to see his other favorite person. One of the cadets, does not quite know who Lance is asks about it. Chip is personally offended that there is somebody who doesn’t recognize the Lance Serrano (Or whatever your preferred last name for him is, in this pretend movie I intend to give everybody their missing last names.) on sight, and immediately begins launching into all his accomplishments, which of course impresses the cadets. They start bombarding him with questions, until Pidge tells them to stop, and then tells them to ask their questions one at a time. So an impromptu Q & A session commences in which it is confirmed that Lance is not Altean, (A self-indulgence for me, because it frustrates how many people have run with this fact, despite the marks being the only Altean trait he exhibits.) culminating in one of the cadets meekly asking if he would do a flight demonstration for them. At first he tries to decline, but Chip is excited by the idea, and Pidge eggs him on, bringing up the whole Tailor line. Lance takes her aside and asks her what she is doing. She responds that since he disrupted her job, he better make amends by contributing to the tour. He complains that he hasn’t flown so much as a cargo-jet in years, and how does she expect him to fly one of their state-of-the-art, not to mention sinfully expensive fighter-jets, without damaging it. ‘Please, a pro like you, it will be like riding a bike. And if you do crash it, I’ll take responsibility.’

‘Right.’

‘And I’ll go along with whatever other birthday surprises you have in store for me, without complaint.’

‘...’

‘And it would make Chip really, really happy.’

‘That’s playing dirty, you know I can’t say no to my favorite android.’

And so he goes along with it. At first he’s a bit hesitant, worried about so much as scuffing the fancy new jet, but before long he’s enjoying himself, and showboating to all the kids on the ground. Pidge looks up at him with a face similar to the one he was making earlier when he was watching her gush over the piece of tech. 

And we are with Keith again. He goes about trying to learn more about his dreams by asking his fellow Blades if they know someone, or something, that can help you get information from your subconscious. Zethrid says that she thinks she remembers an Alien race that could dreamwalk, and seeing as Keith doesn’t have much to go on, he decides to head out there. Acxa elects to go with him, as she is also familiar with the quadrant of space that this race resides in, and it’s a bit disorienting for the uninitiated. They get there, and convince the race to help Keith out. He is but in pseudo sleep state, and this time the memory is of the time he visited his father’s grave with Krolia. (We’re facing the front of the gravestone this time. And yes, we do finally find out Texas Kogane’s name.) Once again he hears Allura’s humming, except now it is slowed down. He approaches it, and again the visions start coming. But this time he is able to get a good look at all the images flashing in front of his eyes. They don’t mean anything to him, but in the last one, not only does he see a nebula that resembles Allura, but a small silhouette that looks suspiciously like...Voltron? The dreamwalkers have copies of all the images he saw thankfully, because a race like their’s would have found a way to transfer information out of a mind directly into images (Sort of a similar school of thinking like the Altean memory hologram things.) Back at the Blade’s headquarters, he asks if anybody know’s where the nebula is located. Nobody has ever seen something like it, but a few of them, including Zethrid, Ezor, and Axca, seem to recognize a couple of the other images. They realize that the other locations must be a path to the nebula, so Keith recruits those that knew were to find those locations to set out on reconnaissance mission. 

Here I’d like to jump around a bit. We’ll keep switching between Keith and crew’s journey, and Pidge’s Birthday Celebration. In attendance of this dinner are Hunk and Shay--Naturally, as they prepared the food--The Holt family including N-7 and Chip, Shiro and Curtis, and of course Lance. I would like this to be one of the more lighter spots in the movie, where we just see everybody’s dynamic with each other, and just exist, because after this act it’s going to get pretty heavy. One of the things that I would like to happen is that there is a projection in the background highlighting Pidge’s greatest achievements. (Including a clip of Chip first going operational, his first words being, ‘Please, define the word ‘mom’. Nevermind, I have found the definition in my Database. Be very afraid.) The party scene comes to an end, just as Keith’s expedition reach the Nebula. He decides to approach it alone in a cruiser, despite the disapproval of the rest of the crew. He claims that he has a feeling that he needs to do this alone. As he is approaching the Nebula, we occasionally cut back and forth to Pidge and Lance, who are having a conversation as he walks her home. They are discussing the day they had, Pidge thanks him for forcing her to attend her own party, Lance thanks her for encouraging him to fly again. Keith’s cruiser enters the Nebula and in the center is in fact a fully formed Voltron, seemingly deactivated. Lance asks her if she would like to hang out with him more often, alone. This devolves into a conversation (Heavily inspired by a textpost from @sp4c3-0ddity. I’ll try to find the link later.) about why them dating is or isn’t a good idea. Keith gets closer to Voltron, and realizes that it seems protecting something in its arms. The conversation grows more dramatic. Keith finally reaches Voltron, and discovers that there is some kind of a force field containing a floating young woman in the same position as the Nebula. (Wearing a light dress, because this is a family picture.) The force field allows his cruiser to pass through, and his scanners or whatsits indicate that there is a breathable atmosphere within. He opens his cruiser door? I don’t know spacecraft lingo, sue me and reaches out for the woman and brings her inside. He closes the door/hatch/whatever quickly because the moment he takes a hold of the woman the force field begins the dissipate and Voltron appears to be separating. The woman, who at the very least resembles Allura, flutters her eyes open and when her gaze locks on Keith she says ‘You’re here! Thank the Ancients, you’re here. Now we can...’ and she falls unconscious again. Meanwhile, Lance and Pidge have reached the climax of their argument. He doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want start a relationship when it’s clear there is something between them, and she says that it’s because she can’t be who he wants her to be. 

‘I just want you to be you, why else would I be asking you out? And don’t tell me this is because of Allura. Of course I still love her, but she’s gone now, and I am more than ready to move on. She wouldn’t want me to be in mourning for the rest of my life. Quiznak, if Curtis and Shiro could make it work despite their deceased loved ones than you have no excuse.’

‘That’s different, I knew Allura. She was one of my closest friends. I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t even be able to look at you without feeling guilty. You literally have her mark on you.’

‘Stop making this about other people, and just tell me how you feel!’ 

‘This is how I feel! Why won’t you listen to me?! Trust me, if we did this I would not be able to focus on us, because I would always have her in mind, and that wouldn’t be fair to any of us.’

Lance sighs. ‘Look, if you’re not interested in me then just tell me. But don’t act like you’re doing me a favor by refusing to date me.’ 

‘My feelings for you don’t matter! I’ve been in love with you since before we even met Allura, that’s why we can’t do this! Because I would be taking advantage of her absence!’ Her eyes widen in Shock, and she covers in mouth in mortification, clearly not wanting to reveal that much. Lance is surprised too, never realizing that her feelings run that deep. 

‘Pidge, you’re not...’ Their communication devices start ringing. Cut to the other former Paladins, who’s devices are also ringing. The pick it up and are shocked by Keith’s message. 

‘I found Allura. She’s returned!’ 

Pidge and Lance look at each other uncertainly, not knowing what this development to them. 

And this is where I stop for now. Ain’t I a stinker? Because as of writing this sentence it has almost been five hours and I need me a break. 

To be continued probably....

[yellowmechanicalcat]

fic: Take It Easy (plance, gen)

what up guys have a non-queued post! This fic takes place after Chapter 3 of Waiting, Wishing but can be read as a standalone. Set sometime between Seasons 3 and 4, it features one-sided (...for now) Pidge/Lance, platonic Kidge, dubious skincare techniques, and awkward bonding experiences, but everything turns out okay. 

Summary:

Lance flashes finger guns at her and jogs off, leaving her standing in the middle of the corridor in her dust-covered armor, beads of sweat dripping down her face, trying to figure out what she’s gotten herself into. Oh, right. The conversation at breakfast the other day. The face goo. She’d agreed to try it.

Which means, apart from the weirdness of putting the substance she regularly consumes for nutrition on her face, that it’ll be the two of them. Making conversation, the way she’s tried her best to avoid ever since their little heart-to-heart on Olkarion. And it’s fine. She can do it.

Find it on AO3 or below the cut.

Take It Easy

Allura clears her throat with just enough authority that the team automatically turns towards her as she leans across the table and gently but firmly places a hand on Lance’s arm.

“Lance, what is wrong with your face?” the princess asks.

Simultaneously, they all stare at Lance as he guiltily looks up from his breakfast goo and – yeah, okay, Lance’s skin is practically sparkling, which is definitely not normal.

“N— Nothing’s wrong with it!” Lance sputters, flushing red. Somehow, blushing only makes his skin shimmer more brightly. It’s like he’d morphed into a human disco ball overnight. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Keith says from the end of the table, letting his spork clatter into his empty bowl. “You look like you rolled around in glitter. Like a chinchilla, or something.”

Shiro looks faintly alarmed at the prospect of Lance having somehow located enough glitter to do so. He sneaks a side-eyed glance at Pidge and quirks an eyebrow, like he wants to find out whether she knows anything about it but isn’t brave enough to actually ask. Pidge just shrugs, because she definitely doesn’t keep track of all the weird things Lance does in his free time, thank you, Shiro.

“You’re a chinchilla,” Lance grumbles half-heartedly.

Keith rolls his eyes at him but Lance doesn’t notice. He’s too distracted by the fact that Allura’s hand is still resting on his arm. This is the longest they’ve ever touched outside of training in probably ever, give or take a few doboshes.

“Do you mean you did this to your face on purpose?” Allura clarifies. In his dazed state, it takes him a moment to process what she’s actually asking, but Lance eventually nods. Satisfied, Allura pats his arm and returns to her breakfast.

“That’s fine, then. I thought you might have contracted a Glass Virus,” she says cheerfully. “That’s when the skin on your face slowly cracks open because the layers underneath have solidified. It looks a bit like glass before everything starts to, ah, leak.”

Shiro finally finds his voice. “Allura, that’s awful.” Allura shrugs. “No worse than your— what do you call them? ‘Pimples.’” “Not that I don’t love learning about gross alien diseases while eating, but I’d like to know why Lance is sparkly,” Hunk interrupts.

Lance groans. The blush is starting to fade but he’s still obviously flustered. “It’s not a big deal. I was trying out a new face mask last night, it’s probably just some residue or something. But it worked great, check this out!”

Expectantly, Lance angles his face towards Hunk and waits until he reaches over and pats his cheek, his skeptical expression giving way to awe. “Whoa, smooth.”

“I know, right?” Lance says smugly. “I grabbed some of the junk you and Pidge brought back from that rando market you found last week, the one that’s kind of like cinnamon?”

Hunk frowns. “What junk— wait, that brown powder? Lance, I got that for eating! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find spices that are actually edible?” “Calm your pants, I didn’t take that much. Anyway, the one I used was more yellow-ish–”

They’ve all gotten used to seeing Lance walk around the Castle with a blend of Altean goo slathered on his face. He’d grilled Coran about its nutrients long enough to conclude it’d be just as good for the outside of a body as it was for the inside. Incorporating secondary ingredients into his face masks is new, although from his impromptu speech about Altean food goo’s seemingly extended-release hydrating properties, he’s clearly put a lot of thought into it. For someone who frequently claims to have slept through every single one of his science classes, Lance understands a lot more chemistry than he thinks he does.

“I still can’t believe you were willing to put all that stuff on your face,” Pidge says once Lance has finished.

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” Lance sniffs. He shoves a sporkful of food goo into his mouth.

And Pidge, much to her own surprise, says, “Fine.”

Lance looks up at her with suspicion. “Fine? What doesh ‘fine’ mean?” he says through a mouthful of goo. “It means I’ll try it.”

The room goes awkwardly silent for a moment as the others pretend they aren’t all staring at them. Pidge makes sure to keep her expression perfectly neutral, even though she’s dying inside because she knows that any moment someone’s going to make a big deal out of it.

Lance swallows, considers it, then nods. “Okay, cool.”

And… that’s it. Everyone starts talking again and breakfast goes on, like nothing unusual had happened.

-

Voltron’s sent to a volcanic planet to scout out a Galra base that is less of a base and more of a campground. The place appears long abandoned. Allura attempts to put a positive spin on it by pointing out that at least they’ve discovered a planet the Galra are not currently occupying, but even that doesn’t do much to raise morale. The air is full of ash and everything is bone-dry. Their helmets filter out most of it, but not enough. By they time they get back to the Castle, they all feel like their mouths are full of dirt and dust.

Lance loudly announces to the team that his skin is in need of some serious downtime after being exposed to such harsh conditions and leaves first, ostensibly to go back to his quarters for said downtime. Pidge ends up trailing behind him because there’s really only one way back, although she tries to maintain enough distance that it won’t seem like she’s following him, because she isn’t– and just for the record, she’s getting very tired of having to put so much thought into every single one of their interactions.

Lance looks back at her and she stops in her tracks. “Oh, hey, you still in?”

She isn’t sure how to respond to that, so she nods. Lance’s face lights up with excitement.

“Sweet! We’ll have a mini spa day, it’ll be fun. Meet me in the kitchen in a varga!”

He flashes finger guns at her and jogs off, leaving her standing in the middle of the corridor in her dust-covered armor, beads of sweat dripping down her face, trying to figure out what she’s gotten herself into.

Oh, right. The conversation at breakfast the other day. The face goo. She’d agreed to try it.

Which means, apart from the weirdness of putting the substance she regularly consumes for nutrition on her face, that it’ll be the two of them. Making conversation, the way she’s tried her best to avoid ever since their little heart-to-heart on Olkarion. And it’s fine. She can do it.

-

She can’t do it.

-

“‘Nooooo, Pidge, you are definitely overthinking it. Seriously, this is all we ever talk about anymore! Can you please just put a lid on your emotions instead of letting them ooze all over the place?’ …I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he’d say. And that’s why I can’t ask Hunk,” Pidge concludes, switching back to her normal voice as she peers around her trash sculpture of Hunk.

Her audience, nestled in junk-Shiro’s hair, is not impressed. The blue space caterpillar chirps.

Pidge frowns down at them. “Excuse you, my impressions are great.”

She flops onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, cataloguing her options. She can’t think of a good reason to cancel on Lance that wouldn’t make him suspicious and she’s running out of choices to ask for backup. She’s already ruled out Hunk, and she’s not sure about asking Allura or Shiro–

That’s when it hits her. Well, technically, her sweatshirt hits her, right in the face, because the caterpillars have just dropped it on her, but it coincides with figuring out the solution. She pulls her sweatshirt over her undersuit and shoves her feet into her boots, because being half-changed is as good as it’s going to get.

“Thanks for your help, guys!” she tells the caterpillars, hurrying out of her room.

-

Pidge catches Keith in the hallway. ‘Catches’ is not an exaggeration because she actually latches onto his arm to make sure he doesn’t get away. It’s taken her nearly half a varga to track him down, and she’s nearly out of time.

He looks down at her, clearly startled, and still in his paladin armor. “Uh, what’s up?”

She levels him with a hard stare. “You owe me.”

He doesn’t get what she’s talking about right away, but embarrassment is contagious. She figures if she keeps staring at him long enough, he’ll eventually remember what she’s talking about and she won’t have to rehash the whole awkward event.

It works.

Keith’s eyes widen before his face settles into a mildly pained expression. It sort of reminds her of the time they’d guessed his birthday and gotten Shiro to confirm it and spontaneously decided to celebrate at dinner. Coran had made them all wear silly hats he’d dug out of some storage cube because he remembered hearing about Earth traditions and party hats and he’d forced Keith into wearing the most ridiculous one. Once he’d realized there was no escape, Keith had sat through dinner with that exact same expression.

“… okay, and?” says Keith.

“And I’m cashing in. So I told Lance I’d try his face mask thing, right, and he invited me to do a spa day but there’s no way I can do it alone because things have been so weird since Olkarion but if I bail it’ll make it worse, and that’s why I need you to come with me.”

It’s more information than Keith probably needed and he has to close his eyes as he processes everything. She watches as he takes a deep breath, muttering something under his breath that sounds a lot like ‘patience’, then opens his eyes again.

“This isn’t really a good time, Pidge. I’m leaving for a mission with the Blades first thing tomorrow and I have a lot to do before I go–”

If there was anything that would convince her to back down, the reminder that sometimes Keith left their team for another one was definitely not it. She tightens her grip on his arm.

“Don’t worry. This won’t take long, I promise,” Pidge lies, tugging him in the direction of the kitchen.

-

Lance had changed back into his civilian clothes. His eyebrows raise questioningly when he sees Keith trailing behind Pidge, and the boys’ eyes meet as silently, Keith dares him to say something, anything, just to pick a fight and give him an out–

Until Pidge slugs him in the arm, breaking his focus.

“Keith was just telling me how he’d been dying to try this stuff too, weren’t you, buddy?” she says blithely. “So I brought him along. Hope that’s okay, Lance.”

Lance looks skeptical but shrugs. “Sure, I should have enough. Let me grab another cup.”

Keith glares daggers at Pidge the moment Lance turns his back to them. She smiles sweetly at him in response.

Lance’s spa day supplies are lined up on the counter, covered by a blanket. Before they begin he makes them swear they won’t reveal his Top Secret methods to anyone. This is apparently something he genuinely worries about, because, as he tells them with the utmost seriousness, what they are about to experience will change their lives forever.

Pidge thinks this is dumb, and tells him so. “Seriously, who would we even tell?”

“Just swear!” Lance insists, scowling.

Keith huffs impatiently. “Fine,” he says, clapping one hand over Pidge’s mouth before she can say anything else and raising the other hand in an approximation of a Scouting salute. “We swear.”

Lance waits until she, too, raises her hand in an actual three-fingered salute, but seems satisfied. “A little sloppy, but I’ll allow it.”

Pidge tilts her head up slightly and blinks up at Keith. “Lemme go or I’ll bite you,” she says through Keith’s hand. Keith releases her in a hurry.

Lance pulls the blanket off with dramatic flourish and animatedly gestures to the setup on the counter. “Okey-dokey, here we go! Just three easy steps for guaranteed results: Steam, scrub, and soothe. Nothing to it!”

There’s a covered basket, the corner of a towel peeking out; a tea kettle and cups; a couple small containers, one of which contains something that like goo; and two short Puigian scarves that Lance holds out to them.

“You and Keith can use them,” Pidge says.

Lance looks doubtful. “You sure?”

Pidge quirks an eyebrow at him, a wordless reminder that she specializes in finding solutions to the most challenging situations, and this is far from challenging. Who does he think he is to question her ingenuity?

Lance’s mouth twists wryly in response, but he offers one scarf to Keith, who just stares at it.

“Why do I even need this?”

“Watch and learn,” Pidge says grandly. She pushes her bangs back with one hand then slides her glasses up to rest on top of her head. Matt’s old glasses are surprisingly sturdy. This isn’t the first time she’s used them as a makeshift headband.

“That works,” Lance says, looking impressed as he knots the other scarf behind his head.

Reluctantly, Keith copies him. “This is weird,” he mumbles.

Pidge goes to stomp on his foot, but Keith slides both his feet out of the way before she can reach with her unfortunately shorter legs. Lance notices their scuffle, glancing from Pidge to Keith.

“For someone who ‘really wanted’ to try this you sure are unenthusiastic about the process, dude,” Lance says dryly.

“Not unenthusiastic, just tired,” Keith says, poker-faced. It’s hard to argue with that, considering the morning they’d had, so Lance drops it.

They pull out the multipurpose chairs from under the counter, unfolding the legs, and settle in; they’re more like stools than real chairs, but their low backs made it safe to tilt back without collapsing.

The covered basket turns out to hold heated cloths. Lance instructs them to drape a cloth over their faces, something about preparing their skin for cleansing by steaming away ‘toxins’, a term he seems to believe is defined as ‘gross space dirt’.

But Pidge can’t even bring herself to argue with him right now because Lance’s cloth trick is magic. She can feel her sinuses clearing as pressure lifts from her head; she hadn’t realized just how much the dust had affected her. She makes a happy little noise of contentment, settling into her chair.

“This actually isn’t so bad,” Keith says in mild surprise, voice muffled under the cloth.

“Yeah, well, that’s kind of the whole point,” Lance sniffs. “Skincare: it’s actually not so bad.”

“Shut up,” Keith says amicably, leaning further back in his chair so he can prop his feet up on the edge of the counter.

They sit there until the cloths on their faces start to cool. Then they all have hot tea, because apparently they need to steam the toxins out of their insides, too. Lance fusses about the amount of sweetener Pidge puts in her tea because it isn’t healthy or something and before Pidge can argue that space sugar doesn’t count, Keith points out it isn’t even real sugar so it’s probably fine. Lance complains about the two of them ganging up on him, but she can tell he isn’t actually that upset about it, so she sneaks some more sweetener into his tea when he’s not looking.

Once they’re mostly done with their tea, Lance pulls out a small container, twisting off the lid to reveal something similar to glue, or maybe wax.

“This is for exfoliating. Just, uh, don’t ask me what it is, Coran explained it to me and it made my head hurt,” Lance says. He smears some on his forehead and around his nose. “Anyway, you wait about thirty ticks and then peel it off. It works great on blackheads.”

He demonstrates, holding out the used strip as proof. Keith declines to look, but Pidge leans in closer. Whatever the exfoliant is made of is definitely effective.

“Gross,” Pidge says appreciatively. Lance beams at her.

She dips her hand into the adhesive and manages to cover half of Keith’s nose before he squirms away, baring his teeth at her like a cat in a bath. He sulks his way through the thirty ticks, at which point Lance has to help Keith peel the stuff off his nose because Keith apparently can’t manage it on his own and Keith nearly punches him when Lance tells him not to be such a baby before Pidge intervenes.

In the end it takes all three of them to get the exfoliant up because it turns out that Keith really wasn’t joking about it not coming off.

“Are you crying?” Lance says incredulously, eyes wide.

“No,” Keith snaps, hands protectively cupped around his nose.

Pidge takes it upon herself to settle with science whether the exfoliant was really that awful or if Lance was bizarrely immune to its effects. She dabs some onto the sore spot on her chin as the boys watch closely and peels it off with the same results Lance had. Bonus: one less zit.

Lance grudgingly concludes that he should probably test his skincare routine efficacy more thoroughly before trying to patent it. Keith is overwhelmed by the idea of Lance ever patenting anything. While they bicker, Pidge seizes the opportunity to examine the exfoliant, having noticed that the jar actually has two separate compartments and that Lance had only opened the lower one.

She twists open the top lid and peers inside, but she doesn’t see much before the lid slams shut as Lance unceremoniously plucks the jar from her hands. “Nope, nuh-uh, bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Told you, it’s Coran’s, and you really don’t want to know any more. Trust me.”

It’s probably the worst thing he could have said, because even if Pidge wasn’t already curious, it pushes Keith’s suspicion to an all-time high.

“Let me see that.” Keith grabs the jar from Lance, ignoring his indignant yelp of protest. He twists open the lid just enough for something to tentatively wiggle its way out before hastily pulling back as Keith slams the lid back down.

“It’s alive!” he chokes out.

Exasperated, Lance throws his hands in the air. “I tried to warn you!”

-

Finally, Lance unveils his piece de resistance. His latest concoction of face mask goo is a muted lavender color instead of the familiar green. He pushes the bowl towards them and tells them to cover their faces, demonstrating proper technique on his own. Dubiously, they copy him until their faces are all not-quite-Galra purple.

“Now what happens?” Keith asks, mask applied.

“Now we wait,” Lance says, reaching for the kitchen timer and setting it. “Twenty doboshes, then you rinse it off. I usually listen to music but I only have the one set of headphones.”

“Imagine that,” Pidge says dryly, because he seems to have forgotten that they’re her headphones and at some point she does expect to get them back.

Lance ignores her. “So. Ideas, anyone?”

Much to their surprise, Keith does. “We could play that game.”

The game is a slightly more competitive variation of Twenty Questions mixed with Rock, Paper, Scissors. The rules are simple: Everyone has to answer, and more rules can be added at any time. None of them remember who’d come up with the game in the first place, but it’s ended up being both a good way to kill time and a much less invasive bonding experience than the Altean mind-meld gear. They haven’t been able to settle on a points system yet, so no one’s ever officially won.

Pidge and Keith shoot for the category, her rock crushing Keith’s scissors. She ends up going with ‘favorite things’, even though it’s kind of a cop out choice because it’s so vague.

She and Lance shoot next; paper covers rock, Lance wins. He does a drumroll on the table.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the first topic of the evening iiiiis: Halloween candy!” he announces with entirely too much enthusiasm.

Keith looks confused. “Didn’t we do this one already the other day, with Hunk?”

“Nah, that was… food, I think? Favorite foods? Totally different concept.”

Keith shakes his head. “I don’t get why people are so into Halloween. It just seems so– so over-commercialized.”

“Maybe because it’s fun, you weirdo? Also, free candy. Anyway, you’re up, Pidge, loser answers first,” Lance decides arbitrarily. He nudges her with his elbow, which wouldn’t have been a problem if Pidge wasn’t also downing the last of her tea.

“Really, Lance?” she chokes out, coughing furiously.

Lance thumps her back sympathetically. It doesn’t help. “My bad.”

They wait for her to finish hacking up her lungs before continuing with the game. Admittedly, it is not her finest hour. Then again, they’re all sitting around the kitchen with food goo smeared on their faces, so at least she’s in good company.

She clears her throat. “Um, I like peanut butter cups. Matt and I used to fight over who’d gotten more whenever we went trick or treating and I usually ended up stealing his.”

“Same for me,” Lance says cheerfully. “Lucky for me, no one else in my family liked them that much, so I never had to fight for them. Remind me never to go trick or treating with you. Keith?”

“Sour gummy worms,” Keith says, without elaborating. “Point of order, are we shooting for every topic?”

‘Point of order,’ Pidge repeats, silently mouthing the words, because trust Keith to be extra-formal with what is the world’s least formal game.

Lance bares his teeth in a fierce grin. With the face mask, the effect is slightly terrifying. “Bring it.”

The boys shoot. Keith’s scissors win.

“Favorite pet,” Keith decides. “Or pets, I don’t care. Go.”

Pidge zones out as Lance continues to ramble about a giant goldfish he had when he was nine years old and wonders whether she should pick the space caterpillars. She’s not sure they count as pets, though; they’re self-sufficient enough that they’re more like freeloading alien roommates.

Lance still hasn’t settled on his answer by the time she tunes back in. “—although we already had a turtle and two finches and sometimes a cat by the time I was born and they were all pretty cool, so I’m torn–”

“Wait, how do you ‘sometimes’ have a cat?” Pidge interrupts, frowning.

“Julio was his own man, he liked to do his own thing. Kind of like Keith, actually,” Lance adds unnecessarily, much to Keith’s displeasure. “Anyway, Julio visited lots of people around town. I’m pretty sure we were his favorite family because my sisters gave him cans of tuna.”

“So he wasn’t actually your cat, he was just a stray,” Pidge clarifies. “That shouldn’t count as a pet.”

To their surprise, Keith disagrees. “Actually, I think it should. We had a cat like that too. Technically it had us, I guess, because it’d been living out back before we moved in. Ours was just called Cat, though. He’d have been my pick.”

Lance looks faintly impressed by Keith sticking up for him. “Gotta say, I never would have pegged you for a cat person.”

“We fly giant robot lions. I think that makes us all cat people,” Keith deadpans, much to Pidge’s delight. She offers him a high five that he returns after a split second of hesitation, while Lance loudly groans at the pun.

Pidge turns her attention back to Lance. “I know I’m going to regret asking, but what actually happened to your goldfish?”

Lance heaves an overly-dramatic sigh, putting a hand to his forehead in an obvious pantomime of Tragedy. “My sister Rachel fed him to Julio when we were out of tuna fish. Anyway, now that I’ve shared my tale of woe with you all, it’s Pidge’s turn.”

“Well, we have a dog, so I guess it should be her…” Pidge trails off when she realizes with a sudden pang that there’s no way to know if Bae Bae is even alive anymore and tries her best to ignore the thought. “…but I’m going to have to say that Kaltenecker’s my favorite.”

Lance’s face falls. “I should have said Kaltenecker! Can I change my answer?”

“Too late,” Pidge says smugly as she and Keith face off again.

Keith wins once more, this time playing paper to her rock instead of scissors, and grimaces as he realizes he’s stuck picking the topic once again. “Uh… movies?”

Lance leans forward, already on the edge of his seat with anticipation, and Pidge rolls her eyes at him because she’s pretty sure she already knows what movie Lance is going to pick.

“…that don’t have a sequel,” Keith adds at the last moment, which means Pidge’s selection is also null. Her face falls.

“What? No!” Lance complains, slamming back in his chair. “That’s hard!”

“What about remakes?” Pidge asks anxiously. “Do remakes count?”

Keith lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Sure, remakes are fine.”

“Yessss,” Pidge and Lance say in unison.

“Team Remakes!” Lance crows, holding his hand up for a high five. It’s ridiculous, but she slaps her hand against his anyway.

“Team Remakes!”

-

The Castle alarms go off before they can finish. “Galra cruisers spotted near the Balmera. They’re moving into attack formation, the Balmerans need us to head them off while they prepare their defenses,” Shiro announces over the Castle’s comms. “Everyone to your Lions! Wormhole opening in ten doboshes.” Keith’s yanked off his headscarf and is already halfway to the door by the time Shiro’s done talking, face mask and all. “On our way, Shiro.” “Hold up!” Lance hollers at him. “At least wipe the mask off, you’ll get your helmet all messy—” Keith pauses and turns, holding out a hand to catch the towel Lance is already throwing to him before Lance is even fully in his line of sight. Their motions are perfectly synced. It’s kind of impressive. “Thanks. See you guys out there.”

Lance passes Pidge another towel as he pats at his own face. “Remember to wash your face when we get back, okay? That way you’ll at least get something out of it.” She nods, face already half-buried in her towel, and rushes back to her room to collect her armor, grimacing when she remembers she hadn’t fully cleaned it after that morning’s mission, but there’s nothing she can do about it now.

By the time she gets to the Bridge, her face is mostly clear of goo. She jams her helmet on on the way, leaving the visor flipped up. The others have all reported in as en route to their Lions – all except Lance, who’s standing by the doors with his helmet tucked under his arm, like he’s waiting for something.

Or someone?

His eyebrows raise when he sees her and he taps his cheek. “Hey, you missed a spot.”

“So did you,” Pidge points out, looking up at him.

“Hold still.”

Lance reaches out and catches her chin to swipe at her face, his thumb gently brushing her cheek before he lets go. It’d be an intimate gesture, under different circumstances, and Pidge isn’t entirely comfortable with how frequently she’s thought about what that might be like.

Her hands are already moving before she realizes it and she carefully brushes a smear from his nose. She can’t help grinning when he goes crosseyed to try to see what she’s doing.

“Much better,” she teases, poking the tip of his nose.

It isn’t actually much better. Their faces may be slightly cleaner, but now they’ve both got purple goop on their hands and it’s going to get on their gloves.

An unreadable expression flickers across Lance’s face and his shoulders drop forwards. “Look, Pidge, I don’t know how to say this…”

Seeing him so serious wipes the grin from her face and makes her stomach clench. Her emotions are oozing again, and her mental version of Hunk is displeased.

“Can it wait? We really need to get going.”

“I know, I know, just give me a tick,” Lance says. He reaches up, scratches the back of his head with his free hand. “I wanted to tell you that I had fun hanging out with you today. We usually end up doing stuff you like, but this was the first time you actually wanted to try something that I’m into. And that was cool. So… yeah. Thanks for that.”

He flashes her a small smile and heads inside before she has a chance to process what had just happened.

Then Coran’s voice is in her ear reminding her to get a move on, wormhole opens in one dobosh, and soon all her attention turns to the fight.

-

Pidge heads up to the Bridge for debriefing, Keith’s quick footsteps echoing half a step behind her. They aren’t the first ones back; Hunk’s already deep in discussion with Shiro about how many consecutive layers of metal the Yellow Lion’s armored claws could cut through while Coran checks in with the Balmerans. Pidge removes her helmet, shaking out her sweat-damp hair.

Hunk’s back is to the doors, so Shiro spots them first. He nods in greeting, then squints at them.

“What happened to you two?” he asks suspiciously, which is a bizarre question from someone who’d observed the entire fight.

“Shiro?” Keith says questioningly.

Shiro holds up a hand to stop him. There's a funny expression on his face. “Actually, never mind. I think I’m going to let Hunk handle this one.”

Shiro claps a hand on Hunk’s shoulder before striding off to join Coran at his station. Hunk turns around, clearly perturbed by his sudden responsibility.

“That was weird,” Pidge comments. Keith grunts in agreement.

Also weird: Hunk is staring at them.

“Did you know that you both have a little bit of, uh, something? On your faces? It’s red,” Hunk informs them. “Oh! Not like blood or anything, it’s more of a… marinara sauce kind of red? Or maybe more like a sunburn? Hang on, let me pull up a feed real quick.”

Hunk helpfully activates the camera in his gauntlet and aims it at them so they can see themselves.

There’s a moment of silence.

Finally, Keith speaks up. “I have no idea what this is.”

Keith looks like someone shoved a very runny cherry pie in his face. Pidge’s face is mostly solid red, except for a curved line running down her cheek that’s about the size of someone’s thumb. It hadn’t been visible through their helmets’ visors, but there was no mistaking it now.

“I do,” Pidge says grimly. “It’s Lance’s face mask. There must have been a dye in whatever he mixed into it, and we probably rubbed it into our skin when we were wiping them off earlier.”

The video feed abruptly cuts off as Hunk triumphantly slams a fist into his palm. “I knew he took the brown powder!” he says excitedly. “I’m pretty sure it’s more like beets than cinnamon ’cause it stains like crazy. Great substitute for food coloring, though. It really only glitters when you mix it with water, which… actually, that’s how you’d rinse off a face mask, isn’t it? Huh, that explains a lot.”

“This stuff stains?” Keith demands, voice cracking. He buries his head in his hands. It doesn’t do much to conceal the fact that the the tips of his ears are turning a shade of red that very nearly matches his face.

Pidge takes a slow, deliberate step away from him, just in case he decides to blame her for their unfortunate new makeovers. Keith’s only embarrassed now, but that’s not to say he won’t be mad later.

“Is it permanent, Hunk? Please tell me it isn’t permanent.”

“It isn’t permanent,” Hunk replies immediately, looking increasingly sheepish as he twiddles his thumbs. “Probably.”

“Probably?” she echoes in disbelief.

“Well, it’s hard to say. I haven’t had enough free time to work with any of the new spices enough to know for sure...”

From behind her, Keith speaks up, his tone low and warning. “Pidge.”

She rounds on him, scowling, because this is definitely not her fault.

“What?” she snaps defensively.

“Red is really not your color.”

A pause.

She stares at him, not sure she heard him correctly. Keith stares back coolly.

She narrows her eyes and looks closer, studying his splotchy red face. And– there. The edge of his mouth is twitching, like he’s trying to hold back a smile. There’s a glimmer of mirth in his eyes.

He’s teasing her.

Pidge lets out an incredulous bark of laughter, breaking into a wide grin as Keith starts to laugh, too. It turns out laughter is even more contagious than embarrassment, because once they start they can’t seem to stop laughing.

“‘Three easy steps for guaranteed results!’” Pidge quotes, imitating Lance, jazz hands and all.

Keith snorts. “Yeah. Guaranteed to look ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry about your nose. Does it still hurt?”

“Nah. The mask thing actually made it stop stinging.”

“… I can’t believe I ever agreed to do this.”

“Well, I can’t believe you dragged me into it!”

“Well, I, for one, hope Lance learned his lesson and doesn’t steal from me again,” Hunk adds with affected sternness, arms crossed, and that only sets them off again.

They barely manage to pull themselves together when Lance and Allura finally get back. They’re both in full armor, deep in conversation until Lance pulls off his helmet and Allura abruptly cuts off mid-sentence.

Half of Lance’s face is a bright, solid firetruck red. The other half looks like an abstract painting. There’s a pale stripe along the bridge of his nose with a larger dot right where Pidge had poked him.

Allura looks over at the others; Pidge and Keith wave. Hunk shrugs.

Without a word, Allura turns on her heel and heads over to join Coran and Shiro, leaving a bewildered Lance behind.

“What’d I do now?” he says plaintively to the room at large.

Hunk coughs. Lance looks up and finally notices Pidge and Keith, identical smirks on their bright red faces, Hunk standing behind them and unsuccessfully trying to hide his own amusement. Lance’s hands fly up to his own face as he realizes, with dawning horror, that something has gone very, very wrong.

“Aww, quiznak,” he mumbles.

-

After a long shower, Keith heads back to his room. His face is back to its normal color but still faintly shimmers under direct light, which Lance and Hunk both promised would fade within the next day. Keith can’t really bring himself to be that annoyed about it because his skin does actually feel pretty good, although he’ll never admit it. Even so, he’s immeasurably grateful for the full coverage of his Blade mask. The less to explain, the better.

There’s a piece of paper attached to his door, some kind of drawing. He pulls it down and tries to figure out what he’s looking at. It looks like a humanoid shape in red with one foot on the Black Lion and one foot on the Red Lion, like it’s waterskiing through a sea of stars. Which is impossible. Keith squints at it and realizes it’s probably supposed to be him. Huh.

Below the doodle is a note in Pidge’s familiar scrawl:

Thanks for helping me break the ice today. I think everything’s finally back to normal, and it wouldn't have happened without you. You’re a really good friend.

She’s signed it with her usual self-portrait, the one she likes to embed in her code, except she’s colored her face in red.

Keith bites back his smile and folds the note neatly, stashing it in his pack to take with him.

--

 I believe that we're in this together.

- Mika

[vilestorm]

Songs For Soulmates *Plance* Fifteen|Pidge

Sorry this is so late! Anyway, I finally got myself an AO3 account, so I’ll try to post this on there as soon as I figure out how it works. Without further ado, the chapter!

“Guys, bad news!” Pidge’s brother, who had just finished setting up the lights and was now taking a break, ran up to the stage where Voltron was practicing. It was finally the night of the concert, just after lunchtime, and since the band knew and had practiced all the other songs for the day, Pidge had taught Lance the vocals for Clairvoyant, since everyone else knew their parts. They were just about to start practicing it, but it seemed Matt had other ideas.

“What is it?” Shiro asked, and flipped his sheet music back to the first page. “So, based on social media posts about the Voltron/Galra Beats concerts tonight, I wrote a code that calculated how many people were going to each concert, and...”

“And?” Lance looked on the edge of his seat. His eyes were wide and his mouth turned upward in a hopeful smile.

“Well, see... the results are not great.”

“Just how bad are they?” Keith asked. He put down his guitar and walked up to look over Matt’s shoulder.

“The ratio is about, well, 4 to 10.”

“Are we the ten?” Romelle asked hopefully.

“No, we’re the four.”

“Itshay,” Lance muttered. Allura nodded. “Quiznak.”

“Well, it’s not the end of the world, I guess...” Pidge trailed off. It most definitely was the end of the world. Ever since she’d joined the band, they’d had awful trouble coming up with their new song, encountered a new rival band, and now they were going to be second best. There was no way this was a coincidence, Voltron had been the top band for a year straight before Pidge had joined! Maybe she was bad luck.

“It is! We’re doomed! Time to panic!” Hunk yelled, and sunk to his knees in despair, accidentally knocking over one of his drums.

“Maybe not,” Keith said, “I’ve got an idea, but you’re not gonna like it, Lance.”

“I don’t like half your ideas and yet we do them anyway. Your point?”

“Right. Anyway, everyone except Lance knows their part for the new song by heart, yes? So why don’t we make a show out of it and perform the new single? We announce it to the public this afternoon. Then those numbers are bound to change.”

“WHAT? But I barely know my part!” Lance protested. He sputtered for a few more seconds before settling to glare at Keith. Pidge scootched a little bit closer to him and took his hand in hers, squeezing it lightly. “That’s not a bad idea. You guys can practice and I’ll help Lance with the lyrics. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lance mumbled.

Calling all Voltron fans! Tonight, yes, tonight, during our big concert, we’ll be performing our new single, Clairvoyant! This is a song that has never been released to the public, the one that brought Lance and his soulmate Katie (better known as Pidge, you all know her!) together, and the one that will definitely make this a night to be remembered! Tickets are running out fast, so be sure to grab one before they all disappear! We hope to see you all soon,

Shiro

Shiro tapped the “post” button one last time and grinned, “there. That’ll definitely lure them in. Lance, how are you feeling?”

“Better. Pidge is a good teacher.” Pidge smiled. Lance had been only a little bit too worried and jittery, but it certainly hadn’t been anything that a few hugs and maybe a kiss couldn’t fix.

“Is everyone ready to play it then?” Shiro asked, slightly surprised. He clearly hadn’t been expecting Lance to be ready.

“I think so,” Hunk was smiling, “and I also may have helped out my own way.”

“How so?” Allura asked. Hunk grinned, “Shay is coming! And you know how she is, having tons of friends, so... she may or may not have pretty much been gathering a huge group of kids from school to drive down and watch.”

“That’s awesome, Hunk!” Krolia patted him approvingly on the head and then tossed a sliver of beef jerky to Kosmo before eating one herself.

“Seems like everyone’s ready,” Keith said, and nodded, “so let’s do this.”

[kallura-icedcoffee]

poppy: body/role swap

A flower that blooms in the desert

Plance x Kallura Week 2018

A/N: Hi, I’m late to everything :) Also this fic is a continuation of sorts of this drabble. If you don’t want to read it, long story short, Allura needs to work on her quintessence wielding.

Mix & Match: There’s a little bit of you in everything I do

The first time Keith and Allura had swapped quintessence, so to speak, it was more than they had bargained for and they ended up seeing each other’s entire lives through each other’s eyes. It was a lot, it was overwhelming and it should have been a one time thing, but now they couldn’t help themselves. The addiction of feeling each other so intimately was real and they often stole themselves away to engage in this practice of cycling their life force into one another with Allura as the conduit.  

Except this last time.

“It’s MY console!”

“It’s OUR console!”

“You helped get it for me! Me! Not you!

“I crawled into that damn fountain and nearly got arrested by mall police! That baby is as good as mine as it is yours!”

“That was a gift! You don’t try and take a gift you gave to someone else!”

“Ugh, can you guys please settle this?!”

Pidge and Lance had stormed into Allura’s room at the Garrison, completely ignoring the part where Keith and Allura were sitting on her bed, hands held in a meditative state.

“I’m the one who wanted the video game in the first place! It should stay with me!

“But you wouldn’t even have it without me!”

The two paladins continued to squabble over custody rights, and the fighting got louder and louder, and Allura’s eye twitched and her mouth curled into a scowl as parts of herself and parts of Keith were flowing in and out of her body and they wouldn’t shut up about this goddamn game and finally…

She just…

Snapped.

“ENOUGH!” Allura screamed and in the process, a burst of energy rippled from her epicenter and moved outward, knocking Keith back and sending Lance and Pidge into a wall before they slumped over onto the floor.

“What was that?!” Lance blinked as he came to.

“A reminder not to piss Allura off.” Pidge held a hand to her chest trying to catch her breath.

“I’m so sorry, is everyone all right?!” Allura looked over them with concern.

“We’re ok. I think.” Keith’s thoughts felt jumbled and he himself felt disoriented.

They dusted themselves off and nothing seemed immediately out of place so they chalked it up to just a random experience, an “Allura is doing her weird magic stuff again” and went to bed without giving it a second thought.

When Lance woke up the next morning he didn’t think he felt any different. Breakfast went normally and it wasn’t until he spotted Pidge in the hallway that he sensed something was off but couldn’t figure out why.

He had never seen her wear makeup since he’d known her, but here she was dolled up, hair styled and surrounded by a group of young cadets. She was chatting away, laughing, being playful.

“Scott was it?” She smiled while autographing a slip of paper before sticking a lipstick kiss on it.

Lance’s brow arched.

“I can’t believe we know THE green paladin of Voltron! Can we get a selfie?” The boy asked and the others nodded in agreement.

Pidge stood, nestled in her little harem and smiled at the camera being held out, hands formed into finger guns. There was something about this that seemed awfully familiar and the entire scene had Lance seething. First of all how dare she look this gorgeous so early in the morning and second, how come she never giggled and slapped his arm like that while telling him how funny he was? He stormed over and snatched her away just as they finished up the photo session.

“Ow! Chill much?”

“What are you doing?!”

“Making friends.”

“Flirting! You were flirting and frankly you should be ashamed of yourself, do you even know those boys?”

“No, but who cares, they know me.”

She took a compact out of her pocket and began checking her lipgloss. It wasn’t until she stared at her reflection that she seemed to snap out of her…whatever it was that had come over her.

“What am I doing?” She looked up at him.

“You tell me lovergirl!” He placed his hands on his hips.

Their conversation was interrupted by Pidge’s father, who approached them with clipboard in hand.

“Lance, Katie.”

“Hi dad.”

“Did you forget you promised to help us brainstorm options for creating a cloaking mechanism for the Atlas?

“Do a what for the what?” Pidge looked at him utterly confused.

“A cloaking mechanism for the Atlas” Lance repeated. “Realistically you have a few options. We could use optical camouflage or reduce temperatures of the outer surface of the ship to lessen electromagnetic emissions.”

Sam and Pidge stared at him, mouths agape. Sam’s glasses slid down his nose.

“What?” Lance shrugged.

“Lance you can barely remember what you had for breakfast, how the hell do you know about cloaking techniques?” Pidge asked incredulously.

Lance went to answer except, he wasn’t quite sure. It had sort of just rolled off his tongue naturally.

“Something’s wrong” Pidge blurted out.

“Very” Lance agreed.

Meanwhile Shiro and Hunk were sitting in the dining hall with Keith, gawking as they watched him eat. Not only had Keith come to breakfast with his hair neatly gelled and brushed back, but he was currently sitting with impeccable posture while cutting his pancakes into perfect identical pieces. A napkin was unfolded in his lap and after he took each bite he’d sip his juice delicately, never slurping, that was bad manners.

“Keith…”

“Yes Takashi?”

Shiro and Hunk glanced at each other before he continued.

“Is everything ok?”

“It’s splendid, why do you ask?” He smiled.

Another flicker of eye contact between the captain and yellow paladin.

“Nothing. You just seem…different” Hunk chimed in.

“Well I feel fine. Although…”

They both leaned in.

“Yes?” Shiro urged.

“It’s silly.”

“Just tell us.”

“Well,” Keith placed his fork and knife down on the table, “I’ve been feeling a little self conscious this morning. I woke up and I just thought…well my ears are just so ugly.”

Tears welled up in his eyes.

“Wait what?” Hunk nearly did a double take.

“They’re just so round!” Keith erupted into a blubbering fit, snatching the napkin to hide his face. “How will Allura ever love me with ears like this?”

He blew his nose into the napkin with a loud exaggerated honk.

Shiro’s face perked up while Hunk was still dumbfounded.

“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘how will Allura ever love you’?”

Keith realized what he’d just said and his face turned fifty shades of pink before he quickly got up from the table.

“E-excuse me, I have things to attend to!”

Shiro and Hunk watched him run out, not sure what the hell had just happened but pleased that they now had blackmail on the black paladin.

Keith darted out into the hallway when he nearly collided with Pidge and Lance.

“Keith! Thank god we found you. Are you feeling, y’know, ok?”

“Honestly? I just had a rather humiliating exchange in the cafeteria that I would rather not discuss, but yeah I’m not ok. I know it sounds crazy but I don’t feel like myself.”

“Oh my god us too!” Pidge grabbed him by the arms.

“Are you wearing mascara?” Keith sniffled as he dabbed his nose with the cloth.

Pidge quickly let go of him with a glare before quickly changing the subject.

“You guys don’t think this had anything to do with that incident last night do you? When Allura got all mad and did that little blasty thing?” She tapped her finger to her chin.

“The shockwave of concentrated quintessence caused by the princess’ momentary emotional outburst could be what’s causing the current abnormalities and changes in personality traits that we’re currently experiencing” Lance said nonchalantly.

Keith and Pidge blinked at him silently.

“What?” Lance looked at them, puzzled.

“Let’s find Allura. Now!” Keith shook his head and marched off with the other two in tow.

After asking around they finally found Allura in an empty hanger. She was climbing on top of a hover bike that clearly did not belong to her.

“Thank goodness we’ve been looking all over for y-”

“Are you stealing that?” Pidge pointed to the cruiser the princess was currently perched on.

Allura sat up on the bike. She had her hair down, some of it obscuring half her face. Her cadet jacket was off and tied around her waist, revealing the white fitted tank top she had on underneath.

“I’m not stealing it, I’m just taking it for a little spin.” The normal lilt in her voice was gone, replaced by a deeper tone dripping with attitude.

“Princess taking things that don’t belong to you is wrong.” Keith’s brow furrowed.

Allura scoffed and rolled her eyes before leaning over on the handle bars and narrowing her eyes at Keith.

“So then you don’t wanna ride?” She bit her lip.

“I’d love to” Keith blurted out, stumbling toward her before Lance grabbed him by the collar.

“Allura that blast you hit us with last might has us all messed up, you’ve got to fix this!” Lance pleaded.

The princess pondered his words. She had felt off all morning, and irritated, and every time she saw James Griffin she wanted to deck him in his chiseled jaw.

“Perhaps you have a point. Keith and I were in the midst of exchanging our quintessence when you interrupted. I may have accidentally exchanged all our quintessence.”

“Well can you put everything back?” Pidge asked.

“I’m sure I could…but I’m gonna go for that ride first.” Allura smirked starting up the bike.

“Are you serious?!” Lance yelped.

“Very. Coming?” She winked at Keith who was looking at her, utterly smitten.

“Yes!” He pushed Lance and Pidge aside and slid on behind her, wrapping his arms around her middle, holding her tight.

Lance and Pidge watched in dismay as they took off into the desert leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

“So what do we do until they come back?” He pouted.

“Lay low I guess…” Pidge shrugged.

There was an awkward silence, before Lance spoke up again.

“You weren’t really hitting on those guys earlier were you?”

“Worried?” Pidge gave him a knowing grin.

“No! I’m just curious is all.”

Pidge giggled and patted his shoulder.

“You have nothing to worry about. My relationship with those guys is purely planetonic” she assured him before walking away.

Lance sighed with relief before his face twisted into a perplexed state.

“Wait a second, THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL WORD!”

AO3 LINK

[hailqiqi]

so it turns out I kinda missed you

Sometimes, 5 a.m. phone calls lead to good things.

(and merciless teasing from your family.)

Here’s some fluff medicine that I prescribed for @shitlorddio! (Who has drawn an amazing piece of art for this that I will link when she posts)

Shout-outs to: @sp4c3-0ddity for beta-reading (thank you for making it  magical!), @mistyhollowpro for screaming/proofing, @radiantcerulean for the title help, and the lovely @claralaclarividente for her help with the Spanish/cultural aspects and her endless patience in the face of my never-ending questions.

Originally inspired by @xpyzkx‘s cute as heck post-canon texting fic.

Words: 1,202

Read it on AO3 here.

“Good thing we left early, hmm?”

Lance rolled his eyes at the car in front, not bothering to look over and see the shit-eating grin he knew his brother wore. “Yeah, yeah. We still have time, though.”

“We do. Because I made you leave early,” Luis said, letting his hand ‘accidentally’ clap his arm hard on its way down to the gear-shift.  Lance yelped and grabbed his bicep, scowling, but Luis waggled a finger at him before he could retaliate. “Ah ah ah, flaquito, no attacking the driver.”

Grumbling, Lance crossed his arms and sunk back into his seat. “I could’ve come to get her on my own, you know.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be able to make out in the back seat on the way home.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Lance exploded. “How many quiznaking times—”

“Sure, she isn’t,” Luis drawled as they moved again. “Just every story you tell is ‘Peach this’ or ‘Peach that’—”

“Her name’s Pidge—”

“That’s what I said,” he continued without missing a beat, “and then you’re constantly texting her—”

“Because she’s got the smallest time difference!” Well, her and Keith and Shiro, but...

“Plus she called you at like five a.m. to tell you to come pick her up this afternoon and you just went ‘okay!’” Luis laughed. “Not even Mami is buying the ‘just friends’ shtick, and you can do no wrong in her eyes at the moment.”

“Ugh. I know.” Lance threw his head back with a groan.

Mami had been adamant that she ‘would not have him sneaking around under this roof, mijo’ and it had taken the better part of an hour to convince her that they did, in fact, need to get the guest room ready, as Pidge would not be sleeping in Lance’s room.

Wasn’t that, like, totally opposite to the problem other guys his age had?

“What time did she have to leave this morning, anyway?”

“Uh…” Lance glanced at the clock on the console instinctively, though it wouldn’t hold the answers. “Her first flight left at six, her time. She would’ve had to get the 1.30 shuttle near campus.”

Luis whistled. “1.30 a.m.? And she gets in at four p.m.? That’s a hell of a journey. You sure she’s ‘just a friend’?”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Luis!”

“Uh-huh. Why’s she suddenly coming, again?”

Lance turned to look out of the passenger side window, his cheeks hot as he mumbled a reply.

“What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

Lance resisted the urge to punch him. “She said she missed me, okay?! Argh!” Yelling his frustration, he stabbed the button for the radio and began flicking through the frequencies just for something to do that didn’t involve fratricide. “And I know what you’re thinking, okay, but—”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s not your girlfriend.” Lance could hear the fucking grin in his voice, and it made his eye twitch. “But she will be.”

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

 Were hearts supposed to beat this hard?

He stood in the arrivals hall at the terminal, scanning the crowd as Luis slouched casually beside him.

Oh God. He was gonna puke. What was wrong with him?

It’s only Pidge.

“Relax, flaquito, her flight only landed fifteen minutes ago. She’s probably still going through security.”

Lance shrugged him off, unwilling to admit how nervous he was at the prospect of seeing Pidge walk through those big white doors. He still didn’t really get why he felt like he was in a dogfight, but he’d be damned if he was gonna let Luis find out.

He’d missed her. And he was finally ready to admit that — being totally honest here — the way he missed Pidge? Definitely not the same with how he missed the others. Him and Pidge texted every day, video-called a few times a week, and were constantly sending snaps and memes back and forth — and still he’d found himself missing her.

Hunk, who been his best friend for almost a decade, called him once a week and sent the occasional text, and that was enough to quell the ache. Shiro, Keith, Coran? They were family to him, yet he rarely found himself thinking about them. Knowing they’d all be together again next month made it hard to miss them too much.

Allura…? Allura he’d been in love with for almost two years, yet she’d never, ever made his heart beat as fast as this.

Shit. Maybe Luis had a point. And Marco. And Mami. And Veronica. And—

“People are starting to come out,” Luis observed, ripping Lance out of his thoughts. “What does your Peach look like?”

“Pidge,” Lance corrected automatically. “And she’s like, 155cm, has brown hair probably just above her shoulders — wait she dyed the inside bits blonde, so not just brown anymore. And, uh—”

“So like that girl over there?”

Lance’s gaze followed the direction of his finger, and his heart stopped.

Right there, just beside the doors, standing on her tiptoes to try and see over the crowd. She wore a pink t-shirt that practically fell off her shoulders, her hair was an absolute mess and with her glasses gone he could see the bags under her eyes even from this far away, but…

Pidge.

It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

A second later she saw him. Their eyes met and her face lit up like the sun, and then she was sprinting towards him, her luggage forgotten as she weaved through the crowds with a cry of “Lance!”

He met her halfway, letting out an “oof!” when she barrelled into his chest and then immediately using the momentum to spin her around. They were both laughing when her feet touched down again, but he didn’t remove his hands from her waist and then…

Well, one of the weird things about being a Voltron paladin was that you were almost supernaturally in sync with your teammates.

Lance wasn’t sure if it was his idea or Pidge’s, but a heartbeat later her lips slid over his and her hair was soft on his fingertips. She flung her arms around his neck and damn she was short but hell, he could bend so he wrapped his arm tighter around her waist, pulling her against him and kissing her with all the enthusiasm of a man starved, because who needed to breathe anyway?

Not him. He’d be damned if it was him.

Eventually, though, Pidge pulled back, her eyes shining brightly and the most gorgeous smile he’d ever seen on her face as she whispered: “Hi.”

Lance’s heart leapt.

“Hi, yourself.” He grinned, leaning down again to place a peck on the tip of her nose. “I missed you.”

Pidge laughed, a light, clear sound, and he wondered if he’d died and this was heaven.

A low wolf whistle had them jumping apart, faces bright red. Luis stood less than a metre away, leaning casually against Pidge’s suitcase as he watched them, every feature on his face alight with poorly-concealed mirth.

Pidge glanced between him and Lance questioningly, eyes widening and blush deepening as she made the connection (did they really look that much alike?). “Oh—! Oh! Uh… Hola?”

Luis laughed. “Hi, Not-My-Girlfriend. I’m Not-His-Brother, Luis.”

Click here (Just do it)

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

Pidge’s flight schedule, if anybody wants to see it.

She called her parents from Houston at like 11am to let them know she was travelling. She’s in trouble.

[justalittlequirk]

Freaking Voltron

You know what makes me the maddest when it comes to the finale of Voltron?(yes it has to do with ships, fuck off) It’s that the writers and the storymakers set up the perfect opportunity to make both gay and straight ship happen. (Yes I’m talking about Allurance and Klance, screw you)

Imma be honest. As a Klance Stan, I was a little disappointed in Allurance being canon, but hey, who didn’t see it coming, one, and two, it was admittedly adorable. (Even though it popped out of no where faster than my will to live drops as I enter my English class (Like seriously, they have six seasons of nada then out of the blue Lance admits that he “loves” Allura when we have seen more evidence in seasons 2-6 of Plance being canon (don’t attack me)))

Anyway, rants aside, Allurance was the canon ship and really no one could do anything about it-

SO EXPLAIN TO ME, WHY THE FUCK 2 WEEKS AFTER LANCE AND ALLURA HAVE THEIR FIRST KISS, FUCKING ALLURA, THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE, MY FREAKING MAYBE IM GAY STARTER PACK 1, 2, AND 3, DIES BECUASE SHE “HAS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE” HONEY THE ONLY THING SHE HAS TO SAVE IS ME FROM JUMPING OUT OF THE WINDOW THAT WAS BESIDE MY BED WHEN I WATCHED SEASON EIGHT ALL IN A DAY.

So here I am sobbing my eyes out, fine maybe she says goodbye. Everybody will obviously be torn up about it. Then, after some sort of miracle and a little Jesus, Hallejuah glowing in a dimension that is brighter than my future, then she’s back.

“PSYCHE YOU THOUGHT,” the writers said, “THIS IS THE SEASON FINALE BITCH, YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS SAFE!? WELL SO DID ADAM AND WE ALL KNOW HOW WELL THAT TURNED OUT!”

so here I am, finishing the season, when it pops into my head, “Holy shit, they can make the two most popular ships canon. There’s still hope for Klance.”

Somebody tell me why, why do they have the nerve to pull a YOU-THOUGHT, on us twelve times this season. Including the Adam-comes-back, the Lance-is-bi, The Everyone-is-Safe-and-Happy, and the everyone-ends-up-with-a-fullfilling-future. Like, WHAT!?!

First of all, the season ends with Allura dying ( we all know my anger on that), then **breathes in calmly** you’re telling me, that Lance,

“Spends

The

Rest

Of

His

Life

Mourning

The

Death

Of

Allura,”

Wait there’s more, **clears throat**

“On

A

Farm”

YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT LANCE, MY BUDDY BOY, MY ADVENTUROUS FUCKING GRYFFINDOR, SETTLES DOWN ON A FARM, SINGLE.

Next thing you know he’ll snap and half the universe’s population will go Peter Parker on us.

So first of all he pulled a Thanos, but what makes it worse is that

1. None of his other friends do it (settle down I mean. Yea, nah, his friends are actually repairing the universe. Okay take a few years off if you need but then, sweetly, bless your heart, get your fucking life together)

2. He spends it alone, (maybe with a couple family members and the other paladins occasionally popping by but how often would that happen either ehm you know, getting the universe back in order)

3. He’s Cuban and that probably the worst stereotype the writers could include in the show

4. (👈 got me riled the most) after him being single and ready to mingle, and two bonding moments in one season, Klance doesn’t become canon. (Yea, I know, shitty thing to be ruled up about but seriously if you want to satisfy your audience the most, a wonderful opportunity opened up for the writers to choose both the most wanted ships in the fandom, besides sheith maybe)

Yeah I know, it’s a freakin stretch but still. Allurance literally went on less. The writers have the audacity to include subplot at all, especially when they know the toxicity of the fandom and how they’ll react **cough, cough** to this situation, include all or have none if you want your audience to react the best way. It not only took away from the main plot, but in a sense downgraded Allura to just a love interest.

Yes, I’m aware she is so much more than that, but time after time, again and again, strong females like Allura end up falling in love with a person and that’s all they ever talk about. Allura is amazing and funny and above all heroic, but when her goodbye scene ends up with her spending ten seconds with the other characters and then loving all over Lance and then giving him Alteans markings for absolutely no reason, like, whatT!?!

I know, I know he loves her so he should get a little more attention, but it’s frustrating when a big heroic scene comes up and the hero ends up snogging the love interest.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[sp4c3-0ddity]

For the fluff prompts, what about 32 with Plance? 😉

@rueitae​ said:

24. “Lets just stay in bed.” with Plance if you please.

32. “This is gonna sound cheesy but….I love when you’re half asleep and talking nonsense.” Because pillow talk. (Consider this an alternate or prompt to combine my earlier one)

i’m going to be Like That and combine prompts...hope you don’t mind!! but anyway, it’s all of ~1700 words but still took me way too long and was supposed to be post-canon but ended up being a weird long-distance AU which...um. dunno if it’s good but cheesy it is. mind the implied nudity and sexual content (nothing’s explicit), and enjoy!!

(24) “Let’s just stay in bed.” / (32) “This is gonna sound cheesy but...I love when you’re half-asleep and talking nonsense.”

Pidge wakes to sunlight streaming in through the gaps between dark blue curtains. The light warms the air, and despite the noisy hum of the air conditioning unit over the door her skin is still sticky with sweat.

She groans and tugs the star-studded bedsheets over her head - she’s not ready to get out of bed and it’s marginally cooler burrowed underneath - before rolling onto her side.

Her nose brushes against something firmer than a pillow.

“How long have you been awake?” she mumbles into Lance’s arm.

The bed shifts as Lance joins her under the covers, his warm breath against her face indicating that he’s facing her since she refuses to open her eyes. A part of her is too hot and wants to kick him and his body heat out of bed, but the other part prefers to latch onto him and snuggle closer.

The latter wins out.

Lance wraps an arm around her waist while he reaches up with his other hand to brush sweaty hair off her face. “How did you know I was already awake?” he wonders in a low voice.

“You’re always awake before me,” Pidge reminds him. She sighs, tightening her own hold around his abdomen and cracking her eyelids to meet his eyes. “I think next time I’m going to make you sleep somewhere else.”

“What? Why?” Lance frowns. “This is my room!”

“It’s too hot and you’re too warm and I know I say embarrassing things in my sleep.” Pidge rests her forehead against his chin, putting the lie in her words - she relishes their time together too much to actually follow through on her threat - and hoping he won’t see the flush that must fill her cheeks.

“Well…”

Suspicion creeps into her when he trails off, and she’s wider awake. She pulls away just enough to tilt her head to look him in the eye again - right when he’s avoiding hers. “Well what?” she asks, an eyebrow raised.

Lance smiles sheepishly and says, “This is gonna sound cheesy but…I love when you’re half-asleep and talking nonsense.”

Pidge reaches up and grabs a pillow.

It smacks Lance in the face.

“Ow!” He recoils and covers his nose when she takes it back and tosses it aside. He glares at her over his hands and says, “What was that for?”

“Stop eavesdropping on my sleep-talking!” Pidge says, scowling. “Like I said, it’s embarrassing!”

“That’s why you’re blushing, is it?”

The heat rushing to her face is not a welcome distraction from the sun’s heat. “No!” she lies. “I’m not blushing!”

“Oh, really?” Lance bops her nose with a fingertip, making her scowl deeper, and says, “I haven’t seen you that red since the first time you told me you love me.”

Pidge rolled onto her back and covered her face with an arm, then decided her best tactic would be to simply change the subject. “Anyway, since when do you care about sounding cheesy?” She peeked at him from under her arm. “You say cheesy stuff all the time.”

Lance sits up, the bedsheets falling from his shoulders, and crosses his arms. “I…do not!”

“Do too,” Pidge retorts childishly with a smirk. “Wasn’t it just last night you quoted Spanish poetry at me? Neruda, was it?”

Lance’s face reddens, and she feels her own warm anew at the memory. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Pidge admits, shrugging. She sits up too, the better to look Lance in the eye, and after a split second of consideration she doesn’t bother covering her breasts. “I’m still ignorant of some of your cultural quirks but the poetry surprised me and even if I couldn’t understand it it sounded very…romantic.” She coughs, glancing away and toying with the edge of the blanket.

A smile finds its way onto her lips, a flutter low in her chest when Lance cups her face and tilts it towards him, his other hand rubbing her arm. “I’m not good at the translating thing so I can find one later for you,” he promises with a smile of his own.

“Right now I’d settle for a repeat,” Pidge tells him, fluttering her eyelashes.

Lance swallows. “Um.”

Pidge giggles. “Aw, Lance, you’re blushing!”

“Pidge,” he grumbles, his brow furrowed.

“Lance,” she sings, pressing her thumb to his forehead until it smooths.

“One doesn’t simply recite romantic poetry, Pidge,” Lance whines.

She rests her hands on his shoulders and leans closer to whisper, “Do we have to be in the middle of an obscene act for it?”

She enjoys Lance squirming a bit too much as he nods and mutters, “It’s a…heat of the moment thing.”

“Fine.” Pidge rolls her eyes, but she grabs Lance’s chin and turns him slightly away from her. “Just don’t look at me then.”

To her surprise, he resists and puts his forehead against hers. “No, we’ll do this the right way.”

“I’m getting a whole wheel of cheese from you here then?”

(The warmth in Pidge’s chest is much better than the heat and humidity that sits in the room.)

Lance holds her face between his hands again, his thumbs soft on her cheeks. He inhales bracingly and soberly recites:

“Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde,Te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:Asi te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera.”

Pidge shudders when he pauses and can’t help grinning against his lips when he leans in to kiss her. When he pulls away but doesn’t continue she blinks and wonders, “Is that it?”

“It’s the only stanza I have memorized,” Lance admits with a shy smile, “but maybe if I knew you’d like love poetry—”

“I’m surprised you know any at all,” Pidge confesses. As he frowns, she hurriedly explains, “When I met you, you were all pickup lines and didn’t have any real romantic substance.” Her eyebrow quirks and she teases, “I can’t believe I was fooled into thinking you had any experience!”

“H-hey!”

Pidge laughs, then when he continues to scoff indignantly she wraps her arms around his neck. “I actually like that I was your first,” she reassures him.

Lance’s hands go to her waist, and he pulls her onto his lap. “I want you to be my last too.”

Pidge kisses him, and they don’t part so easily this time.

This physical part of their relationship is still something new, but they fit together like two adjacent pieces in a puzzle. And Pidge doesn’t mind the heat so much when she’s sharing it with Lance.

That feeling doesn’t quite last.

“Get off me,” Pidge says the instant the human furnace lying on top of her feels more smothering than soothing.

“I don’t want to move,” Lance whines, nuzzling into her neck.

His lips tickle against her skin but Pidge presses hers together to fight back a giggle. “But it’s hot and I’m gross and sweaty,” she complains even as she runs her fingers through his hair.

“You didn’t care about that five minutes ago,” Lance points out.

Pidge rolls her eyes at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the popcorn ceiling. “Right, because it’s thanks to five minutes ago that I’m grosser and sweatier than I was when I woke up.”

Lance sighs but finally rolls off her to lie beside her instead. “There,” he says. “Happy?”

Pidge sits up and pushes her mussed hair away from her face. “I’d be happier if your air conditioning worked properly.”

Lance buries his face in his hands. “Even when she’s awake…”

Which reminds Pidge.

“Lance,” she says, touching his elbow to get his attention, “what did I say in my sleep?”

He drops his arms and looks up at her with a slight frown. “We’re back to that now? I thought you didn’t like”—he forms air quotes with his fingers—”eavesdropping.”

“Well, now I’m curious so you have to tell me how I incriminated myself this time.” Pidge smiles sweetly at him. “Come on, you recited poetry for me. It’s only fair you say something to embarrass me now.”

“When you put it like that…” Lance laughs. He takes one of her hands and intertwines their fingers. “All you said was that it was the twenty-first century and that my house should really have central air conditioning.” His eyes narrow. “I take you into my home and you insult it, Pidge?”

She ignores his accusation - despite its validity - in favor of the odd disappointment that sits in her gut. “That’s it?”

“I think you said something about hating mosquitoes too.”

Pidge snorts. “So nothing of substance?”

“Well…” Lance’s eyes drift past her.

She follows his gaze towards the closed bedroom door, and hers drifts around, catching on yesterday’s clothes strewn over the floor before landing on her duffel bag lying open at the foot of the bed.

For the first time, the air inside the room actually feels stifling, and for a long second Pidge can’t breathe.

“Well what?” she says, returning her attention to Lance.

He doesn’t look at her as he says, “You said you wish you could stay here anyway.”

Pidge’s heart sinks at the reminder of the clock ticking towards the morning she has to leave again. Begging a few days off from work isn’t something she can afford to do often.

“It’s my turn next time,” Lance points out with a slight smile as he reaches up to poke her cheek. “And at least at your end we won’t have random relatives opening the door without knocking.”

Pidge flushes at the reminder, clearing her throat and saying, “It only happened once.”

“Yeah, because Marco and the kids were only visiting,” he says with a fond smile.

Pidge likes the way he talks about his family and the love even simple statements exude, but sometimes the embarrassment wins out. She asks, “Your parents aren’t back yet?”

“They won’t be home till later,” Lance says as his thumb runs across the palm of her hand.

“Then let’s just stay in bed,” Pidge says. She lies down, tucking herself under his arm.

“What happened to being gross and sweaty?” Lance wonders even as he obliges her.

Pidge squeezes his fingers tangled with hers. “I decided the pros to staying outweigh the cons,” she says.

Lance’s lips brush her forehead, and she closes her eyes. “Don’t they always?” he mutters.

Pidge’s chest seizes, for that’s a question she still doesn’t know how to answer.

[ecccentrick]

Pigments (Plance)

My entry for the @langstronevent2k18! My gift is for @nooowestayandgetcaught, who wanted Plance! I really hope you enjoy!

AO3

Lance cuts her hair before the battle, the soft snipping sounds echoing around the otherwise silent room. Pidge bites her lip, fingers itching to be typing, to be doing something to distract her.

“About what you said-”

“Let’s forget about that!” Lance says, interrupting, laugh cracking mid-swell. He once again focuses on his duty, finally cutting the dead ends he’s been moaning and groaning about in quick, straight lines. Pidge wants to say she’s surprised by how steady his hand is, but he is the team sharpshooter.

“It’s not that I don’t fee-”

“All done! You’re looking great, I mean, not hot or anything but- uhm, better than before. At least not like a hobo, haha!”

Pidge curls her hands into fists, burrowing them in between her thighs for warmth. “Lance. . .”

“Nope, no! We’re totally not gonna talk about my petty feelings right now, not before we kick some Galran asses! And now that you can actually see, you should be right as rain.”

Pidge never does get to speak uninterrupted. She’ll regret it for the rest of her life.

--

Lance pants, gun heavy in his shaking arms. Sweat settles on his eyelids and temples, and his breath fogs the helmet, making every exhale look like frost. He runs as fast as he can, Pidge quick on his heels. They need this information, he reminds himself when his legs threaten to give out and he sees the head count they’re facing. They need this information, no matter what.

Pidge is the one extracting it, Allura is the distraction, Keith and Hunk keep the entire thing in one piece, the halls fracturing as it self destructs, and Lance has Pidge’s back during the vulnerable seconds she has to have her back open.

As the floor parts a few hundred feet behind them, Lance focuses not on the impending collapse and studies Pidge. She’s in her element, brows drawn low and mouth firm; if anyone saw the expression out of context, they’d surely think she must be royally pissed. It amazes him that someone can be so drawn into their work that they forget everything around them, which is why Lance is tagging along in the first place. She’s leaving herself open for attack, and he has to get between her and injury.

When Allura gave him this assignment, he thought for sure that everyone knew. That everyone knew that he finally figured out his obscure affection for the Green paladin to only be immediately shot down. That, no matter how much Pidge

feel for him, he’d get in the way of fire for her. But everyone acted oblivious, even Pidge herself, so he tried to calm the paranoia that nestles into his brain.

Here, in this moment, it’s easy to forget. The constant screech of metal on metal falling apart, gunfire, explosions and grunts of pain making it hard to concentrate on anything but surviving; it is the symphony of war, and the increasing rubble and chaos only makes his head ache and heart pound.

That might be why he’s too distracted to hear it, the lazer brushing against his cheek, narrowly missing Pidge. She jumps, and twists to glare at him. “What part of watch my back do you not get?!”

“Sorry, sorry!”

He shakes himself of any thought, only the tempo of battle, the fluid way in which his muscles bunch and flex and move with only memory to guide him. The next onslaught he’s on guard, actually doing his job this time.

The new wave overwhelms him, the bots now mixed in with real live Galran’s. One such Galran looks like a General from the insignia on his armor, and man, he’s a gnarly one. Instead of charging, the General lifts a fist, and the bots and the few organic soldiers stop and flee, but one. The Galran smirks, and turns on his heel, escaping down the hall.

“Uh. . .Pidge, you gonna be done soon?”

Sweat is visible on her forehead, dyed purple from the offensively bright light of the monitor, her bangs sticking to her temples. “Not. Now, Lance,” she replies through clenched teeth.

He focuses on the bot, shooting it almost point blank, the bullets bouncing right off of it. His breathing picks up then, because if his gun is useless, then *

pretty much useless right now, right?! Shifting his bayard into a broadsword, he lunges, and once again, it’s easily deflected, the sharp edges of the sword scraping off of it, sparks literally flying.

Pidge, still busy, doesn’t notice a thing, her mind completely focussed on her goal. Lance decides that he should be as well, and gets into a fighting stance, legs planted firmly on the ground. It’s only when the bot’s eyes start blinking an eerie red that he knows. He’s seen this before.

With little time, he grabs Pidge from behind, causing her to try to jerk away. He tightens his grip, body shielding her’s; the bomb goes off with a deafening *

rattling his very bones, the force flinging him, and therefore Pidge, sideways, Lance landing on Pidge’s small frame. Once the dust settles and the floor quits it’s scary shaking, Lance sighs with relief.

Pidge has the gall to look irritated, or maybe that’s just the shock. The expression goes lax when her gaze focuses on his chest.

“Lance. . .*

He giggles, his chest feeling engulfed in heat, probably from the close proximity to Pidge. She attempts to shake him, but he has enough strength in him to keep her pinned underneath him where she’s safe.

“Lance, where are you? Talk to me.”

His vision blurs, and he blinks. “I’m right here in your arms.”

Pidge curses through clenched teeth, eyes looking suspiciously wet. Huh, must be the dust swirling around, or even the sticky red wetness that drops on her cheek. Wait.

“Don’t look,” Pidge begs. “Don’t look, and don’t move, okay?”

He looks, and he immediately regrets it. He appears to be impaled, a hunk of metal peeking out right from center. He draws in a shaky breath and whimpers, the air rattling in his lungs wetly. It gets harder and harder to breath. His arms refuse to hold him up any longer, so he rests on Pidge, who is usually too boney to be a comfortable cuddle buddy. Not now -- now she feels like the most comfortable place, his bloody face tucking into the junction of her neck, smearing red traces of him behind.

Lance almost drowned once, when he was only five and small for his age. He’d almost been caught in a riptide, pulled under. He’d tried so hard to breathe, gulping down burning water into dry lungs. It feels sort of like that now, only so so so much worse, his soggy lungs feeling like useless sponges.

He catches the tail end of the pain, his sight fading quickly. Shuddering, he asks, “D-did you ge-get it?”

“Yes, idiot, I got it.”

His hearing goes last, and he swears he hears Pidge sobbing into the comms. It might just be hopeful thinking.

--

Despite popular belief, Pidge isn’t cold. She isn’t crass, nor uncaring. She just tucks the excess feelings into the corners of her heart until she can deal with them in the safe confines of her room, the gentle castle light illuminating tears tracks wetting her cheeks. But, now they don’t even have the castle, so she has nowhere to hide but inside her lion. It only makes it worse, Green’s feelings echoing hollowly in her mind, making the pain twofold. She can’t stay there, hunched over her chair.

They no longer have the Castleship, meaning they no longer have healing pods. The only way Pidge knows Lance is still clinging to life is the thread of connection that is shared between Green and Red. She exits, severing the mirrored emotions, and slumps beside a dying fire. The planet they landed on in a rush is empty and barren, lacking the right amount of oxygen, but Pidge lets her lungs struggle, knowing Lance is far worse off.

She glances at the cordoned off makeshift tent, shielding Lance, Coran and Allura from view. Discarded rags spill out of the opening, stained red. They don’t have a healing pod, and Allura can only seem to revive the already dead, and they can’t risk that, so they have to do everything the old-fashioned way. The dangerous way.

Funny how space has warped Pidge’s sense of death, the healing pods cushioning their fall so many times that it’s all too easy to take the plunge. Now the rug has been pulled out from under them at Lance’s expense.

Keith stokes the fire. The shadows make his face look hollow and sunken in, but maybe that’s just the grief; he can play all he wants, but Pidge notices the stubborn tears lining his eyelids, and as someone known for burying everything behind irritation herself, she knows he fears the worst. They all do. Hunk is distracting himself by showing Romelle how their Lions work, the latter looking confused and distant. And Pidge and Keith try to sear their corneas by the way they stare at the flames.

There is no jovial jokes, no lighthearted jabs; no one is there to make Keith confused, no one to annoy Pidge enough that she actually does her work on time for once. Their dynamic is shattered.

Allura may be the heart of Voltron, but Lance is the soul. A heart and mind is nothing without the warmth of a soul.

--

When Lance confessed to Pidge, she thought it was a joke. Lance’s face was beet red, his words rushing and falling over each other, his fingers fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Someone must have put him up to this, she had thought. Maybe Hunk, that meddling snitch.

When Pidge didn’t say anything back it’s like he blanked out, his face falling slowly and then all at once. He went even redder and fled, leaving Pidge and her traitor heart to wallow it what could be. She knew she wasn’t the kind of girl he went for, pretty and nice smelling and giggly. Pidge snorted when she laughed, big bellowing hiccups, and she sure as hell wasn’t a looker. She forgot to shower more often than not! She totally smelled! Hunk just knew her feelings and meddled, that meddling meddler!

She hadn’t expected him to act so crushed, nor for him to begin avoiding her. She knew the looks they got from Allura and also knew the moment it interfered with Voltron, she’d step in. She hadn’t known the lengths in which he would one day go to protect her. If she had, she would’ve at least allowed herself a kiss.

Now, she tries desperately to put it out of her mind. She emotionally cuts it out, slams a barrier down between her and Lance in her mind, and proceeds to act like he’s already lost to them. And if he’s already lost, gone, than she can skip the grieving process entirely and wait to break once everyone pulls themselves together. Just like she prefers to be the last one awake, she’d also rather be the last one to cry, in the shelter of her own home, nestled under the blanket of her childhood.

So, she hums forcefully as she fries some space eggs, fanning the fire to make them sizzle. She gets an odd look from Hunk, and a knowing one from Matt, but goes about her business. She’s just trying to make breakfast here! Nothing to see! She holds her breath when Coran exits the tent in the corner of her eye, not daring to look directly at him for fear of his facial expression. They’ve begun to be grimmer and grimmer, like Lance’s ghost is getting closer and closer to the surface.

Hunk takes Shiro and Allura breakfast, leaving green in the face. He’s known for his weak stomach, she tells herself, but knows she won’t be able to convince her brain unless she sees it for herself. She’s never had much of an imagination when it comes to these things. But does she really want that to be her last memory of Lance? Would it be any better or worse than the sight of metal impaling him, the same piece that could’ve hit her instead if only Lance didn’t insist on heroics?

She sneaks after the fire dies down and the planet they’ve set up shop darkens, the skies full of unfamiliar stars and two moons that look like reflections of the other. Shiro and Allura are still inside, Allura slumped backwards, head tucked to her chest like she tried valiantly to stay awake, Shiro on the ground, dead to the world.

In between them is. . .a version of Lance. The sick smell of infection -- sweet and sour at the same time -- envelops the confines of the tent, is all that you can breath in. Pidge breathes shallowly, sweat prickling at her skin. He looks so small, skin an ill yellow tinged in white. In some lapse of judgement, someone folded his arms across his torso, like they were preparing him for a funeral. His funeral.

Suddenly Pidge feels too small, despite taking up the entirety of the entrance of the tent. Her lungs feel too small in her chest, like heavy stones that refuse to let even a gasp of air through their thresholds. Heart racing, she says with the last of her breath, “You martyring idiot.”

She turns away. She runs away. She slides next to Matt, her fingers trembling too much to allow her to unzip her sleeping bag, so she just lays atop it, gasping for air, feeling like she’s going to die.

Pidge thought the false realization that Matt was dead hurt her to the core; at least it wasn’t her fault. She had others to blame. The Galra, the universe, bad luck, the Garrison. Now she and the others only have her to thank when Lance slips away to a place she can’t follow just like everyone else.

--

Lance died. At least once. He’s not exactly sure how he knows, besides being blanketed by the brightest and softed blackness, similar to sleep but peaceful, no chance of bad dreams or sleepless nights. He remembers the disappointment he feels when he is pushed out of it, the brightness of life too blinding to be beautiful any longer. Now, the never ending grayness of his eyelids is just a nuisance.

So, he knows he died, and Allura must have brought him back. But, the feeling in his lungs still burn, he can still taste blood on his tongue, and everything hurts. He is forever tense, snippets of talking and crying and retching (Hunk, for sure) the only sense that doesn't hurt. So, when he finally awakens, his eyelids lifting their lifetime ban, he first sees Allura.

Any other time, that would’ve been a plus, right? Especially with how upset she looks, her eyelids red, her eyes tired and face tense. Like she was really worried about him. But he finds himself disappointed. He feels as though someone else should be there, someone less overbearing and more annoyed.

Damn, he has to be a masochist.

“-don’t move.”

“I reckon he-”

“Lance, buddy! LanCE! LAN-”

“Moron.”

He sighs as the voices of his comrades surround him, all but one. He blinks away the tears from the onslaught of light and motion, and sees every color but green. A pigment of their color wheel missing.

His chest tightens and he feels as though he's falling.

“He’s starting to hyperventilate. We need to knock him out, Princess.”

“Coran! We will do no such thing! We don't have the right sort of equipment to do it correctly and safely.”

A sound of frustration above him. “Yes, princess, I understand but he's not lucid enough to calm down on his own--”

“--idge,” He gasps between constrictive breaths. “Pid- Pidge, is she okay?!”

He opens his eyes he doesn't even remember closing. Keith is next to him, burn completely healed. How long has he been out?!

“She's fine, Lance,” he says. “You made sure of that.”

His lungs loosen just enough for him to take a breath. “Good. . .that's good.”

He attempts to sit up, but an ache soul deep makes every muscle tense in pain. With clenched teeth, he settles back down as everyone looks about ready to pounce on him. Coran is frantically shuffling through bottles and books, muttering to himself. Everyone else is frozen.

Quickly, he notes his surroundings. He doesn't remember this tent being here, but he supposes that since he was hurt they had to think of something to fully protect him from the atmosphere and any alien bacteria. It feels humid inside, the cluster of bodies heating up the small tent.

Once he takes in the sights (or the lack thereof) he notices the stench. Sweet, but not the good kind. Rotten sweet. Lance tries to sniff subtly.

“Is that,” he croaks, coughs again, “Is that smell me?”

Hunk turns a bit green at the mention. “Uhm yeah. Don't freak out, but seems you might have a teensy little infection. That we might not have the stuff to treat. But everything else is looking great! Totally surprised too, since I figured Allura is a legit necromancer.”

Keith is rolling his eyes as he hands Lance something to drink. The alien version of a bendy straw is sorta dizzying. He takes a sip, his dry mouth rejoicing.

“Pretty sure I died there again, actually.”

“Wait, WHAT?! YOU DIED BEFORE?!”

Lance clears his throat awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. Guess me and Shiro should get a club going. ‘Was Resurrected By Princess Allura Club.’ Though I guess Shiro was more downloaded than anything. . .”

“How is everyone so chill about this?!” Hunk asks when Allura starts to busy herself, Keith takes a drink from the bendy straw himself and Coran is counting on his fingers. When no one answers he deflates, shaking his head.

Clearing his throat, he continues addressing Lance. “Anyway! We got someone looking for the plant we need, so don't uh, worry!”

“You don't sound so confident, my Hunk. Shiro will be fine.”

“About that…”

--

“FUCK,” Pidge shouts as her comms go out. She's pressed against the ground, gravity making her feel like she weighs a thousand pounds, and her comms won't work! How will she call for backup?! Her brother is gonna freak if he tries to contact her while she's away and finds her unable to communicate!

She stills her jittery hands and takes a deep breath, Shiro’s mantra running through her head. Pidge is doing this for good reason. She's doing this for someone she cares about, and that has to be enough to pull her through.

Grunting, Pidge pulls herself up, her knees screaming in protest; the atmosphere isn't enough to crush her, but it's also harsh enough to make her job that much harder. Green is unsettled in the back of her head, their bond thrumming nervously. Gritting her teeth, she pushes forward. She's so close.

The plant that she needs to save Lance is nondescript. It looks like any average fern, from what Coran told her. They don't have the Castle of Lions to give her a visual, and she really dislikes being outside, but her heart pounds and skin prickles with panic when she thinks of refusing to do it or failing. In no undefined terms, Lance will die a slow, painful death if she doesn't succeed.

It's so quiet on her own. She's used to Lance’s chatter in her ear, usually bantering with Keith or flirting with Allura. She usually scolds or makes fun of him at those times, and now she feels guilty that she didn't do more for him. She may not have the strength to say yes to his confession, but she also doesn't want him to die or go away somewhere she can't tease him.

Pidge clutches her chest, the ache resonating within. She comes to the clearing Coran described, mostly unchanged over the 10,000 years he was asleep. The atmosphere must make it hard for large lifeforms to thrive, leaving gross bugs and dirt and multicolored ferns to take the space.

Examining the plants, she counts the number of barbs that stick out, strong enough to pierce flesh. She makes a sound when she finds it, carefully plucking the fern that also might kill her because Coran was pretty shifty when describing the thorn-like extensions. She tugs, pulls, whacks, but the plant is still firmly in the ground, the stem unharmed. Pidge tries to tear her hair out, only to find that she can't raise her arm over her shoulders, let alone her hand.

She sits back, sweat leaving uncomfortable trails down her face and making her armor stick to the middle of her back. Tears line her eyelids, momentarily blurring her sight. She failed. She failed and for the life of her she can't think of what to do. No amount of programming can help her here, and Green would destroy the plant trying to extract it.

Pidge grits her teeth in anger and flicks the stem with a rhythmic wack wack wack. It won't do anything, but the sound makes her muscles relax minutely, allowing her to think. She still comes up with nothing, but at least the tears threatening to spill no longer fog her helmet and she no longer tries to pull out her hair underneath that helmet.

Suddenly, there is a tremble that shakes the earth. Alarm rumbles in the back of her mind in the form of Green, alerting her that it must be something bad. Before she can make it fully standing, the ground seems to pulse, vein-like intrusions lifting, dark brown dirt spurting into the air like brown blood. The shaking stops, and she feels a thunk on her foot.

Across the ground is the fern, uprooted.

“Huh,” is all she can say.

--

Pidge has been gone for three days, according to Hunk. Lance has to pry the information out of him, the big fluffy worrier that he is. Knowing this isn't going to do him any more harm; fever will still shake his body, a sickly stench will still permeate his stifling tent, and he will still be slowly burning from the inside. What's a little worry? No biggie.

Hunk stays by his side, creating the illusion of healing by dabbing his sweat slick forehead with a chilled cloth like a maiden in a movie. He's sure pretty enough to be one, Lance jokes, but the jest falls on deaf ears.

Even if she makes it, Lance feels himself slipping.

Facing death once gives you a taste of it, but seeing it twice? Looking into the face of your own mortality? That gives you a sixth sense of just knowing, like muscle memory drilled into your brain. It's a memory and sensation that will never truly leave him.

But, as long as Pidge gets back safely, it'll be okay. The zen he feels should be odd, but right now, he welcomes it, is grateful for the clarity it gives him. He's dying, and he accepts it. Instead of staring it in the eyes, he closes his, basking in its bleakness, knowing that he will never be afraid of it again.

As his eyes droop, and after assuring Hunk that he isn't dying (yet), just sleeping, he allows himself to think of home. Of Cuba, the brightness of the sea and the smell of garlic knots fresh out of the oven and just calling him to burn his fingers on. Of his siblings and niblings laughter dancing around him, Veronica screaming behind clenched teeth, her well worn coolness melting down due to grubby hands.

He wonders how she's doing, more than any other sibling. She's smart, and disciplined, but even she will not be happy when finding out what the Garrison must be hiding. And she will. Sooner or later, she will find what she's looking for -- him, he knows that she doesn't believe he threw away his future for anything less than saving the universe -- and he doesn't trust the Garrison enough not to silence her. And when she does figure it out, he knows she will be waiting for him to come back.

Luis and Laura can readily move on. Not a slight towards them, not at all, but he knows they will give up looking. They're strong like that, knowing when to truly give up. He won't blame them or curse them their happiness.

He tries not to think of his mother or father, and especially not his grandparents, who were sickly and fragile when he left for the Garrison.

No, he thinks of his fellow Paladins. Allura is perfect in Blue, and he truly wishes that she was still the object of affection for he knew she was never going to he a reality. Instead, he has feelings for Pidge, who while still way out of his league, is not a warrior alien Princess.

He doesn't have to try hard to think of Hunk, who is still holding his hand as he drifts in and out of consciousness. He's truly an amazing friend, staying with Lance despite his weak stomach. He almost wishes that his buddy didn't have to see Lance like this, but knows that the fingers curled around his is the anchor holding him in this realm.

Shiro and Keith, now, are like distant stars. Now that Shiro is truly back, everything will slot together when Lance finally lets go. Allura can keep her place as Princess and Blue Paladin, and Keith can have Red back. Shiro can have his rightful place at the helm of Black, and the only minus the team will have is no sharpshooter and that no one to tell corny jokes that actually make sense as opposed to corny jokes that no one but Coran can understand, bless his soul.  

Lance isn't feeling sorry for himself, not truly. He knows that he is the weakest link. The team could readily replace him with a better sharpshooter, that much is true. And, in this cloudy place of half wakefulness, the pain isn't as severe as usual, just a light blow.

Hunk must notice a change, because Lance feels a few light slaps and hears “Lance? Lance?!” but he just can't bring himself to open his eyes. The heat increases, now on the edge of unbearable, his head ready to pop under the pressure. Multiple pairs of hands shuffle along his body, and he has no energy to make a joke about wandering hands.

Suddenly, his muscles tighten, so tightly he can't inhale a single breath. He bites his tongue harshly, blood filling his mouth. After this, he doesn't remember anything.

--

Pidge almost crash lands Green, jumping out of her mouth before she even lands. She rolls on landing, rising on her feet immediately and running as soon as she hits the ground. The camp is entirely empty, the fire unintended, and as weak as it is due to lack of oxygen, this alone is extremely alarming.

She makes a beeline to Lance’s tent, a stench so cloying surrounding it she almost gags. Once she pushes aside the flap of the entrance, Pidge sees a sight she will never forget.

The entire crew is here, in this cramped little tent, even Matt. In the middle of their close huddle is Lance, on his side, and he's *

, his body shaking with abandon that can only be loss of control. Many pairs of eyes snap up at her, all wet and red and hopeless.

Coran jumps into action first. “Come on, Number 5, please tell me you got it?!”

Air shutters out of her lungs. “I do, I-I got it right here.”

Eyes snatch down to her chest where she's cradling the prickly fern against her armor where it cannot penetrate. Coran ushers her in, making room next to Lance for her to fit into.

“What do I do?!” she asks. She can barely speak between heavy breaths, panic threatening to paralyze her tongue.

“We don't have time to do anything now! Not anything I know!” Coran cries. “But we have to try something. We need to stop this seizure, and we need to cool him down, and the only way to do that is to stop this infection! Nothing else works!”

Her brain stalls, focus locked onto the red, angry wound near his chest. She glances at the thorns, back to the wound, and does the first thing she thinks of. She turns him over on his back despite many protests and shoves the fern into his wound, the prickles piercing the skin.

At first, nothing happens. Pidge is out of her body, looking at her failure, at her worthlessness and the echo of grief it causes. Her chest wants to cave in, the heart in her chest beating so quickly she feels frozen despite the adrenaline it pushes into her body with every pump.

Then a gasp, one that isn't from her, sounds out. A ripple shakes Lance’s body one last time before he relaxes against the mat, like a demon within his body was finally exorcised.

No one speaks for a long time, until Hunk breaks the silence. “Did it work or is he. . .” His voice is heavy with tears.

Coran checks Lance’s pulse. “It's stronger than it has been, but still weaker than I like. But. . .I don’t smell the infection as thickly as before.”

Keith slumps against Hunk, Shiro wipes his face with his hand and Allura’s eyes well with tears of relief. Pidge, well, Pidge can't bring herself to be relieved when she knows someone doesn't come back from an infection like that without injury or disability.

The pressure on her chest doesn't lift and she turns on her heels and escapes the cooling sickness that fills the air.

--

There is no place to hide on the barren planet, so Matt finds her quickly. His gentle hand on her shoulder jolts her out of her unhappy musings, and it could have been a welcome distraction if she didn't know that he had a lecture in mind.

“Pidge,” he starts.

“No. I know what you're going to say. It is all my fault, this is all my fault! Maybe if I told him the truth when he confessed he wouldn't have seen the need to sacrifice himself for me, and if only I had been smarter and quicker and better I'd have gotten here sooner and he would be in better shape!” She stands, then, fists clenched at her sides. “You saw that seizure! There is no way he's coming back from that without going wrong!”

Matt is quiet before he answers. “You just answered my questions. But, Katie, you can't nitpick your every action or you'll always been in the cycle of self-hatred. Do you think I didn't blame myself for what happened to Shiro, because I was weak?”

“But it wasn't your fault!”

Her brother’s look is a cross between exasperated and fond. “Exactly. So, with that logic, this isn't your fault either. Do you think if Lance jumped in front of a bullet -- er, metal projectile? -- after you rejected him, that he wouldn't have done the same if you said yes?”

“But,” she begins, “But, he could've died. . . Might still die, not knowing how I really feel. It's scary, thinking about it, that he'd never know, and die thinking I barely think of him as a friend.”

This time, Matt’s expression is pure exasperation. “Then go tell him! What happened to my genius little brat sister?!”

She only brings herself to stand after some animated shooing from Matt, and darts back Lance’s tent on wobbly knees.

--

Lance wakes in intervals. His consciousness is like a wave, swelling only to retreat as soon as it crests. His eyelids are the beach, his eyelashes the mist of the ocean, and wakefulness the sea threatening to tear his very pleasant dream down like a damp sand castle. He's making some awesome metaphors, so really, that's the first inkling that something must not be right. The next is that when he wakes, Pidge is there at his side, grasping his hand.

“Am I in heaven or hell?” he asks, voice rough from disuse and sickness.

Instead of a playful smack, Pidge laughs tearfully. “Neither, idiot.”

“Forgive an idiot for asking.”

“I-I, er, I want to say something. Before you're completely lucid and I can readily deny it if needed.”

“Am I dying, doc?” That one actually gets him a flick this time.

“Shut up and lemme talk, okay. It's about your confession-”

This feels too much like a dream. “No, nope, let's not do that. You don't have to act like you like me just because I almost died.”

Pidge visibly grits her teeth. “No, that's not what this is, idiot. I really like you, for some reason. I, I just let my insecurities get in the way, and I realized that you could've died without ever knowing. I know I'm not very girly, even once my gender was revealed, and I'm not polite or a Princess or a hot guy like Keith or Shiro. I'm just a-”

“Wonderful, smart, caring, loyal, fierce person. Should I go on?”

Pidge turns a cute shade of red and Lance wants to make her do that a million times a day.

“I don't see what you see,” she grumbles.

He smiles, feeling his eyes grow heavy. “You will. I'll help.”

Grasping his hand tightly, she says, “You too. We're both idiots, aren't we?”

[voyager-into-the-unknown]

Plance Secret Santa Fic for Nadia

Moonlight

After months of space travel, the team had been fortunate enough to find an uninhabited Earth-like planet to land upon and make camp while their lions recharged. Pidge had gathered data on the environment and determined that the air was breathable and the water was safe to drink.

Lance tossed and turned on his thin camp mattress, unable to sleep. His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of his fellow teammate for whom he had developed some very strong feelings, and he wondered how long he could keep his feelings a secret. She was always foremost in his thoughts all day, and apparently all night as well. This particular night was quite warm, too warm to wear his his Paladin pajamas. He had gone to bed wearing only a pair of blue boxers and a white T-shirt. Hunk was asleep, snoring just loud enough to distract him. Silently, Lance had crept out of the tent he shared with Hunk and laid out his mattress, pillow, and light blanket under the starlit sky, hoping that the night air would be cool enough to help him sleep. He had no such luck. He tossed and turned even more, then finally settled upon counting the unfamiliar stars and naming the new constellations that he had imagined when gazing at the night sky, but to no avail. He still couldn’t fall asleep. Thinking of the nearby lake with it’s cold, clean water, he made up his mind: it was time for a late night swim.

He quietly entered the tent to grab a towel from his supplies, then put on his sneakers. The lake was only a short walk from the Paladins’ camp. When he arrived at the shore, he hung up his towel on a low hanging tree limb, took off his shoes, and removed his T-shirt, then hung it up next to his towel. Just as he was considering removing his shorts to bathe, he heard a sound. Something was moving in the water. He froze, realizing that he had forgotten his Bayard back at the camp. If some dangerous creature lurked in the dark water before him, he had no way to defend himself!

Lance’s view was obscured by the reeds that grew along the lakeshore, but as he moved silently through the shadows he found a break in the barrier of reeds a bit farther along the shore. The tranquil surface of the lake was broken by a slim figure of someone who had just emerged from the depths. A mermaid? No, he wouldn’t be lucky enough to meet one of those again. The figure turned to one side, and he saw a lovely silhouette in the moonlight. Definitely female, but with only a subtle hint of feminine curves. She had a bosom, but she definitely wasn’t buxom enough to be Allura or Romelle. She wasn’t naked, but seemed to be wearing some type of green sports bra and briefs, and her skin was pale by the light of the planet’s single moon. He just stood there, transfixed by her graceful movements through the water. His breathing quickened. She was so beautiful he couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Who’s there?” asked a familiar voice. It was Pidge! Lance began to panic. Pidge would kill him if she knew he had been spying on her while she went for a midnight swim in her underwear. He should have fled, but it was too late. She was swimming toward him, and suddenly stopped several feet from the shore.

“Lance? What are you doing here?” She sounded rather upset.

“Uh, hi. I was just going for a late night swim.” He hoped it was dark enough to hide how much he was blushing.

“You shouldn’t be here!” she hissed angrily.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not dressed!” She had stayed far enough from shore that only her head and shoulders were above the waterline.

“I’m not either. Anyway, I’ve already seen you swimming in your underwear, so it’s only fair that you see me swimming in mine.” He waded toward her until he was as deep into the water as she was. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night anyway? It could be dangerous.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.

“Me, too. It’s too hot and Hunk snores louder than howling bogbeast.”

She giggled. He swam closer to her, and she backed away from him a little. “Lance, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that this is a bit...awkward.” He hair was slicked back, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Even by the dim light of the full moon he could see that her cheeks were very flushed. Lance couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about, Pidge. You’ve got a really cute figure,” he blurted out, saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh, so you have finally realized that I’m a girl and you’re going to start flirting with me now?”

“I am a connoisseur of female beauty, Pidge. I can say with great sincerity that you are as beautiful as a mermaid and as entrancing as a naiad.”

“Don’t you mean as entrancing as a siren? Anyway, since I am the Paladin of the Green Lion, shouldn’t I be a dryad instead of a naiad?”

“You know your mythology, don’t you?” He grinned at her.

“So do you, apparently.”

“I passed the time by reading a lot of myths, legends, and fairytales when I was a kid.”

“Then you know what happened to Actaeon.”

“Yeah,” he said dreamily. “He was spying on the beautiful virgin goddess Artemis in all her naked glory while she bathed in a stream.” He waggled his eyebrows and smirked at her with a devilish glint in his eye.

Pidge’s face was red, both with anger and embarrassment. She glared at him. “You know Artemis was so enraged at Actaeon for being such a perverted Peeping Tom that she turned him into a stag.”

“Well, I guess he couldn’t resist the beauty of a naked maiden, so the goddess punished him with antlers for being so horny.” He laughed at his own joke.

Pidge rolled her eyes. “You’re lucky I don’t have my Bayard with me.” She swam away from him. Lance took that as a challenge and swam after her.

She stopped in the center of the small lake, and floated on her back. He caught up to her and floated beside her. For a long time they just drifted side by side beneath the starry night sky, at peace with the luminous glories of the universe reflected in the still, dark water of the lake. For a moment, there was no war, no empire, no genocide, no fear, no death. There was only the lake and the forest and the two young people, far from home, but not alone. Never alone. They had each other. They always had each other, Lance realized.

It was strangely quiet in the woods that night. On Earth there might have been the sound of nocturnal animals or insects in the darkness, but here there was a stillness in the air, a silence broken only by their voices.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” Lance said softly. “I honestly didn’t mean to spy on you. I didn’t even know you were out here when I decided to go for a swim.”

“I’m not offended, not really,” Pidge replied. “I’m just not used to it.”

“Not used to what?”

“Being looked at that way.” Clearly, she was still embarrassed. Pidge certainly could have passed for a young boy when Lance first met her, but not anymore. She could no longer hide the fact that she was growing up to be a very attractive female.

“Pidge, you know how much I love enjoy giving compliments to beautiful women.”

“You normally flirt with all the pretty girls you meet even if you barely even know them. This is different.”

“Because we’re best friends?” he asked.

“That’s one reason, but there’s more to it than that.”

He swam upright, gazing at her scantily clad form in the moonlight. She then turned herself upright, hiding most of her exposed body in the water. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Stop doing that!” She seemed more frightened than angry.

“Stop doing what?”

“Stop looking at me that way!”

“Why? What are you afraid of?” He gazed at her lovingly, with such a gentle expression that she looked down, too embarrassed to meet his gaze.

“I’m not Allura,” Pidge said, with her eyes downcast.

“I never said you were.”

“I thought you had a crush on her.” She looked up at him accusingly.

“Not anymore. Anyway, she doesn’t like me that way.”

“Oh, so now you’re going to flirt with me because every other girl in the Universe has turned you down?”

“Hey!” Lance looked offended. “That’s just mean, Pidge. Being rejected all the time really hurts, you know. I am not some Casanova who just loves women and leaves them. I just want a certain someone to be my girlfriend, with the intention that someday she’ll be my wife. I want to be in a real, committed relationship with this particular young lady, but I’ve been so afraid of rejection that I have never told her what she means to me, so I wasted a lot of time, flirting with girls that didn’t really matter to me, while trying to work up the courage to tell the girl I really care about what she means to me. I’m serious about this, and about her. The truth is, I’m really just a hopeless romantic,” he said with fervor. “Or maybe just hopeless,” he added sadly.

“I’m sorry. What I said was a bit harsh. I am just trying to protect myself.”

“From me?” Lance asked. He was looking at her apologetically.

“From getting my heart broken.” She looked so small and fragile when she said those words that Lance was silent for a moment, allowing himself to fully comprehend her meaning.

“It’s going to take every bit of whatever courage I have to say this, Pidge, but if you like me that way, then you have nothing to fear. You are one of the people that I care about the most in the entire Universe, and if you feel the same way, you will make me the happiest man alive.”

“You really mean that?” Her lower lip trembled and her eyes welled up with tears.

Lance’s voice cracked a little when he replied. “Yes. I love you, Pidge. I’ve loved you for all of these years that we have been in space together, and I have finally been able to admit to myself that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone. I think you are the most amazing girl that I have ever met.” Overwhelmed by his own feelings, he tried not to cry, but he did in spite of his best efforts to hold back tears.

Her own tears slid silently down her cheeks in the moonlight. He touched her face, gently wiping them away. “I love you too,” she said, her voice quivering. “You—you’re the only one that I’ve ever—“

Lance didn’t hear what she was going to say next. He stopped her trembling lips with a kiss as he clasped her to him, his arms wrapped around her waist. He felt her arms stiffen against his chest and then relax as she wrapped them around his neck. She pulled him towards her so he could deepen the kiss. Lance was overwhelmed with desire for her, and he kissed her with all of the passion he had kept hidden for so long. Pidge was trembling, perhaps from fear or from the cold lake water or both. Lance didn’t hold back. He continued kissing her with so much intensity that he began to frighten her as well as himself. Then he pulled away, breaking the kiss, leaving both of them gasping for breath. “I love you, Katie Holt,” he said softly, his words reverberating through the still night air.

Wide-eyed, she looked up at him and said, “I love you, too.” She hugged him, and he held her a long time as she trembled in his arms. “Lance, you are the only person that I have ever felt this way about. Please, please don’t break my heart.”

“Never. I am yours forever if that’s what you want. I promise, I will never, ever hurt you. I adore you.” He kissed her forehead. “You’re cold. Maybe we should get out of the water.” She nodded, shivering.

He followed her as she swam towards the shore to where she had left her towel, shoes, pajamas, and a change of underwear.

“Apparently you think of everything. I’m going to be walking back to camp in soggy boxer shorts.”

Pidge laughed at him. “I would like some privacy to change, please.” She had grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her torso as soon as they had reached the shore.

“Okay. My stuff is down there.” He pointed to the tree where his shirt and towel were hanging. “I’ll wait for you. We can walk back together.”

“Whatever you say, Loverboy. I guess you finally have a girlfriend now.” She grinned at him. Lance felt hot all over as he smiled back at her. He darted off to where he left his things, grabbed his towel and began drying off. Realizing that his boxers were a lost cause, he took them off and wrapped the towel securely around his waist, then put on his T-shirt and shoes. He heard footsteps approaching just as he hung his wet boxers on the tree limb.

“Uh, hi.” He felt his face heat up. She couldn’t contain her giggles. “I’m gonna pray this towel doesn’t fall off.” Pidge covered her mouth, trying to suppress her laughter. “Not so loud. You’ll wake up the entire camp.” He held the towel around his waist tightly with his right hand.

She was dressed in her too-large Paladin pajamas and sneakers, her discarded underclothes dripping wet in her left hand, and her own towel in her right. She hung her underthings up to dry next to his boxers. “You better hope no one finds this in the morning. The others will wonder what we were doing out here in the middle of the night,” she said teasingly. She kept her towel and rubbed her damp hair with it.

“They will jump to conclusions and Shiro will kill me, on behalf of Matt and your dad.”

“When we get back to Earth, you need to worry about my mom. She’s scarier than both of them put together.”

“She’ll learn to love me. I intend to be her future son-in-law, after all.”

“Don’t joke about stuff like that unless you really mean it.”

“I do. I want us to be long term, death to us part and all of that stuff.”

The smile that she gave him was angelic. She positively glowed with happiness at what he implied. “I think Katie Holt-McClain has a nice ring to it.”

“I can see you have put some thought into this.”

“I’ve loved you for a very long time, Lance McClain.” She hugged him tightly, and he embraced her, kissing the top of her head. He held her close for a long moment, smiling into her damp hair.

“Pidge, my dearest, close your eyes,” he said in his deepest, most seductive voice.

She looked up at him with adoration. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

“Not yet. I want you to close your eyes because my towel is falling off.”

“Wow, this is even better than turning you into a stag.”

“Pidge!” He exclaimed over the sound of her hysterical laughter. Lance held the towel in place as best he could, but when he turned his back on her to fasten it more securely, it slipped from around his waist, revealing far too much of his backside. It was too dark beneath the trees to see anything, but she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Well, tonight this planet has two moons. Too bad only one of them is full.”

“Pidge!” Lance was beyond embarrassed. He was wondering if this planet had any sinkholes that could suddenly open up to swallow him and take him out of his misery. When her laughter finally stopped, he bravely turned around to face her.

She had broken two small leafless branches off of the nearest tree. “Well, Artemis is the goddess of the moon.” She held up the branches above her head like antlers. “These are for you, Actaeon.”

“I think Actaeon has been punished enough for accidentally mooning the moon goddess.”

Pidge laughed harder than ever at this comment, and Lance, grinning in spite of his own humiliation, grabbed her and kissed her cheek as she giggled. He kissed her forehead as she continued to laugh, and as he kissed the other cheek she was crying tears of mirth. When she finally dropped the branches, it was so that she could wrap her arms around him, stand on tiptoe, and kiss him passionately.

When their lips finally parted, he grinned as he looked down at her and said, “You are never going to let me live this down, are you?”

“Nope. I will be telling this story to our children and grandchildren. Let’s go back to camp, Actaeon.”

They did their best to remain quiet when they arrived at the campsite. “I think I’ll sleep outside tonight too,” she whispered.

“Well, I am going to put some pants on, so my goddess won’t be offended,” he whispered back to her before slipping quietly into his tent, careful not to disturb Hunk’s slumber.

When Lance exited the tent to return to his camp mattress beneath the stars, he was wearing light blue pajama pants with his T-shirt. He saw that Pidge was combing her damp hair, sitting on the mattress she had placed next to his, and he smiled at her. Before they lay down side by side, he kissed her goodnight, then covered them both with his light blanket. They held each other close as they fell asleep at last, bathed in the silvery light of the moon.