* SEVENTH / WHEEL

lance was flat on his back . staring at the ceiling  too  , but completely and entirely laying flat ; kind of like a  starfish  , with the way he had his limbs splayed . and to his luck , he thought this area was totally unoccupied , but leave it to to pidge to need something in a room that practically  no one else  in the castle knew about . 

and so a boot anticlimactically landed on his ankle , he yelped but didn’t yank it back or anything , and fixed the green paladin with a  nasty  glare . 

                                                        “ hey , watch where you’re going ! what the quiznak are you doing here , anyways ? i thought this was a  storage room  . “

for a while now , lance was suspicious of the knowing  intelligence  behind the eyes of keith’s , uh , cosmic wolf ( he hadn’t asked what his name was yet okay !!! ) . year , sure , most alien races  were  smarter than humans , but there was something uncanny about the way it carried itself and scanned the room . 

the moment he had alone with it , lance crouched and made the ‘ i’ve got my eyes on you ‘ gesture ,  completely  unironically . 

                                                        “ man , where in space did keith pick  you  up ? “

this was probably the most important moment in lance’s  life  . he’d heard of plenty other celebrations from planets similar , but nothing quite replicating the  uniqueness  in earth customs ; the flowers , the chocolate , the scented candles . 

lance had a handful of purple stalks with tear shaped petals the size of his hands , but they’d have to do ! he practically chased allura down to find her so he was a  little  out of breath arriving , but he managed to unceremoniously shoved the bouquet towards her chest and huff out a  hasty  explanation . 

                                                        “ p--- princess !! hah , oof , i need to , ah , tell you about  valentines day  . “

it was a fatal flaw of his , to rely too much on his best friend in a time of need . but lance ? was  dying  . not only of homesickness , but of foodsickness or whatever if that was a thing . he missed  food  .

at least , certain foods . 

                                                        “ dude , my man , my main guy , we gotta replicate  garlic knots  . “

his parents had been real strict on curfew lately--- something about fires and a non apprehended culprit . lance was the second ,  third  ? of his siblings to brush such news off , to continue going off at night because that was what grown teenagers were prone to  do  , and he realized , standing in a grisly alley facing a man with a  mask  , that he should have heeded their warnings . 

his mouth opened and closed around words , brow creased tenfold as the tension in his shoulders strung them up to his ears . what--- who---

                                                        “ erm . . . nice  look  ? “

lance was just  chilling  on the observation deck , cross legged on a cushion he yanked from one of the storage rooms and was  three times  his size , staring at a glass plane that separated him and the entirety of space . a pretty common cliche , contemplating too hard that it was too big , but he couldn’t  help  it .

so he promised himself he’d catch up on beauty sleep later and watched the stars pass , none the wiser as the vicinity welcomed in someone else . he was a little too wrapped up in thought , drowsy , thinking up all the planets they’d visit before even  thinking  about earth .

thems the works .

encroaching in on someone’s space ? lance’s specialty ,  especially  in keith’s case . he had a bowl of budded purple flecks , undistinguished by smell alone , and a confident gait when he knocked on the red---  black  paladin’s door , which automatically slid open with little prompting . by clearing his throat , he made himself known . 

                                                        “ uh ,  hey  . i wanna talk . “

lance hit his head  hard  and the fight still roared around him , a stray shot brazenly missing his foot by an inch , a blade ricocheting off the wall and lodging in the floor , head  throbbing  with an untended migraine . his comms had malfunctioned some way or another while retrieving the package--- some  pod  the size of his thigh that radiated heat and purple light . 

he didn’t ask what was inside . 

but then the whole platform trembled with some unseen force and it toppled form his arms , rolled down the tilted panels . lance scrambled after it--- and  out  of cover .

    “You’re reckless!”

Though, to be fair to Lance. Allura would have died in the place of Lance and he didn’t think Lance would forgive himself if the person he liked so much died because of him. Hunk lets go of his friend, he was not going to let him out of his sight for the next couple of weeks.

“What was I going to do without you?!” 

He went back to hugging him again. Hunk honestly wanted to cry. The Yellow was actually petrified over losing any of the Paladins. If this mission went wrong, it could have been catastrophic. 

reckless was a  fair  term , given his tendency to push others out of the way of danger ; he already had the same track record with the crystal and coran , and was pretty sure no one was happy to discover the stench of burnt flesh  after  that night . but hunk’s hugs were notoriously healing and he wrapped his arms around him in turn , patting the spot between his shoulder blades as he professed his stemming worries . 

without lance ? life would go on , he was pretty sure . 

                                                             “ don’t sweat it , big guy . you won’t have to do  anything  without me anytime soon . “

“ lance , it wasn’t your fault. you didn’t know , so stop beating yourself up over it. ” whilst tone didn’t entirely sound convincing , keith meant every word of it. there was nothing , no way , for lance to have known that something was going on with shiro. not when everyone else on the team also couldn’t tell. hell , keith didn’t even pick up on anything odd when he first came back. “ he’s back , that’s all that matters. ”

       he’s back . 

      but he could have been back so , SO much sooner--- and that was why lance closed his eyes and braced himself against keith’s words , those few moments in inner-voltron-space running over and over again in his head since he realized what they’d meant . 

     “ . . . and really , i’m GLAD we have him back . go team . but do you know how much mess we could have avoided if i’d realized it back then ? we’d--- never know betrayal from someone with shiro’s face , the castle wouldn’t haven’t gotten infected with that virus , and . . . and you wouldn’t have that scar--- thing . . . ? mark . “ it was all a little fuzzy in his head , a little MISMATCHED , but screamed truth , “ and because of that , i have to shoulder that blame . “

“i hope not. this doesn’t hurt but, i can’t say the same for ALL scars.” he was still uncertain whether that was what his really was, but there wasn’t really a way to determine that. “i can’t even imagine.” he couldn’t help but laugh. 

“there’d be nothing you COULD do, i guess, but you wouldn’t be happy. at least if you got it in some cool, big fight it’s a story to tell?” he offered.

     “ ‘course not . “ lance just never thought he’d see the day that KICK ASS keith with a face scar . something about the fact just seemed a little too . . . real . but a story was a story , he guessed , “ . . . yeah ! i could definitely entertain the family with back home with something like that . but this WHOLE thing . . . voltron , the paladins , everyone we’ve met ? that alone could keep anyone entertained for decades . “

     “Are you sure about this?”

Hunk peered below him. It wasn’t a long jump. However, he felt queasy being up here. He was tempted to push Lance off the cliff to the water below. Just to get back at him for dragging him up here. Hunk was more keen on dipping his toes into the water. 

“This is safe right? You know. Sometimes water can get contaminated or worse, can kill you.”

There he goes worrying again.

     “ ABSOLUTELY . i’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life . “ 

     lance shook out his wrists and boldly approached the edge , his added weight causing a few handfuls of earth to slough off in his presence but the ground remaining ultimately in tact . the fall created a litany of ripples that lance hoped to intercept , and in a moment of INSPIRATION--- he extended his hand . 

     “ wanna jump together ? “