#alluron

“I’m only hoping we can put aside any differences we may currently have and work together.”  

“You’re talking about our views on Lotor.” Kuron clearly remembers giving Lotor the black bayard. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, something was telling him to reconsider. But he went through with it anyway. 

“I’m a little...perturbed about our viewpoints on Lotor, yes.” Allura’s brows furrow, like she is doing her best to hold back a scowl. It bleeds through, just a bit. The disagreements between them are still fresh in her mind, and they are still sore to think about. 

“I did what I thought was right.”

“You went behind my back to take him to the Kral Zera.” She tries to keep her voice level. She doesn’t want another argument, but she knows she can’t stop it. The wound was never healed.

“It was necessary.” His voice is flat, hard like a brick wall. Allura cannot get through. 

“See, that isn’t what I understand.” She glares, dropping her fists to her sides. “We used to compromise. We used to talk. Not ignore each other, and challenge each other’s authorities as if we—”

“As if we what?” he snaps at her. It comes out of nowhere and it feels so wrong. It’s like an outside force, puppeting his actions. The static is throbbing behind his brow now. 

“As if we do not even know each other.” Her voice breaks and she stares at him with a fierce gaze, looking exhausted, so uncharastically unfurled. Arguing with him has become frequent, but it still feels so unnatural and it hurts her. How will they heal at this rate? “It’s almost as if we are strangers.”

We don’t know each other, is what he wants to tell her. We are strangers. 

The memories he holds so closely are not his own. It doesn’t seem logical to think this way, but a part of him just knows they cannot be his. The truth hurts so tremendously. He wants to continue living in this lie, but he knows it will crumble soon. He just isn’t enough. 

“You speak to me as if you do not want to be around me,” she says. The glare is wiped from her face and that sullen look she has become accustomed to wearing returns. “I have found your behavior to be so unlike you lately, and I am worried for you.” 

All he can see is her. The static is crackling along the sides of his tunnel vision and he hears nothing but white noise. It’s deafening. He shuts his eyes. 

“All I want to do is help you,” she says. It’s muddled against the static. It’s a plea. 

“I wish you could,” he says. It’s quiet, the most vulnerable she has heard him in awhile. It takes her off guard. It’s all she has wanted. 

”I can,” she says. Her voice cracks. “I will. I always will. You must know this.” 

There is a long pause and she so desperately wants him to believe her. He has to believe her. 

“...h-hold my hand.” He opens it, fingers trembling. 

She does, tightly. 

“Are you alright?” She moves closer to him, voice heavy with concern. “Shiro?” 

“No, I don’t think I am,” he says. He knows he isn’t. He cannot focus. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted. I don’t—I don’t know what’s wrong. But something is wrong with me. I’ve been taking it out on you. On everyone. I’m sorry.” 

“Okay.” Allura squeezes his hand tighter and wraps her arm around him. It is a reassurance for him, but also herself. “It’s alright. We will figure this out together.”

“What if we can’t?” It sounds so unlike him. He’s doubtful. Wrong. It’s all wrong. She’s scared for him. 

“We will,” she says. “I promise you.” 

He is glad that despite how wrong he feels, he can trust that she will remain herself. He knows that no matter what happens, he can at least hold onto that. 

“Lay down.” She grabs a blanket out of the first aid kit and folds it in her lap. “You look pale. Rest. It will be awhile before the castleship arrives.” 

He wants to decline—he doesn’t feel like he deserves kindness after the way he has treated her—but the static is still there in his head, threatening to come back full force. He rests his head in her lap and closes his eyes, focuses on her fingers gently stroking through his hair. 

He especially loves kissing her — kissing her silly until she’s impatient and waiting for his mouth to travel south of her lips, past the swells of her breasts, over the canvas of her stomach, to the soft slit between her thighs. She’s delicate and vulnerable when his tongue glides over her, yet simultaneously powerful and sturdy as her hands pull his hair hard and the muscles in her legs contract and sculpt soft ridges over her skin. When he fucks her, her moans are the accompanying melody to the rhythm of his hips as he enters and renters, fast and purposeful as if trying to tell her just how much he adores her with every stroke.

Her pleasure is his purpose. He cannot imagine it any other way.

Tonight is another success. After she comes, she giggles and bites her bottom lip, resettling into the sheets of her bed. She falls back into the mattress, taking a deep breath in and out as she rides out her orgasm. He kisses her round nose, unable to contain his self-satisfaction.

“One more time?” he murmurs into the crook of her neck.

She doesn’t respond at first, so he thinks that maybe she didn’t hear, but when before he repeats himself, she turns her head toward him and shakes her head.

“No, that’s quite alright,” she tells him.

He grins. “You’ve had enough?”

She ponders this question, eyes traveling to stare up at the ceiling of her room. “You’re rougher now,” she reflects, after a moment.

He gives her a soft laugh, nuzzling the underside of her jaw with a kiss. “Is that a bad thing?”

She frowns thoughtfully. “No,” she decides. Her eyes glaze over. “It’s just… different.”

“Hm,” he replies. He thinks to himself, his eyes following the silver arch of her eyebrow before returning to her eyes. “You used to be noisier, you know,” he says.

Or at least, that’s what Shiro remembers.

Her mouth twists and she looks away, as if shy. He takes it as a compliment, cuddling up closer against her, trying to catch her eyes.

“And you don’t say my name anymore,” he adds, with a bit of a mischievous dimple on his cheeks.

She blinks. “Really?” she asks, but it doesn’t sound like a question. “I never noticed.”

“Maybe keeping up takes too much of your breath to say much,” he teases, ducking his head down to nibble the tip of her ear.

She laughs then — and even while somewhat short and curt, her laugh still makes his insides bubble happily. His stomach turns over and he feels completely weightless.

He loves her laugh, and in fact: Shiro loves everything about Allura.

He especially loves lying next to her. The smell of her hair is tantalizing and the soft warmth that radiates from her body is so glorious to bask in. He will never get enough of it.

She slowly turns herself onto her side, showing her back to him. He takes a moment to trace his eyes over the magenta swirls that outline her waist before he scooches close, pressing his torso against her. Touching skin to skin is like a slice of heaven that only he — by some gratuitous stroke of luck — can experience.

He kisses just below her hairline, then gently bites the sharp curve between her shoulder and neck.

Suddenly, she turns to face him, her eyes hard and serious.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she tells him.

He’s confused. He lifts his head up. “What… what do you mean?” He gives her a cheeky grin — in case she’s joking around and just testing him.

She’s done this before: suggest they shouldn’t be doing this anymore. She did this last week, actually. He was covering her body in kisses, slowly pulling off her clothes with his teeth before she stopped him and said the same thing, with the same voice.

He replied with the same befuddlement, and last time she stared at him for a long minute before shaking her head, breaking into small smile, and muttering ‘never mind’ as she guided his head back down between her thighs.

But this time, she looks at him as if he’s stupid.

“I don’t think we should spend time together anymore,” she rewords, completely serious.

He laughs softly. “Allura, stop kidding around.”

“I mean it,” she says.

His heart drops. “What do you mean?”

“I…” and she hesitates. “I don’t feel the same with you anymore.”

Then it hits him — the possibility that she is breaking up with him.

He does not know how to react. Something doesn’t compute. The math doesn’t add up. Shiro is with Allura. He must be with Allura.

It can’t be any other way.

“No. Please,” he begs her. “I love you.”

She swallows.

He starts to feel the desperation sink into his bones. This cannot happen. He cannot let this happen. She’s tried this before and he was able to stop her. He needs to do that again. He needs to convince her that she must be with him because if not, then he would not be Shiro.

“I can’t imagine myself without you.”

And that is a fact: Shiro cannot imagine himself without Allura.

“I love you,” he repeats.

She watches him for a moment, as if contemplating something deep within herself.

He can’t imagine what that might be. The answer is clear to him.

But finally, she replies.

“Okay,” she agrees, softly. “I love you, too.”

On hearing her returned words, he is immediately relieved, happy, overjoyed — and why wouldn’t he be?

He is Shiro after all.