#ambi exchanges

Lance at least thanks his lucky stars that blue is his color, and furthermore, that he’s just picking up a few odds and ends. However, his eyes, mismatched and not entirely his own, are burning. Lance sighs, setting his eggs next to his shaving cream. He must’ve gotten something in them, and he rubs at it as he waits for the cashier to finish up with the person in front of him. He’s not a very chatty guy, granted, but Lance isn’t looking for a conversationalist as much as quick service.

Really, he can’t believe himself. He hopes the workers aren’t too peeved. Lance knows he’d already have complained to Pidge about it multiple times if it happened to him.

Lance hears his cashier move the stick thingy dividing his stuff from the next person’s, but he has to tamp down his embarrassment to make eye contact. After a second, he looks up and smiles. Lance knows exactly how much crabby customers suck and doesn’t intend to be one himself, even if he is currently dressed as a disgrace.

His cashier doesn’t return the action, reaching for the eggs. Lance spares a moment to read his name tag, inverted though it is.

Keith.

Lance looks the rest of him up and down while he struggles to find the barcode and decides that Keith is simultaneously very, very cute and hot as hell. Unfortunately, looks don’t help him out much, and he’s growing irritated by the sounds of his sighing. Lance wouldn’t normally interfere, but it’s kind of taking a long time. Besides, how else is going to get his number if they don’t start talking?

“Uh, I think it’s over here—”

Lance goes to point as Keith’s head snaps up, dark eyebrows furrowed.

The words die on his lips, his gaze locking on the color of the eyes staring back at him. It’s all Lance can focus on, the blue and grey that borders on amethyst, expanding until Target and the conveyor belt blurs into grassy fields, a looming palace, and rolling waves all at once.

Lance smells rain, smoke, soap—crisp and clear like any other memory could never hope to replicate. On his tongue is roast duck, homemade bread, and berries he’s never tasted before. It’s like he’s living it, though Lance has never spent a week outside some city or another and therefore never had the opportunity to experience any of the assault on his senses crashing through his mind. Keith’s smile appears before him, and Lance knows instinctively that he’s the one who put it on his gorgeous face, no less beautiful through the eons it’s kept popping up.

A thousand realities—lives—flash through Lance’s mind, tales of princes and servants, warriors in battle appearing and streaking past at a breakneck speed that he can barely keep up with.

Lance sees himself whisper a thousand I love yous, share a million more barely-there touches that meant so much more to him—to them—than what met the eye. There are goodbyes, tears drying on each of their faces, but more often than not, they manage.

Coming back to himself to stare at a very unsettled Target employee, he has the visions to remind him why that makes him so ridiculously happy. Keith has a white-knuckled grip on the eggs he’s supposed to be bagging, and Lance jumps as he hears a crack from within the container.

“Dude,” Lance whispers because hot damn.

“What the hell?” Keith—his soulmate, Keith—growls, slamming the eggs down onto the scanner. Lance hears the sound of more eggs breaking and is granted a vision of them from ages ago, helping hands on a farm to bring in money for their families. Keith has a habit of being rough with products. Lance realizes it probably isn’t the thing to be noticing right now, but as Keith leans over the belt dividing them, his shirt stretches and it’s obvious that he’s, like, built. “What are you doing?”

Lance takes a step back, hands raised defensively. “What, you think I’m responsible for that whole hallucination mumbo-jumbo? You’re half of the problem, mister.” Lance’s finger points aggressively at his face, showcasing the evidence there to prove his point.

“Why are you in my line?”

Their voices are raising, drawing attention. Other customers are starting to leave Keith’s lane, eyes wide as they run from the disaster unfolding before their eyes.

Lance stares at him incredulously. “Because I wanted, like, three things, dude. Cool it!”

“I am your soulmate, not a dude.”

“Well forgive me if I’m not sure what to call the guy I met a grand total of three seconds ago, who I then shared some kind of flashback, montage-y thing with. Why are you yelling at me about this?”

“I’m not yelling!” Keith yells.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance sees somebody fast approaching, a blur of red and khaki. That does very little to slow his roll, getting up close to the person the universe decided he was fated to be with in multiple lifetimes. “You know, I originally wasn’t sure about why I shoved you into the River Thames, but I’m starting to get it.”

The visions might’ve been rose-colored, but there was a lot of questionable courses of action thrown into their relationships thrown over the years.

“I cannot believe I am stuck—”

“Is everything alright here?” a new voice interjects—Shiro, the manager.

Both Keith and Lance spin to face the interrupter, mismatched eyes flashing dangerously. “We’re fine,” they seethe, twisting back around to face each other just as soon as the words are spat out.

Lance glares at Keith, hating himself for lingering on the image of his flushed cheeks, which kinda’ make his rat’s nest of a hairstyle work. Unbeknownst to Lance, Keith struggles to cope with the freckles dotting his bronzed skin.

There is a long, drawn-out pause between the two of them. Lance cracks first. “You know, blue doesn’t look half bad on you.”

Keith fights down a blush. It isn’t even that great of a compliment, he’s just weak. His awareness of the matter pisses him off a little bit, he isn’t going to lie. Rather than letting himself get worked up again, he raises a brow in disbelief. “Really?”

Lance nods, looking a little offended that Keith would question his judgement. “Yeah, really. Your eyes and brows are really striking —you’re welcome for that by the way, that’s half me—which works good as the focal point of your face.”

Keith tries harder not to let his cheeks go pink.

While he’s trying to think of what to say, Lance seizes his opportunity. It’s probably destiny, really, that Lance wanted to land a date with Keith from the first moment he saw him. “Your shirt though, that really completes the look. Course, it’s made of the good stuff.”

Keith’s pretty baffled. The piece of clothing that Lance is going on about is a red tee that he picked up from Michael’s on his first day because all of his clothes were black. He goes to find the tag, trying to figure out what it is that’s drawn Lance’s eye. In retrospect, he really did leave himself open.

Lance’s shit-eating grin is sharp as a knife as he delivers his punch-line. “Boyfriend material. Speaking of which, are you free tonight?”

Keith blinks.

At the end of the lane, Shiro snickers into his hand. Keith guesses that he’s probably used the same one on Adam before, the idiot.

Keith’s face is stony. “No,” he tells him frankly. “Not for that line. I work again tomorrow. Seven to five. Try again. Shiro,” he fixes him with a glare, “I’m going on break.”

Keith marches off, and Lance watches him go. If it were anyone else, he’d be crestfallen. As is, he’s smitten. His grin softens but doesn’t fade in the slightest.

Veronica comments on it, seeing her brother heading for the beach on a rare day off after evicting the Galra from Earth. His back is a mottled, pale mess. “Hermano,” she hisses, pulling him aside when his team isn’t watching. They all have scars, faint little nicks and tallies of days they’ve lived to tell the tale of their victory, but none like that. “What’s your back from? Why didn’t you tell any of us about it?” He’d had time, certainly, more than enough time in the hospital after he nearly died yet again.

Lance merely shrugs. “Coran was going to get hurt. I had to do something about it,” he tells her in that simple way of his, head snapping back around to stare at Pidge as she cackles something crude from the waves. Veronica watches him go, teeth gritted together and brow furrowed in concern because she can’t help but feel like she’s just missed something important. She knows just as well as anybody about the merits of sacrificing for the team, but there’s a fault lying in Lance’s shiny flash of a grin—a grin that, if she remembers correctly, used to be brighter—as he runs to tackle his teammate into the surf. Try as she might, Veronica can’t seem to find it and is left with nothing but the memory of her brother without a lion, ready to meet his maker.

Krolia pretends that she doesn’t notice, is completely oblivious to the way her son’s fingers are too tight—strained—around the controls of his fighter. There is a fear there she’s yet to uncover, and attempts to do so with subtle prods at his team, as her status as a Blade leaves her prone to do. She is met only with the occasional confused stare or bewildered silence over the comms, that she knows they chalk up to her not knowing their patterns as a team. She does not divulge that she has spent her every waking moment memorizing the people who she will inevitably have to entrust Keith to, being sure to correct any flaws she sees in her eagerness to remedy the cracks running through them.

In the cave, with her leader, she smiles at him and lets their time together keep her from shedding a single, undignified tear until they’re far away and Kolivan is fast asleep. Even with all that Keith has grown, she knows there are gaps in him that she’s unable to fill. She merely hopes that someone, anyone, can. If not, she hopes they can keep them from growing wider.

And Lance should be able to.

Keith, as leader, has tried very hard to know his team. To read when they can carry out a mission without a hitch, and when they’re seconds away from falling down a hole far too treacherous for Keith to dig them back out of.

Lance, in particular, he’s kept his eye on. He asks him on Earth, once, if everything’s alright. There’s good reason for the question; when Lance thinks nobody’s watching, his face will fall and his nails dig into his palms with force just shy of enough to draw blood. Lance snaps back to normal with blinding speed. Keith can only blink in surprise as Lance nods. “Course. You know me, mullet, ready for anything the universe decides to throw at us.”

When Keith isn’t happy, he shows it. He closes himself off and uses everything he has to scream comfort away. Usually, it works, with the exception of Shiro. Lance, on the other hand, is a clam with a pearl of hurt he’s desperate to hide, and every time Keith comes knocking, he closes up even tighter. He nods, pretending that Lance has him fooled. “As long as you’re good,” he says casually, and when they talk about their strategy for their next mission, doesn’t make mention of the tightness of Lance’s eyes. In turn, Lance doesn’t mention what Matt confessed to him once, after everybody else had long gone to bed and the two of them were left around the table, reeling from Nacxela.

“Keith, he—he was going to give himself up. He was ready, Lance. If Lotor hadn’t—” Matt had shaken his head. “We’d be down one more man in the fight.”

Lance had lain awake in his bed then, staring up at the ceiling and wondering why, when he thought of making the same sacrifice as Keith, he didn’t mind it so much on him. When had he stopped caring?

Lance hopes, sincerely hopes, that Keith wouldn’t do that again, but he never brings it up again because how can he? He’s such a hypocrite, really.

Keith can only ask himself the same.

One might think they’d break individually. A chip here, a crack there. When one blow after another meant for someone else turns into nightmares that aren’t calmed as easily as they used to be. It’s almost cruel in its irony though, how in sync they’ve always been. Tit for tat, them.

They’re back out in the universe, answering the distress signal of a planet a good few systems away when it happens. An explosion rocks the lions, sends the both of them down for a good few minutes.

They come to eventually, and the battle is hard won.

For Lance, there’s the memory of something almost like a friend floating in front of them, and then searing blackness that ends days later as he stumbles out of a pod. For Keith, there’s the weight of a thousand cuts when all he wants is Shiro.

They meet that night.

Both of them are fresh out of the Garrison med bay, skin like ash and the taste of what had almost been flaky in their mouths. It’s almost eery, the way Lance’s hand slots into Keith’s like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and yet there’s no emotion accompanying the action. It’s all empty, meaningless.

They walk to Lance’s room, sit on his floor and stare at each other, a thousand unsaid almosts hanging between them.

“I can’t do this,” Keith whispers first. Lance—never still, never motionless—has his fingers drumming lightly on his thigh.

“Yeah?” he murmurs. The utterance is neither approval nor condemnation.

It’s a nice thing that Keith can’t be bothered asking for either. He doesn’t even respond.

“You never realize how close death is until it won’t leave you alone. I thought I was okay with that, as long as everyone was safe.” Lance sighs. His fingers haven’t stopped moving. A pause. “You think we’d be better at this whole heart to heart thing. I mean, it’s not like we’re hiding how hard it is to care when you think you’re helping the team.”

Keith huffs a laugh that smacks of fire and their fellow paladins screaming through the comms. A beat.

“What do you think the Garrison will say?”

It’s like that, drained and so fucking tired of the constant fear and wondering which goodbye will be the last, that Keith doesn’t even have to ask for him to clarify. “They’ll be mad. Yell at us about it.”

Lance nods.

It’s so weird, how not caring turns into the only thing that matters being the not caring, and then everything starts to matter so much. It’s so weird how death gets a wave and a slap on the back when it passes by, but when it arrives with purpose, that’s something to fear.

“Haven’t we done enough yet?” Lance asks, standing like the conversation’s over now that the unsaid decision is mostly said. He takes his shirt off and strips down to his boxers, not bothering with any of his skincare as he crosses to the bed and rubs his hands over his eyes.

Keith follows his lead but keeps his top on. Lance holds up the covers for him to slip under.

It’s not the first time they’ve done this, exactly, but before it’s always been with a kiss and some kind of lightness between them. Holding onto each other’s shoulders as the lights flick off just feels like it’s all there’s left to do now.

The discussion doesn’t stop. “It’ll never be enough. There’s always another battle to fight,” Keith responds, voice lacking inflection.

Lance nods. “Wanna’ ignore the alarm?”

Keith shrugs. “Shiro’ll be mad.”

Before, that might’ve meant no. Lance sighs, closing his eyes and ignoring the tickle of Keith’s hair on his cheek. It’s gotten shaggier since being with Krolia. Keith thinks of what his mother would say should she know that he has so little left to give now.

“I’m glad you’re with me tonight,” Lance says. Keith smiles from above his head. There’s a little flicker of love in that, but to feel it in full force is too exhausting. A little love is good. Between the two of them, a little means there’s at least some semblance of realization when it’s too much. That’s important to them right now.

“Me too,” Keith responds.

Lotor sees the tip of his tail, matted though it is with grime and gunk, curl around his paws as he sits on the edge of a well-worn path. It is a strange thing, he thinks, to have lost the blades he once favored for furls of claws camouflaged in tufts of dirty, white fur. He’d done something cruel to the witch—the longer he stays as he is the less sure he becomes of what it was—and this is his consequence. Lotor was angry about that once and planned revenge.

He was never very skilled at listening to anybody he didn’t like, and the witch’s commands for selflessness and devotion that would allow him to return to what he was were lost on ears burning hot with shame and rage. He had watched her friend, a fisherman with a shack on the water, in hopes of vengeance exacted indirectly.

Lotor’s ears twitch with the weight of familiar footsteps and wonders when, as he falls into line behind tan ankles that are normally entrenched in the sea, he stopped caring about that. The fisherman, Lance, is in a good mood today, or at least Lotor thinks he is. He contentedly listens to him sing in a tongue he didn’t know even when he was human. The melody mingles effortlessly with the salt in the air like everything Lance does. The song stops for a moment as Lance crouches and his blue eyes—the same shade as the ocean rolling in at their backs—crinkle fondly as his fingers go to scratch behind Lotor’s ears. “How are you today?”

Lotor doesn’t deign it necessary to give the friend of the witch, his lonely fisherman, anything in response other than his cool, returning gaze. Lance merely laughs, the sound warm like mid-afternoon sand, and straightens back up. “You’re so cold, cariño. You wound me,” he teases as they walk back together to his hovel. Lotor admits that it is small, but Lance is the only one ever inside (he remembers the wistfulness in his fisherman’s eyes as he stares at letters penned from a land far away, and Lotor has never seen Lance receive a new correspondence) and so it is a good home for him. For them. When the moon rises over the waves and after Lotor is absolutely sure that Lance is slumbering away, the bed is soft as he curls up at its foot. Lotor will never admit that when the weather is cold and the crude walls don’t quite keep out the chill, the press of Lance’s back against his smaller form is comforting too.

Lance sets what little he’s brought back, both from the market and the witch’s dwelling, down on the small table he eats at. Lotor is aware that Lance visits her when he can afford to go into town, and he does not go with. Said trip has kept Lance from going to the ocean today, which means Lotor did not have to arrange himself on his boat and do his best not to get his paws wet. He is pleased with that and to see nothing worth notice in his haul, no charms or clusters of herbs the witch might have sent Lance’s way that would keep Lotor out. “How was the beach while I was gone?” Lance asks.

Lotor turns away and settles in his corner of the room, atop a threadbare rug Lance has set out for him and he only grudgingly uses. (This is what Lotor tells himself.)

He hears another peal of laughter in response. “As friendly as ever, cariño.” Lotor does not know what cariño means, but the affection with which the endearment is uttered never fails to make warmth Lotor hasn’t felt in a long time (if ever) bloom in his chest.

Lance does not say anything more and though Lotor closes his yellow eyes in an imitation of sleep, he listens to the steady sound of a knife on a board as Lance prepares their dinner. Lotor never lets Lance know that he listens because then Lance would know that he is worth more to Lotor than the food and shelter he provides. That knowledge is something dangerous, even like this.

Lotor’s tail twitches, sending ripples across the placid surface of his illusion, and with his back turned he is unsure if Lance notices. Lotor supposes it does not matter. His fisherman assumes him to be as aloof as ever, another creature to flash a fleeting smile at despite the fact that he returns to his small, hollow home every day alone. Lotor is not so proud to ignore the sadness he sees on Lance’s face, but he can and does avoid the twisting of his gut in guilt at the thought that he had once been set on etching pain alongside it. The witch makes flames lick at his core, but Lance is quick to douse the inferno in tender smiles and jokes he cracks in empty air. Lotor wishes sometimes that someone could be there to laugh at them. Lotor even dares to hope, on the rare occasion that he is optimistic, that he could be that someone.

Lotor hears the tinny ring of his bowl being set on the floor and pads across the room to seat himself by it. He retains enough from when he oversaw the town Lance lies on the outskirts of, enough from when he was strong and wealthy and wanted for nothing, to know that it would be rude to eat without Lance. His fisherman is somber and kind and has earned that much for housing Lotor, as well as the mercurial and formerly malevolent moods accompanying him.

The smell of spices wafts through the air and Lotor’s nose wrinkles as he waits for Lance to finish cooking his meal. Always fish, but Lotor has seen that Lance is able to change the simplicity of his catch into a variety of flavors. He always sets Lotor’s food down early, though he doesn’t have to feed him in the first place and has grasped by now that Lotor demands to have dinner with him. Lotor wonders if things would be different if he had paid any mind to Lance before everything changed. He likes to think that he could’ve acknowledged his goodness, but the version of himself he knows now is worlds, entire universes away from who he was then.

The witch (when he lets go of more of his anger he might be able to call her Allura again) has altered him in more ways than one. Lotor is not sure whether to be thankful that such a curse brought him to the sea with the man in front of him, or to be angry that all the companionship he can provide is that of a pet when he knows Lance deserves and desires so much more.

The witch is Lance’s friend. Lotor knows this and also knows he is her closest confidant, but the distance between them is still too great to fill the gap in Lance’s life.

Lance comes to sit at the table and Lotor finally allows himself to eat, calmed by the occasional scrape of worn utensils across a similarly battered plate. His teeth are precise as they taste the fruit of Lance’s labor, and when his stomach is full he sits and watches Lance finish. His eyes are loving but oh-so-empty when he looks to Lotor. “Sometimes I swear you’re more human than cat, cariño.”

Lotor finds himself wishing more than anything that he could tell Lance that he is right.

That night Lotor allows himself to nestle his lithe form against Lance, though there is no draft to speak of. He comes into such a place uncertain if his fisherman is asleep, and still, Lotor allows himself to nod off alongside him. Behind closed eyelids and in fleeting dreams Lotor is reminded of the witch’s conditions that he has long forgotten in his fury, conditions speaking of love and vulnerability. Perhaps in the morning, when Lotor’s long fur has made way for hair and his eyes have returned to their natural indigo, he will remember.

The irony of the situation, the way the hold vaguely resembled that of a mother cat toting a kitten, was not lost on Lance. He hummed and wished he didn’t have a prosthetic arm ready to blister the flesh off his body and cauterize it all in the same instant. If not, he might’ve at least been allowed the simple stress reliever of tapping his foot. “So, is this, like, an existential crisis or something, or—”

Lance felt the metal growing warm and bit his tongue.

“Shut up for once in your life, Lance, and listen for a second. I’ll only say this once.” Lance swallowed thickly but wasn’t feeling confident enough to push his limits. The thing that wore Shiro’s face growled in his ear. “Nobody else on the castle knows that we’re here, nobody is coming to save you. That just leaves you and I. The leader of the group, and his useless right hand.”

Lance ignored how the dig at his position on the team stung and rolled his eyes. “Wow, really feeling the love,” he sneered before he could stop himself. He felt a single fingertip heat, and yelped for the moment it scalded his skin before Shiro pulled it away. Lance knew that it was a mere warning of the arm’s full capabilities.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Lance didn’t allow himself to make some smartass comment about the pointlessness of rhetorical questions. The burn smarted irritatingly. He sounded less calm and malicious when he spoke again. Lance tried not to sweat at the threat annoyance provided as it crept into his tone. Annoyance, anger, was volatile. Lance didn’t want anybody holding him hostage feeling too capricious. He did his best to be a more docile prisoner.

“For someone as stupid as you can be, you’re perceptive as hell about the strangest things. It’s too bad for you that you picked up on me, or rather, who I’m not.” Lance pretty much already knew it, but the admission still sent shivers down his spine. “So that just begs the question of what to do with a pest like you.” Lance swallowed and felt too much pride when he choked back a whimper. The thing masquerading as Lance’s hero seemed sadistically pleased with himself as he continued. “I could just kill you and be done with it. What do you think, another accident with the airlock?” Lance’s heart skipped a beat. How did he even know about that? “Training on a higher level than you should be? That’d be messier, of course, but it’ll get the job done all the same. It depends on how much farther you stretch my patience.” Lance desperately fought back the tears trying to rise in his eyes.

He’d always been chatty, it was how he dealt with anything the world threw his way. Kids teasing him for his accent? He cussed them out in the most colorful array of Spanglish ever brought into existence. Got a bad score on a test? Lance recited the prayers his religious grandmother had instilled him until garish red marks on paper were nothing but a blurry memory. At the moment, he just did his best not to sob.

“Or, I could trap you in a pod and ship you off to the Galra, telling the team all about your betrayal. The druids can squeeze just about anything you know out of you, given time. What do you think?” Lance bit his lip. He wasn’t sure if it was just another question he wasn’t supposed to answer in his monologue and wasn’t willing to risk the kind of wounds the thing holding him could create if he broke his silence.

Shiro chuckled, and out of the corner of Lance’s eye, he caught an unnatural, violet glow to the same grey eyes that had once looked to Lance with affection. “It’s alright, I’m asking. You can speak.”

Lance’s voice was shakier than he would have liked when it came warbling from his throat. “I don’t know. You’ve provided me with so many great options; I can’t possibly choose just one.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from making a sound when two fingers this time left burns on the tan surface of Lance’s neck, both worse than the first. “How about this?” Shiro began softly, dangerously. “You tell me which you prefer. You suffer alone under the witches’ hands, or Allura doesn’t have a shoulder to cry on when they find your body. Hunk won’t have you there to crack a joke and make him feel better. Pidge—”

Lance couldn’t stand it and his horror spilled from his lips in a clumsy shout. “No! No, I’ll go, just don’t make them go through that, or any pain. I’m the only one you have a problem with.” Lance would curse himself every day he spent strapped to a table, for not telling someone, anyone that he thought something was wrong with Shiro—not Shiro—before it had come to this.

He could all but feel Shiro’s menacing grin mangling his kind face. “Oh, I don’t think you mean that, Lance.”

Panic seized him mercilessly, squeezing his heart in its vice. “Of course I do! They’re my team, I would never—”

Lance’s short scream abruptly pierced through his indignation.

“You didn’t let me finish.” Shiro waited for Lance’s pained pants to get softer before continuing. “If you want them spared, you’ll beg. You’re always so concerned about the wellbeing of everyone, you’re not good at listening to your leader.” Lance couldn’t stop the soft sound of fear from spilling past his lips. It was humiliating, this thing was already stealing Lance’s life, was only delaying the inevitable, why wasn’t it enough? Another blaze of heat from the arm and Lance howled. “I’m waiting.”

Lance choked on his own tongue, the pain blurring his vision and slowly crushing his fight. “Please,” he whispered, the word strangled. “Please, spare them. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt them.”

He’d come to with his hands tied harshly behind him, enough so to warrant a trip to the pods. His knees would surely be bruised as well with the way Lance put his weight on them to keep from being slammed around too much. His head pounded and the fact that the ride was the live antonym of smooth wasn’t helping. The irony of it all, the fact that it wasn’t even the Galra who had taken him down, was cruel and frankly, was pissing Lance off.

There was always a risk of the locals being caught unaware when they tried to infiltrate planet-based bases, but this went far beyond the normal shouting matches and light death threats they all occasionally endured.

He felt the truck slow to a crawl, and ground his teeth together. It was a good thing he’d been having so many races with Keith to training, and then with Pidge to the kitchen when he’d gone to the Blade and Hunk stress baked to cope. If he acted groggily he could maybe get the jump on them. He’d use his thick head (the same one teachers continually reminded him of throughout his life), bring it up against some chins, kick some genitalia, and hopefully be on his merry way into the same wilderness he’d been captured in.

No such luck. Lance knew himself to be a very good actor, but it didn’t matter anyway. They shoved him onto the ground and put a boot on his back, crackling voices being translated to let Lance understand what snippets of conversation he caught as he tried to catch his breath.

“—vitals—”

“—elevated heart rate—”

“How much—”

Lance felt something lock around his ankles too, and his chin was grasped by clawed fingers that forced him to stare into fly like, bulbous eyes. He couldn’t help but recoil. Lance had seen a lot of shit, but the universe continued to surprise him.

More of the crackling, though Lance noted the sound reminded him distinctly of laughter. “Surprise, paladin. Raiders caught sight of your lion coming in. Imagine that, a Voltron paladin here on our little rock! Exciting, isn’t it?”

Lance flashed a winning smile. “Well, someone has to make up for your incredible lack of good looks.” Lance’s face was dropped roughly back onto the floor. He didn’t allow himself to groan.

“Silence. You’re lucky we got you before the Galra. You know how many buyers there are looking to get their hands on one of your ilk? So small and beautiful, yet capable of so much destruction. Voltron is a mystery to us all.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “As much as I appreciate your admiration for my good looks,” he hoped he didn’t sound as pathetic as he looked, face mushed on the ground, “why don’t you just let me go, and we can let bygones be bygones? I don’t know if you’ve realized, but I’m trying to save the universe, which includes you, dumbass, and my replacement’s got a hot date.”

The alien and his strange eyes seemed amused. “You underestimate the thrall of the empire, paladin. Not every Galra is military. There are plenty of collectors ready to pay up.”

Lance’s lip curled in disgust. “Enjoy it while it lasts, pal. Sooner or later you’ll all get blown sky high, by the Galra or Voltron. We aren’t really in the business of letting people who kidnap us get off easy. You ever seen an Olkari prison?”

Fly dude, as Lance had elected to call him, didn’t seem bothered by the threat. Lance could hear more movement and crackling behind him, though wasn’t in a position to see anything. “You’re hardly intimidating, paladin.” He reached forward, again with those claws. Lance drew back again, or at least as best as he could. It didn’t deter the creature, who tapped the side of Lance’s neck, or rather, something on it.

Lance’s brow furrowed in confusion, and then a muscle in his cheek twitched in anger. “What the hell did you to me?” he growled, becoming aware of the protrusion very suddenly. It must’ve been able to keep track of him too, if the conversation he heard earlier was in reference to him. It was the easiest explanation for why they knew he wasn’t asleep.

His fury sent fly dude into another grating fit of maybe-laughter. Lance still wasn’t sure, but he did hate it. “You’re a new recruit for the trade, paladin. Buyers don’t like things they can’t control.” On cue, Lance gasped in agony as splitting pain all but enveloped him entirely. He writhed in his bounds, head flinging back while he desperately pressed his lips together in an effort to remain silent. When the pain stopped and Lance was done blinking back tears, he felt the alien’s hand caress the thing set into him patronizingly. Lance felt something hot and reckless spark within him. He dipped his head and bit as hard as he could.

The skin was surprisingly soft, which, gross, but effective. Lance spat out the blood he’d gotten on his tongue while fly dude howled and shook his hand, which was apparently his chosen coping method. He turned back to Lance viciously, and though he’d definitely just fucked himself over, his smug grin couldn’t be smacked from his face, proven when creature tried. “You insolent little—” it seethed, before taking a deep breath and allowing a sinister smirk of his own to spread across his lips. “No matter. We’ll just include extra equipment along with you.” Lance resisted the urge to swallow nervously. He didn’t like the sound of that.

Fly dude tossed his head over his shoulder. The sound he made, which might’ve been a name, didn’t translate. “Grab the silencer!” he snarled, looking very darkly pleased with himself as he stared down at Lance, who felt fear grip him more violently than he wanted. Fear meant desperation, which meant sloppiness. He tried to calm himself down, as another of the aliens came forward with a small piece of metal and fabric. Lance had a sinking feeling about what its purpose could be, and his suspicions were confirmed when fly dude revealed a remote Lance didn’t realize he even had. A press of the button had the same pain shooting through Lance, and he crumpled pathetically. Later, he would hate himself for it. At the moment, he was hurting too badly to even notice.

The hand Lance had sunk his teeth into was surprisingly deft, fastening the device around his jaw with a faint stinging sensation. Lance panted as the thing in his neck stopped acting like it was going to kill him, glaring daggers at fly dude. He wished more than anything for his bayard, to put a hole through his ugly head.

The alien seemed sated. “That should do it,” he remarked, as though Lance suddenly wasn’t a person, something worthy of being properly communicated with. He’d been reduced to an object with a mere muzzle, and if Lance wasn’t pissed off before, he was now. He fought hard against his binds, anger giving him strength renewed. It didn’t do anything but aggravate his skin. Fly dude was laughing fucking again. Lance wondered if it was humane to rip out someone’s vocal chords before eviscerating them. It didn’t take much thinking to answer that question. Lance didn’t care. He’d never killed, not truly, never for revenge or anything other than self-defense, but damn if he wasn’t filled with the desire now. The alien was sauntering out. Lance’s only consolation was the blood he could see drying on his hand.

He stepped out of the staff bathroom that served as his dressing room, feeling just as ridiculous as he was sure he looked. The temperature difference between the poorly air-conditioned bathroom to the fan laden main area was startling, but not unwelcome. If it wasn’t Matt’s birthday, who had specifically requested that the mascot be out—the bastard, he had to know Shiro would blackmail Keith into doing it—he would’ve told Shiro to go fuck himself. It was far too late for that blessed course of action at the moment though, so he did nothing but throw his shoulders back and try to at least walk like it wasn’t completely ridiculous to be making cat ears a fashion statement.

Lance and Allura had told him before that his normal jacket and variety of fanny packs apparently weren’t cute either. Still, when Lance tripped on his way home after a night out he gushed every time over the Finding Nemo band-aids Keith kept on hand in them specifically for such occasions.

For as lithe and powerful as Lance was in the water, he was an absolute disaster on land. Keith was unswervingly convinced that he would’ve been a national title holder if the flu hadn’t seized him the day before he boarded his plane for the comp and Blaytz hadn’t let him go. It was still a sore subject, but on the bright side, he was the only one in his marine bioengineering class to ace the final.

Keith had brought him cup after cup of coffee—loaded with nauseating amounts of cream and sugar like Lance liked it—while he pored over his notes and books for hours on end. Lance was letting nothing else concerning water escape his grasp. That kind of bull-headed determination was part of the reason Keith loved him so damn much, and he tried to remember that when Lance cooed at the sight of him walking into the actual bar and took a burst of photos on his phone.

Keith tried to shove the camera down, but he was pretty sure Lance caught that too and didn’t relish the thought of what he could photoshop with the image of his angry, lion-ed self. “You are the worst,” he groused, to which Lance tousled the synthetic mane framing the apex of the suit. It only made Keith grouchier to feel that, and not his warm hands on his actual head.

“Yeah, but you’re adorable in that thing, and it gives you better hair!” Keith did his best not to show his amusement, but Lance’s teasing remarks about his hair were an ongoing joke between them. Keith had briefly gotten self-conscious over it, but the second Lance heard the buzz of a razor he knocked it from his hand like it was poison and pressed a thousand kisses all over Keith’s face. Keith hadn’t been too bothered by it since.

“The worst,” he reiterated.

Lance merely laughed and grabbed his paw. “Ceci, Emil, come look at Black!” he crowed. Keith braced himself, every muscle in his body going tense. He loved Lance’s family, which was just as loud and chaotic and beautiful as Lance himself, and secretly hoped he could one day be a part of it, even if only by marriage. He’d yet to tell Lance. Pidge said he had no balls. Keith pointed out that neither of them had money. She told him that it didn’t change the fact that he still had no balls. Two masses shot across the room in blurs of curly brown hair and flung themselves into Keith’s chest. If they’d been bullets, Keith would’ve been dead.

As it was, he just fell on his ass.

This appeared to utterly delight them. “Soft!” Ceci cried, petting Keith’s cheek fascinatedly. Emil had busied himself with the paws, which he shoved against his forehead to apparently check the assessment for himself. Keith would tell Lance to tell Veronica that they needed a thorough bath later. The suit had seen far too many boys in bro tanks come through the place, and though Shiro claimed to wash it, Keith knew that sort of horror wasn’t something easily cleansed by soap and water.

Emil giggled. “And warm. Like Keith’s warm!” he declared loudly, curling up on Black’s, ergo Keith’s, chest. Ceci rubbed his ears between her little fingers instead. Keith glared at Lance through the massive eyes of the suit. He hoped he got the message.

Lance grinned. “I may have let it slip that you were taking over for Black tonight since it’s a special occasion for Matt. Ceci, Emil, have you told him happy birthday yet? I’m sure he would love to hear your super special song.”

Two heads shot up, brown eyes gleaming with interest. “Matt!” they cried and rushed off Keith to go give Matt the worst, most purposefully off key and grating rendition of the birthday song to ever burden the world. Keith, stuck in an amalgamation of cheap, kinda itchy fabric, was feeling vindicated.

Lance offered his hand to Keith, who took it gratefully. “As excited as ever,” he told him while brushing dirt off the white belly of the costume. Lance smiled fondly, blue eyes melting as he stared off in the direction his niece and nephew had gone. Keith lived for when that expression was directed at him.

“Yeah, but it’s part of what makes them so fun to have around. They’re such kids, they’re the best.” He’d yet to let go of Keith’s hand—paw? The lack of distinction was frightening. He tugged him towards the main party with it. “Come on babe, they’re all excited to see you. Matt made a special request for Black to be here, you know.” Keith rolled his eyes. He could imagine how pleased Lance looked, lips spread deviously into the shit eating grin he wore far too often for comfort. He let him lead him regardless, smiling like an idiot behind his suit.

“Matt, Black’s out!” The boy turned, rainbow glasses balanced on the tip of his nose while Ceci and Emil hung off his arms. He mimicked Lance’s smirk faultlessly.

Matt rushed forward, one second by the tables with everyone else, and the next swamping Keith in a crushing hug. “Black! You’re as fluffy as ever.”

Keith snickered, and after wishing him happy birthday quickly, responded to his good-natured mocking with a very deliberate pat on the back. “Someone spilled Mike’s on this last weekend.” Matt’s expression twisted in revulsion. He’d had a bad experience with that his freshman year, and nobody let him live it down.

He pulled back, eyebrows furrowed with his displeasure. “You are the least chipper birthday mascot I’ve ever seen, and we hired a dragon for one of Pidge’s parties.”

Lance cut in with his cheerful opinion. “Dragons are cool!”

Matt shook his head. “I mean, yeah, but Pidge made him give her piggyback rides the entire afternoon, and it was raining.”

Lance frowned while one meticulously plucked brow arched. “Couldn’t you guys have just taken things inside?”

Another shake of Matt’s head. “She wanted it to be an adventure.”

Keith shuddered in sympathy, murmuring, “Pidge really has always been a demon.”

“My mom gave the dude a really good tip.”

Keith wondered how much he’d have to pester Shiro to get the same. The conversation likely would’ve continued—Lance liked dragons almost as much as sharks and was always hungry for details—but Hunk waved and Lance was far more interested in that. Keith watched him bound over. Lance was likely elated at the idea of sharing the recently gathered information with his best friend. His enthusiasm was endearing to Keith when he wasn’t harassing him about his current predicament.

If anybody asked later, and Shiro did with no small amount of mirth in his voice, he blamed the suit.

Lance, lithe, selectively observant Lance and the love of Keith’s life, ducked out of the way of the low hanging bar with ease. In his defense, Keith had been telling Shiro since he opened the place to fix it, and he was occupied trying not to trip over the tail nestled awkwardly over his ass.

Keith’s head slammed into it with a resounding thud, and he backpedaled while the world blurred for a few seconds.

Keith vaguely saw a shape wearing something green turn to face him with a lowly murmured oh fuck and then there were arms on his shoulders, steadying him while the green person came up and cupped his face in his hands. “Keith? Babe? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Keith blinked a few times and stared, saying with unwavering certainty, “Four.”

The person in green, who turned out to be Lance when his vision cleared, let out a sigh of what Keith hoped was relief. “He’s fine,” Lance announced, and Keith felt the hands on his shoulders let go of him. He stumbled a little, into Lance’s arms. “Probably,” he amended quickly. He didn’t remove the support again, and Keith allowed himself to sag onto a familiar broad shoulder.

“Keith, are you okay? Do you feel alright?” Lance fretted.

In the background Keith could hear someone, likely Veronica or Lance’s mom, shushing Ceci and Emil, who were very concerned for Black slash Keith. “Yeah, I’m good,” he told him, and mostly that felt true aside from a bit of lingering dizziness that Keith felt fading quickly. “Let’s just sit for a bit?”

Lance nodded, and Keith cursed the bulky head he wore not for the first time for prohibiting him from giving Lance a kiss to reassure him. “Sounds good.” He turned to face Allura, who had crept up on them fast with her hands planted on her hips. She dealt with dumb, vaguely injured boys a lot with her physical training thing for the school lacrosse team. Lance turned to her while helping Keith walk back to the break room. He felt like protesting that he’d just left it, but refrained.

“I’m gonna’ go with Keith and give him a breather. Tell everyone he’s fine and not to worry, he just needs some ice for a bit.”

She nodded as she scrutinized Keith through his hideous garments, and didn’t argue. “Of course. Feel better soon, Keith. Don’t try to power through it if you’re not alright. We don’t need you fainting on us again.” Specifically, she dealt with a dumb, vaguely injured Keith a lot with her physical training thing for the school lacrosse team.

Keith waved her off and allowed Lance to escort him out of public view, though not without some of his usual, token grumblings. “We could’ve sat outside. I didn’t even get to see your mom. Or my mom.” Their friend group and the accompanying relatives had gotten tangled up in one another throughout their college experience, with several instances of plus ones that families latched onto with vigor. The plus ones from before got official invites the next time, and the few friends originally tagging along turned into the seven of them going together everywhere. Families mingled, and it was with that that the kid-friendly celebration was scheduled for this afternoon, and then the seven of them had decided they were going to drive to the lake for something more, literally, intoxicating later that night.

Lance would be complaining of bug bites for days afterward, Keith was sure, but as his boyfriend settled him onto the couch gingerly he found that he didn’t care too much. “For someone who is as clumsy as you are outside of a pool, you’re being really gentle.”

Lance’s chest all but puffed out in pride. “Course. Anything for you, babe.” Keith did his best not to blush at the title. Lance used it casually and it didn’t really make Keith pause most of the time. Even so, on occasion, he remembered that woah, they were dating and Lance called him babe and it got him all flustered.

Lance had already lifted the head of the ensemble off, but when he went for the rest Keith shook his head. “It’s cold back here. Shiro has too many fans running,” he explained, and so the admittedly horrible get up stayed put. Lance hummed and rubbed his hand, something he did often because he almost always was craving contact, but it wasn’t always appropriate. Keith liked the feeling a lot, and not just because Lance was almost always warm. A comfortable silence fell while Lance stared him down and Keith ignored the pounding ache forming from his head. It wasn’t a surprise by any stretch of the imagination, but still annoying.

He frowned. “Can I still drink tonight?” Lance’s brow furrowed. Keith was genuinely concerned. There were few things better than kissing Lance on the beach while the sun went down, soft lips melding with his own perfectly to let Keith have a taste of Lance’s momentarily forgotten Summer Shandy.

“Shit, I don’t know. I’ll text Coran? This is definitely a weird enough situation for him to have expertise on.”

Keith laughed, ignoring the sizable lump rising smack dab in the middle of his forehead. “Sounds good.”

A few moments of quiet, again, and Lance giggled under his breath. “Hey, can I call your welt Yorak?”

Keith tensed. He hated Krolia for telling that story. “No.”

Another laugh from Lance and Keith found it hard to stay mad when that sound sent him up to cloud nine. He remembered the look Hunk and Pidge had shared a few weeks ago as Keith’s eyes dutifully followed Lance as he walked out of the room.

He’d become aware of their smug judgment, and heard Pidge’s resultant snort. “Whipped,” she’d said then. Keith almost wished he could deny it.

Lance pecked his cheek. “Kidding, kidding. I wouldn’t do that to you.” Regardless of the reassurance that he wouldn’t harass Keith any further about Krolia’s failures at naming him,

Lance continued to examine the swelling before he sat up with a start. “Oh! I forgot your ice. Be right back, babe.” Lance shot over to the freezer squeezed into the corner of the room, grabbing a Ziploc from on top of it and filling it up. It wasn’t the first time someone had gotten caught across the head at the place. Lance grabbed a few paper towels to wrap around it in order to dull the sheer shock of cold and brought it back to Keith.

He pressed it to his skin gratefully, smiling at Lance. “Thanks,” he told him and, after a moment of hesitation, tacked on, “love you.” Lance absolutely beamed, and sent butterflies in Keith’s stomach erupting. There was no holding back the flush that settled across his cheeks.

Pidge placed two small hands on her hips, scrunching down the fabric of her oversized NASA tee, a gift from Matt who originally had taken it from Shiro and was then stolen by Pidge because it was already spaghetti stained, and was therefore ideal for when her magic exploded in her face. The stranger who had knocked into her was looking a little sheepish, holding out the baggie.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. You dropped--er--I guess I dropped these--uh--things. Here you go.” Pidge snatched it from his grip, stuffing it hastily back into her cauldron despite the offset crack she could see going down the side.

“You are so lucky nothing happened to them,” she snapped, doing a headcount to be sure she had as many as she needed. Allura made fair trades, but never for even a little less than she was owed. Upon finding herself one short, she huffed and got down on her hands and knees. When she looked up she saw the face of the stranger staring down at her in bemusement. She huffed irritatedly.

“Are you not gonna’ help? I need one more of these,” she announced, pushing her useless glasses up her nose. Matt claimed they’d helped him get a feel for his magic when he was younger, bought from a store across town to service him like training wheels on a bike. Pidge was just glad that mostly nobody knew their purpose because while it was embarrassing to still have to use such rudimentary techniques, her already poor abilities only got worse without them.

The boy dutifully stooped down to her level, scanning the dirty concrete for any spillings strewn across its grey surface.

“Charming, aren’t you?” he asked as Pidge’s continued search came up empty handed, letting out a colorful stream of curses as her chosen method of coping. She still thought it was better than what Matt would’ve come up with in all of his “jinkies” and “funky fudge nuggets.” When Shiro was over and the three of them played video games together he preferred to listen to Pidge, or so he claimed. Pidge resisted the urge to snap her cauldron in half.

“I’ve been told,” she grumbled. The stranger laughed, and she wanted to snap him in half too. It had taken a damn long time to find a troll willing to part with what could make a very nice dinner.

“Where can I find somebody else as lovely as yourself?” Pidge reached for her Ziploc, counting again while her tongue poked out the side of her mouth in concentration.

“Try the local sewer,” she replied and grinned as she found she had merely miscounted. That nugget of luck wasn’t enough to brighten her interaction with the stranger, but it sure did make her future better.

“Aha!” she exclaimed. “Miscount.” She blamed the glasses. They were good for magic, not so much for when she actually needed to see. Still, Pidge got into enough standoffs with the goblins living in the nearby dumpster to warrant wearing them constantly. She turned back to the stranger who, to his credit, didn’t appear too put out by her snark.

“Again, sorry about running into you and spilling your stuff. I’m Lance.” He stuck out his hand, flashing a crooked smile. Pidge crossed her arms.

“I’m marginally satisfied despite the state of my,” she glanced down at her shit excuse of a container, “Bag. Thank you for your help,” she told him stiffly. Lance blinked a few times in response but shrugged.

“Whatever. Good luck with whatever you’ve got there, sewer rat,” he told her with a nod to her wares. “Also, I think you missed your chance to walk.” Pidge looked over her shoulder to see her last two out of thirty seconds tick away and was annoyed all over again. She swiveled back to glare at Lance but was interrupted by a blur of red slamming onto the rooftop of a neighboring Thai restaurant.

“I’m winning!” the blur yelled, and Lance lit up again, a devilish grin crowding his cheeks.

“Oh you just wait until I get back up there, mullet!” he shouted, and Pidge dazedly watched him shimmy up the pipe on the side of the wall to chase after him. She shook her head. Boys were dumb, and she needed her ingredients for her potion. She irritatedly slammed her hand back onto the button to the crosswalk in a motion that was most certainly not painful. She waited for another turn, and in the meantime clutched her cauldron to her chest. She didn’t care who she had to watch jump across rooftops as long as she got to Allura’s in one piece.

Pidge had the hindsight to know that she needed to buy more than one brew’s worth of ingredients, but it still didn’t make it any less frustrating to be smelling broiled newt for the third time that week. She had plenty of magic in her--everyone said she had potential, why it couldn’t be accessed was beyond her--it just happened that most of the time it blew up in her face rather than doing anything useful.

She sighed as she took her spoon and stirred the pot. Pidge didn’t actually have a cauldron, other than the one that had been reluctantly retired to a shelf of other odd trinkets in her room after the incident with Lance. Matt and her dad did, but both Pidge and her mom decided that was just because they were nerds, and that some containers they picked up from Walmart would do the trick.

She perked up as she heard the doorbell ring. Matt had mentioned Shiro was coming over with a friend or two, and she nudged Gunther, who was sprawled at her feet. Her mom’s familiar, and even he was better at magic than Pidge.

“Could you get that, boy? I really wanna’ make this batch work.” The dog rolled over on his belly and wagged his tail in the general direction of the door. It unlocked with a click, and Pidge shouted over her shoulder.

“It’s open!” Upon doing so she was greeted with the sound of Shiro’s typical, polite entry, and then a bickering that reminded her precisely why she couldn’t use her awful excuse for a purse. She knew those two, or three voices since they’d apparently roped Shiro into the discussion along with them.

“C’mon Shiro I totally beat him. Just because I was on ground level doesn’t mean I didn’t win,” Lance argued, bustling into the kitchen while Pidge gripped her spoon so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“I told you and Keith to stop doing that,” he argued, completely ignoring Lance’s point. “Just because you’ve got luck doesn’t mean you aren’t going to fall, especially across all the balconies and piping you guys like.” Lance emitted a dramatic sigh, draping himself over the chair.

“I’m fine! You and my mom, really. Where’s Matt anywa-” Pidge’s eyes narrowed, meeting his own. Lance smiled.

“If it isn’t the sewer rat.” Pidge sighed, turning her back to her brew for a moment.

“And pray tell, what brings you here?” she asked and yelped as a bubble from the frothing mixture popped and a few drops landed on her arm.

“What are you doing here?” Lance responded, and Pidge smirked.

“I asked first.” Lance sighed, sulking as he looked to Keith and Shiro for guidance. Shiro shrugged, and Keith was no help to his cause.

“She did.” Lance pouted, turning back to Pidge.

“I’m meeting up with Matt,” he explained, going to stand at Pidge’s side while he stared down at the faintly glowing green goop she was stirring. “But I am far more interested in whatever the hell that is. Keith, Shiro, come look! What kind of magic Pinterest bullshit is this?” Lance didn’t seem to mind the atrocious smell wafting up from the concoction--a result of the fermented lemur oil that was a necessary ingredient.

Shiro walked over at a respectful pace, and Keith ran a little faster to let himself slide into position via his socks on the linoleum. Pidge gritted her teeth and did her best not to laugh upon watching Shiro’s face twist up into something that said he was trying to be supportive but was finding it difficult with the stench accosting his nostrils. Keith was not as diplomatic in his response.

“What the fuck, Pidge?” She shrugged and reached for a pinch of fly legs. Matt always made her add that when it was needed in his own work, so she made fun of him for it. Still, even she couldn’t claim the texture was pleasant.

“I’m trying some vegan recipes out,” she lied as a chunk of some indiscriminate meat floated up to the surface before going back under in a manner that probably did not abide by the rules of physics. It was most likely her thumb of a goblin, harvested herself. The little shits could grow them back in a week or so and stuff like that didn’t cause them pain, so she didn’t feel too bad about it. Besides, they’d gotten plenty of bites in during the scuffle that broke out as a result of her gathering, not to mention the sardine cans they often launched at her when she walked by. As far as Pidge was concerned, they were even. Lance raised a brow. “I cheat sometimes.”

Keith looked ready to call her out for her lie, but Gunther suddenly sprang up and he went sprawling as a result. Lance laughed, Shiro told him he should be a little more observant, and Keith dusted himself off as he grumpily rose to his feet.

“Whatever,” he groused. “Where’s Matt anyways?” As if summoned, and maybe he was, Matt being so good at sensory spells, Pidge heard his clomping footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Here!” he announced, sliding into the kitchen in the same manner Keith had. “Sorry for letting these slinkydinkers into your workspace,” he told her, herding them out with a great sweeping motion of his arm. Pidge cringed. He’d been favoring the term a lot in the past few days, and she couldn’t decide if it was better or worse than tiddlebumps, which was what he’d been using for the fortnight or so previous.

“Out, out! Pidge is an artist, she needs her personal space,” he announced, and meandered over to the stove to see what she had working regardless of his own instruction. For once, despite the smell (which wasn’t bad, as far as potions went that weren’t made by Pidge’s grandma) it actually looked alright, better than alright if one was being generous, and Pidge was smug.

“Looking good. Did they ask anything about it?” Pidge hummed, pulling her spoon from the concoction and smiling as it dripped from the surface at the proper speed for the viscosity she was trying to achieve. She turned the burner to low.

“Lance thinks I’m a Pinterest vegan DIYer, but they seemed to buy it.” Matt laughed.

“I think he thinks you’re a lot more than that if the way he was talking about your incident at the crosswalk the other day is any indication, but whatever you say. You should probably apologize for that, by the way.” Pidge nearly dropped her spoon in surprise.

“What?” she snapped, pivoting to face him, but Matt was already moving past the doorway with a self-satisfied wave as his goodbye.

“See you later, Pidge!” he cried, and the door slammed shut behind him. Pidge wished she had Curtis available to remind her to grill Matt later about what he’d said, but for the time being she needed to bottle up the product of her work. For the first time in what felt like forever in her woefully unlucky experience with magic, things seemed to have gone right.

Pidge wasn’t quite sure how she’d missed the fact that Lance had been friends with Matt for awhile, but once he had shown up once, he kept coming back. Before, something had, apparently, always seemed to come up when they were supposed to meet at their house, so he’d never been mentioned. Pidge supposed she enjoyed the peace while it had lasted, or at least that’s what she said if anyone asked. Truth be told, sometimes it was fun to be on a walk to Allura’s and to see him hopping across rooftops, an alley cat out for a run. Pidge was aware that it was illegal and so was he, but he didn’t seem to care all that much. He told her one day,when Matt had invited her to join in on their Mario Kart game since Hunk and Keith were out on a date and couldn’t make it. Pidge grinned, settled in on the floor next to Lance, and grabbed a remote.

After arguing with Lance over the use of a wheel and if it was necessary--clearly not, the wheel was for quitters--she blue shelled him three times in a single course and while she was impressed with his ability to come back into first every time, she was more satisfied with stealing it out from right under his nose at the last second. Lance pouted, but Matt high fived her and they tucked into a half-eaten carton of Ben and Jerry’s they had lying around afterward so everything worked out alright. Besides, Lance got her back when he landed a nice clump of cookie dough right on top of her head, though he claimed it was by accident. Pidge wasn’t fooled and shook her spoon angrily at him while she swore vengeance.

“You’ll have to fight the security guard at the mall for first dibs on revenge” he teased in response. Shiro, the other addition to their party, leveled a disappointed stare his way.

“Lance, didn’t Varkon threaten to call the cops on you last time you did that?” Lance sighed, rolling his eyes.

“The food court has too many health violations, and I happen to know that he lets a particularly speedy pickpocket go when he’s not up to a chase. He can’t do shit.” Pidge interjected quickly while using a napkin to pat at the ice cream in her hair.

“How do you get away with any of that, anyway? Didn’t he catch you hopping up on the balcony after climbing the Christmas tree last year?” Lance waved her off.

“That was in the past, and yes. Keith thought I couldn’t make it without using the escalator as support, so I had to prove him wrong.” Matt’s spoon scraped the bottom of the carton obnoxiously, though he didn’t seem to care too much.

“Yeah, but be careful, dude. Just because you have freakishly good balance doesn’t mean you’re not gonna topple something over one of these days, and send you down with it.” Lance laughed.

“Yeah, I’m really worried about a traffic light caving under my weight,” he teased, Matt feigned upset, and they laughed. Pidge’s curiosity was piqued. Balance, did he say?

Pidge would just like to say, for the record, Matt was blind and she was gonna’ hold the Lance thing over his head for years. It had started on a rainy day when she’d found Lance scaling an apartment building, hands clutching at the brick and concrete while he perched atop a street lamp to get a grip. Pidge nearly had a heart attack on the spot, seeing him move with very inhuman grace on his way to the roof.

She was well aware that Lance liked the rain--he’d refuse rides home if they were close just so he could walk in it--but this was a little more then a preference for the weather. It was coming down pretty hard, and nothing could convince Pidge that the metal he stood on wasn’t slick, or that it was perfectly normal for him to keep standing, unruffled by the downpour.

She rushed over, standing at the base of the post without actually touching it. Even with her small stature, she wasn’t going to risk having Lance fall.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, getting Lance to look down as a result. It was hard to see in the rain, but she was almost certain that he took a hand off the wall to wave, which didn’t help her feel like he was any more secure.

“Hey, Pidge!” he shouted back, and Pidge cursed the way he smiled. She stamped her foot, a habit that she had picked up jokingly with Matt when they were bickering, but one that stuck. She thought she heard him laugh, and she resisted the angry grandmother in her that wanted to retort by shaking her finger aggressively.

“Get down from there! Are you insane?” Lance shrugged, or at least she thought he did.

“It’s fine! I’ve done this before!” Pidge didn’t like the sound of that. She wondered if there really was more merit in Matt’s claims about Lance endangering his own life then what she gave him credit for.

“Get down!” she commanded him in return, and the way he gripped the pole and slid down it set her on edge. Pidge was bad at pretty much all magic. Creating and casting spells, removing curses, brewing potions, the whole nine yards. However, she prided herself on what Matt affectionately called her “zero bullshit tolerance policy,” meaning that glamours as a whole were incredibly ineffective on her. Therefore, Lance wasn’t one of the fair folk, and she didn’t smell any wolf on him. He was far too fond of the beach to be a vampire, and he was certainly not a goblin or a troll or any other thing that had thrown a variety of rotten fruit at her. There were other options, but mostly Pidge was forming the opinion that Lance was just weird.

Pidge watched him walk over to her, a smile plastered on his face in spite of the fact that he was drenched.

“You know, that whole foot stamping thing might be endearing if you didn’t look like you actually want to murder me, sewer rat,” he announced, and Pidge glared sharply at him. Lance’s smile widened. “And you continue to prove my point,” he teased. Pidge sighed, pushing her glasses up her nose while moving closer to shelter Lance under her umbrella with her.

“You’re an idiot,” she told him playfully and quirked a brow when Lance moved out from under the cover she provided. At her curiosity, Lance shrugged.

“I don’t mind the rain. It’s nice, soothing, kinda’. I always feel better when it rains,” he told her in his defense. She sighed but figured it wasn’t her business if Lance wanted to ruin his hair and have it return to its natural curls.

“Where are you off to?” she asked, beginning to walk again towards the coffee shop that had been her intended destination. She could drive, she had her own car, but she didn’t do sports and her mom was a health nut, so unless she had a lot to carry she was firmly instructed to walk on down to where she wanted to be. With her newfound progress, she wanted to get a drink, sit on one of the funky little tables they had, and look through her spellbook to see if she couldn’t find something a little more complicated to test out. Lance responded, she could hear it as background noise, but Pidge’s attention was stolen away as her eyes slid back to him and she saw that he was glowing.

Not to a normal eye, he wasn’t, and it was subtle enough that she couldn’t notice without focusing out of the corner of her eye, but it was certainly there. Pidge was a smart girl--she’d understood all the technicalities of magic for years, it was the practical use that didn’t really work out--and she understood what was up real quick after the revelation.

She doubted Lance knew, but he or someone in his family must’ve gotten a boon from one of the fair folk at some point. A water inclined one if she had to hazard a guess based on what she’d seen of Lance. Element aside, it seemed to give him a good bit of luck that rubbed off on himself and others. Pidge hadn’t initially realized it because she did have some semblance of confidence in her skills as a witch, but it was always when Lance was lounging around the house that her spells and charms seemed to work right. Not surprising, and Pidge wasn’t sensitive enough to take it to heart. However, she was enjoying all that she could do with him around. With that in mind, she stopped in the street and placed a hand on Lance’s arm.

“Hey Lance,” she drawled carefully and did her best to pretend that she wasn’t trying to schmooze him into spending time with her for no reason other than to help with what he presumed were random homemade medications. He looked down at her, and she pretended not to notice that her shirt was getting soaked too simply from contact with Lance. “I realize we kinda got off on the wrong foot, mostly because I was an asshole, sorry about that.” Pidge had been trying to get him alone for weeks to apologize, but she was never sure how to phrase it right. She hoped what she’d put together in the three minutes they’d been talking was alright. She wasn’t great with that sort of thing.

“Putting that aside, how do you feel about helping me with some of my, uh, DIYs?” She hoped she didn’t stumble too badly over her words. It was weird referring to things from her mother’s prized spell book--worn and creased in all the right ways from years of careful use--as mere crafts. She expected to have to persuade Lance, but to both her surprise and delight he merely shrugged.

“Sure.” She grinned, and Lance held up a finger to stay her enthusiasm for a moment. “But, we have to stop at my house first. I need a change of clothes. You should probably stay down the block for that one.” He paused for a moment, and Pidge supposed he was thinking. “I want my good blanket too. I figure I’m just moral support since I have the artistic skills of a five year old holding a crayon in their non-dominant hand, so at the very least I want to be cozy.” Pidge nodded. The detour was not convenient, exactly, but it could be expected.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, deal,” she agreed, and only just paid attention to Lance’s warnings as they worked back to his house. Pidge was beyond excited to finally have working magic.

Magic was not worth it.

Lance had told her to stay put, but Pidge was stubborn and insisted upon coming along to help him carry his things. Lance tried to argue with her, but Pidge put her hands on her hips and leveled him with a stare that told him any resistance was a waste of time, so he sighed and brought her along for the ride.

The first thing she registered upon entering the house was that it was loud. There were kids running around, that almost instantly plastered themselves to Lance’s legs. From the kitchen, she heard someone yelling in Spanish, far too fast for her two years worth of classes to make out. The kids, a boy, and a girl unlatched from Lance’s legs, and swarmed Pidge instead, yelling questions out of gap-toothed smiles.

“Tío has a girlfriend!” The girl shouted, brown eyes sparkling. Pidge’s eyes widened, and Lance was quick to slip his hands around her waist, fingers moving to tickle her. She dropped to the floor in a fit of giggles.

“Don’t be rude, Ceci,” he admonished, but the quirk at the corner of his lips betrayed his lack of intent. Pidge was startled to hear footsteps, and then a commanding voice, though it was not unkind in nature.

“What are you two little bugs doing?” The kids--and the male was still crowding Lance, shaking his shoulders while he tickled Ceci--startled, looking up towards the source of the sound.

“Mama!” they cried and abandoned the two of them to rush her. “We weren’t doing anything bad, promise!” The woman who had spoken laughed and ruffled their hair.

“Sure, you weren’t. Who’s this, Lance?” she asked. Lance straightened up, brushing the dirt off himself after landing on the floor. His clothes were still sopping wet.

“Veronica, Pidge. Pidge, this is my sister Veronica, and her kids, Cecilia and Emil,” he introduced them. Veronica waved, seemingly oblivious to her kids teasing one another on either side of her.

“Nice to meet you,” Pidge greeted politely, unsure of how to deal with the whirlwind of commotion. Her own house could get rowdy and she understood that it was summer, but that didn’t stop her shock upon being thrust into such an environment.

“Likewise,” Veronica replied, and shooed the kids towards the kitchen. “Go on, Lance will be around later,” she promised, and they ran off with a last glance back at them. She didn’t miss the way Ceci cackled after an indignant cry rose up from Emil, or so Pidge assumed, somewhere beyond where she could presently see.

“I gotta’ get a change of clothes,” he confessed, motioning to himself. “Keep an eye on Pidge for me while I get dressed?” he asked, and Veronica nodded quickly.

“Yeah, no problem. Hurry up, though. Mom’s gonna get mad if you leave a puddle on her new rug.” Lance yelped and tore off and up the stairs while his sister laughed.

“Sorry about intruding, I didn’t think I’d cause such a commotion,” Pidge admitted a little sheepishly once Lance was gone. Veronica waved her off, leaning against the wall.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. The twins get excited about Lance no matter the circumstances. You’re just a bonus,” she teased, and though they’d only just met Pidge found she didn’t mind. She laughed, and after a bit of silence that followed once the utterance quieted, Veronica spoke again.

“So, how’d you stumble across him?” Pidge shrugged and decided to skim over some details in her explanation.

“Oh, we bumped into each other around town, and then had some mutual friends. Nothing all that exciting.” Veronica nodded and stared down the way he’d gone.

“He doesn’t bring people around here too often. Kinda’ cool that he let you in, not gonna’ lie,” she admitted, only to be overpowered by some commotion in the background. A rougher, more irate tone. Pidge could hear the twins’ names being mentioned somewhere in the midst of the scolding that appeared to be taking place, all in Spanish. Veronica’s mood soured, if the scowl on her face was any indication.

“Hey, Pidge, why don’t you wait outside?” she asked, but Pidge knew it was the sort of demand that was more politely phrased as a suggestion. It was still raining, but Pidge was good at telling when she wasn’t wanted. Veronica practically pushed her out the door, hands warm on her shoulders as she steered her. “I’ll send Lance out when he’s done,” she told her quickly and slammed the door. Pidge frowned. She’d always been too curious for her own good, but she at least respected Lance enough to tamp down her own inquisitive nature. Her foot tapped impatiently, and she did her best not to let her interest show when Lance stalked out the door.

“Let’s go.” He took her wrist in his, not a tight grip, but not idle either, and where Veronica’s palms had been soft and smooth on her freckled skin, exposed from her tank top, his were a little calloused. Like the rest of him, his fingers were long and nimble, skin pale under his finely curved nails. They looked worlds better than Pidge’s own, bitten from nerves and stained with different ingredients. She didn’t argue with him, and soon his grip faded to a mere memory while he made for her place.

They walked in silence for a ways, and Pidge watched as the farther they got away from his house and whoever the voice had belonged to, the tenseness went out of his shoulders and his posture slackened. She’d never seen Lance, who waltzed into her place and flopped on the couch like a sack of potatoes, uncomfortable before, and it set her on edge.

“You know if you ever need to get out for awhile, you can always come over.” Pidge tried to force a casualness into the pitch of her voice that she didn’t feel, kicking a puddle to top it off. She stole a glance at Lance out of the corner of her eye and was pleased to see his lips curl just enough to form a real smile.

“Thanks, Pidge.”

Pidge tried to squash down the happy little thrill that ran through her as he moved closer to her for the rest of the way.

They spent the rest of that afternoon, and many more, holed up in the Holt family kitchen and basement, where Pidge finally was able to do some magic and Lance pet Gunther a lot. Lance didn’t ask questions, just laid back and let her leech off the luck that seeped from him in waves. Pidge had tried to figure out what he had done to win such a fantastic boon, but as it turned out, Lance was more altruistic than previously thought. She had asked him once, shortly after going to get coffee together during a break, and seeing him pay for the other three customers in line behind them with a fifty, as well as telling the cashier to keep the change as a tip.

“Do you do stuff like that often?” Lance merely shrugged, sipping his latte on the way back to her house, stomping purposely in a puddle that had formed from a dip in the old sidewalk. Pidge found she didn’t mind too much when some of the splashes hit her ankles. Lance liked making messes, especially if it involved water. Pidge was a fan of organized chaos herself and had gotten used to it after a time as long as Lance cleaned up after himself.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and she both stopped and stared at him disbelievingly as he continued to walk, seemingly oblivious to the strangeness of his own answer. She had to pump her smaller legs fast to catch up with him again.

“You know, doing nice stuff out of the blue.” Pidge had originally felt guilty for using him, even if he wasn’t aware, to make her spells work, but when he started raiding her stash of water bottles and protein bars in her room--supplied by her parents for when she got wrapped up in her latest hyperfixation, and wouldn’t come down for meals--she figured he was getting something out of it after all. Besides, he seemed to like playing with Gunther, and Pidge bought him Pixie Sticks too as a bribe. She didn’t understand how he could so easily eat the pure sugar--she liked salty snacks herself--but when she asked he merely shrugged and dumped another one down his throat. Candy aside, she’d realized pretty early on after her initial irritation had faded, that Lance was a good person. He just didn’t seem to be aware of the fact.

“Nah. Back there really wasn’t a big deal, don’t worry about it too much, sewer rat,” he told her flippantly, but Pidge was skeptical. One night when she and Hunk were left at her house after Lance and Keith went out for a run together, she inquired into the subject again. This time, she got the answer she was looking for.

“Oh, he’s notorious for that sort of thing. He downplays it, but he’d do anything for anyone, as long as he sees they need help. I was with him one day and he found the weirdest cat in an alley. I mean, it looked alright aside from the weird ears--they were all pointed and bald--but its eyes were blue, like, really blue. It had a paw stuck in a mousetrap, don’t ask me why, because I don’t know, but Lance took it home to fix it up.” Hunk’s nose wrinkled.

Pidge liked disorganization, but Hunk was a fan of order and cleanliness, which made sense considering his handmade labels for everything in his kitchen. He did most of the cooking around his house since his mom had gotten injured at work. He didn’t appear to mind much, at the very least, and Pidge listened as he went on. “I told him not to, disease and all, not to mention his dad hates animals, but he wouldn’t listen. I think he managed to hide it in his room for a week or something before his dad found the cans of food in recycling, but Lance said the cat was gone before he ever saw it in person.” Pidge frowned at the mention of Lance’s dad. What was with that? Still, Hunk wasn’t finished.

“I mean, that’s probably a good thing. You should’ve seen the teeth on that thing, looked like a shark, I swear. I mean Lance said it was sweet, but I don’t trust that. He’s weirdly good with animals.” Pidge took the information in stride, aside from a concerning detail that kept popping up. She interrupted Hunk, who was still going on about the cat. Definitely one of the fair folk, and an apparently predatory one at that. How Lance wasn’t dead, she didn’t know.

“Lance is safe with his dad, right?” she blurted and flushed resultantly at her own brashness. She was never very eloquent, and everyone, including herself, knew that. Hunk startled for a moment at her words, and she saw his eyes narrow, hands balled into fists.

“He’s never hit him, or anybody else in his family, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied, but wouldn’t meet Pidge’s eyes. If she could’ve frowned harder, she would’ve.

“And?” Hunk balked, his eyes going to the door. Pidge presumed what he was thinking.

“Knowing them, they’ll get into some sort of race and they’ll be another ten minutes,” she suggested. She wanted to know what was going on. Hunk looked back at her, sighing.

“If you ever tell him I told you, I’m gonna’ tell him you have a crush on him,” he threatened. Pidge blushed to the tips of her ears, shoving her face into a decorator pillow her mom had on the couch, handmade by a banshee friend she’d had in college.

“I do not have a crush on him,” she protested. Hunk hummed knowingly, letting Pidge in on exactly what he thought of her denial.

“Maybe you haven’t admitted it yet, but I’ve read your diary. You show all the signs,” he declared smugly. Pidge gasped, glaring at Hunk from across the couch.

“You read my diary?” She didn’t understand how, she had several nasty hexes just waiting to be unleashed if anyone other than herself tried to open it, but Hunk was nosy and meticulous and she wasn’t surprised that he’d found a way around that, even unaware that the spells were there. Hunk nodded unashamedly.

“And I’d do it again. Promise me you won’t tell Lance.” He held out his pinky for good measure. Pidge sighed and wrapped her own around it without complaint.

“Say you promise.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“Fine, I promise,” she huffed at last, and that seemed to finally placate Hunk, who pulled away and gathered his thoughts for a few long moments before he opened his mouth to speak.

“Lance’s dad isn’t violent, physically, but he’s always been pretty harsh on Lance’s family, and Lance receives the brunt of it. When he was a kid and even now then and again, he made him do all the yard work by himself, made him stay up way too late studying, and then would yell at him when he got a bad grade anyway because he was so tired.” Pidge knew Hunk to be petty over small things, knew he bickered lightly without too much prompting, and knew he and Lance had some sort of weird friendship that let them have entire conversations via incomprehensible hand gestures, but Pidge did not know him as someone prone to anger. When she stared at him at present his dark eyes smoldered with it,  his hands clenched into fists while the muscles in his arms strained dangerously.

“Lance can get out of the house a lot more now that it’s summer, but still.” Hunk still looked livid, and Pidge was secretly grateful he didn’t get mad more often. Hunk was outwardly soft, but at his core, he was undeniably strong. They lapsed into silence after that, and when Keith and Lance came back in, arguing over the pronunciation of milk (which Lance said he was the superior authority on, since Keith couldn’t even drink it without locking himself in the bathroom for an hour), Pidge paid a little more attention to his little quirks and oddities. She didn’t want to miss anything that big again.

Not that Pidge would ever tell Hunk, because as angelic as was when hefting Keith onto his shoulders or cuddling up to Lance along with his boyfriend on their group movie nights, he held onto information that proved his points, and she definitely had a not so small crush on Lance. In her defense, she wasn’t sure when it had started. They spend a lot of time together, having him hold down the reeds she was working on twining together for a charm, or letting her prop her spell book up on his back.

He’d informed her that his opinion of her had changed from Pinterest fanatic to boho hippie, and apparently stuck with that line of thought despite the fact that Pidge insisted that her assortment of stained overalls and graphic tees--with the occasional dress, she liked the way they felt swishing around her legs--was more grunge than anything. He waved her off and kissed Gunther’s forehead.

“Hippie,” he told her, completely disregarding her use of logic. Pidge couldn’t even take another stab at refuting the claim, because she was sprinkling crushed unicorn hoof around her room as a ward. She’d been pestering the goblins more than usual lately, and they were getting more persistent. She probably deserved a good mud clod to the face, but she was avoiding that for as long as she could. It wasn’t until she’d finally decided he was really and truly oblivious enough to take to Allura’s shop that she noticed how cute he was, curious face illuminated by the faintly luminescent crystals she had hanging on her walls.

As to what they were, Pidge wasn’t sure. Allura officially called herself a witch but she had a good shot of faery in her, and that kind of heritage let her use all sorts of freaky magic that Pidge didn’t even want to know about. She supposed it didn’t matter in the end because soon enough Lance caught her staring like an idiot, and flashed a smile that had his cheek dimpling in the most perfect way. Pidge knew she was a goner. When she went to check out, Allura seemed to see her blush still remaining from the incident, and grinned devilishly, shoving one of the crystals at Lance.

“Here!” she proclaimed, wrapping it up with some cord, faster than what Pidge had previously thought possible, to form a necklace. “It’s on the house. Pidge shops here all the time, it’s the least I could do,” she reassured Lance when he tried to protest. When Pidge glowered at her on the way out, she merely winked while her scales--passed off as tattoos to those like Lance--flashed in the light.

Lance then proceeded to crush whatever shreds of Pidge’s dignity were left, by wearing the pendant constantly, claiming it brought out his eyes. Pidge’s sudden interest in potions again, which she’d abandoned quickly after her luck turned in search of more exciting opportunities, had nothing to do with the fact that any redness in her face could be chalked up to heat from steam, if anybody went asking. When Hunk did, she flipped him off and buried her face in another pillow. Why her?

Pidge was not prepared, in any way, shape, or form, for the panic she felt on her walk back from Coran’s--Allura’s uncle, for all intents and purposes. His shop was farther away for her, but also had a wider variety than his niece’s, mostly because Coran somehow made friends with nearly everyone he met and had about every ingredient under the sun as a result. She had her phone on mute most of the time, almost entirely because she got distracted easily when whatever she was working on smelled bad, and then things burned and everything just got ten times worse. She wasn’t planning to check it, taking the three bags hanging off her arms into consideration, but she started wondering about how long one of her poultices had been fermenting and got it out to check. Instead, she was greeted with a wall of texts and missed calls, from Shiro, Hunk, Matt, and Keith, but no Lance. Had they planned to meet up today and she’d forgotten? She scrolled through the messages and clicked Shiro’s contact to call at random. He picked up halfway through the first ring.

“Do you know where Lance is?” he asked before Pidge could even ask what was going on. Her blood seemed to freeze in her veins.

“What, no! Why? What’s wrong?” she took a detour into an alley, setting her bags down to press her free hand over her ear in order to hear Shiro better. There was a pause on his end of the line, and when he finally spoke he sounded frantic

“Hunk got a call from him about a half hour ago, and he sounded like a mess. He’d been crying, by Hunk’s guess, and he could hardly understand a word Lance was saying. He hung up pretty quick, apparently, and nobody’s heard word from him since.” Pidge felt a drop of water hit her cheek shortly after Shiro finished filling her in, and looked up to see that the clouds that had been lurking towards the edges of the sky earlier in the day were now knitting ominously together. Pidge gathered her bags again, crushing her phone between her shoulder and her ear. Shiro was still talking.

“When he gets upset sometimes he does stupid stuff, tries tricks or to climb things that he needs someone watching his back for. Keith has checked all their usual spots, but he isn’t at any of them.” Pidge listened raptly, scouring her brain for anything that might remind her of where he could be. She swung by Allura’s shop--she promised to keep an eye out, but she hadn’t seen him--the coffee house they went when her house got too stifling--also nothing--and arrived back at her house a nervous mess, running her fingers haphazardly through her damp hair. Where would an upset Lance have run off to? She crouched on her bedroom floor, sticking her hands under her bed to drag out the tub of miscellaneous odds and ends she’d pre-made, or just things that she couldn’t use immediately.

She had to have something that would help, right? Something that could help her track, or even just keep Lance safe. Her hands delved into the mess, and at last, she came up with a few ear drops, or what was supposed to be used like ear drops, anyway. She twisted the cap off, ignoring the oddly colored flakes of dried goop that came with it. That likely meant she’d made it before Lance had shown up, but it wasn’t awful enough for her to throw out. She ignored the fact that that didn’t exactly mean it worked, let alone well. Pidge vaguely remembered that it had something to do with memory, and that was good enough for her. She tipped her head to the side and did her best not to cringe at the wetness that followed a light squeeze of the container.

When she straightened back up, she found herself surrounded by a barrage of clamoring voices, snippets of conversation she’d heard ever since Lance came into her life.

“Sewer rat-”

“Are you insane?”

“What kind of magic Pinterest bullshit-”

Pidge shook her head, though it pounded with the commotion and she bit back a whimper. She had to focus.

“Always been pretty harsh-”

“What the fuck-”

And then, at last, what she had subjected herself to the experience for.

“You know if you ever need to get out for awhile, you can always come over.”

At once her mind was calm, and Pidge let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. However, a thought occurred to her rather quickly. If Lance was supposed to be at her house, where was he? She glanced slowly around her room, but her eyes snagged on her window. Lance, for how obnoxious he was, was never rude. He wouldn’t have let himself in. She glanced out and down and saw what she was expecting. Huddled against the side of the house was a figure in a white shirt, plastered to his body from the rain.

Pidge launched herself down the stairs and out the back door, tripping over her own feet in the process, waving frantically to Lance to come in. When he stood in the kitchen, she draped towels and blankets over him while he shivered, and clutched the pendant Allura had given him so hard his knuckles shone white.

Pidge sat him on the couch when he was properly dried, shooting texts off to the rest of their friends to let them know Lance was safe. When she had finished, she looked at him. He avoided her gaze, but his thumb stroked the side of the crystal rhythmically. She didn’t try to reach out to him, not yet.

“You wanna’ talk about it?” she asked. She’d never been very good with emotions or words, and, of course, the two combined were even worse. Lance shrugged.

“What’s there to talk about? You said I could come over whenever I needed a break, right? Everything was just too loud over at my place.” His voice was sharp, wielded sloppily like a poorly balanced blade. It wasn’t like his normal easy laughs and crooked but well-intentioned grins. Pidge took that as her cue to offer a hand to him. Lance was touchy, she knew that well enough from all the times she saw him huddled up to Hunk, but they’d never done much. As it happened, Lance latched on without much hesitation.

“That’s fine,” Pidge told him with a shrug. “Sorry for assuming.” She knew very well Lance was lying, and after a second his lip trembled anyways and his eyes got glassy. He scooted a little closer, and when Pidge hesitantly dropped his hand to open her arms welcomingly, he moved into her embrace without further prompting. His hair was curly after being out in the rain, and Pidge decided she didn’t mind how it felt against the skin of her neck. She rubbed his back, unsure at first, and then more steady when Lance didn’t move away.

“I’m not too loud, right?” he asked after a moment. Pidge sucked in a breath and wondered if it was too late to make amends with the dumpster goblins, if only to send them on over to Lance’s dad.

“No, no, of course not, Lance.” She was planning on going on, but Lance had more questions.

“Am I useless? Stupid? Lazy? A nuisance?” It broke Pidge’s heart, hearing him go on while damp spots formed on her shirt, tears dripping off Lance’s chin that rested on her shoulder. His voice cracked on the last word, and she held him a little tighter.

“No, you’re amazing, Lance. A great friend and we all think so. We like having you around.” Lance sniffed, and Pidge wished she knew what to do other than continuing to press him to her, keeping him safe. It was a long time before Lance spoke again, long enough for Pidge’s eyes to grow heavy and for Lance’s shirt to dry out more. Pidge wasn’t great with physical affection, but she liked the feeling of Lance locked into place with her, the tips of his long fingers toying with the ends of her hair, short and strange as it was. His other arm was around her waist, not harsh in his grip, but firm. Like she was his anchor in a churning sea. Pidge wanted to be there for him, to be the one to keep him steady.

“You’re really something else, sewer rat” he whispered, and she could tell from the way his words slurred that he was tired too.

“So are you.” She let the name slide without complaint, the tension long gone out of her limbs, allowing her to properly relax on the couch with him. “Don’t let anyone, even for a second, tell you anything else.”

Matt had woken them that time when he returned home from Shiro’s several hours later, thankfully before their parents got home from work. Ever since the day they spent holding one another, there seemed to be an understanding between them. When Pidge got snappish, skittish and tired of having people around, Lance cleared room for her and set himself up a respectable distance away. When Lance was feeling particularly frustrated, stagnant and full of energy he wasn’t able to properly release, Pidge called him over to help her tie charms and organize ingredients. Busywork, but it gave Lance something to do and that was all he really wanted.

Still, Pidge was worried something was wrong. As of late, Lance had been shooting her looks when he thought she wasn’t paying attention, a kind she didn’t know how to respond to, or understand the motivation behind. His eyes would soften at the corners but grow dark, a little wild, and his brows knitted together, almost like he was concerned, but not quite. It sent Pidge’s stomach into a series of flips every time. She couldn’t seem to get close to him like she had that day, either.

She tried, rented movies they’d talked about seeing together, but Lance always sat on the floor with a blanket, despite how much room there was on the couch. Pidge was at a loss, and she bemoaned her struggles to Matt, who was a good big brother and let her waltz on into his room while he played video games or did homework for his online summer classes. She flopped onto his bed and vented her frustrations, which sent Matt into fits of laughter that she never expected, but was always frustrated by. She bit her lip, glancing at her phone every few seconds. It always made her lose her place in the spellbook she was finally getting around to using--she’d bought it forever ago, but without Lance’s luck had never been able to work with it--but she was expecting Lance, and he was late.

He was never late.

Lance was always on time, if not early, and it was not unusual to see him arrive with some sort of housewarming gift to boot. Pidge did wonder if that had anything to do with his upbringing but never asked. By the time the doorbell finally rang, Pidge was a jittery mess. She hopped up and all but sprinted to get it.

“It took you long enough!” she announced, seeing him standing on the front porch. It was raining again, and Lance’s hair was curling again. Pidge tried not to blush, and Lance stepped inside. Was it her imagination, or did he seem more put together than normal?

“Nice to see you too, sewer rat,” he told her with a laugh, and then shifted a little on his feet in a nervous manner that wasn’t at all like him. Pidge felt her stomach plummet. Had she done something? Lance did seem to be distancing himself, what if they hadn’t made as much progress as she’d thought? Pidge tried to smile despite her worries, motioning to the kitchen.

“Well, come on. I have this thing that-” Lance cut her off.

“Actually, I kinda had something in mind for today,” he admitted, and Pidge froze, already halfway to the stove. She threw her shoulders back, feigning nonchalance.

“Oh, yeah, that works too,” she agreed quickly. Lance flashed a quick smile, but it was nothing like his normal ones that could light up a room. Then, he looked at the ground and moved towards the door.

“The others should be here soon,” he informed her, and Pidge tried not to panic. Maybe she really had done something. They hadn’t discussed inviting anyone else along, it was supposed to just be them. The final straw was Lance’s hand on the doorknob, saying,

“Maybe I should just wait out-” Pidge raced forward, going to his side.

“Lance, are you mad at me?” she asked. She felt horribly childish doing so, but he was just being so weird, she couldn’t help it. His face went blank, before morphing into one of complete and utter surprise.

“What?”

“Are you mad? I know it’s a dumb question, but I thought we were close and recently you’ve just been, well, off I guess? I don’t know and I get that it’s probably dumb but I really like having you around and everything even just as a friend and I don’tknowwhatyou’redoingbut-” Pidge thought she might spontaneously combust, as Lance doubled over, laughing wildly.

“Hunk said you wouldn’t notice anything but I thought I was being so obvious, how could you not?” He snorted, and Pidge cursed herself for thinking it was cute. Over the top of his shirt, the crystal glowed steadily.

“I’m sorry?” She didn’t understand. What was he going on about? Why was Hunk involved? Oh, my god, had he told Lance about her crush?

“I was finally gonna’ ask you out today, Pidge,” he told her slowly. Pidge blinked a few times, staring up at Lance in disbelief, and then she felt a patchy blush spreading up her neck and cheeks. She was going to die on the spot. End of story, no questions asked. How was she supposed to react? She’d never done this before, and her normally infallible mind was not computing. Lance’s expression fell.

“It’s cool if you don’t want to, though! I’ll just go, and we can pretend like this never happened or whatever.” Pidge saw him tearing up, and all of a sudden she had her arms around his neck, clinging to him like a koala on steroids, as Lance would say when he affectionately recounted the incident later. The only problem was that she had meant to just hug him, but she didn’t expect to jump quite as high as she did. In a grand clashing of teeth and also foreheads, Pidge and Lance shared their first kiss. Lance’s arms caught around her waist, keeping her in place when they pulled back to dissolve into laughter.

Between fits of giggles, Pidge reached out to examine Lance’s face.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. You okay?” Lance nodded, despite the way his lips were starting to swell a little from the force of the impact.

“You’re something else, Pidge.” She gave him another kiss, not quite on the lips but it was in the general jurisdiction and that was good enough for her. About the time she started slipping from his arms--in all fairness, he didn’t have a lot of time to catch her before her koala grip would’ve failed her--Hunk and Matt burst through the door wiedling cameras, Shiro and Keith following shortly after with a massive bouquet of rubber rats.

Tony, as much as he liked to pretend he was with his kid---not his kid, really, but he might as well have been for how much Tony agonized over keeping him safe---was not fine. Sure, he could sip drinks with umbrellas in them at parties when Peter called and act suave, but at the end of the day, he had a shit load of work to get done. Happy could only take care of so much, after all, and he’d been especially worried ever since there was that incident with the new Stark building and the big bastard with wings who had taken it upon himself to try to kill a fifteen-year-old.

Peter didn’t need to know just how much he’d donated to see that when he went on trial, the man was put up against the best lawyers money could buy.

So, Tony felt bad because his kid had kind of almost died---the fact kept Tony up at night, but he tried not to show in front of Peter just how badly he’d scared him---and invited him to the lab. The only problem was that he’d had calls coming in left and right about how some place in South Korea had been razed to the ground by some lunatics with a spear (not Tony’s personal style, but the woman had apparently done some damage and he was grudgingly impressed). The problem for him was that the place was loaded with Stark technology that Tony had previously believed and advertised as infallible, and it hadn’t done shit.

He’d had people yelling at him all day, and as much as he enjoyed being a role model for Peter---who followed him around with stars in his eyes as he showed him everything he had in the works---he was five seconds and one more snippy phone call away from losing it, and he couldn’t handle it anymore. Peter was in awe behind him, chattering away about what he might be able to add to things when Tony spun, brow creased in pain and general exhaustion.

“Peter, why don’t you head home for the day?” Peter stared at him owlishly, confused.

“What?” Tony sighed, placing his hands on his shoulders. He wasn’t exactly great at being a role model (he wavered between being mad or just disappointed, and in his opinion, the kid did enough life endangering stuff to have that be deserved), but the little quirks he’d picked up with him around at least made him hope that he could try.

“This today just isn’t really working for me,” he repeated, slower. “So you,” he steered him towards the door, “Have to go. I’ll call Happy up to show you out in a minute.” His headache was building in the space between his eyes, picking up speed and turning from a leisurely and irritating throb to a more splitting pain.

As much as he liked Peter, he could be a handful.

“Woah woah woah, I told May that I wouldn’t be home tonight, ‘cause you said I could sleep over!” Tony frowned, fighting the urge to be overly brusque with him. He had made promises to Peter, he couldn’t exactly say that his anger was undeserved.

“You can still stay in your room.” He might’ve turned down the opportunity to be an Avenger, but Tony had kept the space readied for occasions such as this. Peter’s eyes looked from him to the lab. Tony felt a pang of guilt, overpowering his aching head for a moment, but Peter’s mouth screwed up angrily.

“It’s not about the room, Mr. Stark. It’s just that I was looking forward to this.”

Tony was a little too tired to decipher what he meant. “This?”

“Seeing what you do, asking me what I would do to improve it. You always treat me like I’m some kid, and now you’re finally asking me for my input, and won’t even see it through to the end!” Tony immediately came up with a bad response to that, but frankly, he didn’t care what he said at the moment as long as it got the kid out of his hair and he could go get some Advil or something for his damn headache. It was growing into something akin to a physical force, a wall meant to block out the world that was steadily getting less tolerable the longer Peter hurled truths at him he didn’t have the energy to own up to.

“Listen, kid, it’s not that I don’t care what you have to say, but right now is a bad time for me to care about it,” Tony groused, and Peter rightfully bristled more at that.

“Do you ever? I let you fly me all the way to Germany at random, nearly died more than once trying to prove myself, and aside from that dumb little test with the new suit, you never stop and ask me what I want!” Tony knew the kid had enjoyed just about every second of the fight, but it didn’t stop him from remembering the panic and desperation he felt in every movement of his flailing limbs before he’d realized that he wasn’t being hurt. Something in Tony was bending, one more dol of the pressure building in him liable to make him snap. He stared at Peter’s knitted brows and flushed cheeks a moment longer before deflating all at once.

Peter, whether it was from the odd sixth (spidey, Tony called it, when he was in the mood to tease) sense he had about things, or just plain right brain power at work softened.

“Mr. Stark?” Tony stared at him, and for a moment forgot that he was supposed to be firing back quick deflections and retorts that would leave Peter fuming, but put in his place. It really had been a bad day, and the fact that he felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to his skull didn’t help.

“Some Advil, please,” he called out, whether to Peter or the tech he’d made, he didn’t care as long as the medicine got to him. The pills arrived, and he swallowed them down dry with a faint grimace, settling himself on the floor to breathe. Peter was uncharacteristically quiet, the only sound the hum of the machinery surrounding them. Slowly the pain was fading, but Tony knew thinking about everything that he still had to do would make it come back in an instant. He tried to focus on the light shaking of Peter’s leg instead, a constant he could zero in on while letting the rest of the world fade. That worked for a little, and then came Peter’s voice, bashful, apologetic.

“Sorry for yelling, Mr. Stark.” Tony dropped his head for a second, before sliding his eyes over to him. His cheeks were still red, but out of embarrassment now, if Tony had to hazard any sort of guess.

“It’s fine, kid. You’re right, anyway. I have an event next Friday, but how about the one after that? Same plan that we were supposed to follow today.” Peter lit up, though did his best to hide it with a quick nod.