#kartok

Matt should have known the minute Lance started talking about face masks that Leilani was going to be curious. He should have known that they would have gone all bright eyed and that Lance would cave under the force of it. He should have known those things, but Matt’s not sure he could have predicted what he was seeing now.

“This is lovely!” Leilani declares, sitting crosslegged on the floor of the lounge. Their skirts are flared out around them, they have two hands in Lance’s, and some green type of face goop on their face. “What did you saw was in this?”

“Some kind of underwater plant,” Lance says, pausing in his project of painting Leilani’s nails, smiling back at them and looking a little bit dazed. “It’s something like an algae, seaweed hybrid. Pidge was trying to break it down for me, but we couldn’t ever settle on a solid answer.”

“I also didn’t try very hard,” Pidge says, not looking up from her laptop.

Matt snorts, turning his face into Shiro’s shoulder in an attempt to muffle the sound. He’s not entirely successful if the nudge to the side from Shiro is any indication. Whatever.

Lance is clearly on the verge of a whine, or at the very least some serious pouting, but it’s entirely derailed by Leilani taking his face in their two non painted hands.

“Do not fret,” They coo. “Omontu might be able to help with a diagnostic for  you! Let me call her!”

Lance goes bright red and stammers out something that amounts to Leilani not needing to do that, while thanking them at the same time. He’s totally and completely flustered. “Oh they’re gonna kill him,” Matt murmurs, shaking his head, while sweet citrus dances on his tongue.

“Maybe we should intervene,” Shiro muses, smiling in spite of the fact that he’d elbowed Matt for laughing. “Allura’s a fit match for the Blue Lion, but I think Blue might be pissed if Lance actually died, you know?”

Matt’s snickers are interrupted by a gentle, “Dear Heart.”

Kartok smiles warmly at Leilani from his place across from Matt and Shiro on the couches before it can go. “Omontu would surely not appreciate being interrupted from her research so suddenly.”

“You kidding?” Matt grins. “She’d bitch sure, but she’d still do it without thinking twice.”

“You really don’t have to,” Lance insists again. “Seriously it’s okay. I-”

“Oh this is distressing to you.” Leilani blinks. “I will not then.” They smile at Lance, warm and bright and Matt can’t help but laugh this time when he practically melts into a puddle.

“Jesus Christ,” Pidge snorts, looking up from her project at last.

“We’re Jewish,” Matt calls over his shoulder to her, grinning at the snort from Shiro in his ear.

Gonna run with the Commanders for this one!

Leilani: Akello and Valdis used to call them “little bird”. Remembering that still makes them tear up, even nearly a decade after their deaths. 

Zarra: Has SUCH a sweet tooth. Like really, it’s kind of bonkers how much of a sweet tooth she has. Matt wants to bring her to Earth mainly so he can show her ice cream. 

Kartok: He has 4 designs that look like they’re tattooed on his back. They’re not tattoos. They’re marks he had burned into his skin. 

Matt: He has been so tempted to like. Get a pet and bring it on board. So many creatures he can’t help but be like “!!! Puppy!” when it’s not remotely a puppy. Martek won’t let him though. Spoilsport. 

This is all equivalencies bc alien ages are wiiiiiiild

Leilani: late 30sKartok: late 40s-50sZarra: mid 20s (about Matt’s age)

Martek: early 20s (slightly younger than Matt, like a feisty undergrad assistant)Ortraz: late 30s-40s

Jion & Zetri: late teens

Akello: late 30sValdis: mid 30s

OOH HO HO HOHO YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH WE’VE TALKED ABOUT THIS (also em knows far too much about the nitty-gritty of wedding planning from 3 years ago so bear with me)

It would be a THING. They’re such a power couple already - Black Paladin of Voltron, Pillar of the Coalition? Yeah. It’s like, half diplomatic event. Like a British royal wedding. 

Leilani, Lance, and !oshi do most of the planning and are THRILLED that they’re basically given free rein. Everything is perfectly coordinated, expertly arranged, not a flower petal or a ribbon out of place. They know everyone’s dietary requirements/restrictions despite the guest list being several hundred people long (it’s easy to rack up the numbers. Trust me, as someone who hand-addressed 250 invitations, this is just fact). They bring in extra staff to the Castle of Lions, they have regular video calls to plan, it’s basically the biggest event either the Coalition or Voltron has ever hosted.

And, of course, it’s utterly breathtaking in the end. How could it not be, when Matt and Shiro are so unbelievably in love that it saturates every corner of the room? Leilani and Kartok officiate together. Leilani starts crying before anybody even says a word. Pidge cries a lot, too, but she’d tase anyone who pointed it out.

After the ceremony... It’s just a big fuckin party. (As all good weddings are, imo.) Lani/Lance/!oshi wrangled food and musicians from across entire galaxies. There are endless toasts to everything imaginable. The cheers that go up when Matt and Shiro take the floor for the first time are deafening, and they don’t stop grinning for a week afterward.

It’s pure joy, every moment. 

Oh I like this! 

Tbh we haven’t talked about them a lot…. but hey, it’s been a rough day so why not? Fun facts about birthdays that might not actually be all that fun!

-Leilani has no idea when their birthday is. Growing up on their planet as an empath, they weren’t treated as a sentient person, more of an object to be coveted and forced into the care of others and pretty much infantilized. It’s a twisted kind of abuse that actually led to them being sent to the Empire and in to prison in the first place, they were literally SENT by their own people, along with two other empaths, older ones, who died shortly after arriving. Leilani didn’t know their family well, they never really celebrated, well, anything. When they learn about birthday parties from the paladins, they are over the goddamned moon and they want to throw a huge collective party for everyone, because why celebrate one birthday, when you can celebrate ALL the birthdays?

-Kartok doesn’t celebrate his actual birthday anymore, because it was something he shared with the family he lost. If he choses to celebrate at all, he does so on what would roughly be the day he met and bonded with Leilani. They changed his life, and he thinks of himself as reborn under their touch. 

Well there’s not really a formal division of tasks like that, like titles for each Pillar, but they definitely each have their niches and the specific parts of the Coalition that fall primarily to their purview.