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anchoredtether · 6 years

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Title: A Cappella

Author/Artist: AnchoredTether

Rating: T [mild swearing, graphic depictions of violence]

Pairings: Plance [Lance x Pidge]

Series: Harmonious Conjunction

Chapter: 2/?

Summary: After discovering a secret (or not so secret?) talent of Lance’s, Pidge finds herself realizing how little she actually knows about her longtime obnoxiously flirty teammate. She thought she had Lance figured out, but the more she learns the more she realizes the complexity of the Blue Paladin’s personality. It turns out her curiosity just might be the death of her.

Timeline: Takes place after the end of season 5

CHAPTER 02 ][ A CAPPELLA

Pidge made a mental note to look into her hacked Garrison files still on her laptop and find Lance's file, delve into his test scores or something to find out the hidden whatever it was that piqued her interest in the Blue Paladin. The team went on a mission the next morning to free citizens from Galra forces, so Pidge didn't exactly have time to work on her "research." Between shooting warships and forming Voltron and fighting Galra soldiers, it wasn't until a few days later that the crew found some much needed peace and quiet after an exhausting battle.

"This juice is incredible, Hunk! What's it made of?" Lance slurped his straw obnoxiously as he finished his seventh serving of the stuff. They were all lounging in the common room, enjoying some refreshments Hunk whipped up from the planet they were currently occupying.

"You don't wanna know." Hunk replied ominously.

"Ew, please don't tell me this is made of intestinal juices or something." Keith made a face at the cup in his hand.

"Gross Keith! Why would your mind go there first, of all places??" Pidge stuck out her tongue as if the juice she was just drinking was, in fact, made up of intestinal juices.

"Ohmygosh guys, it's not from something that bad!!" Hunk cried. "Give me some credit!!"

Lance had turned a few shades paler. "So...." His eyes slowly moved to glare inquisitively at his friend. "What iiiiiis it made of??" When Hunk didn't answer, Lance stuck out his neck. "I GOTTA KNOW MAN! I DRANK SEVEN CUPS OF THIS STUFF!"

Hunk sighed. "It's from a plant similar to a coffee bean, one of the natives showed me how to make it."

"Okay, so it's like coffee, I can handle that. Tastes more like pineapple orange juice though, which is weird."

"But the 'beans' used to brew it come from... from..."

"FROM WHERE?!?"

"....from the regurgitations of a creature that looks like a field mouse."

"SO WE'RE EATING MOUSE VOMIT JUICE!?!" Keith looked ready to snap, but the whole crew looked equally disgusted or abhorrent.

"But...it's delicious mouse vomit juice." Hunk protested.

"It's perfectly safe, Paladins." Allura assured them, the only one aside from Coran who seemed unphased by this information. "Food preparation can come in all kinds of strange forms. This juice that Hunk learned to create is actually incredibly nutritious and will no doubt help you all replenish after a hard battle!"

"Allura's right, ya know." Coran butted in, taking a pitcher of the stuff to refill his own cup, then went around filling everyone else's cups despite their looks of disgust and horror. "Besides, there are plenty of weirder drinks you Earthlings are accustomed to, such as the deliciously disturbing drink produced from Kaltenecker."

"Oh don't remind me of that." Allura said softly as if she were reminded of a nightmare.

"What!? I thought you two loved milkshakes. You drank em faster than Lance." Hunk said.

"Ehhhh, yeah." Lance took a sip of his refilled mouse vomit juice before continuing. "I showed them how one 'acquires' milkshakes and they were... horrified."

Pidge still frowned at the drink she held in her hand. "That's perfectly normal on Earth. We get milk from cows, goats, camels, yaks... all mammals get milk from their mothers as infants. I'm surprised you Alteans are weirded out by such a... natural concept. Or do you guys not... breastfeed...?" She only realized how awkward the question was after she said it.

Lance interrupted the awkward silence with his obnoxious slurping.

"How are you still drinking this stuff?" Keith asked, impressed but disgusted.

He shrugged. "It tastes good. You can't let the psychological-ness of it get to you. Let your taste buds decide if you want it."

"That is something Lance would say." Shiro finally spoke. Although his expression was hesitant, he drank the juice as well.

"That is something Lance would say." Keith echoed in agreement.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Lance didn't quite sound offended, but moreso confused.

"Well, I'm sorry about the uhh... 'psychological-ness' of this, as Lance puts it." Hunk apologized. "I'll try to make something less... you know what, I just won't tell you guys what's in my recipes anymore."

Pidge sighed. "That's probably for the best."

In the end, it was mostly Lance, Hunk, Allura, and Coran who drank the juice. Shiro seemed to like it the more he drank, but Pidge downed her glass like it was medicine (complete with disgusted noises) while Keith gave his cup to Lance. They slowly trickled off from the common room one by one, heading to get ready for bed after a long day of fighting.

][ --- ][

Pidge retired to her room, ready to take off her Paladin armor and plop down on her bed, but she decided instead to take a well-needed shower. She was normally a morning shower person, but her shoulders were sore and she figured the hot water would help her relax to get an even better sleep. She gathered her towel and pajamas and headed towards the bathrooms. As she approached, she heard something that sounded vaguely familiar, something that reminded her of Earth.

It was music, no, singing, faintly coming from the bathroom door. When the door slid open with a whirring sound and she stepped into the steamy room, she could hear it with greater clarity. She recognized the song, but she couldn't put a name on the artist who originally sang it. Pidge had more of a taste for techno and movie soundtracks, so the more popular songs were less familiar to her. She was drawn further into the communal bathroom, lingering just past the edge where the mens side began. She was mesmerized by the voice, the words beautiful and passionate.

This is it, boys, this is war - what are we waiting for? Why don't we break the rules already? I was never one to believe the hype Save that for the black and white I try twice as hard and I'm half as liked, But here they come again to jack my style That's alright I found a martyr in my bed tonight She stops my bones from wondering just who I, who I, who I ammm Oh, who am I? Mhmm... Mhmm...

Pidge's honey brown eyes widened as she realized who was singing. It was Lance. Since when could Lance sing? How had she not known? But now that she thought about it, she had never heard him sing. Usually individuals who had a voice like that were constantly singing, whether along with their headphones, with the radio, or a cappella at random spurts. It seemed incredibly contradictory - Lance, the one who was always batting his eyes at women and sliding smooth pick up lines, didn't ever use his siren-like singing ability to woo the ladies. Why would he hide such a talent? Lance wasn't exactly one to be bashful. He continued, and Pidge couldn't help but sit down on the cool tile floor and listen intently as he sang the chorus even louder.

Well, some nights I wish that this all would end 'Cause I could use some friends for a change. And some nights I'm scared you'll forget me again Some nights I always win, I always win...

She couldn't help the small giggle when he started singing overlapping parts of the song, although he did it amazingly well for a one-man-choir. She was about to head towards the girls' side to shower when he ended the song, but as she was in the middle of getting up onto her feet he started singing another song with hardly any pause to catch his breath. This song had a much different feel than the last, but Lance still sang it with all his heart.

I am a question to the world, Not an answer to be heard Or a moment that's held in your arms. And what do you think you'd ever say? I won't listen anyway… You don't know me, And I’ll never be what you want me to be.

And what do you think you'd understand? I'm a boy, no, I'm a man.. You can't take me and throw me away. And how can you learn what's never shown? Yeah, you stand here on your own. They don't know me 'cause I'm not here.

Pidge was standing now, her towel and clothes held tight to her chest, her eyes staring vacantly at the floor as his words struck something deep inside her. She knew this song. She loved this song. It reminded her of home, of Earth, of her family, and it brought tears to her eyes. She could hear the music in between the words Lance sung. As the song enveloped her core, she felt how the words applied so strongly to the boy who sang them, the boy she was starting to finally better understand.

And I want a moment to be real, Wanna touch things I don't feel, Wanna hold on and feel I belong. And how can the world want me to change? They’re the ones that stay the same. They don’t know me, 'Cause I’m not here.

And you see the things they never see All you wanted, I could be Now you know me, and I'm not afraid And I wanna tell you who I am Can you help me be a man? They can't break me As long as I know who I am

When she felt the tears spill over her lashes and fall upon her towel did she blink rapidly, snapped out of her trance. His words weren't just notes to be sung. She could tell this was a favorite song of his and the words resonated with him and who he was. In a sense, hearing him sing I'm Still Here felt more personal than something akin to reading his diary. Pidge contemplated leaving the bathroom and going back to her bed so he wouldn't know anyone heard him, but she couldn't find it in her feet to leave the bathroom. She wanted to continue listening, not only because it made her bittersweetly nostalgic for Earth but because it was a side of Lance she never knew... a side she was starting to admire, if only in secret.

Finally she made her way towards the girls' showers, albeit slowly. She hesitated to turn on the water because that meant it would be harder to hear Lance's voice, but eventually she shook her head and willed herself to take her shower. Lance unknowingly serenaded her and she found herself standing under the stream of hot water completely lost in thought. In time she heard the shower water stop on the opposite side of the bathroom and the Blue Paladin's voice ceased its beautiful chorus. For a moment Pidge panicked, realizing that he would know that either she or Allura had heard him, and shut off her water. It was a desperate attempt to hide the fact she was there, and Lance would never be a hundred percent certain unless he dared to walk over to the girls side and see Pidge's feet beneath the curtain. There was a long, terrifyingly anxious pause of silence where she tried her best to hold her breath. To her relief, she heard the door to the bathroom open and close and let out a long, drawn-out sigh.

She didn't know what to think of the whole encounter.

And for Pidge, not knowing what to think was a first.

#harmonious conjunction #my fanfiction #plance #flirtyrobot #plance au #voltron #vld #voltron au #vld au #plance fanfiction #flirtyrobot fanfiction

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pumpkins-s · 6 years

Text

Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink

Read on AO3 Here

Read the Other Chapters on Tumblr Here

Lance Alexander Rafael McClain is born in the middle of a summer storm, thunder cracking and rain slamming onto the roof of an old ramshackle house that had seen more than its fair share of children.

The miracle baby, that’s what the family had called Lance. The unexpected son to a mother of five daughters.

(In which family is always complicated, Lance’s life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and he and Keith are really emotionally constipated for each other.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: Keith/Lance, significant platonic Lance & Hunk

Characters: Lance, Lance’s family, Hunk, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Allura, Coran

Chapter 11: Limitations

((Author’s Notes:

Last update of 2017, rolling out. Late November and early December were sucked up with an original writing project for college -my first novella, which killed me - but I'm pleased to be back now to my Regularly Scheduled Bullshit. This chapter and the one following it were originally intended as one update, but for logistical and timing issues I opted to divide the two.

This chapter has discussions of divorce, (mentions of) the foster system, and what can be interpreted as child abandonment & poor parenting, depending on a person's feelings on the subject matter. While these aren't exactly new topics for SLAOS (see: Hunk's living situation), I still felt it was suitable to give a fair warning if those are topics any of you are sensitive to.

Also! Because I'm a hoe for my own bad music choices, there's another SLAOS playlist up called Lions - The tumblr post (complete with coverart!) can be found here, or you can jump to the playlist directly on Spotify or Youtube.))

After everything—that exhausting, all-encompassing summer that had ended following Lance’s return home with a sparse few weeks of scorching, claiming sun, the crisp freshness of coastal air, and continuing reconciliation with Hunk—returning to Greenwood feels severely underwhelming.

Perhaps it’s simply that many of the fears Lance held approaching the place the first time around are now largely void. He knows this place, lent a kind of familiarity to it in one year living there that he never experienced with his multiple years at his former schools. Knows who to avoid, who can be trusted, what to do and what to say. His position there is secure enough that he doesn’t have to experience a daily fear of being one step away from losing it all—so long as he keeps his shit together, at least—and that’s all Lance ever wanted, really.

And so, when his family departs with considerable noise, but still substantially less fanfare than last year, he feels fairly at ease as he helps Hunk unpack the remainder of their stuff.

About twenty minutes in, as Lance is balanced precariously on the head of his bed and attempting to restring last year’s not-strictly-legal Christmas lights, Ritzie bursts in without warning. The door rattles as she kicks it open, and Lance, startled, yelps and falls backward onto his bed, casting a despairing look at the ceiling as the Christmas lights follow him down and land heavily on his stomach.

“I hate men!” Ritzie announces sullenly, and then collapses in a pouting heap on the ground, limbs splayed to the ceiling dispassionately. After a moment, Yuu follows in, casting her a tiredly concerned look as he steps over her legs and takes a seat on the end of Hunk’s bed, crossing his legs beneath him.

“All your friends are men,” Yuu points out, staring down at her, and she sticks out her tongue.

“Fine, I hate white men.”

“Ritzie…” Hunk puts down the clothes he was sorting, and turning to her as if with the solemn bringing of shocking news. “You’re white.”

“Jewish,” she corrects with a hiss, pointing a finger in the air imperiously, and Hunk squints.

Lance snorts, rolling over and pushing the Christmas lights to the side. Planting his chin in his hands and his elbows on the bed, he opts to take pity on her and ask, “What happened?”

Ritzie moans in defeat, and waves the hand still in the air. “We shan’t speak of it. It was too horrible.”

“Ritzie—“

“Shan’t.”

Lance sighs.

“She got snapped at,” Yuu says, ignoring Ritzie’s squawk of protest. “That guy who was on our floor last year, Travis?”

“The one who called me—what was it—‘a Mexican’?” Lance rolls his eyes. A year of continued observation—not exactly desired but inevitable due to shared classes—had assured him that Travis’s specialty in cultural insensitivity and general assholishness extended in basically all directions, various genders and ethnicities included. “Among other things. What’d he say to her?” He can’t exactly imagine Ritzie taking shit from Travis of all people, so whatever words had been exchanged must have been pretty bad to affect her like this.

“He didn’t,” Yuu admits, scrunching up his nose in distaste. “Well, he was the cause of the whole thing, so I’m blaming him for this one, but—“ Ritzie whines, and Yuu pokes a foot gently into her side, prompting another displeased noise. “Anyways, he was picking on this year’s newest target, one of the new scholarship kids, because he’s uncreative. Ritzie stepped in, and the kid she was defending basically told her he didn’t need a uh—a society princess causing a scene by trying to speak for him.”

Lance hisses in a breath. “Yikes.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t…great.”

“You doing okay?” Lance asks Ritzie, casting her a sympathetic look, and she shifts enough on the floor to sit up, glaring at him.

“I’m fine.” Ritzie stands up, scowling as she casts them all a wary look. “I’m going to go unpack. Half my clothes are still in a box.” She trudges out of the room, and they all wince when the door slams pointedly behind her.

“…Is she actually okay?” Hunk asks after a long moment of awkward silence. “I know she likes to make dramatics of things but she seems like…genuinely upset. For Ritzie levels of upset, at least.”

Yuu groans in exhaustion, which seems to be the ongoing mood for all of them, Lance thinks. Falling backwards onto Hunk’s bed, Yuu shrugs, staring up at the ceiling miserably. “Who knows? Ritz’ likes to make out she’s all nails, but God knows she’s pretty sensitive at times. Especially about this sort of thing.”

“This happen a lot?” Lance asks, peering inquisitively at Yuu. If it does, it’s certainly not a trend he has really noticed. Most people seem fairly acclimatized to Ritzie’s meddling streak—begrudgingly accommodating if not grateful, at least.

“Occasionally?” Yuu makes an indecisive noise. “You know what she’s like. Can’t help but get involved in everything, regardless of whether she’s wanted or not. It’s a compulsion to be overly helpful, if anything, but to some people it’s annoying, or her personality just makes it come off as self-righteous despite being genuinely well meaning.” His head leans up enough to cast Lance a tired look. “Some people just want to fight their own battles, and she can’t get that when it applies to anyone but herself. And it doesn’t help the people she’s usually quickest to jump in and defend are scholarship kids, can’t exactly blame some for reacting badly. Pretty much everyone in that program isn’t exactly coming from the heights of financial luxury—though I suppose you guys would know that better than me,” he amends, an embarrassed flush scrawling across his cheeks.

Hunk offers him a wry look. “Yeah, probably.”

“But anyways,” Yuu continues, flopping back down and waving a hand in a move that’s so reminiscent of Ritzie herself not yet ten minutes ago that Lance has to stifle a probably situationally-inappropriate giggle. “Some kids in that situation, the last thing they want is someone else stepping in and causing a fuss, they just want to keep their heads down. Or worse, they don’t want Ritzie specifically getting in the middle of things. Insult to injury, or something, I guess.”

There’s a pause, and Yuu sighs. “It’s not like I don’t get it, y’know? To them it’s like…how could a kid living in privilege—the literal granddaughter of the headmaster, at that—possibly relate to someone who’s clawed their way to get here? It just looks like a martyr complex gone bad.” Hunk makes a reluctant sound, and Yuu points a finger at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought it.”

“Okay, yeah,” Hunk says, holding his hands up in surrender. “A couple times, when we didn’t know each other as well. But she’s just trying to help, I figured that one out a long time ago. Ritzie’s one of the most bullheadedly self-sacrificial people I know.” He casts Lance a significant look, and he doesn’t have to say anything for Lance to know the other bullheaded moron he’s referring to is probably Lance himself.

“Yeah, but not everyone’s going to get that, and they can’t really be expected to.” Yuu sits up, fiddling with the hem of his shirt uncomfortably. “And she gets that, too. When she gets like this, she’s upset at herself, not mad at whoever told her to fuck off. She just needs some space to cool off and mope by herself for a while and then she’ll be fine.”

“Mmmm, if you say so,” Hunk murmurs, leaning up and stretching, and then grabbing the nearest box yet to be unpacked. “You’re the Ritzie expert.”

“Well,” Yuu stands up, going to join Hunk. “I’m probably banned from the room for a bit, so I’ll help.”

They both turn to Lance, giving him a pointed look, and he sighs, getting up to join them reluctantly.

After about fifteen moments of Lance awkwardly shuffling in place in-between helping unpack, and casting longing looks towards the door, Yuu knocks his shoulder against his own, offering him one of the patiently exhausted yet amused expressions he gets when dealing with Ritzie trying to do something particularly unadvisable. “You can go and check on her, you know.”

Lance squints at him suspiciously. “You’re the one who told us to leave her alone.”

“Yeah, but,” Yuu makes a face, shrugging a shoulder, “I did mostly mean me. Besides, if she’s going to talk to anyone right now, it’s you.”

“…Really?” Lance asks skeptically.

“You two have got that like—wonder twins junk going on. Ritzie and I have known each other so long, we practically treat each other like siblings, with all the annoyance and pushing at boundaries that comes with it. You treat her like a friend and that means a lot to her.”

Lance glances away from Yuu and to Hunk carefully, who gives him one of those looks that means he’s being an idiot again, like about Greenwood, like over the summer.

Well. Hunk’s never wrong.

“…Ok,” he relents, and bows out of the room as Yuu and Hunk resume their work, breaking into easy conversation about the robotics team’s possible plans for the year as he slips out the door and pulls it shut quietly behind him.

Lance slinks across the hall to Ritzie and Yuu’s room, knocking gently, and the door creaks open of its own accord when he touches it, apparently not shut properly to begin with. He casts a wary look into the suspiciously empty room as the door opens more and more of it to view, and after a moment steps in, glancing amongst the largely unpacked boxes and haphazardly shoved around furniture. “…Ritzie?”

There’s a crash of noise, and then Ritzie’s voice, sounding rather frazzled, rings out from the adjoining bathroom door. “In here!” Lance considers asking if she wants him to leave, but then she calls out “One second!” and he figures she can tell him to shove off to his face if she desires.

Instead, he opts for more awkward skulking around her room, carefully stepping over boxes and bags and random shoes, likely chucked in the car at the last minute, knowing both Ritzie and how Lance’s own packing tends to go. Picking up on the distinct lack of pet tanks, even amongst the clutter, he yells out back to the door. “What happened to those leopard geckos you stole from Jake Calhoun last year?”

“Oh them?” Ritzie calls back, voice markedly less shaky than before—a safe topic, then. “They’re at home. Somehow for the one day Dad was actually home and not on a video conference or something, he still managed to find them after not noticing the tank in the spare room for the whole damn summer. Wouldn’t let me take them back to school.” She pauses. “I’ll give it a week and then sneak them back in somehow. The housekeeper won’t stop me, she hates them.”

“You’re terrible. A terrible, terrible rulebreaker,” Lance says, just loud enough for Ritzie to hear, and her muffled laughter rings through the door.

It’s all a diversion tactic, really, for both of them, but it’s nice. Hearing her laugh and not be upset like before is nice. Lance always feels like he has so little control in his life, an inability to do as much as he should and help as much as he would like—unable to help his family, incapable of healing Mavis, of fixing himself.

Always, always, unable to bring Loraine back to them—unable to save her, unable to be her.

Comparatively, helping Ritzie should be easy.

It is. It isn’t. It’s neither. It’s both. Somehow. Like Loraine, and the being and saving of her.

Can’t save the dead, his heart whispers, and he hears Hunk on the beach again, for the millionth time over.

You need to save everyone, to protect them, because you love them. You let them in, because you need them, but you also push them away when they get too close.

Can’t even save the living.

He walks echoing steps along Ritzie’s wall, tracing a hand along whitewashed, concrete-foundation walls, the kind you can’t push poster tacks or hooks into, the kind that can’t be marked or damaged. Instead, they tape up pictures and string lights along windowsills to make homes out of a place that will bear no marking or memory of them once they’re gone.

His fingers still along the edge of the school-installed shelf, the one every room gets on each opposite wall. Ritzie has already started unpacking here, in the most backwards of functions given most of her clothes are still in boxes, knick-knacks and debate trophies and small ornaments he’s seen her pick up at touristy junk shops crowding the surface. On the edge, there’s a photo of a younger Ritzie and two men he assumes are her dads, all crowded together outside a building somewhere in a traditionally cheesy family photo. Ritzie’s hair is a puff around her head, not even long enough to pull into the smallest of pigtails or braids yet, and her dads have their arms around each other, a hand each on her shoulders.

They look nothing like her in the slightest. They look like a family.

“Oh look,” Ritzie says with a snort behind him, and Lance starts as her arms loop around his waist and her chin drops onto his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard her come out of the bathroom, too wrapped up in both their pasts. “They were married once. Who’d have thought?”

Lance puts his own hands on her forearms, and says nothing. He doesn’t know this territory.

“That was the day they took me home properly, y’know,” Ritzie says conversationally, voice dull. Her hair tickles his chin and the edge of her glasses digs into his neck. He leans his head more firmly against her own, regardless. “Day they adopted me. I was…” She scrunches up her nose. “Eight? Eight. They were my foster parents first, got me just after I turned seven, so it wasn’t like we didn’t already have pictures, but…” A chuckle. “They wanted it to be special, I guess? First photo after it was all official. Once we were a definite family. No maybes, no take backs. Maybe they just knew I needed that.”

“You look happy,” Lance offers, and Ritzie huffs.

“Yeah.” She frowns, just slightly, and Lance can feel the corner of it against his skin. “They got divorced not long after that, it felt like. I mean it was—it was three whole years—but God it didn’t feel like it. And then it was just…over. Looking back, I was probably the only thing holding them together, at that point. They’d always been separating, but they just didn’t realize it for a long time. Neither did I.”

Lance looks down and studies their hands, just next to each other. Ritzie is taller, but her hands are just slightly smaller than his, fine-boned and calloused and skin paper-thin pale next to his own. She is an ice sculpture, immovable, impenetrable. She is glass, easily broken. “Does it still hurt?”

Ritzie’s head turns, and her laugh tickles the back of his neck. “Most things don’t stop hurting, Lance.”

“I know,” Lance says, and he does. God, he does.

“…I don’t know,” she answers after a moment, soft but still firm in her decision, still Ritzie. “I guess? Sometimes. They’re happier now, and my step-dad—my papa’s husband—he’s nice, and they still…they still love me. Even if they don’t love each other, they still love me. I know that. And hey, two birthday parties, right? What could be better?”

Her voice is flat, and Lance closes his eyes. “You’re allowed to be upset. It’s ok to be upset about things that won’t change.” God knows he is.

She sighs out against his shoulder. “But I’m not sure if I am, at least as much as I used to be. It doesn’t not hurt, but it’s number, now.”

He tries to imagine the pain of Loraine going numb, of it fading. He can’t. He’s not sure he wants to. It has settled, but it has never, never become lesser.

He thinks he’d rather die, than face that day when it is lesser, despite how much easier it would be.

“I guess I just wish they were around more,” Ritzie murmurs, and Lance thinks of Mavis. “They’re always—“ She makes a frustrated noise. “Never mind.”

There’s a pause, and then she says, “I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

“I know.”

“I was just—upset. Before my dads, there were mostly just group homes, everyone always clashing or sticking together. I guess I kind of stayed used to that, even after. When it was just me, in this new school on my own, and then just me and Yuu, the one other kid who didn’t have anyone, on our own together.”

Ritzie: the princess, the protector. Ritzie: the faceless, the friendless.

Ritzie: the child hanging off the tree, reaching out, seeking. Yuu: the child on the ground, looking, searching.

A park in Maryland, a private school in Virginia—what’s the difference, really, Lance wonders, when it comes to lonely children.

Except—he hadn’t been lonely, really. Not when he had his sisters, not when he had Loraine.

But then Loraine had been gone, and Mavis had been the next best anchor, but was away, always, even when she was there. Just like Ritzie and her dads.

“What that kid said to you…” Lance says, and Ritzie tenses slightly against his back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Ok,” he says, and Ritzie presses a smile against the back of his neck. Lance finds her hands with his own, squeezes. “Ok.”

“Thank you.”

“…I think I saw Calhoun bringing a turtle in earlier,” Lance mumbles after a long moment, a peace offering. “Do you want to go and rescue it before he inevitably kills it?”

Her smile curves into a grin, upturned lips warm against his skin.

“Please.”

At the end of a weekend in early November, with rain pounding outside amongst air so humid it feels heavy, Lance sits on the train back to D.C. from Veradera, watching the brewing storm from the window, wondering idly if it will turn into one of the thunderstorms that more usually characterize summers.

He likes thunderstorms, remembers August afternoons spent running out into the tempest with Loraine and his other sisters, dancing through forming puddles and letting the rain and wind ruin their hair as their mother screamed at them to come inside before they tempted fate and ended up being the unlucky idiots who got hit by lightning. Evie would recount statistics of lightning strikes, shark attacks, car crashes, every you’re more likely to as she would carefully place a palm out into the rain by their mother’s side, the only one who knew the unlikely odds, yet feared the chances more than the rest of them, Lance and the others contented to the risk in exchange for the joy.

Beside Lance, Hunk is silent, and that steals more of his attention than even the storm.

He had thought they had reached a new stability, after the summer. It’s not perfect, and Lance fucks it up more than he gets it right—like anything—but he tries, he tries to be more open, to not shut Hunk out when he feels himself slipping, and he knows that’s all Hunk was looking for, really—a token of effort, a bit more consistency in Lance’s treatment of him.

It is better. It feels better, than before. Not perfection, but honesty, human and flawed, there to be seen and heard.

And in turn he has felt Hunk try to be more understanding of Lance’s other forms of support, quieter on the afternoons Mavis calls, giving him the space he needs.

Which is why this past weekend—which took a turn from a friendly goodbye on Friday night when Hunk opted to go home with his grandmother to two days of Hunk straight up vanishing, rounded out by an awkwardly silent car ride and wait to board the train—is somewhat of an aberration.

Ok no, very much of an aberration.

And the thing is, Lance can’t figure out why. As far as he can tell, he’s done nothing to promote the return of Hunk’s silent treatment—and while Lance will fully acknowledge he has vast capabilities to be a dick, he’d like to think he’s at least self-aware enough to realize when he’s being a dick.

In truth, the longer Hunk remains silent, and the longer Lance racks his brain while tracing raindrops on the window, the more he begins to wonder if it does have anything to do with him at all. While Hunk hasn’t really been looking at him, it hasn’t seemed pointed, and the few times their eyes have met, Lance hasn’t detected the quiet fury he usually feels radiating off of Hunk when he’s truly angry at him, but just…distraction, lack of focus.

Hunk’s mind is somewhere else, as out of tune with his surroundings as Lance had been in Ritzie’s bedroom when he’d stood thinking of things that once were, and Lance frankly has no idea as to what holds his attention so drastically, except that it may not in fact be concerned with Lance himself.

Shocking, he knows, but he’d also like to think he took the portion of Hunk’s lecture about how his life doesn’t revolve around Lance to heart along with the rest of it.

Which really only leaves the question of what non-Lance-related puzzle has Hunk so wrapped up.

Next to him, Hunk shifts, pulling an envelope with a clumsily shredded top and loopy handwriting on the front out of his bag and turning it over again and again in his hands. It’s a repetitive motion he’s already done a couple times during the train ride, before tucking the envelope back into his bag until the next time he draws it out and does it all over again. Lance is drawn to it, watching Hunk’s large hands handle the envelope with the kind of dedicated fragility given to something revered, or something feared.

Stealing one quick glance at Evie in the aisle seat, who is still conveniently focused on her laptop, thick eyebrows lowered and glaring at the screen, Lance leans out and carefully taps the edge of the envelope. Startled, Hunk retracts it instantly, clutching it to his chest as if he instinctively expects it to be stolen away, and blinks, turning to Lance.

“You alright?” Lance asks quietly, and Hunk quirks a false smile far too easily, leaving Lance wondering when he learned to do so well what Lance does all the time.

“Fine.”

“…Uhuh.” Lance glances down at the envelope pointedly, and Hunk’s hands around it twitch nervously. “Look, you know I’m not going to make you talk about whatever’s going on, but…”

Hunk winces, eyes lowering to the envelope. “That obvious, huh?” He looks back up to Lance’s deadpan stare, and snorts. “Ok, yeah, fair.” Eyes flickering to Evie’s profile next to him, Hunk shakes his head and mutters under his breath, “I’ll tell you about it later, not here.”

Lance casts a questioning glance around the half-empty train car, and then looks pointedly to Evie’s headphones fit snugly over her ears. “Hey Evie, Karen was the one who broke your DS when you were eighteen.” Evie doesn’t even glance up, completely unawares of anything he’s saying, and Lance turns back to Hunk, who rolls his eyes.

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

“Hey I’m just saying in terms of privacy, this isn’t actually that bad.”

“Yeah, but—“ Hunk leans forward. “It’s about—it’s about my mom, ok?” he hisses under his breath, and Lance jerks in surprise.

“Your mom?” he asks, and Hunk just nods jerkily.

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Lance mumbles, and nods in turn, sitting back. “Ok.”

Hunk says nothing, falling back to his pattern with the envelope, turning it over and over again, fingers shaky as they skate around thin pencil lines to avoid smudging the writing, and Lance is left to wonder at exactly what secrets it contains. Is it a letter from her, a letter about her?

Lance has never met Awhina Garrett, the highflying woman who could never ground herself enough to be a caretaker. He’s seen pictures, old things depicting times long before, shoved up onto the fireplace mantle in Hunk’s home. She is mythic in that house, and in Lance’s own for that matter, unspoken of beyond the occasional whisper of a story from Hunk’s grandmother. It is not that she is a disgraced topic, or something uncouth to breathe mention of, but more that she is simply…not present. She has not been a part of Hunk’s life for a very long time, and never part of their lives, part of Veradera.

What could she even have to say, to the son who barely knows her?

Obviously, whatever it was, it was enough to rattle Hunk.

The silence between them lingers the rest of the train ride back to school, eyes largely not meeting save for conspicuously shared glances of waiting tension as Evie tiredly drags them out of their train and onto the local Metrorail one with the stop that puts them closest to Greenwood’s front gates. She waves them off distractedly, already answering a call from their grandfather about a sudden and immediate problem with the television he wants her to resolve right now, please.

They walk up the front steps of their dorm to the tune of Evie loudly explaining that no, Abuelito, she can’t fix the T.V. with the remote power of her mind because shockingly even she isn’t that good, and Lance has to stifle a grin even with Hunk shifting anxiously next to him.

He calls out his goodbye cheerfully, and Evie makes a face at him as she holds the phone out away from her ear enough that their grandfather’s confused bellowing won’t blow her eardrum.

Once they get up to their room, Hunk makes a beeline for his bed, flopping onto it gratefully, and Lance leans heavily against the door after he shuts it, eyeing Hunk speculatively as his friend makes exhausted sounds and rolls around onto his back, already fishing the letter out of his hoodie pocket. “So. Your mom, huh?”

Hunk heaves a heavy sigh. “Yep.”

Lance thinks back to the weekend’s lack of Hunk’s presence, and almost without thought slides to the ground, back resting against the door. “Was she here this weekend?”

Hunk blinks, and shakes his head, face furrowing into contemplation. “No, but uh—“ He stops, considering. “She’s been…around.”

“Around?”

“Earlier this week,” Hunk says, pushing himself up enough to sit back against the headboard. “Just a couple of days. Don’t know if she did that on purpose. She and Nana write, sometimes. When Nana has an address, at least. I guess she’d probably know I’m at boarding school by now, when I’d be home and when I wouldn’t be. Maybe.” He grimaces. “Maybe they don’t talk about me at all.”

Lance just crosses his arms over his knees, leans forward and rests his chin onto them, eyes trained to the floor. There is no easy answer here. Either Hunk’s mother knew his life’s schedule, and chose to come on days when he wouldn’t be present. Or she didn’t, which leaves the implication that she never asks about him at all. He honestly can’t say which would be more disappointing, or more comforting to Hunk—that his mother may have avoided him, or that she does not think of him.

Despite the close intimacy they share compared to their other friends, even they have things they do not speak of, unless in desperation. Lance’s hair—the incident that put him down this road to begin with. Loraine, sometimes, and what she meant to both of them.

Hunk’s mother—she, too, is one of the things they do not ask each other unprompted.

Lance was shared the story—or lack of it—for her…her un-presence in Hunk’s life in confidence when they were younger. Of how Hunk has that parental gap he doesn’t quite know if he even misses, when he never had something to begin to miss in the first place. Beyond that, it was something rarely mentioned between the two of them, it just was. Is.

Some things, for better or worse, are immovable.

Lance’s life will not resolve itself with waiting. Ritzie’s parents will not suddenly reconcile. Hunk’s mother will not come home to him.

“What happened?” he asks, rather than offer comfort. Hunk’s shoulders slump in subtle relief, and Lance decides he made the right call.

“She’s apparently on one of her ‘clean up the act and all loose ends’ kicks,” Hunk says softly, looking down to the envelope sitting in his lap. “Nana says they work, sometimes. For a little while.”

“…What happened, Hunk?”

“I don’t—“ Hunk makes a frustrated sound, curling up on himself. “It’s not like I’m angry, really. Though maybe I’m supposed to be. She just…was never the sort of person meant to be a mother. Anyone’s mother, not just mine. That’s not—I know that’s not my fault, it might not even be hers, but—“

“It hurts?” Lance guesses, thinking of Ritzie, and Hunk looks up, smile tenuous and grateful, even with watery eyes.

“Yeah.”

And then the tears spill over.

Lance moves on instinct, crossing the room to Hunk’s bed and sitting across from him. He looks around for a tissue for all of half a second, before promptly giving up and opting to pull his jacket sleeve over his hand and use it to dab ineffectively at Hunk’s face. Hunk makes an embarrassed noise, hands reaching up to try and push Lance’s hand away and wipe at his face himself, and Lance gently slaps them away with his spare hand until Hunk huffs in resignation and gives up. He looks mostly tiredly amused by the time Lance is done.

“Crybaby,” Lance mutters halfheartedly as he withdraws his hand, not meaning it in the slightest, and Hunk’s patient look indicates he knows Lance doesn’t mean it either. “Your skin always gets so blotchy.”

“Yes, because I’m really worried about that, Lance,” Hunk says dryly, even as he sniffles one last time and wipes his nose with the back of his hand, making a face. “Where’s the tissue box?”

“No idea.” Rummaging around in his jacket pockets, Lance finally turns up an old napkin he thinks he stole from the school cafeteria last week, and offers it to Hunk. Despite the suspicious look he gives it, Hunk accepts, wiping his hand and then wiping again at his face. Glancing down at the envelope still sitting between them, Lance draws in a deep breath. “Look, whatever your mom wrote—“

“My mom didn’t write that,” Hunk mumbles, scrubbing the napkin over his nose and eyes one last time and then balling it up in his hands, placing them back in his lap and reaching out one finger to tap the edge of the letter apprehensively. “It was—my—“ He sighs. “My dad did.”

Lance blinks. And then blinks again. Confusion wells up, and he stares at Hunk blankly.

One of the things Lance has always known with complete certainty in life is that Hunk doesn’t have a dad, at least not one he can put name and face to. There had only been Hunk’s mother, the unavailable, the unobtainable, and his grandmother, the homemaker, the caretaker. The technical family tree made up of the woman who birthed him, and the woman who raised him, none other.

“Your dad?”

Hunk sucks in a breath. “Yep.”

“But I thought—“ Lance wavers. “How?”

“Apparently part of the whole tying up loose ends thing meant visiting some old haunts,” Hunk says, with a kind of self-deprecating laugh, and Lance isn’t quite sure why. “She ran into an old flame, they caught up, and I guess somewhere along the way she decided it might be worth mentioning she had a kid that was half his.”

“Jesus,” Lance says faintly, and somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear his own mother—or Marcie, maybe—making a scandalized noise at his language choice. “And she’s uh…sure?”

“As sure as it’d ever be without a test.” Hunk shrugs. “She never stayed with anyone for long, but she never saw more than one person at once. Even I know that much, from her and Nana’s old letters and stuff.” He hums halfheartedly, a low, conflicted sound, eyes dropping again to the letter. “…She never told him, before. Just left when it was time for her to float off somewhere new. I have no idea why she brought it up now of all times, or if she even expressly did and he just did the math with my age o-or something and asked her but—“ Hunk glances up, staring at Lance with solemnity, and more than a hint of panic. “He is. He’s my dad.”

“He’s your dad,” Lance repeats with as much breathless awe as Hunk, and now his friend looks even more terrified, as if Lance’s speaking it somehow made it that much more real. He looks down to the letter once more in time with Hunk, and suddenly the way Hunk so reverently handled it, and the weight of it, metaphorically speaking, makes sense. “…Where? Where is he, I mean?”

New Zealand. Australia, maybe. The U.S.? Where else had Hunk’s mother been?

“You won’t believe it,” Hunk says, and when Lance looks to him, raising an eyebrow, Hunk giggles, suddenly seeming giddily overwhelmed. “Samoa.”

“…Samoa.”

Hunk nods frantically, eyes wide and excited. “Samoa. The uh—the independent state, not the American territory portion.”

“Why the hell was your mom in Samoa?” Lance asks, and suddenly he’s laughing too, stifling helpless snorts into his hands because this conversation was so entirely not what he had expected, and God—Hunk has a father, a father in Samoa. A father with a name and an address and—and—all the proof of a living and being of a person.

“I don’t know!” Hunk answers, throwing his hands up before he has to quickly pull them down again to muffle his own laughter. “She just—she just was!”

“I guess, geographically, it’s sort of logical.” Lance says, as the last of his giggles die down. “Especially if she was island-hopping around that part of the Pacific.”

“Who knows with my mother, honestly,” Hunk says, sounding mystified but not particularly upset, and Lance feels glad Hunk seems to be more at ease, at least until he looks back to the letter, and his shoulders slump slightly. A more serious expression sets on Hunk’s face, and he doesn’t look upset, really, so much as just very…contemplative. “He wrote this, for my mom to give to me. He wants—he wants to meet me. At Christmas, or the summer, whenever I’m comfortable. He—“

Hunk hesitates, and Lance leans forward, offering his hand to Hunk as an anchor. He takes it, smile grateful, and Lance intertwines their fingers as he taps Hunk’s name on the envelope carefully with his other hand. “Do you want to meet him?”

“I—“ Hunk’s face cracks, uncertain and frightened. “I don’t know? For so long when I was younger, littler but old enough to understand, all I wanted was to—to know. And then I accepted I never would, and now…” Hunk’s voice cracks, and his spare hand grabs at the forgotten napkin to scrunch and twist between his fingers anxiously. “What if it goes wrong? What if—what if he doesn’t like me?” he finishes, voice small.

“Hunk,” Lance says firmly. “Of course he’ll like you.”

“My mom doesn’t like me,” Hunk whispers.

“No,” Lance says, reaching up to touch Hunk’s chin and gently raise his face upward so that they can look eye to eye. He knows enough about running away from things, about the times Hunk has had to confront him and force him to see his own hypocrisy. It’s time he did the same. “Your mom doesn’t want to be a parent. You said it yourself. It’s not about what you can and can’t be for her, it’s about what she can and can’t be, and therefore not your fault.” He smiles as gently as he can manage. “You’re always there to tell me when I’m being an idiot, so now I’m returning the favor. You have no duty to your dad, blood doesn’t create a relationship, and if you don’t want to meet him you don’t have to. But don’t run away because you think he might not want to know you when he’s already indicated he does, otherwise you’re being just as dumb as I am whenever I panic and push people away.”

Hunk sniffs, and is back to wiping ineffectually at his eyes with the napkin. “Don’t compare my biggest moment of crisis in my life to your—your repetitive cycles of ‘I must solve everything myself’ self-sacrificing nonsense.”

“You’re welcome,” Lance says, grinning, and Hunk throws the napkin at him, the crumpled paper batting softly off his nose.

“…I just don’t know what I want,” Hunk admits softly after a long moment. “I never even thought this would be an option, you know?”

Lance thinks of all the unfixable things that haunt him, that drive him. What he would do, if he had an option to suddenly change it all. At first instinct, it seems easy. Bring Loraine back, repair his family, make himself…himself again. But it’s not that easy, really. If he could reverse the last year and a half…he’d lose Mavis all over again, would have never met Ritzie.

They’re not equivalent to Loraine in any way, shape, or form, but in the same sense she isn’t—she isn’t equivalent to them. You can’t trade away one person for another, balance out the equation and decide who’s worth more. Loraine was—is—everything, but Mavis, his friends…they’re important too. He wants Loraine back more than anything in the world, but he wants so many things. Wants his family to be ok again, wants his mother to have never been sick, wants Mavis to have never left, but sometimes bad things just…happen. And would he even know how to be her Lance again, if the world reset and he could have everything back?

“Yeah,” he says to Hunk eventually, shrugging tiredly. “I know.”

“…What would you do?” Hunk asks, and Lance snorts.

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask, my dad was dead long before I was around.” Hunk makes a face at him, and Lance sighs. “I don’t know either, ok? Sometimes family isn’t what you expect it to be…for better or for worse.” He hesitates, and then grabs the envelope, picking it up and turning it to face Hunk. “It’s your decision to make, and it’s not like you have to do it now. But you have a chance, and if you want this, then don’t give it up and regret it down the line.”

So many unchangeable things happen, to all of them, but one of the few things Lance feels like he’s learned—with every fuckup and face slap and New York city street—is that you can’t run away from change, either. To hold onto his past, to Loraine, and to survive, he must change. Otherwise he’ll never reach the Garrison. Never reach her stars, his stars, their stars.

The unfixable is immovable, but change is also inevitable.

“If you want to know your dad, Hunk,” Lance says quietly, “Don’t let fear keep you from family.”

“You’re one to talk,” Hunk snorts unthinkingly, and Lance winces, glad Hunk doesn’t notice when he does. His family issues aren’t the ones on the table, right now. “I— yeah. Ok,” Hunk says, and when he squeezes Lance’s hand, Lance squeezes back.

“Ok,” he breathes. “Good.”

#Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#my writing #vld fanfic #Voltron

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