dappered | (no subject)

(no subject)

[ the thing is, he's not mad at shiro. maybe he should be, but he's not, because he understands that going from ace pilot with promising space exploration career to prisoner of war to leader of a ten thousand year old resistance faction doesn't leave a lot of room for the smaller, interpersonal problems. pidge is the one with a real cause for a grudge, anyway, and shiro is so painfully, obviously, trying his best to be the leader they need. he doesn't deserve keith hunting him down in the middle of the night to talk about the fact that they had toed the fraternization line uncomfortably close during keith's academy days, and then he thought shiro was dead, and then he started getting weird fucking dreams about alien energies and maybe shiro not being dead, and then... everything else.

shiro is treating him like one of the guys and he understands why. it's easier that way. it's been years and they're both different people now, except keith still has those same dreams--not the ones that left him awake in the dark and sure that shiro was alive, sure that he was breathing somewhere, alone, needing, and so helpless that it hurt to breathe. no, these are the old academy standby, thinking of shiro leaning in close, shiro taking off his shirt for training, shiro finally turning around and seeing him looking. the kind of stupid fantasies that left him hard and wanting when he woke, frantically jerking off just so he could get up and function around shiro without popping wood.

(he still has the dreams about shiro being alone somewhere, every now and then. he gets up and paces down the hallways and brushes his hand over shiro's door, but he never hits the comm button. they have each other now, or something, he tells himself. the dreams are clearly some kind of influence from the lions, and they're all together now.)

anyway he has shiro back and there's still a fucking glass wall between them. no unnecessary touches. no late nights together in one of their rooms, even though all they had ever done was talk. it's frustrating as fuck and he gets it and he's trying really hard to be fucking understanding, trying not to push. allura had said that they might notice some influences from the lions, now that they'd all established a bond, that they might be more sensitive to each other, but keith doesn't feel sensitive so much as scraped raw, holding everything back. he wants to hit something all the time. he snaps at lance and flings himself into battle when he has the chance and he thinks sometimes he can feel shiro through that link they're all supposed to have, that hint of quiet strength coupled with some sort of strapped down emotion-- loneliness? pain? --but then it's gone and he's left wondering whether he imagined it in the first place.

they'd been encouraged to go and spend time with their lions to strengthen their mystic bonds or whatever, but here keith is guiltily fucking sneaking around the wrong hangar, running his hand carefully over the black lion's sleek metal skin. that tiny little place in the back of his head where his weird impulses and gut feelings come from isn't telling him that he's unwelcome, but he knows that this is kind of suspicious. ]

Threaded | Flat

[The others don't know that he spends more nights sleeping in his Lion than out of it. He's discrete, and anyway it's never more than a few hours. Sleep-- let's just say it's not the kindness it used to be. He always wakes to the dull, distant roar of cheering, sweat-soaked, heart racing so fast it feels like one constant, mechanic thrum, the taste of blood in his mouth that never seems to go away.

But they're not as bad when he's in his Lion. Its mind is a quiet place, and though their bond isn't strong (Allura tells him he's holding something back, and that it breeds distrust. He doesn't know how to tell her he doesn't know what he's holding back, or how to stop it) Shiro knows that it will wake him if there's danger. Cold comforts.

He's in the pilot's chair, has it tipped slightly back. He's staring at the ceiling, trying to will himself to break down whatever barrier is keeping them just slightly out of phase when the damn thing purrs. As far as he can tell, it's out of nowhere, and he starts. He knows the source without reading any of the external sensors, without looking. Keith.

The Lion moves without any direction from him, and bends its head down as if it were nothing more than a house-cat trying to rub up against someone's leg. The motion is precise, it stops when it touches him so as not to bowl him over. Shiro doesn't move. Barely breathes. If he holds still maybe Keith will just go away.

It's not that he doesn't want to see him. Doesn't want to talk to him. He does. But he already had to deal with the shame of Keith pulling him off that damn table, seeing him vulnerable. He's terrified of what he doesn't know of his own mind, and dragging someone else into that, no matter how well-intentioned they are-- he can't do it.

The Lion has other ideas. It all but spits him out onto the floor, and Shiro is left rubbing his head on the hard flight deck, fighting down a grimace.]

Hey.

[... awkward.]

Can't sleep?

[ shit finally hits the fan less than a week later-- they're all stuck on an alien planet on an alien ship without any supply of suppressants. pidge had dedicated herself so thoroughly to her cover story of a male beta that she'd gotten the implant that all but erased her scent and sex drive, so it didn't matter that she turned out to be a female alpha, but keith and lance and hunk still have their own cycles to worry about. coran promises that the atlean medical bay can probably eventually synthesize something useful that is safe for human biology, but for the moment all they've got is "standard" altean supplements in their food goo acting as a sort of all-purpose birth control and vaccines against alien diseases. it won't suppress heats or ruts.

granted, the castle of lions is pretty fuckhuge if one of them really needs absolute isolation, but separation puts a bad taste in lance's mouth for reasons he's not willing to examine too closely. he knows he's not due for his cycle just yet, so he doesn't know why he's been so restless the past couple of days, prowling around after-hours and seeking out company and then getting irritable with them and stalking back off again. keith's off on a mission to the local village and isn't supposed to be back for a few days, and it annoys him that maybe the absence of keith's scent is causing the unrest. he's more worried about the effect of keith's absence on shiro even if he'd never admit it out loud. shiro's been everything like a perfect alpha so far: strong, focused, inspiring, and infinitely patient. he hasn't once snapped at lance or hunk for not being good enough, nor has he tried to force them all into a close pack relationship by aggression and intimidation the way some alphas did. shiro only ever did the right thing for them and never thought of himself.

apparently literally, because after lance can't find him in the ship for a solid ten hours he follows the hint of a strangely sweet, burnt sugar smell to an unused room and nearly passes out from the strength of it when the door opens for him and the scent washes over him like a wave. ]

Jesus christ-- Shiro?

HIT ME WITH UR BEST SHOT FIRE AWAAAAAY

[ so then there was that time where keith and shiro stole a shuttle from the castle and went down to the surface of a galra controlled planet against allura’s orders, all because there’d been some sketchy rumors of other humans having been seen. allura declares it’s too risky to send the lions when they still can’t form voltron (Red and Black still have their days when they won’t move for lance and keith no matter what they try), and the others reluctantly agree that they can’t afford to lose anyone again by drawing galra attention. it took them six long months just to find each other across the far fucking regions of an unfriendly universe and they’ve all got scars to show for it. they can’t be careless with each other anymore, trusting to luck and the invincibility of youth.

keith does his best, of course, but he’s the one who wants shiro back the most. sometimes he clicks the way that shiro did effortlessly, knowing intuitively what the rest of them all need, but keith is still more used to locking himself down than reaching out. he and allura don’t always agree, and he and lance are… whatever they are now.

lance knew the minute that keith decided to go to the planet on his own. he’d felt it like it was his own thought, hot and guilty, and he didn’t look at keith and keith didn’t look at him, but keith wasn’t surprised at all when lance had shown up in the middle of the fucking night in the hangar with his gear stuffed in a go-bag and a deep scowl.

they’ve been in the palace now for two weeks. the guards have learned not to try and separate them and they fight their matches in the arena as a pair, efficient and deadly. lance had actually figured it out first that it’s more performance than combat skill that counts. fights that last too long become boring, fights that are over too quickly aren’t interesting. he and keith only move in sync when they’re fucking or fighting but when the connection flows between them it’s like the easiest thing in the world to know what keith knows and see what he sees, and even pull memories from their lions. shiro had fought in these kinds of matches. shiro had won these matches for a year. keith moves like him sometimes, forgetting he doesn’t have a cyborg arm, and lance has had to catch him before he shattered his hand.

lance has had to catch him a lot. In the cells at night they curl around each other, sometimes able to sink deep into each other’s heads and find some kind of peace pretending that they’re both other people. sometimes they just fuck furiously until they’re tired enough to sleep, and they don’t talk at all for fear of snapping at and turning on each other. everything in keith is still calling out for shiro, still holds out hope that they’re going to find him here among the prisoners, and his fucking faith is infectious, making lance want to hope, too.

what neither of them had known was that the gladiator matches weren’t the only things required of captives. the more they won they more attention they garnered, until some of the higher ranked galra asked for private shows that had nothing to do with combat. in this, too, they won’t perform without the other, even if one is kept chained in the background as a spectator while the other… serves. apparently it’s some kind of mark of distinction to have powerful or popular gladiators collared and leashed like pets to be admired and displayed. the galra find keith exotic and defiant so he’s the favorite, whereas lance doesn’t bare his teeth every time he’s touched. what they like to watch is lance making keith forget where they are, make him honest in his pleasure and vice versa. ]

[ so neither her earth education or her galra education had prepared her exactly for getting pregnant, apparently nobody had bothered to chart her mother's progress with a half-human infant. lance and the others make silly jokes about fuzzy kittens but keith figures it's more likely to take after the human father; she herself doesn't have purple fur or claws, after all, and her dam was a full-blooded galra.

kolivan throws a fit, of course. keith hadn't wanted to tell him, but thace and ulaz were more or less permanent fixtures on the castle ship now, acting as liaisons, and they sniffed it out as soon as her hormones started to ramp up. kolivan wants her to come back to the blades' headquarters, acting like the doting grandsire he always pretends he's not, but keith wants to have her kittens-- babies, whatever, here in the castle, here with her lion and her team. this is as close to a safe nesting ground as she's going to get.

also it's nice to have the others waiting on her hand and foot. hunk cooks for her, pidge builds helper robots, lance will massage anything she wants massaged, and allura sings altean lullabies.

most of the time, it's nice. some of the time, it's unbearable, her clothes not fitting, her armor not fitting, her fucking traitor lion refusing to fly anywhere. she aches everywhere, and she kind of wants to murder shiro for it. her temper must be prominent in the lion bond because she can't find anyone in the common room when she stomps into it, wearing a huge sweater and nothing else because she's ruined two sets of clothes already today with her sore, leaking breasts and the baby won't stop kicking and it feels like any constriction on her stomach would be unbearable, so pants are fucking out. she's only wearing panties because they had to make that a rule for lance, and she's not going to be the one that lets him get away with repealing it. ]

Threaded | Flat

no subject

>toebeans

OPEN SEASON ON BLUE LIONS - LANCE

> shklance????? lmao sex gladiators idk

LADY!KEITH + KITTENS