[ there’s a lot of alarming shit going on with that speech, a lot of things that make alarm bells go off in the back of lance’s mind as he’s listening-- but he’s not protesting, too caught up in the rush of relief at being handled gently, being together with instead of alone. maybe it’s a result of the druid experiments or maybe it’s a paladin thing that he can’t tolerate being alone anymore, the way he thinks used to be normal. human. before, he would never have had tears sliding silently down his cheeks over someone pulling him into a hug or touching his bare skin, or telling him that he’d been brave during isolation as if that was its own punishment.

before, he wouldn’t have been enveloped in a cloud of scent just by getting close to another person like this-- he can smell, somehow, how far along matt is in his pregnancy, that his milk is coming in, the information populating in lance’s brain from a set of pheromone cues too subtle for him to register consciously. his mind keeps trying to label matt as… something like a sibling, an older, experienced packmate, an experienced mother, the perfect individual to help look after him if he can’t have the other paladins near. it feels completely natural to open his mouth for matt’s tongue and to flatten his palm over matt’s pregnant belly, stroking it lightly through the fabric of the robe.

later he’ll freak out over the prospect of zarkon and him and love, and the implication that zarkon wants to breed him and change his body further. for the moment it’s all he can do to whimper against matt’s mouth, a little overwhelmed but hungry for everything. the words are just words, the touches are real, lighting up his nerves and starting a slow-burning fire in the pit of his stomach. he wants-- he wants to press matt down in the sand, or maybe let matt press him down, even though he’s never done anything like this with another person. he’s made out with other kids his age back at garrison, he knows what to do with a dick (hunk’s, anyway), and he’s spent a lot of time fantasizing about shiro’s fucking tree trunk thighs and magnificent pecs, but he and keith and their furtive handjobs or reciprocal blowies in the dark can’t hold a candle to what he’s prepared to let matt do right now to soothe the needy thing inside him.

T-that’s crazy. [ zarkon, conqueror of the galaxy, waiting for him. lance castillo, the spare pilot that barely scraped by in his entrance exams, as anybody’s special precious beloved anything. he kisses matt harder as if in protest, trembling. ]

I’m not-- any of that, I haven’t been--

[ brave. ]

He just wants my lion, he doesn’t want-- why would he need-- [ and, high and stupid and shrill, ]

I’m too young to get pregnant, my mamá would kill me!