#lance is a mother hen and keith is whipped and can’t say no to lance

[izukillme-moved]

wish i could stay

“It’s lung cancer,” states Allura, looking down at the table. “And I’m afraid it’s starting to spread. We can do nothing to stop it.”

I - what?!

Lance’s entire world begins to spin. His equilibrium tilts, and he feels dizzy. It’s as if the ground is crumbling underneath his feet, and he can do nothing about it.

Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. 

The word reverberates in his mind, bouncing around like 

“How?” he asks helplessly. 

 “Lance, you have to know, I’m so sorry-” Allura looks more than distressed, hands fluttering about in that anxious manner she hasn’t shown since they were children.

Lung cancer. How fucking ironic. 

He can’t help but let out a bitter laugh. “So this is how I’m going to die, huh? Lung cancer. For a damn swimmer who served in the freakin’ army and never smoked a fucking cigarette in his whole damn life.”

His words sound angry, but his tone is dull and flat. When he says it out loud, he doesn’t feel the wave of anxiety and pain he expects to feel. He just feels... cold and uncaring. There’s nothing but a pit of emptiness inside him, the sharp edge of acceptance dulled by the sandpaper wave of shock.

He can’t help but be absolutely terrified by the lack of feeling. It’s like he’s not Lance anymore. 

Because Lance feels. Lance feels every single damn moment in his life with vigour and joy and hope and passion and anger and sorrow and pain. Lance feels so much it hurts. This shell feels nothing.

Allura’s eyes take on that mother-hen look of worry, and she reaches for his hands. “Lance, I wish I could do something,” she says, eyes brimming with tears.

Lance can’t bring himself to cry. He can’t bring himself to do anything but look his impending death in the eye with an expression of weary defeat. The sharpshooter that could even stare down a huge tank without flinching, armed with just a rifle, is gone. Replaced by a shell of who he used to be.

“Don’t tell Keith. I don’t want him to know. He’ll be broken.” 

His mouth moves on its own. Lance lets it. 

The old Lance, before-Lance, would have made sure he told Keith as soon as he got home. Made sure that Keith was able to grieve properly, that they could worm in time with each other, that Keith was prepared for the death, so it wouldn’t shock him.

Now-Lance doesn’t care. Now-Lance just wants to go in peace, without wanting to put in any effort. 

Now-Lance doesn’t want to see Keith hurting.

Before-Lance can hear his mind screaming at him to tell Keith, to spare him the shock of his death. But he doesn’t say anything, allowing now-Lance to keep talking, to say all the things before-Lance would never have even thought of saying. 

After all, before-Lance is no longer Lance, so why should he even bother controlling what this husk of him does?

“So,” Keith asks, sliding his arm around Lance’s waist, “what’d Allura say?”

“Everything’s fine,” Lance lies smoothly. He’s always been a good liar. “It was just a little bout of sickness. I’m totally okay.”

Keith eyes his boyfriend up and down. “Are you sure? You were coughing up blood.”

“It was just a bit of laryngitis. I’m all better. I’ll be okay if I eat like normal, says Allura,” Lance fibs, thanking every God he knows that Keith is completely clueless about medicine or diseases. 

“O... kay,” Keith says, a little dubiously. He holds out his hand. “Can I see the reports? Just so I know that you’re good.” His eyes hold genuine worry, and Lance just wants to kiss it better.

“There aren’t any,” he lies again. They’re in the box under his bed, the one containing his most private things. A letter from his deceased mother, his grandfather’s wedding ring, a scarf that his very first boyfriend Lotor gave him before he cheated on Lance. He hasn’t even let Keith see what’s in it. The one time Keith asked, Lance lashed out with the full force of the Destroyer (as the rest of his regiment had nicknamed him). He knows Keith won’t look; he has too much respect for Lance’s privacy.

Keith nods, still looking a little troubled. “If you’re so sure. What do you want for lunch?” 

“Uh, anything is fine,” Lance says.

Keith shrugs. “All right, I guess I’m making stir fry, then.”

Lance’s heart aches as he watches Keith walk towards the kitchen, a slight bounce in his step, even humming a song. His shoulders have straightened from the small slump they’ve had for a few months ever since Lance has been sick.

Stir fry is my favourite. 

“It’s getting worse,” Allura says.

Lance snorts weakly. “I could tell, Captain Obvious.”

Allura looks her friend over and sighs. Lance is pale despite his dark complexion; his cheekbones are prominent and there are barely noticeable bags under his eyes.

“Six months, at the most,” she states, lacing her fingers together. She can’t bear to look Lance in the eye, so she just looks down at her mahogany desk.

“Okay,” Lance sounds surprisingly calm and accepting of his dreadful fate. Allura whips her head up.

There is no feeling in Lance’s eyes. Just a bottomless emptiness.

“Oh, Lance,” she whispers helplessly. 

Lance grins, a shadow of the bright smile he always used to sport. “It’s okay.” he says. 

And to him, it is.

When Lance gets home, he’s met by Keith standing in the door, arms crossed over his chest.

He’s holding a white file.

Lance’s heart jumps to his throat.

“Cancer,” Keith says, voice trembling. “When were you going to tell me?”

Lance’s lip wobbles. “I - I-”

“I looked in the damn box, because you were looking fucking ill, Lance. You got so thin, and you kept coughing up blood. I had to find some clue,”

“I - why-”

“Because you didn’t tell me.” Keith’s eyes are bright with angry tears. “You just planned on - on dying, and leaving me here to lose it completely.”

“Keith, I-”

“No, Lance,” Keith cuts him off. “I - why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Lance says softly. Even to his own ears, it sounds lame.

“Worry,” Keith repeats, tone bitterly sarcastic. “And did it occur to you, genius that you are, that I might have gotten over it had you told me earlier? Had we worked through this, together, like we agreed to do all our problems, and made sure we didn’t waste a second of what life you have left?”

Lance, for once, is stunned into silence. He feels tears come into his own eyes.

“Keith - I-” He reaches for his boyfriend, but Keith pulls away. Lance sees the strap of a duffel bag over his shoulder.

Keith steps around Lance and through the door, tossing a set of keys onto the sofa.

“I can’t believe you would hide this from me,” is the last thing he says, voice soft and broken, as he disappears into the elevator.

Lance crumples against the wall, tears gushing out of his eyes like rivers.

Keith - Keith - 

And just like that, the most important thing in Lance’s life has left him.

Just like that.

Lance howls, then, all his feelings let out in that anguished scream. He weeps loudly and continuously, without caring that the neighbours will be annoyed. He sobs like a teenage girl whose boyfriend dumped her. He cries and cries and cries, curling into a little ball and falling into a restless sleep by the open doorway.

You’ll catch pneumonia, warns Hunk’s voice in his head.

Lance shakes it off.

He has fucking cancer. Nothing matters anymore.

He wakes up to warmth.

There’s a blanket piled over Lance. He’s lying in his bed, surrounded by pillows and his favourite stuffed bear from his boyhood. A note lies next to his head, and Lance turns to read it.

Yell for me when you wake up.

The handwriting is as familiar as day to Lance. He can’t help the happy tears that spring to his eyes.

“I’m up!” he shouts as loudly as he can - which isn’t very loud because, well, he has lung cancer. 

Keith comes into the room, wearing a pink apron and a sad smile.

“I thought you left,” Lance says softly, a little out of breath from the shout.

Keith sits down on the bed, brushes Lance’s hair out of his eyes. 

“I’d never leave,” he says, looking into Lance’s eyes with absolute honestly. “I might - I might take off, but I don’t think I could ever leave you.”

He pulls Lance into a hug, and the thinner can’t help but burst into noisy tears, sniffling and rubbing his eyes and shaking like a goddamn leaf. 

“Oh, Keith,” he sobs. “I don’t wanna die,”

Keith rubs Lance’s back gently. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. 

“No it’s not,” Lance cries.

“Maybe it’s not. But I’m here for you, and that - that’s gotta count for something.”

Lance nods into Keith’s shirt. “You always make things better.” he mumbles.

Maybe things won’t be all right. He is going to die, and he’s going to die in pain.

But hey, things could be much worse.

After all, he has Keith. What else could he possibly want?

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld #klance #lance mcclain #ceru writes #keith kogane #VERY ANGSTY #fanfiction #angst with fluffy ending

[ganymedesclock]

Your biromantic ace Lance headcanon... I just? Love it so much?? I’ve noticed people never headcanon the flirty people as ace, so I love ace!Lance.

It was honestly inspired because... watching things like Lance talking about Allura in his vlog, it betrays that there’s a pretty harsh divide between how he really experiences attraction and how he thinks he should seem attracted. Him gushing about how cool Allura is and then hastily correcting it to how he’s sure that Allura thinks he’s cool.

With that, and how much he talks about what seem to be kinda old-school action movies, I think it’s pretty clear where Lance gets this attitude of he should be the passive ladykiller who draws people to him when it’s much more Lance’s nature to just... adore someone. He’s really, at his heart, this sweet, sentimental guy and that part of his personality is really adorable when it comes out.

The idea that he’s acting about sexual attraction is, and I touched on this a bit in the post, was that s4e4 gave all of the paladins very fake, shallow reads of them that are fundamentally untrue. Shiro as a generic beauty with nothing important to say, Hunk as a bumbling buffoon, Pidge as someone just blathering off meaningless nonsense science, Allura Keith as an arrogant lone wolf who’s only isolated because he’s too cool for this teamwork thing.

The main conflict in s4e4 is this schism between the acted personas and the real people, and even before we really get into those personas, we discover something interesting about the team: all of them, including the charismatic Shiro and the stated diplomats Hunk and Allura, are positively wooden actors.

The only person who acts well, without any instruction, and consistently does the best the entire episode?

Lance.

And Lance’s persona stands out- because he’s framed as the “loverboy”, mister romance, flirtatious, and- at an incredibly superficial read, that seems like that’s true to character, in contrast to everybody else’s.

But it’s not.

Lance is not a sexual lover- and, it’s very clear that his persona is. He practically does a pole dance hanging from the Red Lion. This is- hedged in a g-rated show- blatant sex appeal.

Which sends a very interestingly complicated message. It tells us that casanova Lance isn’t real- but also, that Lance, out of the team, is the best at playing something he’s not. Allura sort of manages Keith’s role by being literally too frustrated to participate, making her seem aloof and stoic. Hunk has his role externally manipulated onto him. Shiro and Pidge are just stewing in discomfort the entire time and arguing with Worm Coran about what he’s expecting of them.

Lance is the only one who isn’t uncomfortable the entire time. And his input? Whatever he’s doing, the audience loves it. He’s basking in the approval of his fans, signing autographs, listening to the cheering.

At this point- that’s more important to Lance than the fact that he’s pretending to be something he’s not. And again, of everything they could’ve chosen to be Lance’s fake persona, they chose casanova.

So I guess the headcanon sprouted out of that: if Lance is faking his relationship with sexuality, then is it possible he actually doesn’t feel sexual attraction at all? Again, that’d be hard if his main role models he’s looking up to are old-school male action movie heroes- pretty much every macho man action hero is frequently defined by having lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of beautiful women.

Assuming Lance was exposed to this young, and going off the implication that Lance doesn’t really have a strong relationship with his own orientation as much as an expected orientation- that would do a lot of damage. It’d be fundamentally alienating. But it’s also hard to articulate an absence of that sort of thing- and I’m drawing a bit from my own experiences as an asexual person here. For the longest time, I simply assumed that sex was something I’d inevitably want once I got to the Right Place and the Right Person. Suddenly this desire would just, unfold. Clearly.

(Spoiler: it didn’t.)

The vlog also further highlights a lot of what s4e4 implies about Lance- because while Lance isn’t the only one to share things he’d rather not, Lance is the only one we see actively discussing the possibility of doctoring the footage afterwards.

Lance is very concerned about his image. How he’s seen, how he presents himself, this is not an effortless thing. Hell, Lance’s personal grooming routine, introduced as early as s1e2, even tells us that out of the team he’s the one that puts the most thought and effort into his appearance. It isn’t a joke- it’s establishing characterization.

The reason why s4e4 doesn’t have Lance struggling with being saddled with this fake extra personality is “Loverboy Lance” is a piece of baggage he’s had since the first episode.

Like- let’s go over Allura, who Lance actually does have a full-blown crush on at this point, even if I don’t think it’s reciprocated or, really going anywhere.

We see three phases of Lance meeting Allura. The first two fit very cohesively with what we know are Lance’s virtues, and who Lance is as a person. Allura startles awake, calls out for her father, and then starts collapsing.

Before anybody else processes this sudden turn of events, Lance panics- he runs over to Allura and catches her so she doesn’t hit the ground. In that instant, he has no idea who this person is and hasn’t really processed what she looks like- all he cares about is that she’s going to get hurt. It’s a very knee-jerk, heart-on-sleeve moment of compassion.

And this is who Lance is! He feels things, right there, and obviously- he’s a good guy who does good just because it’s the most natural reflexive thing to him. This is the same Lance who shoves Coran, then a relative stranger, away from a bomb, and draws Iverson’s attention and lets him say some very hurtful things to protect Pidge, who’s been mostly just rebuffing Lance’s friendship and criticizing him at that point.

He helps because it just plain doesn’t occur to him not to.

And then Allura looks up- and Lance sees her face for the first time and it strikes him he’s holding a beautiful woman in his arms.

This is not the face of a casanova. It’s, again, that kind of immediate emotions-first response; he’s sweating, his expression is nervous. This is where a crush he’s continued to harbor for four seasons now first takes root, but immediately, he doesn’t want to mess this up- and that’s when we see a very marked shift:

Loverboy appears.

In contrast to his first two reactions, this is unsympathetic, and it’s very fake. This is the facet of Lance that Allura first insults and then immediately loses patience with because he’s flirting rather than answering her questions or taking her seriously. Because as soon as Lance decides he values Allura’s opinion of him, he whips out this fake personality and puts it on.

Because for Lance’s action hero idols, this kind of smarmy attitude works without a hitch. He’s trying to be James Bond. But in the real world that isn’t pretty much an outright power fantasy, that doesn’t work- and if Lance had kept being the sincere, mildly-smitten but mostly worried person he shows time and time again when surprised, stressed, and focused on everything other than how other people see him, he’d have been fine.

This, I think, way more than Lance fearing his lack of a role, is the underlying implication behind his insecurity and his never hearing the virtues or stated “identity” of the Blue Lion.

It’s not that Lance’s role is undefined or he needs to find it. Because remember- the reason why Lance doesn’t hear Blue’s virtues is he interrupts Allura to push his own fantasy.

I can’t think he didn’t do that on purpose. All of the other paladins have their Lions described and then given to them- Hunk is clearly not expecting to be paired with Yellow after Allura describes his temperament. But Lance already knows which Lion is his- and he cuts off Allura before she tells him what the Blue Lion is like.

Which frankly? Sounds like the behavior of someone who’s scared about what he’s going to hear- rather than desperately hanging on Allura’s words to tell him who he is. Lance at the start of the show just plain doesn’t think he’s good enough. And Loverboy is just his poison of choice to defend himself- taking the superbly-confident fictional men he’s watched and making that a defensive mask he can brandish at any situation that makes him uncomfortable or insecure.

Think about Lance calling himself the “cool ninja sharpshooter” when- even establishing himself as a sniper, Lance overwhelmingly uses his scope and range on the battlefield to check on all his friends, quip and joke with them, and play support rather than stoically sneaking out and precisely headshotting the most important target. He’s a friendly mother hen with a gun. Impressive marksman? Yes. Stoic assassin as implied by “cool ninja”? Well... there’s a reason Keith thought that was a joke and it’s not because he doesn’t think Lance is good with a gun.

So the rough tenets of Loverboy is: he is very sexual, he’s always composed and cool in every situation, and everyone is supposed to like him. He’s James Bond.

But the thing about Loverboy, as spotlighted by s4e4, is it’s not real. It’s fake. And the further Lance progresses as a character the more he’s letting this mask crumble away, in huge chunks.

Lance’s moments of strength as a character- s3e1 and his connection with Keith, the instance that makes Red decide he’s worthy of connecting with, and s4e6 supporting Allura- come from a point where Lance’s reflexive compassion surges forth not only with intensity, but a sense of complete calm. It’s Lance affecting a soft, serious, benevolent demeanor.

Because the Blue Lion is the ultimate nurturer. The lover, not as smoldering libido, but that softly takes their beloved’s hands and sees all the universe in their eyes. It’s the kind of love that looks at someone and understands, and accepts their faults, and sees all of their strengths, whether that’s a friend or a crush.

Insecure, vulnerable, uncertain Lance attempts to seduce, attempts to brag, attempts to posture, and it’s a very selfish kind of love- it’s a love that attempts to make everything about him. “Uh, I mean, I’m sure Allura thinks I’m strong and cool and pretty”. And he’s not very good at it.

Confident, certain Lance, at the height of his power doing what he does best- he supports, he understands, he reads right through people and responds with compassion and empathy and a sense of surrendering to a kind of higher flow. And that’s not always serious! I would argue that the Lance we see utterly smitten in the vlog, gushing about man have you seen Allura she’s so great and wonderful and pretty- is his true self acting out. Again, it’s his nature to adore and his nature to support. There’s a reason this kid is a leg pilot through and through, and arguably moved to Red because Keith needed him there.

Since love is such a big deal to Lance, it’s thus not surprising that romance is stated to be something significant in his arc. And I think this whole thing of transcending the immature casanova archetype that he tries to hide behind- of becoming more certain in himself and embracing his true virtues- could tie very nicely to an arc with Lance beginning a relationship based on what his actual needs and wants are, rather than the expectations tied to the Loverboy persona.

Because the real relationships that Lance flourishes with are supportive ones. He heavily connects with Plaxum as an intelligent rebel and someone whose cause he supports and situation he’s concerned by before he ever finds out she’s a beautiful mermaid and thus someone he’s attracted to and might want to pull out Loverboy to deal with.

Now- reading Lance as a biromantic ace who’s been struggling with trying to live up to what can only be called a violently heterosexual ideal isn’t necessarily essential to this arc, but, I think it would fit very nicely here- especially because there’s this thing of when women have seemed totally into Lance, he never once makes any motion towards pursuing sex or even expresses interest therein. He verbally espouses a great desire for intimacy, both romantic and platonic, and I think that’s sincere, but Lance made a raunchy joke only once over the course of four seasons. 

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lance #readmore #thirty-two paragraphs later...... #whoops I've got some feelings about Lance and romance #Anonymous