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pumpkins-s · 6 years

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Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink

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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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ficsofvoltron · 7 years

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Most importantly, that this guy, amazingly, impossibly, thinks he’s a girl. Somehow.

A girl, not… Well.

Apparently a skirt, a hair bow, and a bit of old lip gloss did a lot more than Lance gave it credit for, especially given this was paired with his loose, boyish shirt that he knows for certain is one of Carlos’s old things, and his distinctly short hair.

#spilling like an overflowing sink #lance mcclain #fanfic #voltron #vld #Voltron legendary defender

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uzuuzuking · 7 years

Note

M do you have any (maybe voltron?) OCs ??

i don’t have any voltron ocs, no;; i do have other ocs but they’re super underdeveloped and i hardly do anything with them >.> now i’m tempted to make a voltron oc damnit.. also i’ve p much adopted @pastel-clark‘s oc loraine from their fic spilling like an overflowing sink which is my favorite langst background fic. also vodka aunt mavis

#answers #none of that makes any sense unless you've read the fic lmao oops;;#Anonymous

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fallenqueen2 · 7 years

Note

omega shiro. alpha other four

Ohh a Voltron Fic :D I’m so down for this! So this was for my now closed A/B/O open Ask Box on my NSFW blog @risingqueen2 Enjoy Anon :P

“God Shiro, why didn’t you say anything before? We could have helped!”Lance scolded the other man who was currently riding his fingers like his lifedepended on it. His fingers digging into Lance’s shoulders as soft whimpersfell from his lips that were swollen from biting on them to hide his noisesfrom before Lance found him.

“Didn’t want to be nngghh, a bother.” Shiro panted out as Lance’s fingersbrushed against his prostate making him slicker as he keened loudly. Lancegroaned resting his face against Shiro’s chest.

“You’re an idiot, we don’t care if you’re an Omega and we are all a team, apack Damnit.” Lance grumbled as he kissed at the fine set of pec’s in front ofhim.“I’m sorry.” Shiro whined, baring his neck to the Alpha unable to help the responseat making one of his Alpha’s upset.

“It’s okay babe, just don’t do it again.” Lance palmed Shiro’s cheekwith his free hand just as the doors to Shiro’s room swished open and theycaught the scents of the other three as they hurried in. Shiro whimpered as theAlpha scents of his pack hit his senses and he buried his face into Lance’sneck, his stuttering.

“We’re right here Shiro.” Keith placed his hand on Shiro’s neck lovingly whilePidge ran her fingers through his hair and Hunk rubbed at his thighs that wereshaking under the strain of riding Lance’s fingers and the scents of the otherAlpha’s attacking his senses.

“Easy Shiro.” Lance said reassuring as the Alpha’s helped the loose limbedOmega to lay back onto the bed, their hands never leaving his body making himfeel warm and loved as their scents washed over him.

“Please.” Shiro let out a soft whimper as he spread his legs wide, his heattaking over his mind making him act out of character.

“Easy Shiro.” Hunk cooed as he lifted the Omega’s legs up to settle on hiswaist while he slowly, gently eased into the Omega’s hole making Shiro gaspedand buck up under the new sensations of being full after being aching emptyduring every heat he went through.

Lance swung himself over Shiro to straddle his hips; he leaned down tokiss at Shiro’s chest and stomach soothingly knowing that Hunk was not smalleven by Alpha standards. Hunk stayed still until Shiro gasped out a weak ‘move’and he slowly started to drag his cock out of the wet, tight hole that wasswallowing him down happily before pushing back in at the same slow pace.

Lance reached behind to stroke the Omega’s cock, spreading Shiro’spre-cum before he raised himself up and sank down onto Shiro’s cock in onesmooth movement. Hunk, Shiro and Lance let out groans of pleasure in sync withone another. Shiro’s fingers scrambled to hold onto Lance’s hips, mouth slackand eyes confused as he gazed up at the Alpha that was astride his hips.

“Just because I’m an Alpha doesn’t mean I don’t like bottoming from time totime, just ask Hunk and I’ve always wanted to do this.” Lance emphasized hispoint by rolling his hips teasingly, making them both groan. “He’s rather needy.” Hunk said knowingly as he rubbed at Shiro’s legs as hekept the steady pace of pushing in and out of the Omega.

“Enough talk, I think Shiro should put his mouth to better use.” Pidge interruptedas she suddenly straddled Shiro’s face, teasingly rubbing her wet pussy againsthis lips. Shiro groaned and latched onto the offered mound making Pidge groanhappily at the attention to her lower reign.

Lance matched Hunk’s pace so Shiro was inside of him at the same timeHunk was inside of Shiro. Lance reached up and cupped Pidge’s small breastsfrom behind, squeezing and teasing her nipples with his fingers. Pidge archedher back for Lance as she made small circles against Shiro’s mouth as hestarted to use his tongue.

Pidge gasped happily as she reached out for Keith who had been justwatching and stroking his cock. He took the offered hand and allowed her to tughim over to her, she took his cock down to the root in one movement makingKeith choke on his breath and clutch at her hair as he forced himself not tobuck into her mouth.

Shiro groaned against Pidge when Lance squeezed around him and Hunk’sthick cock hit against his prostate. He whimpered, unable to hold on any longeras his senses were overwhelmed to a point of slight pain. He shouted againstPidge’s pussy making her shake from under the shocks of his shout. Shiro camehard inside of Lance and clamped down on Hunk.

Shiro vaguely felt himself feel fuller and warm as Hunk spilled his ownseed and his stomach felt wetter than before singaling Lance had come. Hismouth was overflowing with a beautiful taste that must have come from Pidge anddrops of come hit his face and he knew somehow it was Keith.

Shiro felt like he was floating as his limbs were re-arranged and hefelt himself being cocooned in a blanket and soft words reached his ears ashands stroked at his face, hair, arms, neck, every part of him really and hefound himself sinking into the arms of slumber feeling satisfied and contentfor once in his life after his heat hit.

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

Photo

Missed having The Girl as my profile pic. So.

#Loraine McClain #my art #slaos talk #spilling like an overflowing sink (voltron)

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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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 10: Listen (Learn)

Lance returns home to the backdrop of the setting sun highlighting the sloping roof of the house. Always a little crooked-looking and never quite right, but sturdy and strong against the years it has housed and sheltered them from summer storms and winter snowfalls without fail.

He breathes in, the smell of grass and the sear of the August heat against his skin distinct, and decides that this is all right. While there’s a part of him that desires to flee back to the relatively safe bustle of Mavis’s apartment—where he can live a life of secrets, undiscovered among the bustling city throng, and find comfort in Mavis’s fierce protection—another, almost larger piece of Lance finds a kind of settling in being home.

There is a peace to Veradera, to the place he has spent every happy summer since his earliest days, that nowhere else can even touch. Despite every complication and each pain that can too be associated with the place, the joys outweigh the grief. Loss has been seen in this house, time and time again, but it has seen so much love too.

If Mavis’s home is the place of safety, this is the place of salvation.

…Love should win. Lance wants love to win. Even with his fears, with the secrets and things buried deep he keeps, he doesn’t want it to turn this place sour for him. Maybe, now that he has found refuge for some of his baggage—both figurative and literal—in Mavis’s own home, he can better protect the good that exists here from turning only to bitterness in his heart.

Maybe.

It’s probably not the best coping solution, he admits, but it’s…well, it’s a solution.

Somewhere in the distance, among the trees that stretch out beyond their road’s little huddle of houses, a bird chirps loudly, and Lance closes his eyes, savoring the feeling of something he’ll never fully understand, but can recognize instantaneously anyways.

This…this is good. Those three weeks away were the refresher he needed to re-piece himself into a semi-functional being.

Mavis had been right.

Distantly, he imagines her rolling her eyes, reminding him that she’s always right, and he smothers a grin behind his palm.

Nodding to himself, he opens his eyes, and goes to help Karen, the one who’d apparently called dibs on picking him up after a fervent rock-paper-scissors match with Marcie, with getting his bag from the car. She pulls it out of the boot without pause, and waves him off when he tries to take it, swinging the weight around like it is nothing to her. To someone like Karen, realistically, it probably is.

“Glad to be back, right?” she asks him, grinning down easily as her bushy bangs fall into her eyes, and Lance smiles.

Really, if anyone else in the family knows what it’s like to come back home after feeling like you’ve lived another life away from here, it’d be Karen. She’d taken what she was good at and used it to run as far as she could with it, and the older he gets, the less he can begrudge her that.

They may not be overly close, compared to their other siblings, but sometimes he thinks he might understand her more these days, just a little. Not entirely, not quite yet, but close.

It hardly matters, either way, really. They are what they are, all of them—the leavers, past and present and eventual, Karen and Mavis and himself, all for their own individual reasons.

Igraine and Lucas, too, he supposes, reminding himself that they’ve long left for training by now.

Still, he gives Karen a nod.

“…Yeah, I think so.”

She leads him inside with little fanfare—well, as little as is possible, for Karen—slamming the door open and shouting a booming “We’re home!” before promptly collapsing facedown on the sofa and not moving, even when Lance pokes her side gently. After a long moment, a quiet snore rings out, and Lance giggles. It had been an eight AM flight arrival time, and Karen has hardly ever been a morning person, despite being an athlete, so he decides she’s earned this one.

He’s just cataloguing who would be at work and who would be home at this time of the day, when Marcie’s voice calls him from the kitchen, upbeat and chipper despite the hour. “In here, Lance!”

As he enters the kitchen, he finds her in a state of frenzy; the counter littered in flour and opened tins of ingredients, with cookies resting in the oven as she whips together frosting with enthusiasm. When she sees him, Marcie’s eyes light up, and she promptly places down the bowl to sweep him up in her arms, littering his face with kisses and fussing with his hair as she draws back, smoothing out the curls and idle tufts that stick out wherever they please.

“How are you?” she asks, and his smile only feels a little forced. This is not like when everything fell apart, and every question was a statement of pity. This is different, he knows.

“Better now that I know you’re baking,” he answers, and she swats his arm, before handing him the mixing spoon regardless. He wedges it in his mouth despite the affronted wrinkle of Marcie’s nose at the ungainliness of it all, and savors the sweet taste of the batter dissolving on his tongue as Marcie picks up her icing bowl and whisk once again.

“Where’s everyone else?” Lance asks around the spoon, and Marcie snorts, freeing a hand to lean forward and yank it gently out of his mouth.

“Aunt Lupe and Mamá are out at work, Aunt Rosa’s asleep upstairs after a night shift, Uncle Jesús is in the garage, our grandparents are over at the Garretts’ for tea and the weekly aggressive Rummikub game with the Muñozes down the street, and Evie’s upstairs yelling at her computer in what I can confirm is neither English nor Spanish—though no idea what it is beyond that—again.”

“…And Karen’s asleep on the sofa,” Lance finishes for her.

“Of course she is.” Marcie rolls her eyes, looking up to the ceiling as if praying to it to give her strength. After a few idle turns of her wrist on the whisk in the mixing bowl, she pauses and blinks, looking back down to Lance. “Oh, right, and Hunk is in the garage helping Uncle Jesús with stuff, since someone conveniently got both his assistants to jump ship.” The quirk of her mouth assures Lance that his sister isn’t actually mad about him encouraging Igraine and Lucas to pursue their ambitions, but he still winces slightly, both at the intentional reminder of his role in their departure and the unconscious one that he has been ignoring Hunk while he has been away.

“You should go check in on him,” Marcie continues, unawares. “He’s been mopey since you left, and it’s only gotten worse. I think he missed you.”

The guilt rises up, and Lance swallows it back down. No, he knew this would happen, and had resolved to himself it was necessary. He can’t call himself Hunk’s best friend and continue to let himself destroy Hunk’s life with all his messes. Some time away was—is the first step in freeing Hunk from the burden of…well, of dealing with Lance.

“Yeah, maybe in a bit…”

Marcie quirks an eyebrow suspiciously at him, but otherwise doesn’t question his lack of enthusiasm, and Lance can only be grateful for it as he pointedly launches into a colorful recount of his time in New York, minus a few things here and there, to steer the conversation in another direction.

Sometime between Lance’s description of the streets of Mavis’s neighborhood, and the reassurance that no, Marcie, living alone has not in any way improved Mavis’s cooking ability, trust me, Hunk shows up in the kitchen.

Lance doesn’t even notice, at first, too caught up in his enthusiastic tale about the day Mavis managed to get them lost on the subway, twice, and then locked out of the apartment…twice, much to his sister’s evident horror. It’s not until he hears the shuffle of noise at the doorway, and Marcie looks up from her mixing bowl to chirp a friendly “Oh! Hunk! There you are,” that it registers, and Lance freezes mid-sentence, rant stalled to silence in an instant.

Turning his head suddenly feels harder than admitting to every doubt, every fear, Lance has felt bubbling under his skin both during and after his visit to see Mavis, and when he finally does, meeting Hunk’s gaze isn’t any easier. Hunk has always been of the earth—the kind of peace and comfort equivalent to skipping stones dancing along a lake or the feel of hot sand lining the surf—but in this moment, with narrowed eyes trained on Lance with a kind of fury he has never known directed at him as such, he is steel.

“Look, Lance is back!” Marcie continues on, painfully oblivious, and Lance wonders if it’s too late to just make a break for it and crawl out the window. “I was going to kick him out to the garage to see you, but I ended up accidentally hogging him so that he could tell me about New York.” She blinks, looking contrite, as if Lance hadn’t been the one to deflect with his stories of the visit. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright, Marcie,” Hunk says evenly, glare never leaving Lance, “We all know it’s pretty much impossible to get Lance to do something he doesn’t want to.”

Marcie laughs, soft and affectionate and a hundred other things Lance probably doesn’t deserve right now, and he shrinks beneath Hunk’s eyes even as Marcie cheerfully bustles on with her baking.

There is silence, cloying and borderline painful, outside of Marcie’s idle humming as she checks the oven, inspecting the cookie trays. After a long moment, she straightens up, hands on her hips, and looks back and forth between them, smile still firmly fixed in place. “Well! I’m sure you two would rather catch up without me in the way, so why don’t you go for a walk to the beach, or something?”

“Uh…I don’t think that’s—“ Lance begins, startling, but Marcie is already there, bustling him up with shooing hands off the counter and out the kitchen, Hunk along with him. She herds them out through the living room to the front door, Lance casting desperate looks to Karen’s sleeping form all the while in the hopes she might awaken and intervene, and then out onto the porch. Hunk doesn’t even look at Lance beyond one quick, scathing side-eye, walking past him with a grace that begets a sense of false diplomacy, and down the steps pointedly.

Lance turns back to Marcie despairingly, eyes pleading, and when she shoots him a blankly unamused look that clearly conveys her disappointment, he decides she’s far too good at reading a situation without actually letting on to it. Mavis may be the self-proclaimed actress of the family—among many things—but Marcie knows how to wield a customer-service smile with downright deadly intent.

Suddenly, Karen’s recurring declaration when they were all younger that Marcie could out-fake-bitch anyone makes a lot more sense.

“Don’t do this to me,” he whispers, and Marcie smiles grimly.

“Sorry little brother, this is for your own good.” She gestures for him to hold out his hand, and he does so reluctantly, Marcie dropping a pile of coin into his open palm, before shutting the door firmly in his face. The sound of the lock sliding into place is a clear reinforcement of the earlier message, and with a sigh Lance drops his head to stare forlornly at his hand, mentally counting out the change. The exact total provided is not lost on him, and when he reaches it, he winces.

…Well played, Marcie.

“So…” he drawls uncertainly, and when he turns, Hunk is staring tiredly at him over his shoulder. “…Wanna go…get ice cream?”

The walk to the beach seems to take longer than usual, steeped in an awkward silence that leaves Lance glancing at the road, the landscape, everything around them but Hunk, choosing instead to drink in the change from lightly scattered trees to the open coastline, and gravel to sand under his sneakers. It’s not as if the whole idea of nature or open spaces has suddenly become a novelty after only a few weeks in New York—if anything, he’d developed a new appreciation for it months ago, after being forced to adjust to the urban setting of Greenwood—but right now anything is better than acknowledging Hunk’s stiff frame barely five steps distance from him, and so he pretends his fascination with the scenery is significantly greater than it actually is.

Somewhere between Lance’s fourth time quickly sliding his eyes past Hunk to the tree or rock next to him, and his fifth time looking up to the sky and gasping when a bird flies overhead—not exactly an unusual occurrence, but he feels like he needs to do something to fill up the silence, or he might just fade away—Hunk grits out a quiet “Will you stop that, please,” and Lance winces, snapping his mouth shut with a near-audible click.

There’s a moment of hesitation in Hunk’s steps as he falters, half-turning to Lance with regretful eyes, a clear apology on the tip of his tongue, before he meets Lance’s own guilty, unsure expression, and just sighs, eyes mournful as he turns back away from Lance once more and continues down the path.

Things don’t much improve by the time they reach the ice cream shop tucked in the middle of the cluster of small stores across from the water, between the tiny Italian restaurant that does garlic knots Igraine swears she’d kill a man for, and the pokey old trinket shop that services the rare tourist or the local who’s forgotten someone’s birthday present until the very last minute. The ice cream shop is a little family-owned business that’s been there since before Lance’s parents arrived, well over thirty years ago, and between the summer jobs both Karen and Carlos got out of the place for three years straight, and the frankly immoral number of free samples Lance’s sisters had wiled out of the unsuspecting teenage boys working the front counters that were far too susceptible to a pretty smile for years on end, the place has firmly become established as a part of Lance’s childhood.

He’s never had a bad memory there, and usually just going in and being welcomed in by the workers that always know him by name is enough alone to put him in a good mood, but when he shuffles in with Hunk, the ring of the bell on the door feels like the toll of death. Lance smiles uncomfortably when the server on duty, a girl who’s brother had gone to school with Evie, greets them, asking him about his trip—because in a town like Veradera, everyone’s up in everyone else’s business. He answers as briefly as he can, trying to ignore Hunk’s stare lingering on him, and counts out the change with a frazzled mind when it comes time to pay.

When they leave, stilted goodbyes called over their shoulders and an ice cream cone each apiece, rainbow sherbet for Hunk and mint chip for Lance, Hunk trudges past Lance with weary silence to the edge of the shop-street pathway. Lance follows him until they hit sand, Hunk walking about ten steps in before simply plopping down upon it, crossing his legs and tucking his elbows over his knees.

The last fading of the sun against the watery horizon is still present, and Lance finds his eyes caught on it as he goes to join Hunk, sitting down next to him and curling up into his own ball not even yet two-third’s Hunk’s size, still tiny and frail by comparison even with every lie of strength and growth, both physical and mental, he tells himself.

He bites into his ice cream, tasting the sharp kiss of the mint on his tongue, and wishes his heart didn’t hurt as much as it does.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Hunk says eventually, and Lance wants to laugh, because of course Hunk would put his worry at upsetting Lance over a perfectly normal reaction to his…Lance-ness above his own frustration at Lance’s shitty behavior towards him. Sometimes, it amazes Lance to no ends they’ve manage to be friends as long as they have, given how different they are—the selfish shadow and the ever-giving rock of stability.

“…This is the part where you apologize and explain why you ignored me for the better part of a month, Lance,” Hunk continues when Lance doesn’t respond, sounding more tired than angry at this point, and Lance looks to the ground, averting his eyes as he takes another bite of his ice cream cone. “Well?”

Lance lets his silence speak for him, and Hunk growls out into the open air, an exhausted, desperate sound.

“Thirty-six calls, Lance! I had to talk to your mother just to check you were still alive, and God, do you know what that feels like? I thought something had happened to you,” the too goes unspoken, tasting of hospital beds and funeral sunshine, but its silence echoes between them. “Thirty-six, and you didn’t answer a single one. ”

“I know,” Lance says, voice measured in a way the unsteady beat of his heart doesn’t match as his confession spills from him, unbidden. “I counted them.”

“Tell me it was an accident, a mistake!” Hunk snaps, “Tell me your phone broke or you forgot your charger, which I know you didn’t because everyone else was getting texts from you. Tell me anything. Spin me some story about why you managed to Skype Ritzie every week and not pick up my calls. Lie to me,” Hunk’s voice cracks, filled with an unspoken, worn-out grief Lance knows so well he can feel it in his bones, and it aches. “I don’t care! Just give me some bad excuse so that I can pretend I believe it and we can move on, like we always do.”

“…No,” Lance whispers, and he doesn’t quite know why, but when confronted with it, with the knowledge that Hunk knows and recognizes every false confidence from Lance’s tongue, the taste of his free out from the situation is sour.

Hunk doesn’t deserve a lot of the crap Lance puts him through on a near-constant basis—doesn’t deserve any of it, really—but he especially doesn’t deserve to be given false complacencies right now, when confronted with Lance’s half-hearted attempt to end it. End their codependence, the depth of their friendship, their…whatever. Whatever this is.

“Why not?!” Hunk screams, jumping to his feet, half-finished ice cream cone forgotten as it falls from his hand, and it is enough to startle Lance to his feet as well, with the realization that he’s never heard Hunk like this before. Not once, not when Lance’s mother got sick and things went to shit, not even when they lost Loraine and everything fell apart all over again. “You lie to everyone else! You lie to your sisters, when they ask if you’re okay. You lie to Ritzie, when she asks you why we came to Greenwood, despite the fact that she looks at you like you hung the sun, and tells you everything, and you let her. You lie to everyone, all the time! Except Mavis, apparently, for some reason—because she showed up out of the blue after three years of radio silence and gave you some stuffed toy, and that was enough to earn your trust apparently!”

“Don’t—“ Lance snaps, because Mavis is more than that, more to him in the face of all they have lost than Hunk could ever understand, despite her faults and despite her flaws, but Hunk barrels on.

“She’s the only one you’re honest with. So c’mon, lie to me! It’s what you do best, right?”

“I didn’t forget to call you,” Lance says calmly, even as his hands shake, because Hunk deserves to know. Deserves this much honesty, at least. “Hunk I didn’t—“

“Stop it!” Hunk says, “Just—stop! Tell me you forgot. Just give me that. Tell me what you tell everyone else, when you want them not to see inside. Tell—tell me you’re better all of a sudden, and you’re not m-miserable inside pretending you’re something you’re not every day, and I’ll lie in exchange and say I believe you!”

Lance’s eyes widen, any words he had left falling from grace, and suddenly this feels like a long time coming, more so than a month of missed calls and heavy silence, stretching across a year and then some of broken things swept under the rug but never actually disposed of. Hunk heaves heavy breaths across from him, hands curled into fists, and Lance’s heart catches in his throat when tears pool in his best friend’s eyes.

“Because—“ Hunk laughs, swiping ineffectively at his eyes. “Because I can’t do this anymore, alright Lance? I can’t take being the person that isn’t good enough for honesty, but isn’t given the comfort of lies either. I can’t take you being a constant presence in my life and then shoving me away the minute you think you’ve found some other coping solution. Y-you need to pick, because I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore, and it’s too much to be both.”

“Hunk…”

“Look,” Hunk sighs, crossing his arms, shoulders shaking. “I don’t know if you ignored me because you just wanted space from my hovering, or if you’ve just decided you’re sick of me, but I need some clear answer, because I can’t keep—“

“It’s not that!” Lance says, “You’re my best friend. You’re family, all right? I need you!”

“Then act like it instead of shutting me out like this!” Hunk screeches, and Lance jumps, taking a step back. Tears threatening to spill over once more, Hunk collapses back into the ground, large shoulders tucked in as he buries his face in his hands. “Make up your mind and just…tell me what you want, you idiot. I need you to tell me, I can’t read your mind. I’m not—“ He swallows, and a mountain of grief shudders out between wide fingers. “I’m not her. I’m not Loraine.” Hunk whispers it like a confession, an apology for a sin he never meant to commit, and it feels like the snap of the rope taut against open air the day Lance—the day they fell…all of them.

Lance sags, stumbling to the ground, and feels the grit of the sand against his knees as he watches his best friend break.

Loraine may have been the one that hit the ground first that day, but they all fell with her, one way or another. Igraine’s regret, Mavis’s guilt, Lance’s collapse, Hunk’s…

Hunk: his best friend, his protector, his brother of summer sun and whispering winters.

They’re all broken, were broken, are still breaking, and Lance is only just starting to see it.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles out, and across from him Hunk twitches, “I was just…I was just trying to protect you.”

Hunk laughs hoarsely, confused and desolate. “Protect me from what?”

“Me,” Lance admits, and it stings. “The things I do to myself. You’re right, I lie and I make myself miserable and I let people love me without actually letting them in, and I—I’m a self-destructive ass and a psychiatrist would probably have a field day with me, and I just thought…” He pauses, and glances over to Hunk hesitantly. “Hunk, I can’t hide from you. You’re there every day and you have to deal with all of that, and you never even complain about it. I had to get you out before I destroyed you too. Mavis is—it’s different,” he finishes lamely, and he doesn’t know how to explain it, that feeling low in his gut when he thinks of Mavis’s hollow apartment and that trundle bed and the clothes she bought for him, that he is not her destruction but, in some fucked up way, her self-decided redemption.

After a long moment, Hunk sighs, shuffling over until he is directly across from Lance, reaching out and catching Lance’s smaller hands within his larger ones, turning them over and inspecting them gently as if they’ll explain all the never-ending inconsistencies of Lance’s being to him. “…You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not gonna argue that one, you know.”

Hunk snorts, releasing Lance’s hands and leaning forward to push one palm against his cheek gently, the tiniest pressure against his jaw and cheekbone. “You remember this?”

Lance furrows his brow, trying to mentally calculate what Hunk means before it clicks, and he blinks. “…The time you slapped me? Kind of hard not to.”

“You were trying to spare me that time, too. It’s exactly the same thing. What, are we just going to go round in circles now?”

He frowns, watching Hunk carefully. “This is different.”

“No, it’s not,” Hunk says firmly, retracting his hand and dropping it into his lap. He stares at Lance sadly, those dark eyes the same as they were that first time he met them, perched in that tree on a hot summer afternoon a lifetime ago, and yet so different, and Lance wonders what the hell happened to the both of them. “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. You push me away, because you’re convinced if you let me I’ll run my entire existence around you.” He smiles halfheartedly. “Pretty big ego you’ve got there, buddy.”

Lance shivers, a sudden lump in his throat. “You know me,” he croaks, “I’m convinced everything’s about me.

Hunk’s mouth quirks upward, a lopsided smile, and inside Lance, something settles. “Believe it or not, I need you Lance, just as much as you need me. So yeah, I’ll fuss over you and mother-hen you, if that’s what it takes, because I don’t want to lose you, but do not think that means I’m going to become you. I’m only doing what you’d do for me, for anyone you care about.”

“You just have to go and make me look stupid, don’t you?” Lance says, but he can’t feel anything but relief, and, as his eyes track spoiled ice cream cones lying amongst soft sand, a sort of displaced grief. Even now, things still get spoiled, ruined, because of him, and he doesn’t know how to explain that to Hunk without getting the same lecture all over again.

It’s not a rational thought, he knows. It’s the kind that brings him to secrets buried in a crumbling New York apartment, under a dorm room bed, whispered to a snow-covered gravestone, and yet he can’t deny its presence.

Perhaps that is what drives him to Mavis, because in triple-locked doors and three AM cereal bowls illuminated by city lights, he senses she has those thoughts too.

“Wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t,” Hunk says with a kind of tired amusement, pulling Lance from his musings, and Lance snorts, punching him gently in the shoulder.

“Jerk.”

#Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#My Writing #Voltron #voltron fanfic #vldfanfic

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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This is too much power for any one person

#I got Inspired by ink and have wasted my whole afternoon doing these for all my characters #SLAOS talk #Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#yes i'm putting this in the main slaos tag it's Worth It

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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The ‘Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink’ All-Encompassing Masterpost

(For all your SLAOS masterpost needs)

(...And mine.)

The Fic:

AO3.

Tumblr Page (w/chapter post links).

Tags:

Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)

Main fic tag. Chapter updates, bonus content, playlists, etc. go here. This is what I’d prefer the tumblr-wide tag to be if someone wants to post about/promo SLAOS.

SLAOS talk

Catch-all tag. Primarily used to tag questions asked about the fic, as well as the occasional comment/shitpost from me I deem worthy of being tagged, and excerpts from upcoming chapters.

The SLAOS AUs

AUs of the fic suggested via askbox. Mostly used to tag ‘story retellings’ I write as warm-up prompts to these AU ideas-- May also occasionally encompass questions/comments about said AUs. This is a newer tag so some old AU questions asked before the ‘retellings’ became A Thing may not be under this.

SLAOS fanart

The tag for fanart. Pretty self-explanatory.

[Characters also have their own tags for art/questions pertaining directly to them. Search /tagged/ on my blog by their full name (ex: ‘Evie McClain’, ‘Yuu Itami’). Canon characters are tagged by ‘slaos’ followed by their first name. (ex: ‘slaos Lance’, ‘slaos Hunk’).]

Playlists:

Overflowed.

CityBreed/StarGirl.

Character References:

[Note: This isn’t an exhaustive list of art of these characters, simply the most handy visual references done by yours truly that are available. For an entire collective of the art of a character, I suggest searching by their tag.]

The McClain Sisters.

Loraine.

Child Lance & Loraine.

Mavis.

Ritzie & Yuu.

#I get questions sometimes about where to find things for this fic and I got tired of backtracking through my own blog/tags so.#this is mostly for my own benefit tbh #Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#fic masterpost #Voltron

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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CityBreed / StarGirl :

The Playlists for Mavis Marisol Paloma & Loraine Ophelia Eliza McClain

(Art by @asshole-cat)

So I mentioned a little while ago that I was putting matching playlists together for Mavis & Loraine, and now that Logan’s had a chance to finish the coverart I bullied him into, I thought it’d be nice to properly share them publicly-- Enjoy!

CityBreed:

Good Grief (Bastille) // He Is the Same (Jon Bellion) // What You Know (Two Door Cinema Club) // Pantomime (Imagine Dragons) // Oh No! (Marina and The Diamonds) // You Don’t Own Me (Grace) // Cry Baby (Melanie Martinez) // Boris (Boy) // Believer (Imagine Dragons) // The Stand (Mother Mother) // New York Soul, pt. ii (Jon Bellion) // Harlem (New Politics)

Full Playlist: Spotify. Youtube.

StarGirl:

Sloom (Of Monsters and Men) // Above the Clouds of Pompeii (Bear’s Den) // Maybe IDK (Jon Bellion) // Next Year (Two Door Cinema Club) // Hopeless Opus (Imagine Dragons) // Ship To Wreck (Florence + The Machine) // Waitress (Boy) // Fineshrine (Purity Ring) // You Are the Moon (The Hush Sound) // Goodbye To a World (Porter Robinson) // Pompeii (Bastille) // I Believe (Christina Perri)

Full Playlist: Spotify. Youtube.

#Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#SLAOS talk #playlists #my playlists #Mavis Paloma #Loraine McClain #my ocs

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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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 9: Liar

((Author’s Note:

Hello! New update here for SLAOS to kick off July before I get busy with my Klance Big Bang fic!

Before we begin, a few exciting things:

My lovely friend Logan has done some beautiful doodles of Mavis and Loraine, which you should absolutely check out here and here.

Also! Since I love having something to listen to while I read/work, there are now matching playlists for Loraine & Mavis for you to so check out if you so please! You can find the tumblr post for both playlists here (complete with coverart!), or go to them each directly-- Mavis: Spotify. Youtube. Loraine: Spotify. Youtube. ))

It takes four days before things to go to shit.

…Naturally.

Why on Earth would Lance have expected anything else, with such a foolish, hopeful, half-thought out idea?

It’s four days of awkward, stumbling missteps in trying to relearn himself, filled with scrambling changes of clothes every time he dares to look in the mirror and feels his stomach flop unsurely at seeing bright patterns and knock-off chiffon, pairing skirts with his loose, faded t-shirts in hopes of finding some suitable balance between memory and self-taught reality, and one rather memorable incident on the second day of this little mini-venture when Mavis had opened the bathroom door to find Lance in tears after he had accidentally jabbed himself in the eye with her half-stolen, half-borrowed mascara brush.

Even after making the decision to give this a try, it’s not as simple as throwing on a new set of clothes and calling it done. It’s hardly easy unlearn a year of practice keeping himself from these things, and it’s never really just been about clothes, regardless.

After all, Lance thinks, if this was just an odd addiction to what most people might call cross-dressing, then that might be easier to be rid of. But this… This is just himself. Lance. It’s an itch under his skin on hot, muggy mornings that he cannot escape and a distinct feeling of wrongness every time his shirts rub against his collarbone and long skirts sit too low on his thin, unshapely hips.

No matter what he does, even in this… experiment, it still feels like he’s running from himself, and it leaves him with an aching, wishful desire for the easy sense of self he’d known as a child, happy and unquestioning of what he wanted or how he wished to look or feel.

He’s not sure if this is all a result of his choices in the last year after losing Loraine, or if this was, perhaps, inevitable. Maybe he would have faced the same struggles had he persevered anyways as he got older.

Still, no doubt this would have been easier, with Loraine here.

…Then again, having Loraine would have meant no Mavis, and that in of itself is a can of worms and complicated feelings Lance isn’t quite ready to open yet.

Regardless, for those few strange, itchy, yet oddly content days, he presses on to figure out what he wants from this, what he wants from choice.

On the fifth day, he finds himself sprawled out on Mavis’s couch in the heat of the summer afternoon as the humidity clings to his skin, NASA t-shirt from his suitcase and skirt from Mavis’s purchases thrown on and the hair bow pinned haphazardly to his curls, tongue darting out idly to prod at the leftover sticky sweetness on his lips from an ill-advised foray into lip gloss, old stuff found in Mavis’s bathroom drawer that likely hadn’t been touched in years and was well past any advisable expiry date. He’s sitting in a position that would likely get him scolded for indecency at home— Shoulders resting on the cushions where he should be sitting and legs flung up in the air, knees hooked over the back of the couch and skirt pooling in his lap as his arm stretches past his head to flick through channels on the television with the remote clasped upside-down between loose fingers. Across from him, Mavis sits with her feet tucked up under the pillow Lance rests his head on, shirt abandoned in favor of just her sports bra and jean cut-off shorts, brow furrowed as she fiddles with a replacement string for her violin, loudly confident in her occasional bluster that she can do it herself rather than take it to the shop.

It’s a quiet, pleasant kind of companionable silence intermingled with the background noise of the TV ads and Mavis’s occasional swears as fine, long fingers poke and prod at delicate woodwork.

At least, until the sharp rap of knuckles on the front door jolts them both into awareness, attentions turned to it in half-awake confusion.

“Mavis?” A man’s voice rings out. “It’s me, are you home?”

Mavis blinks, looking to Lance for a moment, and then promptly trips over herself and falls to the floor with a squawk as she tries to scramble off the sofa. “Shit!”

“You okay?” The voice asks, concern drifting into the friendly words. “I’m gonna come in, alright?”

There’s the scraping of a key being inserted into the lock, and the door handle turns, sending Lance wiggling desperately in a similar failed maneuver to Mavis’s in an attempt to at least sit up properly. In some distant part of his mind, he wonders in what alternate universe Mavis, paranoid, private Mavis, would ever give some random guy who clearly wasn’t a relative a spare key, as Mavis waves her arms pointlessly from her upside-down position on the floor at the door, one knee still caught on the sofa, and screeches. “No, wait! Jeff—“

The door slams open all of three inches, before catching on the chain lock, and jolting to a sharp stop. Sighing, Mavis drops her arms, covering her face with one of them tiredly. “Chain lock, Jeff.”

“Whoops.” Half a man’s face hovers in view in the crack between the door and the wall, grinning abashedly. “Sorry, forgot.” Below him, another face, younger and with wider eyes, peers into the space as well as the man’s eyes slide over to Lance.

Lance’s heart catches in his throat as it finally registers with him what he is wearing, in plain view, to this man who is not Mavis and not safe, and he finds himself frozen, half-tempted to flee, but unable to find his feet.

“So…” The man drawls, thick New Jersey accent caught up in cigarette smoke roughness visible in his words. “Who’s the girl?”

“The what?” Mavis half mumbles, stumbling to her feet, grabbing her shirt where it lies on the coffee table and pulling it over her head as she staggers to the door and nudges it back enough to unhinge the chain lock, opening the door properly once it’s free.

“The kid?” The man says, sticking calloused hands into loose jean pockets and meandering into the room enough for Mavis to shut the door behind him, with his shadow hot on his heels, a boy around Lance’s age with dirty blonde hair that hangs in front of his eyes and a scattering of freckles on his forearms that stand out against his pale skin. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me…” He pauses, thinking. “…Your brother’s daughter? You mentioned you had family coming to visit, and you’re the youngest sibling, right? So…”

The guy’s gaze slides between Mavis and Lance, questioning, and with a lurch in his stomach, one part horror, one part elated relief, several things click into place for Lance all at once.

Most importantly, that this guy, amazingly, impossibly, thinks he’s a girl. Somehow.

A girl, not… Well.

“…What?” Mavis says, and then her eyes widen as she catches on, darting to Lance in a panicked question. “I mean, uh…” He stares back at her with something like frightened desperation as it fully registers their only options here are to roll with it or correct the man’s mistake and face the potential consequences, which is… unappealing. Making a split-decision in seconds, he silently begs her to play along.

He’s not ready to face it again. The judgmental looks, the uncomfortable questions. Not in this place that is supposed to be his secret haven. He knows nothing about these people, aside from the fact that they seem to know Mavis, and that alone is not enough to confirm they are safe for Lance.

“…Yeah.” Mavis finally finishes, trailing off unsurely and lapsing into momentary silence. “This is… My niece… Lance.” The man blinks, surprise flickering over his face, and Lance looks to his cousin with a strained, pleading expression, prompting a quick, aborted movement on her part that looks like something between a shrug and throwing up her hands, the meaning, as far as Lance can determine, best equated to a sentiment along the lines of ‘I panicked’.

Which… Fair enough.

“It’s… a nickname.” Lance offers unsurely, edging closer and wincing at how frail and borderline whispery his voice is. “Long story.”

“Alright then.” The man’s voice is bemused, but not unkind, and Lance unfurls, shoulders relaxing ever so slightly as he registers that, yes, this guy has accepted the ruse without question. “Lance it is. It’s nice to finally meet Mavis’s niece. She doesn’t talk ‘bout her family half as much as she should.”

“Right then.” Mavis coughs into a fist, eyes flickering unsurely to Lance once more, as if she can’t quite believe this is happening either. “Lance, meet Jeff and his son, Tommy. Jeff and I um… work together, and Tommy helps out sometimes around school.” She turns back to the newly christened Jeff, sticking her hands into her back pockets in a nervous gesture that is purely Mavis, and goes to work doing what she does best— Deflecting. “You’re supposed to call me before you just come over, jackass.”

Jeff grins unashamedly, holding up his hands in an easy gesture of surrender. “I needed to go over some numbers with you for next month’s stock, and I was in the neighborhood.” Mavis raises an eyebrow, distinctly not amused, and Jeff waves the plastic bag in his left hand carefully. “I brought takeout, your favorite Chinese place.”

Something gives in Mavis’s expression, and she looks to Lance. “I don’t know if now is the best time, Jeff…”

“Come on,” Jeff waves his hand dismissively, and for the first time Lance finds his mannerisms rubbing him the wrong way. People listen to Mavis, that’s just part of the way she works, and to see someone so casually ignore her unsubtle suggestions is… unusual. Different. “You love Chinese. It’ll just be for a bit, promise.”

Hesitantly, Lance reaches out, catching Mavis’s fingers at her side, and she glances at him again, clearly sensing his discomfort. “…Leave the food on the kitchen counter. We can talk in my room, give us some quiet.”

“Great.” Jeff says jovially, sliding a hand around Mavis’s waist that makes Lance’s skin itch uncomfortably, and leading her away without a backwards glance. “Tommy, keep Ms. Lance company, yeah? Talk about your video game things or something.”

“Yeah, sure…” The boy mutters quietly, sounding as if he’d really rather not, and then Mavis is gone into the other room, quickly flashing Lance a reassuring smile as the door shuts behind her that he does his best to mirror.

After a couple long seconds, it properly registers that he is alone with Tommy, and he turns back to the other boy, the other boy who thinks he is a girl and who’s father apparently is close enough to Mavis to touch her like that, and prays that he doesn’t fuck this up too badly.

His only reassurance is that Tommy looks just as unsure and uncomfortable as he does.

“So…” The boy drawls, soft and questioning. “You’re… Mavis’s niece.”

“Um. Yeah.” Almost unconsciously, Lance crosses his arms, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “And your dad and Mavis… They… Work together?” His voice lingers on the last words, dubiousness easily soaking through. He may not know an exceeding amount about the adult world just yet, but he doesn’t think randomly showing up to someone’s apartment that they apparently have a key to with lunch is standard coworker behavior in the slightest.

At least, no one’s ever shown up to their house with lunch for any of his sisters or mother claiming to know them from work.

“A-Ah, yeah!” Tommy brightens considerably, nodding and shoulders relaxing slightly. “She works at Dad’s bar! She helps with my music theory homework for band class when I’m there after school sometimes, she’s really nice.”

“Yeah…” Despite himself, Lance feels a smile slip onto his face. “She is.”

“’M sorry about my dad, for the record.” Tommy offers. “I know he can be a bit… much. He just… really likes Mavis. He tries to find excuses to talk to her and stuff.”

“It’s alright.” Lance offers hesitantly, not completely sure if it is all right at all but trusting the other in his honesty in regards to the situation.

Tommy grins unsurely, bright and cheerful, and idly Lance catches a similar, fainter pattern of freckles along his cheeks to match the ones on his arms, scrawling around the length of his face and catching on the edges of his nose. “Yeah— Sorry, I don’t think that was a very good introduction before, with me hiding being my dad like that.” He sticks a hand out, thin fingers smudged with dirt and ratty friendship bracelets crowding his wrist. “Tommy Buchanan.”

Lance smiles, and takes the proffered hand, his darker skin tone contrasting sharply against Tommy’s. “Lance McClain.”

It’s only then that he once again considers the oddness of his name compared to this ruse— So easy Tommy’s presence is, at least, compared to his father, that it previously slipped his mind once more that this is… Happening.

Lord help him, whatever this is. Perhaps he would have been better off never touching those clothes Mavis had bought, had he known such complications would arise so quickly.

“Um—“ He shifts awkwardly, and Tommy shrugs amicably, retracting his hand as Lance lets go.

“Don’t worry. I know a girl named Dylan and another named Billie… And a guy who insists people call him Sugar. Lance isn’t the oddest nickname I’ve heard, especially not for a girl.” Tommy smiles, young and unassuming and all the things his father appears to be without the undercurrent of wrongness Lance in his potential paranoia feels. “I think it suits you.”

“Oh.” Lance feels heat scrawl across his face and shuffles back, bringing his hands in front of him and twisting his fingers together nervously. It’s… strange. It’s not that he’s never been complimented on his name before, but the idea of someone now appreciating it in a way that is wrapped up with the idea of him being not-a-boy is odd. He’s so used to forcing himself to associate what it means to be Lance with being what he needs to be— Not his memories of being Lancie Loo-Loo, the child that never feared these associations of name and meaning at all.

And no, someone thinking Lance and associating it with girl isn’t quite right either, but it’s something different, at least, and that is… enough. Maybe. Maybe.

“Thank you.” He says softly, and Tommy brightens.

Perhaps, he thinks, this is not so bad after all.

“…Do you want to watch TV with me?” He offers. “Mavis and I were watching this old music competition she likes.”

Tommy nods enthusiastically, hands shoved into his pockets and previous nervousness all but disposed with, and Lance feels himself breathe a sigh of relief.

Later, much later, long after the Chinese food resting in its plastic bag in a sorry heap on the counter has undoubtedly gone cold, Jeff and Mavis reappear from her room. Jeff collects Tommy as he leaves, the food still untouched where it sits as he loudly laughs and talks his way out, hand on Mavis’s back all the way to the door, and Tommy shyly waves Lance goodbye, chasing after his father down the hall without bothering to close those last couple steps of space between them.

They migrate back to the kitchen on an unspoken agreement in awkward silence, Mavis spooning out the now sticky, clinging-together mixes of rice and meat and vegetables into chipped bowls and shoving them into the microwave to reheat while Lance perches on one of the too-tall bar stools, legs kicking idly and meeting only air.

After their food is placed in front of them, Mavis sits down next to him, fork twirling in her hands as she pointedly looks down at the bench and not at Lance. “So that was… a thing. That happened.”

Lance blinks, and automatically fills his spoon and shoves it into his mouth. “…Yeah.”

“Jeff thinks you’re a girl.”

“They think I’m a girl.”

Mavis’s head thunks dully against the kitchen counter as she drops it, arm outstretched to snag the glass of some dark, auburn liquid Lance can safely assume isn’t meant to be shared with him that she’d poured while reheating their food, and then once again brings her head up enough to down the liquid in one fell swoop. “Is this good or bad?”

“I don’t know.” Lance says honestly, bones thrumming with the knowledge of exactly what just has occurred, and it’s the truth. He really doesn’t know— On the one hand, there’s the strange, bubbling elation at the idea of being something else for once. Maybe not what is right, whatever that is, but… Something. On the other, though, there is a kind of precarious inevitability to this sort of thing that promises doom. He is not prepared for this sort of situation, for the upkeep and forward planning needed to maintain... this.

If his mother or Marcie were here, they would promise him that this is his life, and he doesn’t have to keep secrets or, vise-versa, tell anyone anything he doesn’t want to, especially things that are none of their business. If Karen or Igraine were here, they’d call him an idiot for getting himself into such a mess, and then they’d smack Mavis upside the head for letting it happen.

If Loraine were here…

He doesn’t know.

If Loraine were here, it is very likely he wouldn’t be here altogether, either.

Lance trusts Mavis though. He knows this much, whatever that means for this rather odd little situation. “I really… don’t know.”

Distantly, he wonders if he should be panicking over this.

…Probably should, in all honesty.

He isn’t. At least not currently, though he can’t speak as to whether some kind of panic will set in later— He got good at compartmentalizing these things almost subconsciously, after Loraine. Right now he just feels… numb. Lost.

This is not overwhelmingly positive in any way, and this is not awfully bad. It’s certainly not easy, definitely, but it is what it is, and now the only question that remains is what to do with it.

“Mm.” Mavis hums, staring down at her empty glass and swishing the ice resting in its base gently as if it might offer her the secrets of the universe, or at least of their current predicament. “You’re damn lucky you inherited whatever same genes that Lucas got for a pretty androgynous appearance, honestly. And that your voice hasn’t dropped yet.”

Lance pales, and Mavis blinks, eyes widening as she rethinks her words, turning to him with a faintly panicked expression. “Hey, not saying that it will happen! You might get a fairly ranged or high-pitched voice, lots of people do! Look at me, I sound like a forty-year-old man often enough and I’m trying to pass myself off as a singer half the time!”

Lance snorts, breaking into unexpected giggles. “No, you don’t. You sound like Mavis.”

Mavis pauses, and then relaxes, a small, fond smile slipping onto her face. “…Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Lance says, awkwardly poking his spoon around the remnants of his lunch. “I’m not that worried about that sort of thing with um, with Jeff and Tommy, anyways. Like…” He frowns. “Yeah, it’s surprising, and it makes me a little nervous, not gonna lie, but this isn’t my real life, really. What they think I am or am not, it doesn’t matter that much. I’d just never really considered the fact that those… changes will happen one day.”

“Growing up happens to the best of us, Lance.” Mavis grins wryly. “We all just have to live with it, there’s not many alternatives.”

There’s a pause, soft but peaceful, as they both poke unsurely at their food, and then Mavis breaks into giggles, growing in volume and hysteria quickly. “God, what are we doing?”

Despite himself, Lance finds the infectious laughter catch him, leaving him burying his mirth in wide, tight-lipped smiles against his palms. “No idea.”

Mavis cackles at that, hunching over and sending her bar stool rocking unsteadily, and it only sends Lance into further giggles, grinning over his fingers as he peers down at her doubled-over form, her shoulders shaking from surprised, relief-stricken nerves.

It’s all a mess, but at least it’s their mess— To own, to claim, to do with as they please.

And that? That is good.

Eventually, after the food is finished and the dishes washed and left on the drying rack, they find themselves curled back up on the couch as the evening heat falls to mildly warm and humid night air that clings to their skin like a second pair of pajamas. The two of them sit in the middle with Lance slumped into Mavis’s side, her arm thrown over his shoulders and his fingers tangled in the edge of her large sleep shirt as she flicks through channels, looking for a late-night rerun of a movie or a cartoon.

There is a steeping quiet, made up of uncertainty and a million questions they both have about all this, and all the things they cannot understand about each other, even after Mavis finds an old anime being shown and leaves it with the volume on low.

Lance lets himself be the first to break their waiting, speaking into the night where the daylight may not have his unsure thoughts. “So… Jeff.”

Mavis freezes ever so slightly, eyes trained on the television. “Jeff.” She says. “Jeff is… a friend.”

“You said he was a coworker.”

“He is!” Mavis blinks, and then shrugs. “Well, I mean, technically it’s more like he’s my boss—“

“You’re sleeping with your boss?!” Lance screeches, surprise getting the better of him, and Mavis cringes.

“I’m not sleeping with anyone. And how do you even know what that means?! You’re like… barely twelve.”

“Mavis I grew up in a house with eight teenagers.” Lance deadpans. “I know what sex is, thank you very much!”

Mavis turns red, sputtering, and he sighs. “Geez, what is he like, ten years older than you?“

“Only eight, and it’s really— It’s really not like that, okay?” She says sharply, cutting him off, frame still tense and awkward, and Lance relents, burying back against her side and resting his head against her chest.

It’s a different sound than Loraine’s heartbeat, just ever so slightly in its feeling in a way he cannot explain, but it’s still calming, regardless. Mavis is not Loraine, but that does not inherently make her lesser. It just makes it… Well, different.

Loving Loraine, attaching himself to her as his anchor in the world, that was easy, natural. Mavis is… This is a foundation, a trust they have chosen to build, rather than one that was innately there from the beginning. They do not automatically know each other the same way Lance and Loraine did, but they have chosen to, and in a way that is maybe even more powerful.

Maybe.

It is difficult, he thinks, to define his relationship with others without using Loraine as a reference point, and he neither wants to live his life seeing everything as lesser than Loraine in some way, nor as ever coming to see the bond he shared with his sister as somehow less important, because of what it held in inexplicable connections over fostered faith and work.

“So what is it like, then?” He asks instead to quiet the rabbit-heartbeat thoughts of his mind, and Mavis hums, unsure and considering.

“I dunno kid, alright? It’s just… Jeff is kind to me, and the attention is nice, I guess. He’s apparently been really lonely since his wife, Tommy’s mom, left a few years ago, and I think he just likes having someone to talk to.” She shrugs, shifting Lance’s weight ever so slightly. “He says he needs me around, and it’s… It’s flattering. He owns the bar I work at, and when I started helping him with more managerial duties, my paycheck like… doubled. I was really struggling to make rent at the time so he inadvertently helped me out a lot there.”

Lance crinkles his nose. “Still. Giving him a key, though? You used to lock your bedroom door at home just to stop people from getting in. Including your brothers. Whom you shared the room with.”

Mavis makes an unhappy noise of half-hearted denial at that, twisting her hands together in a way he knows means she’s fibbing. “It just sort of ended up that way. I started doing all this extra work around the place and helping him with the books and suddenly there was just a lot of off-hours talks and him showing up with lunch and stuff and then it was just… easier, for him to have a key. I got used to it, I guess. He means well, and I don’t dislike the company. And it’s free food and stuff and… My job too, y’know.”

“It doesn’t sound like it makes you happy, though.” Lance says, because no matter what his dwellings on the knowing of Loraine versus the knowing of anyone else, he understands enough about Mavis to discern this, at least.

“It doesn’t make me unhappy, and that’s enough when it comes to me dealing with people.” Mavis says firmly. “He’s… It’s complicated.”

“I guess.”

“I promise you it’s fine.” She says with all the certainty that comes with being someone like Mavis. “I’m not going to start shacking up with psychos or something, don’t worry.”

Lance grins against her sleeve, shaking his head ever so slightly. “If you say so.”

That night is when the panic does come, fleeting but certain as it leaves him breathless and stumbling from sleep, dreams of hands yanking back his hair and cutting and of whispered voices from long-left classrooms chasing after him. It’s a wordless hum of anxiety of what happens if they know, what happens if they find out, that leaves him rolling and scrambling his way off the pullout mattress and up into Mavis’s bed, clinging to her shakily as she whines sleepily and shifts over enough to make room for him, patting his head absently as she passes out again.

He falls asleep to the soothing sounds of her breathing and the distant honks of the cars in the night traffic outside, and in the morning she makes him frozen waffles that are still soggy after being toasted and promises him that if he wants it so, Jeff and Tommy will never set foot in this apartment again while he is here.

And it’s the truth, for a couple days— Before Jeff calls to invite himself over for lunch with a fifteen minute warning Mavis cannot seem to deny him, and Lance throws on a frilly shirt and shorts without thinking.

That second time, he doesn’t bring Tommy, and Lance sits fidgeting uncomfortably in the corner.

The third time, he does, and Tommy teaches Lance poker with the card set he brought stuffed in his shorts pocket with a hopeful, hesitant expression.

Despite everything, the Buchanans suddenly seem to become a part of the regular schedule, after that.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, in a way. This may be Lance’s escape from his reality, but this is Mavis’s actual life at the end of the day, and apparently Jeff and Tommy, for better or for worse, are part of it.

And so he gets used to Jeff showing up every few days to eat or to talk or to drag Mavis out to go somewhere with him, and to dodging inside the bedroom every time he hears a knock at the door and he’s not appropriately dressed, per se, just in case.

It becomes a part of the new normal disconcertingly quickly, if he’s being honest.

He likes Tommy’s company, at least. It’s odd, hanging around someone the same age as him— He’s used to befriending people who are technically older, no matter how infinitesimal that one year gap between himself and Hunk might feel, and knowing Tommy’s only a few months older is odd.

Not bad, but… Definitely odd.

Still, it’s nice, to have someone to hang out with when Jeff inserts himself into Mavis’s daily schedule with charming smiles and reassuring words, and Tommy holds a kind of quiet peacefulness different from Hunk or Yuu’s that Lance can appreciate. The afternoons he spends playing snap or go fish with him and helping him braid more messy friendship bracelets for his wrists and ankles are… Good.

It’s undeniably strange when Tommy braids him ones in bright pinks and yellows and tells him that they’re nice colors for a girl like him, but that’s not bad either. It’s a strange half-ruse he adjusts to. Not quite a lie, not quite truth.

He thinks of home, sometimes, when he works, and he sets aside three bracelets, lavender and yellow and dark red, for Ritzie and Hunk and Yuu.

An obnoxiously neon pink one gets made for Mavis, to match the bright nail polish she puts on her toes every few days with consistency, and she ties it to her ankle and doesn’t take it off.

Lance ends up with six, all from Tommy in varying colors, scattered up his arms, and he admires them as he desperately tries to ignore the anxious curling in his gut when Tommy rambles happily about his father.

Jeff makes Mavis happy, or so she says, and that’s what’s important.

Outside of that, it’s nice. Mavis cooks oversized bowls of spaghetti or makes toasted tomato and cheese sandwiches on the nights she doesn’t give up and order takeout or pizza, and the two of them eat dinner sometimes on the couch with old anime reruns on the television. She takes him sight-seeing around her schedule and to the theater she works as a stagehand at on the slow days, introducing him to her coworkers there, all of whom Lance likes infinitely more than Jeff, if he’s being honest. He dresses in his clothing from home on those occasions, until his second visit when he spots what he had at least previously assumed was a man in tights and heels milling about the stage and a then assumed woman wearing a binder and wifebeater.

“It’s off-Broadway theater in New York, Lance.” Mavis tells him airily. “Almost everyone’s either queer, not-cis, or liberal as all fuck.”

After that, he hesitantly dresses as he pleases for each particular day on those occasions, and Mavis takes him for ice cream from the corner dairy afterwards like clockwork.

He listens in the spare evenings as Mavis practices the instrument of the day, most often the tiny upright piano jammed in the corner of the living room or her violin, and calls out song requests based off whatever show or movie was just on TV.

Mavis, blessed by her ability to play by ear, normally nails them.

Once his three and a half weeks are up, Lance packs away the clothes he didn’t bring with him in the first place into Mavis’s closet, pockets the random junk she bought him, and leaves with photos for Marcie, a book for Evie, Tommy’s number programmed into his phone with a promise to text, and thirty-six missed calls from Hunk.

And then he, reluctantly, unsurely, clinging to Mavis’s sweater in the airport as he hugs her goodbye and wonders how long it might be until he sees her again, goes back home.

Home to Veradera.

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

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

Note

'why are we whispering?' - ritzie, hunk :3

For the record, I made a very pleased screeching noise when I saw this. Thank you.

Sometimes, having friends is… confusing.

Up until recently, Hunk can say with fair certainty the only friend he’s ever had is Lance (excusing, perhaps, the children he’d played with in the bush and the beach as a toddler back before he and his grandmother had moved to Veradera, but he barely remembers their faces, let alone their names).

Regardless, having extended company with anyone who isn’t Lance, or related to himself or Lance, is new, and Hunk will readily acknowledge it’s something of an adjustment.

…And that, of course, doesn’t account for the fact that Ritzie and Yuu are an experience unto themselves beyond what to expect from most people.

Particularly Ritzie.

She’s more Lance’s friend, honestly, and just Hunk’s by association. It’s not that they don’t get along— He likes Ritzie well enough, she’s very friendly and including, but she’s… a lot, and he has trouble keeping up with her energy and jumps in logic even half as well as Lance does, hence why he generally prefers Yuu’s company.

But… Sometimes Lance and Yuu aren’t around, and Hunk finds himself in some rather interesting situations.

“Hunk.” Ritzie’s voice hisses from the back doorway to their dorm floor, head peeking around the corner and staring suspiciously down the hallway, eyes darting in a way that guarantees she’s up to something questionable that would probably result in suspension or the like if she was anyone else.

The sensible thing to do here would to be to walk away, maybe text Yuu or Lance and leave them to deal with whatever this is once they get out of class.

So, naturally, Hunk goes over instead.

“What is it?” He asks, and Ritzie shushes him rather loudly.

“Quiet!” She murmurs, lips curling up in a teasing, conspiratorial grin.

Hunk blinks. “Why are we whispering?” He responds, pointedly dropping his already quiet tone down a few more decibels. Ritzie’s grin only grows wider, and he feels his stomach sink. “What have you done?”

Proudly, Ritzie casts one last glance along the corridor, and then throws open the door, revealing the back stairwell that’s only supposed to be used for emergencies and cleaning staff (and students sneaking out), and…

“Are those lizards?” Hunk screeches as near silently as he can manage, staring down at the rather large glass tank containing several pairs of reptilian eyes blinking up at him.

“Yes.” Ritzie turns, gesturing to the tank with a look of utter seriousness. “Help me get them to my room, the cage is frigging heavy.”

“Why do you have lizards?” Hunk tries instead, already automatically reaching down to grab the one end of the tank as Ritzie does the same to the other, sticking one leg out to keep the door propped open. They lift it, staggering under the weight even between the two of them, and Hunk spares a brief questioning thought as to how the hell Ritzie got this up the stairs herself, before she’s urging him forward and he’s shouldering past the door, the two of them stumbling into the hallway with the lizard cage.

“Technically they’re leopard geckos.” Ritzie answers. “Not really lizards, per se. And I rescued them.”

“…Rescued them.” Hunk parrots in half-disbelief, walking his way backwards in the direction towards Ritzie’s room, scanning nervously for anyone else coming down the hallway, too afraid to contemplate the consequences of getting caught with unregistered animals in a student dorm room.

“Yep!” Ritzie pops the ‘p’ in the word cheerfully, shrugging a shoulder to nudge her pigtail backwards behind it without somehow wobbling the tank. “Jake Calhoun, y’know, the fucker in Adams Hall with the shitty undercut? He got them for Christmas and decided pretty quickly having pets was less interesting than having things to experiment on, heard him talking about it in class.” She stops, staring up at him with wide eyes, and not for the first time Hunk is uncomfortably aware of the fact that while he may be several inches taller than Ritzie, she still manages to make him feel small just from sheer personality size and her general aura of confidence. “There was a fourth one Hunk, you don’t want to know what happened to it.” She turns as they reach her room, bracing the tank against her hip with one hand and unlocking the door, shoving it open with a foot and guiding both Hunk and the tank in.

“So you broke into his dorm room and kidnapped his lizards.” Hunk mutters tiredly, already figuring out where the rest of this is going. He glances down skeptically as they guide the tank to the center of the room and set it down. Yuu is going to have an aneurism when he sees it, though Lance will no doubt be delighted.

“I prefer the term ‘liberated’”. Ritzie says happily, staring down at her newest acquisitions. “You want to help me name them?”

He should walk away. Should go back to his room and pretend this never happened, or do the responsible thing and call the school administration about this.

“…Yes.” He says instead, and tries not to be shyly pleased at the way Ritzie’s face lights up at his answer, much as he always is when Lance does the same.

Getting attached to two of them would be a very poor idea, after all.

#thank you I love...#Ritzie and Hunk are such Goods #ask memes #writing prompts #SLAOS talk #Spilling Like An Overflowing Sink (Voltron)#SLAOS Hunk #Ritzie Lamae #my ocs #my writing #I've still got like three more of these but they'll probs have to wait till morning tbh #Anonymous #asks #questions for Nik

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pumpkins-s · 7 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 8: Longings

(( Author’s Note:

(kicks down door) Greetings, I'm back.

Apologies for being away from this fic so long. It's been a weird few months for me with a lot of personal stuff going on (If you follow me on social media I'm sure you witnessed the fallout of my breakup with my near year-long partner, for one), and that in addition to the Large amount of discourse in the fandom that sprung up after season 2, particularly surrounding Lance content, made me too nervous to update for a long time.

It took a while, but I eventually remembered that I started this fic for me, because it makes me happy, and letting the pressures of how long an update was or worrying over people's demands for when Keith would arrive was only hurting me, and my ability to write the fic.

So new rule. I'm doing this at my pace, Keith will get here when he gets here. End of story.

Now, before we begin, a couple things:

I'm incredibly honored and delighted to present to you all the finished version of Peachlance's fanart for this fic, which if you remember I linked the WIP sketch to a couple chapters back. You can check out their gorgeous art of Lance & Hunk here on tumblr, or here on twitter.

Also! I'm still not an artist in the slightest, but for those of y'all desiring them, here's some rough references for Mavis and Ritzie & Yuu I did a few months ago.

That's it. Have fun, bye. ))

Mavis’s apartment is a tiny thing on the thirteenth floor of a crumbling old residential building wedged between two larger, shinier new buildings, the few small windows in her apartment providing absolutely stunning views of her fire escape and the wall of the building outside.

It’s tiny, jam-packed, and bordering on claustrophobic, with its singular bedroom, living room, kitchenette, and bathroom all crammed together into one small unit. As a whole, it’s considerably smaller than Lance’s home, even if he is used to sharing that space with a hoard of other people, and arguably he’s pretty sure Mavis’s bedroom is actually slightly smaller than his and Hunk’s dorm room at Greenwood, which is saying something, given that’s not exactly a large space either.

Lance loves it instantly.

The first time he sees the apartment, an exhaustingly long thirty minute subway ride involving three train changes away from the airport, Mavis kicks the door open with otherwise little fanfare, dumping Lance’s suitcase by the door and straightening up.

“Welcome to city living! Mi casa es tu casa.”

Lance snorts, eyes roaming over the mess of dirty dishes in the sink, the unfolded pile of laundry on the coffee table, the assortment of books and music sheets on the kitchen counter. “Tu casa es un desastre.”

“Hush.” Mavis says, pointing a finger at him. “You try being an adult capable of clean, organized living these days. It’s hard.”

“You’re twenty-five.” Lance deadpans, and Mavis sniffs, flipping her hair and crossing her arms, pouting.

“Don’t remind me. I already feel old.” She claps her hands, grabbing Lance’s bag again and swinging it over her shoulder easily as if it isn’t heavily packed with everything Lance needs to survive here for three and a half weeks. “C’mon, let’s get you settled. You’re lucky I bought a bed that has one of those second mattress pullout trundle things in case one of my brothers or Evie ever came to stay or something.”

“Goodie.” Lance mutters, and Mavis smirks back at him, nudging the bedroom door open just as her phone goes off. Pulling it out of her pocket, she glances at the number and winces. “Work. I need to take this.” Swinging Lance’s bag off her shoulder, she turns and bodily chucks it at the trundle bed, sending it flying onto it with a loud crash that leaves Lance wincing and pitying his cousin’s neighbors. “Go ahead and get settled while I’m on the phone, if you want. There’s some toiletries and spare clothes I picked up just in case, since I wasn’t sure if you packed enough given I do the laundry like… once a month.”

“Gross.” Mavis snorts, and nudges him into the room, pulling the door shut behind her as she turns back to the living room, answering her call with a muffled, yet distinctly blunt “What.”, obviously none-to-pleased with whomever is calling her on her day off.

Sighing, Lance shuffles his way over to the trundle bed, nudging his suitcase over to a corner as best he can and then flopping down, savoring being able to stretch out properly after hours of being crammed on first a plane and then the subway. He may be smaller than an adult, or even, admittedly, small for his age, but that doesn’t mean he appreciates being shoved into tight spaces for extended periods of time any more than the next person.

Rubbing at his eyes, he sits up and turns to the small pile of clothes and what looks like a spare toothbrush and face-wash, among other things, resting on the pillow. He moves the toiletries without much thought, idly inspecting the label on the face-wash and happily noting it’s a brand he’s used before, but when he turns to the clothes he hesitates, looking at the shirt resting on top properly for the first time and noting a… small problem.

It’s pink.

A bright, searing pink, small flowers patterned along the collar and lace for sleeves.

Hands shaking, he grabs the fabric and carefully lifts it up, eyes roaming over the distinctly feminine cut and color of the shirt with a kind of displaced horror, offset by the hesitant want he feels just from looking.

The shirt is exactly the kind of thing he would have picked out, a year and a lifetime ago. On instinct, he holds it to his nose, and it smells… not like what he remembers when he thinks of clothing like this, of Loraine’s shampoo and his mother’s laundry detergent, but it does smell somewhat like Mavis, like the subtle scent of her leather jacket and her apartment, and that is… not right, but not wrong either.

God though, that doesn’t take the edge off the wanting, even noting these minute differences between his memories of the life he craves and his reality. If anything, knowing it’s real, here and presented in this space where he is relatively free of the consequences of such choices, makes the whole thing worse.

Almost idly, hands gripping light fabric, he thinks of a story his Aunt Rosa had told him once as a child, an old Greek myth from one of her well-worn books about a king who was punished for his transgressions in the afterlife by being placed on an island surrounded by water and with fruit trees growing on it, but could not eat or drink, no matter how much he hungered or thirsted, for eternity.

That is what this is like, he thinks. It’s placing cursed salvation in front of a starving person and watching them crawl desperately towards it.

He wants so badly, and yet to have it is akin to taking fruit from the poisoned tree.

Jerking slightly, Lance drops the shirt with shaking hands, as if it might scald him. From the kitchen, Mavis’s voice, raising in volume as she argues with whoever is on the other end of the line, drifts through, pulling him back to reality.

Mavis… right.

Assumedly, this is her doing, then.

Hesitantly, he turns to the remaining pile of clothing, eyes falling to a now more than obvious assortment of bright patterns and cheerful designs, a veritable ball of doom. Reaching out, both hands grasping unsurely, he rifles through it, overly-short cut fingernails, a habit he picked up to fight the urge to paint them, catching on floral shorts and thin tights and close-shaped t-shirts splashed with color.

As a whole, he counts four shirts, two skirts, one pair of high-waist shorts, and a single pair of light pink tights.

…Oh, and a clip-on hair ribbon. Blue.

Really, it’s not that much, barely a few days selection of clothes, but at the same time, it’s everything.

He wants to cry, he wants to cheer, he wants to burn it and curl up in a ball and try to forget.

It’s the little things that destroy a person, Lance thinks, when it comes to the wanting.

Outside the room, Mavis’s voice rises to a sharp crescendo, followed by the muffled sound of something being chucked sharply against a thankfully soft object, and, judging by the following array of colorful swears directed to the air, Lance can only assume it was Mavis’s phone being thrown, hopefully onto the sofa or something where it won’t be damaged.

It’s a funny thought that preoccupies his mind for all of about two seconds, before his gaze falls to the clothing spread out before him, and he swallows nervously, calling out. “M-Mavis…?”

Despite his half-hearted effort at the tiny vocalization, the loud cursing from the kitchen trails off, and after a moment, Mavis pushes her way into the room, door slamming open and then swinging shut behind her on its own momentum. Her hair is a mess, sticking out in every direction where she’s clearly run her fingers through it, but she doesn’t look upset, just mildly pissed at best.

“Sorry, sorry, my boss is a dick. I was supposed to have tomorrow off to do fun bonding shit with you or something, but he’s now demanding I cover my lazy coworkers ass so…” She trails off, eyes falling to him for the first time and widening, taking in his own shell-shocked expression, before her gaze catches on the scattered clothing, and it closes off, becomes guarded. “Ah.”

With a kind of long-awaited resignation, she trudges over to the trundle bed, nudging Lance gently with a food to get him to move over, and then flopping down next to him, lifting an arm in clear invitation. Lance doesn’t hesitate, despite the distant knowledge that the articles of his distress were undeniably provided by the person next to him, and falls against her side, tucking his head under Mavis’s chin and listening to the thrum of her heartbeat, the erratic sound slowing out to a steady rhythm as she calms down.

It’s good. Soothing. Like how he used to lay with Loraine when he was younger, the two of them tucked up together on that cramped bed layered in old quilts and well-worn pillows.

For a moment, when he closes his eyes and feels Mavis’s blunt fingernails scratch lightly against his scalp as her fingers card gently through his hair, he can pretend he’s back there again, in his sanctuary.

But... He sighs out, opening his eyes and meeting the sight of Mavis’s whitewashed wall. He is not there, and this apartment might just be his next best chance at something like a new sanctuary.

“I’m sorry.” Mavis says after a long moment of quiet, voice low and unsure. “I forgot.”

“Why would you…?” He rasps out, words falling into uncertainty.

Mavis chuckles, a brittle, bitter sound. “Let’s call it a momentary increase in stupidity. I just…” She sighs. “I wasn’t thinking, really. Well… No, I was thinking, just not very intelligently.”

“Well, clearly.”

She laughs at that, small but genuine, and Lance manages his own wet giggle in return. She grins down at him, and then her face falls, turning away to look at the wall. “I… I listen to you on the other end of that phone every week, Lance, and I don’t even have to see you to know how much it’s killing you underneath, living like that. No matter what, you’re miserable because of it, and I suppose I just thought…” She shrugs. “No one knows you here, so there’s no consequences here, y’know? It’s completely removed from home, from your school… from everything.” Mavis smiles weakly. “It’s stupid, but I guess at the time I wanted this place to be the escape for you that I made it for me. Plus, well… I can’t help but feel a little guilty, I suppose.”

Lance shifts at that, offering a questioning noise. “What? Why?”

Mavis shifts nervously. “Lance, you hate living like this, and I was the one who talked you into Greenwood in the first place—“

“Hey, no. No.” Lance sits up quickly, glaring at Mavis. “You didn’t talk me into anything. This— Everything was my decision. You didn’t coerce me into making the choices I have or any of that shit.”

“But—“

“Nope!” He says firmly, poking his cousin’s cheek gently. “You helped me, nothing more, and for that I’m grateful, okay? I’m…” He sighs. “I’m not saying I like living like this, or that I’m alright with it, because I’m really… really not, but I need it. I need this… purpose, to keep me going, to give me something to hold onto.” Lance hesitates. “I’m honestly not sure if I’d be alive right now, if you hadn’t helped me find that. It stabilized me.”

Mavis stares at him for a long moment, and then groans, head tipping back to fall against the side of the proper bed next to the trundle, where her back rests. “Don’t go getting emotional on me now, kid. We can’t both be having a sob fest, and your bullshit earnestness makes my self-pity just look sad.”

Lance grins in spite of himself. “Karma for deciding you’re to blame for all my problems.”

“Hey!” Mavis sticks a hand into the air, pointing up at nothing imperiously. “I never said I was to blame for all your problems. Just… a few of them.” She coughs, hand falling after a moment almost bashfully. “Ok, in retrospect, that sounds… Yeah.” After a moment, she glances down at him, raising an eyebrow. “I did actually mean to return those this morning before I picked you up and get you some different stuff, I just genuinely forgot.”

He smiles softly. “I believe you. I wasn’t angry in the first place, anyways.”

It’s true, really. Whatever slight slivers of annoyance he’d felt at Mavis sticking such metaphorical poisoned fruit in front of him had quickly drained away within minutes, leaving only a kind of calm acceptance and tiny pieces of lingering grief.

Mavis loves him, as much as any of his sisters, and maybe even almost as much as Loraine had, he knows this. She would never do anything to intentionally hurt him, or pain him. She only wanted to help— Had only ever wanted to help, since that first conversation after Loraine’s funeral, when she had offered him Loraine’s final gift, and along with it the directions to a chance at redemption.

“I should have known it was a shitty idea from the beginning, really.” Mavis murmurs quietly, leaning over and snagging the single pair of tights to glare at them ruefully. “Sticking you with that kind of decision.”

Almost unconsciously, Lance reaches out, catching the dangling ends of the tights carefully and tangling them between his fingers. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just…” He swallows. “I want too much, I think. I’m afraid if I let myself have that kind of thing, I might not have the heart to give it up again.” His eyes flicker to his cousin. “And I can’t, Mavis. I can’t let those pieces of who I was back into my life. I’d rather die than jeopardize this last thing that I can do for her.”

Mavis sighs, dropping the rest of the tights into his hands. “You shouldn’t live your life trying to please what’s not coming back, Lance.”

“It’s what I want, though.” He says. “It’s the only thing I want, really, to do what she couldn’t. It’s the closest I can get to keeping a piece of her alive, and I… I need that.”

“I know…” Mavis says, closing her eyes. “God, I know.”

That night, Lance dreams of Loraine. Of the soft warmth of her hugs, of the sweet taste of summer air and of breathless laughter caught in near soundlessness on rushing air around a speeding hoverbike on old dirt roads.

There are dreams Lance has, nightmares really, that end in screaming, in the oxygen in his lungs being stolen in heaving sobs that leave him shivering and with an aching throat. Those… Those are the nights of blood and pain, the sensation of falling through air and of remembering what glassy, unseeing eyes look like, the nights when he cannot escape the day she died.

This is not one of those nights. Though, still, the bittersweet feeling of her face and her heart, loving and kind, haunting his sleep leave him with tear tracks on his face when he wakes, regardless.

Almost blindly, he rolls half out of bed, intending to walk the five steps necessary to reach Hunk’s across the room and curl up against the larger, slowly snoring warmth that is his friend, before his hand touches scratchy, industrial carpet instead of old wooden floorboards, and he remembers he is not at home, and Hunk is not here.

Sitting up, he rubs at his eyes blearily, squinting at Mavis’s distinctly unoccupied bed next to the pullout trundle, and then turns when the faint flickering of light under the doorway catches his eye. Stumbling to his feet, he carefully crosses the room and opens the door, pulling it open with the gentlest of creaks to bring the wash of yellow light from the kitchen streaming in, illuminating Mavis’s frame where she sits on a stool next to her kitchen bench, half hunched over a bowl of cereal and eyes settled on the book she has propped up against the fruit bowl. She blinks, glancing up, and when her gaze finds him her expression softens ever so slightly, almost lost in the imperceptibly neutral planes of her face.

He almost expects her to offer some quip, some cliché line that he can read in her eyes that screams you too, huh? But instead, she merely makes a halfhearted noise that falls somewhere between a snort and a sigh, and pulls out the stool next to her, patting it idly. Slowly, Lance edges out of the doorway and over to the stool, catching his toes on the well-worn wood of the ring between the legs of the seat as he looks for footing, scrambling up onto it as best he can. Legs dangling, too short to touch the ground, once he’s settled.

Mavis grabs a bowl from a stack on the bench, obviously washed but yet to be put away in a cupboard, in front of him, and then nudges the open box of cereal towards him. He accepts it wordlessly, pouring it into the bowl in rush of noise against the silence as the pieces of grain collide against the porcelain.

They’re Cheerios, he notes almost absentmindedly.

Loraine had liked Cheerios.

Fumbling, he reaches for the milk carton where it sits between the two bowls, and Mavis intercepts him quickly, picking up the carton and unscrewing the lid.

“New carton. It’s heavy.” Is all she offers, pouring the milk into his bowl. She resettles the carton once the pieces of golden brown are floating in white, presenting him with a spoon from who knows where wordlessly.

Lance takes it, scooping up a mouthful, and tries not to cry when the cool rush of milk and sweet tang of the cereal hits his tongue.

“I never liked Cheerios much growing up.” Mavis says quietly, staring down at her half-empty bowl and trailing her spoon through the mess before lifting it to her lips. “Loraine and Evie did, though, so that was all my Ma or Aunt Maria ever bought when they went to the store.”

Outside, there comes the faintest whisper of witching hour traffic along the streets, and the clinking of their spoons against the porcelain bowls is loud in the otherwise silence of the night.

“You’re an adult,” He murmurs, “…Does it ever get better?”

Mavis sighs, propping an elbow on the bench and resting her cheek in her hand. “I’ll tell you when I figure that out myself.”

Lance nods jerkily, and that’s the end of it.

Even by that first day after Lance arrives, things are a mess, because Mavis’s schedule is a mess— And maybe her life in general is a bit of a mess, too, but Lance imagines that comes with the territory when one is somehow a part-time bartender, part-time stagehand, and freelance musician all at once.

Plus, well, it’s Mavis. She kind of specializes in functioning from afar while everything actively goes to shit, which he suspects is a trait he might slowly be inheriting via continued exposure to her mere presence.

Maybe. Maybe.

…Lance isn’t sure if he knows how to function period, really, regardless of outside problems, so maybe he’s just kidding himself with that one.

Either way, function Mavis does, so the morning after their little heart-to-heart over soggy bowls of Cheerios in the last trickling vestiges of night, she rolls out of bed to the chime of an annoyingly cheerful alarm at six AM and staggers her way into the bathroom to get ready for work, nearly tripping over Lance’s trundle as she goes, which is enough to wake him and send him scurrying into her bed to seize the warm spot she’s left behind.

She makes a face at him when she returns, poking the side of his head where it peeks out between the sheets. He hums sleepily, and she grins, a crooked, fragile thing. “’M sorry about this. I really wasn’t supposed to work today.” He offers a half-awake noise of understanding, and Mavis’s expression fades into a soft smile. “I’ll be back by dinner, I’ll bring takeout or something. You still like Thai food, right?”

“Mmmm….” Lance rumbles out, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “…Yeah.”

“Good, cool.” She straightens up, sighing out. “TV has a DVR, remote’s on the table. Don’t open the door to anyone, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I know, Mavis.” He mumbles. “I’ll be fine.”

She hesitates, dropping an uncharacteristic kiss onto his forehead, an action Lance would expect more from Marcie or Evie, and then she’s gone.

It only takes a few hours, once he’s rolled out of bed and forced himself into the living room, before the boredom sets in, and the itch, just there under his skin, becomes all the more obvious, like a crawling, wiggling thing, burying deep until it hums and scratches in his bones. It had been there since he’d woken up and gone to get dressed, uncomfortably aware of the selection of clothing Mavis had gotten for him shoved onto a shelf in the closet, just… there, right within grasp.

It’s undeniable, like a siren’s call, and television can only distract him for so long.

Almost automatically, he reaches for his phone, intending to call Hunk, his go-to backup system, before he pauses, and then drops his hand.

Hunk. Right. Part of the whole purpose of this trip was to not so subtly give Hunk a break from Lance’s… everything. He’s not going to go calling his friend after less than a day over some frigging clothing. It’ll just leave Hunk worrying about him incessantly.

He takes his phone, buries it between the couch cushions, and resurrects Mavis’s laptop from its constantly overheating, cracked screen, duct-taped death to Skype Ritzie.

“It’s just all so boring, darling.” She tells him in lighthearted monotone, bushy hair pulled back in a single ponytail on the other side of the screen, pale skin against jean shorts where she sits cross-legged and curled up in on herself. Off screen, someone calls her name, and she yells back loudly in French, before turning back to the camera with a sigh. “I love France, but it’s all just making nice with Papa’s business associates while he jets them around on cruises and listening to him arguing over the phone with Daddy about custody, again.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s like I’m a freaking commodity to be passed around.”

“Sorry.” He tells her in a whisper, and Ritzie laughs, the bright, cheerful sound he’s come to recognize and appreciate in her.

“Not like it’s your fault. I’m just looking forward to when I escape the parental affection battle and school goes back. I miss you lot, even Yuu, despite his nagging.”

“Miss you too.” He says, and even though he can’t tell her about the long-worn scars on his arms or the buzzing itch under his skin that he called to distract himself from, because she does not know, will never know, he still means it.

Will always mean it.

Even long after Ritzie hangs up the call, Lance sits there, fingernails digging into his arms where they’re crossed, and when it gets to be too much, he jumps up, forces himself into busyness by washing he dishes that lay piled high on Mavis’s counter, all the way down to their cereal bowls from the night before.

He eats a handful of dry Cheerios, pretends it’s lunch even as he ignores the sandwich sitting in the fridge, cut in triangles like he insisted on when he was little, before Mavis left home, and studiously does not cry.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

And when Mavis brings home takeout and bullies him into watching shitty old anime reruns with her, it’s almost good.

Almost… It feels like no matter what Lance does, he’s always just grasping at almost.

Two days after Lance first arrives in New York, minus the day he actually got off the plane and took his first steps into Mavis’s apartment, he reaches his breaking point.

...In a way, he’s surprised he even lasted that long.

It’s not so bad, in the morning, when Mavis doesn’t have work and drags him out of bed to walk around the neighborhood, teaches him the differences between the New York and D.C. metro systems, parades him over to the diner two blocks down and presents him cheerfully to the workers, who all know her by first name. It’s movement, noise, people, all the ingredients to the recipe for adequate distraction and entertainment. It’s nice, even with the oppressive heat of the summer sun beating down on the sidewalks, and Lance can see why his cousin treasures the home she has found here so much.

It’s in the evening, when Mavis, apologetic and reluctant, has to duck out for a short shift at the bar, that Lance finds the itch return, driving him to more frantic cleaning and fruitless pacing in an effort to forget.

He knows, really, that there’s only two options to drive away the itch— Give in, or… Well, he’s been trying to break himself of the latter habit, for the sake of Hunk’s sanity and the slowly healing marks on his arms.

On some level, Lance doesn’t know why it’s so bad this time, compared to any other. He’s been doing this for over a year now, has held himself strictly to this decision even when he’s home on the weekends and holidays, far away from Greenwood and its prying eyes, and he’s never come this tenuously close to slipping, to giving in.

He thinks, maybe, it’s the utter lack of pressures here. If he gave in at home, if he dressed and acted as he liked and found a way to lock it down every time he returned to Greenwood, his family would, in well-meaning intent, encourage him to take the clothing he loved, the things he once treasured, back with him.

They are too understanding, in a way. They’ll never be able to grasp the importance of this, of the lie he and Mavis have so delicately crafted.

But… Here? Here there’s only Mavis— Friend, cousin, coconspirator, secret-keeper. She knows. She understands why.

And so, as the hours drain away and the night creeps in, Lance finds himself falling from grace in a moment of desperate self-pity, fueled by exhaustion and resignation, and sneaking into the bathroom with the single hair bow Mavis had purchased grasped between his shaking fingers.

When he clips it on unsteadily, stepping back and squinting into the mirror, it’s all wrong, a conspicuous mark against his short hair and faded dark grey shirt. He looks more like a child playing around in his mother’s makeup drawer, metaphorically, at least, then he does like himself.

At the same time, though, even that one little piece is… Everything. The color of it, the weight of it against his skull, it’s everything to him.

“It looks nice.” Mavis’s voice rings out from the doorway, and Lance startles, turning sharply to see her reclined there, arms crossed and considering.

He hadn’t even heard her come in, he realizes. Too caught up in his elated panic over this tiny act of... something.

“It looks terrible.” He bites out, and Mavis shrugs.

“I think the color suits you.”

Lance glances back to the mirror, looking again, and for a moment he wants to ask if she really thinks so, but he shakes it off. “Doesn’t matter anyways.” He reaches to unclip it, and Mavis slides forward quickly, catching his hands in her own and staring down at them, biting her lip for a moment in an unsure, hesitant gesture.

“I’m not going to tell you what you should or should not do, Lance. But—“ She glances up ever so slightly, meeting his eyes even as she still looks down at him, the significant height difference between them never more apparent. “Nobody here can touch you. Nobody has to know.”

He blinks, pointedly ignoring the itch behind his eyes, and hesitantly looks back at his reflection, studying the splash of sky blue against his slight curls, the same as Loraine’s, even at this length.

He wants. He wants so badly, and he’s so tired of not being able to give into it.

Hesitantly, nervously, he slips one of his hands free of Mavis’s, dropping it to his side and running the edges of his fingers along the hem of his board shorts, the long fabric chaffing against the inside of his knees as it has for the last two days, heavy and unbearable.

“Could I…” Lance says quietly. “Could you bring me those shorts you bought me? Please?”

Just three weeks. Three weeks here, in this place where secrets can lay buried, and then he will go home to Veradera, and be who he needs to be once more.

Nobody needs to know.

…Right?

#spilling like an overflowing sink (voltron)#Voltron #vld fanfic #vld fanfiction #my writing

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