another post to remind everyone to please /please/ delete anything you’ve posted or reblogged about the leaked pictures of Lotor and other new characters as Studio Mir is now in legal trouble with DW.
reblogging again because this is extremely serious i haven’t seen any of the leaks anywhere but they are still hopping around and if you see them please please please ask the person to delete it!! ask the person they reblogged it from to delete it
this leak could literally make people lose their jobs and could potentially delay the new season depending on the severity!!
just please delete them i don’t want anyone to loose their jobs over a few stupid posts online!!!
please delete anything related to this guys!! it’s way, way more serious than we all thought. please delete the fanart people have made too. don’t be selfish. it’s not worth people losing their jobs :(
SHAPESHIFTERS presents: Special Giveaways 2 and 3!
Y’all. The second and third Shapeshifters donor-funded binder giveaways have been funded in full. What is there to say? It is a genuine privilege to be the humble channel through which your generosity flows. You are beautiful people, and we’re going to make some beautiful binders in your honor.
As special giveaways, these two have special prizes. The two lucky winners of this giveaway will each receive one single-layer custom-sized binder in their choice of size, cut, and print, including any four-way stretch print available on Spandex House. Check out the store for basic options, or Spandex House’s website for approximately a zillion more choices. Your binder could be Shadow Deer. Or Cupcakes. Or covered in corn? Or any of the pictured binders above, many of which are no longer available for regular purchase in-store.
Bonus round: add your favorite Spandex House print in the tags. We’re still both enamored of the jinder (or jeans binder).
The fine print:
Only reblogs and retweets count. One per blog/twitter. No giveaway blogs.
Reblog this post for an entry into Giveaway 2. Retweet this tweet and follow the @ShapeshiftersCB twitter for an entry into Giveaway 3.
Entries from all countries are welcome.
You may reblog without entering, just tag or comment accordingly so we know. Signal boosts are always appreciated.
If you have commentary, please add it in the tags! Due to Tumblr limitations beyond our control, your entry may not be counted if you add text to this post.
The winner will be randomly selected on **May 10, 2017**. We will send an ask and a message notifying the Tumblr winner, and a DM notifying the winner on Twitter.
If either winner does not get back to us within three days, a new winner will be selected in their place.
The winners’ fabric selection must be four-way-stretch, and no more than $16/yard in price.
If you think that the Voltron fandom has become toxic lately; you’re right.
But we can change that. If your blog is a place where the characters of color stay characters of color, reblog this. If your blog is a safe space for ALL shippers- and not just the ones that ship what you ship- reblog this. If your blog doesn’t support Shaladin but won’t bash it, reblog this. If your blog supports Shaladin but doesn’t send rude and mean messages to people who don’t, reblog this. If your blog is a place where anyone is welcome, reblog this.
And don’t stop there. Spread the word, but also take action. Don’t reblog/post things that white wash characters, don’t reblog/post stuff you see as pedophilia, don’t reblog/post things that you know aren’t okay, don’t reblog/post racist things, don’t reblog/post hurtful things. Lets freaking end Hate in Voltron. Because there is too much of it. And its not only whats going on your blog. If you see someone getting harassed for what they ship, take action. If you see people getting death threats, take action.
Voltron is the defender of the universe. But we’re the defenders of each other.
Keith writes poems in a notebook, a hobby that he rarely partakes in. It’s strange imagining a brooding, dark-haired teen writing poems about flowers and feelings, but then again…
“I thought you could’ve been something great, but I guess you’re just a dropout.”
“It’s such a shame to see a young man throw his life away like that, without rational thought.”
“Oh what do you know, dropout?”
“You threw away your chance to be something good in this world, you know that? Threw it away on the hope for a dead man.”
“We can’t let him stay, he’s Galran! Who knows what he’ll do!”
“My family is gone because of his kind, my entire planet! All my people! I will not let one of them on my ship, as a Paladin!”
“We were supposed to be fighting Galrans. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? What do we do now?”
Maybe it’s not difficult to imagine him doing that after all.
Keith’s personal hell is silence.
You wouldn’t think this from a boy who’d lived alone for a long time in the middle of nowhere, but there are many things that are unexpected about Keith.
But the desert isn’t nearly quite as empty as people would expect. There’s lizards that scuttle on the walls at night, distant barks and howls of wild dogs and coyotes on the wind. Owls hoot in the evening and raptors screech in the mornings. And on the rare days when even those are all silent, there’s the cheap shitty radio at the top of the metal drawer, tuned only to one of the few channels available to him.
It was country or static, so he took country.
But now, he didn’t even have the annoying twanging of guitars or gruff voices singing about beer, girls and trucks to comfort him. There’s nothing here but endless darkness and silence, a crushing quiet that sucks any hope out of him. There’s nothing for him here but him and his own head, and a million questions that he can’t answer, doesn’t want to answer, that tear and rip at the edges of his mind, like an itch that he can’t scratch.
Distractions come in the form of sinking into memories, good and bad, any one that is clear. He’s in his first flight class, riding the adrenaline high of piloting the shaking, bouncing flight simulator, stepping out with pride in his chest and one of the highest scores seen ever in the Garrison. He’s thirteen on his first bike, zooming down the street whooping to school, right before he hits a rock and skids nearly a yard on the pavement (there’s still a long, striped scar on his leg from that incident). He’s watching T.V, some documentary on Mothman, mumbling a goodbye as his dad leaves on an ‘errand’. The last time he’d ever see him again.
He bounces back to happier memories, though those are limited. Learning martial arts from Youtube videos and practicing his roundhouse kick in the dormitory alone, while everyone else was out to dinner. Feeling a sense of grim satisfaction in the next memory, when he knocked the front teeth out of that asshole kid who called him a ‘no good sonafabitch bastard fag’ and his bale gray shoes were stained red. A sensation of mild irritation when Iverson chewed him out for it, put him in detention where he was alone, save for the other kid.
The other kid, of course, was Lance. Sitting in the front corner by the door, tapping and doodling on the desk with his pencil. Keith sat on the opposite side, fidgeting awkwardly with the pen he’d ‘borrowed’ from Iverson’s desk earlier, taking it apart and putting it together again. Over and over, cap, spring, ink cartridge, nib, metal ring, outer case. Outer case, metal ring, nib, ink cartridge, spring, cap.
Tap, tap, tap. Goes Lance’s pencil. Keith glances up, and stares. No smile now, instead a rare look of patient serenity. No sign of anger, disappointment, sadness at his situation, but instead an aura of calm. If not for the slow blinks, long fluttering lashes that are the woman’s envy, he could be sleeping.
Snap. Keith had accidentally broke the ink cartridge while putting it back in, and now black ink gushed out over the desk, staining his hands, seeping into the cracks of the white linoleum floor. The teacher in charge, a tired, white matron with severe eyes and a hooked nose, glances up at the noise, sighs angrily, and motions towards the bottle of cleaner and paper towels by the window.
Lance snickers softly on the other end of the room, and Keith feels his neck flush with embarrassment and anger. Accompanied, for some reason, by a strain of pleasure.
For once, he made Lance laugh, not the other way around. And Lance didn’t even know him, earning a bittersweet victory.
As he mops up the chemical-smelling liquid up the floor, the tap-tap-tapping ensues, except now it’s not a simple monotonous pattern. It’s seemingly erratic, short clips there, pauses here, and occasionally he would still his hand and go completely still, as if listening, before continuing his tapping.
Morse. Keith realizes, and he nearly wants to laugh. He’s talking in Morse, probably to one of his friends by the door. And sure enough, when he looks up at the door, there’s that big dude Hunk, the kid that you couldn’t hate for the life of you and almost always had to accept hugs from-most of the time you didn’t have a choice anyway, the guy had arms like a bear. His hand raps out of sight, on the doorframe, a quiet muted series of thumps that took a keen ear to hear.
Keith watches as Lance listens intently, grins devilishly, and taps back a response. A laugh bubbles in his stomach; for a kid who was made of movement and was hardly still, here he was, able to learn Morse to talk to a friend through the door.
He starts wiping down the desk, scrubbing the ink off. In the few moments since it’s release, it was already sticky and hardening, and took a considerable amount of force to remove it. As he moves his hand in circular movements, he listens to the conversation.
Im so b-o-r-e-d Lance even took the time to add a second’s pause between letters, for emphasis. You had to admit, one had to admire the dedication to dramatic flair.
Cant do much for you there. Is Hunk’s faint reply. Movie night?
Uh hell yeah Jeez, he even took the time to communicate seemingly trivial thoughts. And for some reason, this makes him seem all the more likeable. He’s human, and he communicates this in stupid dorky ways. Pop the corn!
Hunk rolls his eyes. Hows detention
Eh not that bad just me here. He stops for a moment. Oh yeah me and keith
Hunk blinks in surprise. You mean top of class keith?
Only one keith i know dude Lance smirks. Man hes even more emo up close
I wouldnt say that fifteen feet away is close lance but whatever you say
Hunk seriously though hes so weird Keith’s blood seem to chill as he translates this. Like he just spilled ink everywhere and i think hes staring at me
All the teachers expect more out of him thatd turn me a little weird too tbh
Yeah but like hes so weird A brief moment of quiet where he contemplates for a choice of words, and during which Keith increases his attempts, lemony smell of the cleaner stinging his nose as he squeaks the towel against the table. Like what the hell is up with the haircut? And hes so quiet
Keith doesn’t catch Hunk’s response, but he does hear Lance’s, despite his attempts to drown it out. And he hardly talks to anyone. It’s like he has no friends
Pause for Hunk. Yeah but seriously hes sorta creepy Pause for Hunk. That wouldnt be surprising Pause for Hunk. He always one upping me and it pisses me off. Its bad enough that im barely scraping by but then here comes mr hotshot and suddenly hes teachers shining example. Its all keith this keith that and im sick of it. Everytime iverson says his name i want to barf
By now Keith was struggling not to shake. It was like being stabbed, except remembering a mishap he had a long time ago with a knife, stab wounds hurt less. When using a sharp enough knife, all you remember about it is that it's cold and everything's dizzy. Now, it felt like the air was a thousand times colder than a knife accident in the warm spring sunlight, and his head reeled violently. The desk, despite having been cleared away of ink several minutes ago, was still suffering Keith’s violent scrubbing.
“Keith. Keith Kogane!”
He blinks; the teacher is calling his name. “Yes?”
“You may go.” And with her final words, and he releases his hold on the world, watching it dissolve back into the eternal inky darkness. Lance, Hunk, and the teacher pay no mind as they vanish into specks of light that are quickly swallowed by the shadows.
Of all the memories he could have chosen to relive, it was that one. The one that haunts his dreams and tugs on his brain. But he needed it for the pain, the pain was what reminded him that he was still human, he was alive, he was real. He was still Keith Kogane, ingrate, dropout, excelled student, future fighter pilot, top of the class. Still Keith Kogane, Red Lion Paladin, tired sixteen year old, stupid teen with a crush on a boy, listened to country music. Still here. Still alive. Still real.
He chooses a nicer memory this time, one that’s soft and gentle. A lullaby he picked up somewhere, accompanied by soft guitar and warmth. His eyes are closed in this one, all fuzzy splotches of pink behind his eyelids, and he welcomes the feeling.
He doesn’t go back to the inky darkness for a long time.
Continuing my thought from the last post would anyone be interested in a “ladies of Voltron” week?
Like a week for Allura and Pidge and Haggar and Colleen Holt and Queen Luxia and Florona and Plaxum and Ryner and Shay and Nyma and even like Shay’s grandma and Moontow the Arusian and the unnamed alien girl Hunk charmed with his cooking in Space Mall and any ocs people have etc etc
Ignore the bad banner I just needed something attention grabbing lmao.
Anyway!
Time for the first (of hopefully many) binder giveaways!
So. I’m not a rich fellow but I have a job now and I really want to start helping people in what little ways I can! So if this first try goes well I’ll put a little aside each month to donate a binder to any Trans boys/ Nonbinary buddies/ect. that might need one! because I know how hard it is to get one especially when you’re young.
Here’s the prize!
Choice of one of any of the following.
GC2B Half binder BLACK
GC2B Half binder WHITE
GC2B Half binder GREY
GC2B Tank binder BLACK
GC2B Tank binder WHITE
GC2B Tank binder GREY
SOME RULES MY FRIENDS.
Reblogs and Likes count as entries!
Sorry but please only trans, nb, gender queer entrants. No cosplay or whatever. I’m sure you understand!
Enter as many times as you want so long as it’s not spam.
YOU CAN REBLOG EVEN IF YOU AREN’T ENTERING JUST SAY SO IN THE TAGS. Please spread the word!
You don’t need to be following me! This is for everyone!
If GC2B ships to your country then I can ship it to you!
You must be comfortable giving me your shipping address
For the love of all things holy measure yourself properly if you win I WONT BE PART OF ANY OF YALL HURTING YOURSELF WEARING A BINDER THAT’S TOO SMALL
THIS GIVEAWAY RUNS FROM NOW UNTIL MAY 1ST (MIDNIGHT GMT+10)
Tfw.... you don't update a fic...for like...three days.... I'm so sorry Shit is pretty tight where I , and my schedule just got messed up pretty bad. I'm still writing this fic for @klangst-week but the chapters might be a few days late or so. Please bear with me, I'll try and update soon ( ´△｀)
Sequel to The Notebook On the Bed. Prompt 2: Mistake/Faith
Keith writes poems in a notebook, a hobby that he rarely partakes in. It’s strange imagining a brooding, dark-haired teen writing poems about flowers and feelings, but then again...
“I thought you could’ve been something great, but I guess you’re just a dropout.”
“It’s such a shame to see a young man throw his life away like that, without rational thought.”
“Oh what do you know, dropout?”
“You threw away your chance to be something good in this world, you know that? Threw it away on the hope for a dead man.”
“We can’t let him stay, he’s Galran! Who knows what he’ll do!”
“My family is gone because of his kind, my entire planet! All my people! I will not let one of them on my ship, as a Paladin!”
“We were supposed to be fighting Galrans. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? What do we do now?”
Maybe it’s not difficult to imagine him doing that after all.
It was a mistake.
I shouldn’t have ever gone into Keith’s room in the first place. I never should’ve read that stupid notebook of his, let myself fall in love. Never let myself get distracted during that fight, never should’ve gotten Keith captured, never, never, never, never-
“Lance, are you still here?”
I jolt out of my stupor, and turned. It’s Shiro, tall, somber, and looking a million years old. He’s exhausted, probably hasn’t slept since the fight yesterday… was it really only yesterday? An entire era seems to have passed since then.
“Oh. Hey, Shiro.” I mumble a reply, attempt a half-assed smile, before turning back to the cryopod in front of me.
Keith is in stasis right now, face locked in an expression of pain. Like someone having a bad dream. The purple fur and ears had melted away, back into his skin, and his eyes had changed back from glowing yellow to his usual violet irises, before we had placed him in the cryopod. It’s hard to believe that a little while ago, he had been bearing all the characteristics of a Galran, or a really dedicated furry. Now, he looks like he just took another really bad beating from the training bot.
“Lance.” Shiro is talking again, voice edged with fatigue. “You’ve been here all night. Please, go to sleep.”
“Look who’s talking.” I mutter in reply. It comes out sharper, more venomous than I had intended, but I was too tired to care. I could feel guilty about this in the future, but not now.
Shiro’s silent behind me, and for a moment I think that he’s left. Instead, he walks forward to sit next to me, cross-legged on the ground in front of the cryopod. In the frosty light, he seems to age another thousand years, bags under his eyes and hard lines of suffering by his lips. Or were those gained by laughter?
For a moment, we’re both quiet, staring at the still figure illuminated before us. I barely manage to stifle a yawn. Even Pidge must be asleep by now, I judge. The sleep cycle of the Castle had activated, maybe…five hours? Maybe six by now?
Who knows. Who cares anymore.
“Lance. You need sleep.” Shiro is trying again, pleading. “We need to be able to stand against another Galran attack, without Voltron. We need you in shape.”
“Well, what about you?” I shoot back. “You look twice as worse as me.”
“Be respectful to your elder, Lance.” He jokes, a strained grin on his face. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
I turn away to glare at my reflection in the glass. Lit up by the pale blue light, I look like a ghost, with sunken eyes and a bitter look.
“I don’t think any of us are, Shiro.”
It catches him by surprise, and I enjoy it for a moment. It’s not often when you can surprise someone you looked up to, and it brings a brief lull of satisfaction that drains away the moment I look back to Keith’s face.
Tell him now. There’s no better time.
No. I don’t want to.
Coward. There’s a small voice that sneers at me inside my head. Second-best. Seventh wheel. Useless.
Shut up. I snap back. But I breath in deeply and steady myself in preparation.
“Hey, Shiro. Can I say something?” It’s more of a demand then a request, but he nods.
“Sure, go ahead.”
Go on. The voice whispers. Tell him you want to go home. Tell him you want to run away. Tell him you’re afraid.
Instead of those thoughts, I tell him about the notebook. I tell him how I had snuck into Keith’s room, stolen the book with intention of blackmail, and left with confused feelings and a scattered mind instead. How Keith had retaliated to my bad response with a cold shoulder and anger, how I let myself get lost in self-pity and get him hurt and stuck on a Galran ship. How I managed to get us both out, how I’d half-supported, half-carried him from the seat, down the ramp, to the hangar, where we were greeted by shocked faces that quickly turned hostile.
Remembering the team’s malevolence towards, I immediately felt queasy. Walking off the ramp towards my friends, expecting help, instead receiving looks of loathing and utter malice. Every one of them took stances of self defense, faces contorted in varied expressions of fury and hate. Hunk looked betrayed and worried, but his bayard was raised and held in a tight grip. Pidge looked positively terrifying, hand trembling as though they were ready to launch themselves at me at any moment. Coran’s face was blank, devoid of any recognizable emotion, except the eyes, which gleamed with a boiling hatred. Allura, on the contrary, was a tower of barely-bridled rage, eyes flashing, teeth bared, a strange white staff clenched in her whitened knuckles. I never knew fear until that moment.
But the most shocking was Shiro. My old hero, someone who had inspired me to be a pilot and go to the Garrison, looked horribly, painfully vulnerable. Shiro, who we playfully named “Space Dad”, who carried Pidge to bed in the wee hours of the morning, who helped Hunk in the kitchen and sparred with Keith when he asked for it, didn’t look like a hero anymore. He didn’t look like ‘The Gladiator’ or ‘Space Dad’, he looked like, like-
A man. And a scared one, at that. Tears were streaming uncontrollably down his cheeks, his shoulders shaking, on the verge of collapse, physically and mentally. It took me a moment to register what he was looking at, and when I did, it was like a blow to the chest.
It hurts someone when they see a person be terrified of someone they consider their brother.
I don’t remember clearly what happened next. Only that it involved a lot of angry yelling, some desperate crying, swearing in multiple languages - I do clearly remember Pidge being able to swear fluently in Latin, Swedish, and Norwegian, for quiznack knows why- and finally, finally, being able to convince them to help Keith, to bring him into the cryopod, and then I would answer their questions as thoroughly as I could.
As promised, that’s what I did. In front of the cryopod, where I told them how Keith had already changed when I got into the Red Lion, how he had been injured and bleeding, and how I actually had no idea why he was like that. It raised more arguing, yelling, and fighting until I, finally, cracked.
I think those were the most tears I’d ever shed in a long time. And I wasn’t a pretty cryer either; if there were tears, there was scrunched, pinked faces, hyperventilating, and snot. The package deal, and it was enough to make them concerned enough to stop it, try to comfort me awkwardly, and, at long last, leave me alone.
My story finished, I turned to Shiro. He looked up, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
I expected to be drilled for more on what happened exactly, if I had noticed any changes in Keith before I had entered the Red Lion cockpit, if maybe there were chemicals that I’d accidentally released when I made the escape, if I was absolutely sure that was Keith, and not an imposter.
Instead, he asked if he could see the notebook. See what exactly Keith had written, if I was okay with it.
Silently, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and showed him pages that I had taken pictures of. He read them quietly, mouth moving to form the words. Smiling at times, sighing at others, and when it was all over, he handed it back, a strange look on his face. Was that a smile? Or a strange grimace of sadness?
“Thanks, Lance.” He says, and his voice is remarkably quiet for a man his size.
“Yeah, sure.” I reply. Then: “Why’d you want to see it?”
“Because-” He pauses to stretch, before continuing. “I wanted to see...to see if it I could believe it.”
Believe it? I told him just then, did he not believe it? Slightly stung, I mumbled those thoughts out loud: “What do you mean, believe it? I just told you.”
“Yes, well.” He smiles half-heartedly. “I wouldn’t doubt your story for a second Lance, except for one part. Keith writing poetry?” And now, a laugh. A real one, albeit short, rises from his belly. A deep ‘Ha’ of surprise. “I was more ready to see pigs fly.”
“Well, we’ve seen lions fly. So why not?” I chuckled back, now feeling fatigue truly settling in on me. Every bone was turned to lead, and my eyelids were turning heavy. Every limb sagged in their joints.
“You truly love him, don’t you?” A soft question permeates through the air, cutting through the fogginess in my head. I consider it, and nod. A part of me wanted to jump in with more, say how I loved Keith from his bad taste in shoes to his stupid mullet, how I wanted to take back all the things I’ve said about him, to tell him how much I regretted my cold insults, my mistakes, the bitter remarks I made about him behind his back. My heart still stinged, when I remember how I had said ‘What do you know, dropout?’ when we had first arrived here, while then was meant only as a snarky comeback, now felt like a sin heavier than a black hole. I wanted to hear him tell me he loved me, and for me to do the same, for both of us to sing lullabies to each other.
But it didn’t come.
Shiro leaves the room, his footsteps echoing through the Castle hallways. He comes back though, and I feel a soft, warm weight settle around my shoulders. I dimly register it as a blanket, before sleep finally catches me.
I sink into a dream, filled with the first chords of a lullaby.
Look around, my darling. Look around,
At the luck we bear today.
Pastel sunsets, glittering stars,
Can you hear what they have to say?
They whisper my love to you, my darling.
Soft like a butterfly’s kiss.
Don’t leave me tonight, my shining star
For surely you will be missed.
Stay with me tonight, my darling. Let me hold you close.
As a thousand religions rise and fall,
And everyone is morose,
Our love will be our deity, and you will be the priest
Sequel to The Notebook On the Bed. Prompt 1: Unrequited love/pining
Keith writes poems in a notebook, a hobby that he rarely partakes in. It’s strange imagining a brooding, dark-haired teen writing poems about flowers and feelings, but then again...
“I thought you could’ve been something great, but I guess you’re just a dropout.”
“It’s such a shame to see a young man throw his life away like that, without rational thought.”
“Oh what do you know, dropout?”
“You threw away your chance to be something good in this world, you know that? Threw it away on the hope for a dead man.”
“We can’t let him stay, he’s Galran! Who knows what he’ll do!”
“My family is gone because of his kind, my entire planet! All my people! I will not let one of them on my ship, as a Paladin!”
“We were supposed to be fighting Galrans. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? What do we do now?”
Maybe it’s not difficult to imagine him doing that after all.
It started in a place where you’d expect demons to rise out of, not love.
(Then again, isn’t love a demon in itself?)
“Nope, no what the fuck.” Keith scribbles out the words, black graphite covering the scratched letters on the yellowing paper. “Stupid, edgy emo chunk of-” He crumbles up the page and chucks it at the wastebasket on the other end of the porch, missing by a mile. An impressive mountain of similarly crumpled sheets lay scattered on that side of the wooden floor, and if Keith kept this up much longer, he’d get fined for littering.
No, no I wouldn’t. Not anymore. He reminds himself. It’d been nearly a year since he’d gotten kicked out, a year since Shiro disappeared. A year since he’d lost his best friend, mentor, brother into space without so much as an explanation from those-those fuckers from the Garrison. Three-hundred-sixty-five days since that utter and complete piece of trash, Iverson, called him to his office to bust a vein at him, and then told him that he could either ‘shape up or ship out’. In response, Keith had silently pulled off his Cadet Identification Tag, bearing a small golden star in the corner marking him as an excelled student, and placed in on the desk, before walking stiffly from the room.
Hard to imagine that it was hardly a year since he, a straight-A honor student with promises of becoming one of the world’s best Fighter Pilots, had walked out of school with his bags and back turned towards the entrance. He knew he’d caused a stir, among students and public, but he didn’t care. Not his problem anymore, the Garrison could deal with the confusion he’d left behind.
He would’ve cared even less if it hadn’t been for something else he was leaving behind.
The skinny kid from Cuba was called Lance. He showed up one day with a goofy smile and a friendly demeanor, the kind that others would tear apart like sharks. Except he was strong, he brushed off the comments and insults with a grin and joke, and became the class clown instead. The one that you laughed with and were exasperated at, but you couldn’t hate him. It was so hard to hate him.
If only Keith could hate him. It’d make liking him so much easier.
But what does it mean? His pen is moving again, scratching drily across the paper. He’d need to get a new one soon, but until then he’d push this one to the limit. What does it mean to like, or even love? What does it mean to be able to feel warm with someone, have someone to take the cold away?
Love (v.) - an intense feeling of deep affection
Like (v.) - find agreeable, enjoyable, satisfactory
Just words in a dictionary, so easy to read and make sense of in the head.
But my heart still has questions, what does it feel to love? How do I know when I love? ‘Like’ is too simple, ‘Love’ is too strong…is it even love at all?
His next words are invisible, small curling grooves in the paper. His pen is out, and he sighs and aims it at the bin. It’s a solid shot, clattering around in the near-empty plastic interior for a bit, as Keith closes his notebook and tucks it back into one of his side packs. With a deep groan, he gets up, stretches, and sets to work picking up the balls of failed ideas and poems and tossing them where they belonged.
Why was he thinking about him, now, of all times? He didn’t care about Keith then, he certainly wasn’t caring about Keith now. He had friends, a life, and guaranteed place in the world. He didn’t even know Keith back at the Garrison, probably didn’t care about his existence at all. So why does Keith think about him so much?
Just a silly crush. Just a distraction. He’s gone now, and it’s for the best. That kid doesn’t care about him, why does he care so much?
There’s a place on Keith’s wall where the wood is beginning to splinter, and a dent is forming there. Sawdust, wood shavings, and small sticks have gathered in a small pile beneath it. Here, Keith punches it almost daily, ranging from as many as only one in passing to enough for the house to shake and the pipes to ease themselves a little looser, right above Keith’s bed. It results in bleeding knuckles, and eventually leads to a trip to the store for some gauze and a pair of fingerless gloves, the kind baseball players wear. The cause of that dent? The persistent, gnawing reminder of that kid from school, with his stupid charming smile ( God damn that smile ) his ridiculous jokes ( Screw those jokes ) and his laugh, his chiming, loud laugh that somehow rings as clear as day in Keith’s memory when he least needs it.
The laugh is mostly what results in the punching.
The sun was setting in the distance, when he straightens up and stares towards the horizon. It’s pretty today, sky touched all colors of bright tangerine to lilac and peach, fading away into a steadily deepening blue-to-indigo. All pastels and glitter, tonight, almost enough to make him feel like it was worth coming here.
This little hut in the middle of a desert was all Keith had left. He managed to buy it back off of some old man’s hands by selling his cadet uniform, cheap, to a grateful family for their son. It was hardly enough to afford this place, with it’s leaky plumbing and shoddy electricity, but the smiles of the small curly-haired boy and his teary mother made it all worth it, somehow. It springs back fuzzy memories, filled with purple and warm arms around his shoulders.
He didn’t remember Mom, of course. She’d left years before he could start remembering, but whatever his Dad remembered, he neglected to say. There aren’t any pictures of her in the house, nor any sign of any female having residence in this old shack at all, but she definitely had existed. Old whiskey driven tales had brought mentions of her, and occasionally he’ll find Dad passed out on the couch from a hard night shift, mumbling something that sound like a different language, over and over. A name?
It didn’t matter. Stomping back inside the house, nothing mattered anymore, as he turns to the bulletin board covered in pinned-up photographs of rock formations and strange glyphs, line graphs printed from the city library ten miles away. Scrabbled handwritten notes, red string webbing it all together like a spider on crack, an occasional red marker note and circle directing attention. To a stranger’s eye, it’s chaos. To Keith, it’s a masterpiece.
He’ll find Shiro. He’ll figure out what draws him to this trashy place, what keeps him from leaving no matter how many times he tries to go. Until then, nothing is important.
Not even a boy with a stupid laugh.
Love (v.)-to experience a deep sensation of appreciation and affection for a specific topic, object, person, etc.
Ex: She loves him because of his looks. I made garlic knots, does he love them? I love him because of his laugh.
you requested hurt/comfort and Pidge, so I drew a sorta weird symbolic thing of how Pidge feels? She misses her brother and really wants to go back to old times, but being a Paladin is stopping holding her back.
I’m sorry for the bad quality, my printer’s scanner is pretty bad.
Lance Log #475: Bad luck, coffee, and fRICKIN' KEITH
@voltron-ss This is my submission for @lazerlapis, Merry Chrysler, Happy Crismum, Murrme Crisus! You had asked for platonic relationships between just about all the characters, klance, and teens being teens, so what better way to express that then through a college/coffee shop au?
I didn’t mean this to be a multichapter fic, I’m so sorry :’) Also I have no idea what a normal posting schedule is so if the second chapter doesn’t come out until after a few months, please bear with me *sobs*
Lance couldn’t say he was a lucky guy. Sure, he’d scored once or twice with getting a pretty person’s number, once won a free coffee grinder in a lottery draw, and once got an ‘A’ by guessing on a test in third grade. He couldn’t say he was misfortune’s scapegoat either, though he did once by ‘accident’ chop off his niece’s hair when playing barber at age eight. He felt like he could call himself, ‘Fortune’s casual friend’, who gets good luck sent his way once in awhile but gets slapped with cold, hard chance now and then when he was too greedy.
Today, though, he couldn’t call himself ‘Fortune’s casual friend’. If anything, he was Fortune’s lab rat, while Fortune tried to figure out the worst possible sequence of events to inflict on a normal human.
(Hey, your narrator speaking. You know, if you can see me, sitting in Pidge’s room with a mic in my face but no camera, I feel like you should know in my head I’m doing a stereotypical *record scratch* *rewind* ‘Hey it’s me. And you were probably wondering how I got in this situation.’ sort of thing, but Pidge says we can’t do that. So just imagine it, okay? Before you get curious and ask ‘Gee, Lance. How’s a swell guy like you end up in this twist?’ Just know that it’s all. Keith’s. Fault. And Pidge too, sorta. Significantly less than Keith though.)
(The little gremlin just socked me. I should probably start talking about the actual story)
Anyway, it’d all started on a normal Saturday morning. You know how Saturday’s are like, the holy grail of the week? That day where you go ‘screw it’ and just go out and chill? You get a break and then you hit the books again on Sunday, but without regret if you’d done it on Friday or Sunday. You see, if you took Friday afternoon as the break, you wouldn’t be able to focus on Saturday or Sunday. Doing it on Sunday, you just feel like you’ve forgotten some random essay assigned three weeks ago due tomorrow (long story behind this, I’m not gonna tell it). But Saturday? Kick back and relax, and use Friday and Sunday for the homework. Nine times out of ten, it’s the best way to minimize stress/anxiety, for me at least.
(Pidge just told me I’m getting off topic. Okay, let’s get back to the story.)
Where was I? Saturday morning, right. It’d started off pretty normally. I got dressed (black skinny jeans, Doc Martens, a blue Aeropostale tee, and a bomber jacket with a blue dragon on it, thanks to my school’s Secret Santa event last year.) I thought I was looking forward to a good day, with my outfit on point and the sun shining. I figured I’d go get some coffee from the little cafe down the street, lovingly nicknamed Space Castle, pick up a phone number, and go on from there.
(Spoiler alert: past me was very wrong.)
As I walked into the Space Castle, I got hit with a the smell of roasting coffee and vanilla. My favorite barista, Hunk was working his magic for a blond chic standing by the counter. The place was empty today, with someone sitting with his face hidden by a gigantic yarn beanie.
“Hunk! My man.” My best friend looked up from the pumps and smiled, waving the half-full cup dangerously in the air in greeting.
“Yo! Lance!” He added a few extra pumps of syrup and topped it all off with whipped cream, finishing it up and handing it to the lady. “Four-fifty, please.” She opened her purse reluctantly and started counting out the money.
I walked up and pulled out my own wallet, worn brown leather with painted white stars on it, courtesy of my youngest nephew. “Here, I got it beautiful.” I handed five bucks to Hunk, who rolled his eyes but cashed it in.
“Oh wow, thanks.” She smiled at me, and all I felt something in my chest jump a bit. She was really pretty, dressed in a blue crop top, blue denim shorts, and flip flops. Her hair was held back by a silver barrette, and fell in two fat curls down her shoulders.
I was aware my mouth was sorta open (According to Hunk via Pidge, I was drooling. Pidge, stop texting Hunk). So I decided to switch to Smooth Mode™ and hit the first thing on my list.
“Hey, does your name happen to be Google, by the way?” I used my best pick-up line for this. I saw Hunk face palm and turn away.
She looked confused for a moment, blinking slowly. “Uh, no? What makes you say that?”
“Because, you’re everything I’m looking for.” I winked. Hunk audibly groaned, but she was laughing. I felt a blush going into my cheeks.
“Oh, you’re sweet. Here-” she grabs a napkin and pulls a pen out of her purse. After a quick moment of scribbling, she hands it to me. “Text me, okay? My name’s Nyma, by the way.”
Wow. Time to check off the first one on the list. I didn’t think it’d be that easy, honestly.
I watched her walk out of the cafe and stand in the sun for a few moments, texting someone on her phone. Next moment, I heard something buzzing.
I whipped out my phone, expecting something like ‘hey cutie’ or something. Nope. Instead, the guy sitting alone at his table pulled out his phone, and walked out to join her. My phone had never buzzed in the first place.
“Harsh.” Hunk said, as the scraggly dude tugged his beanie down a little further and adjusts his black hoodie, before walking out and joining her. They leave together, and the sound of laughter echoed outside. Guess I didn’t get her number after all, and I tore it up and chucked it, rather disappointed.
“She liked my pickup line.” I scowled at Hunk, as he set about making my drink. Today, it was something with vanilla and chocolate, a holy combo, with a twist of a few raspberries and blueberries tossed into the whipped cream. Can’t go wrong with that.
“She laughed at your pickup line.” He replies, handing me the warm plastic cup. “Here’s your five dollar drink, which you never pay for.”
“Because you love me. Also, because I saved your butt last summer in that aerophysics course from Iverson’s wrath.”
“You inflicted the wrath on me in the first place, you’re the one that texted me in class.”
“And I deflected it back to me, didn’t I?” I take a gulp, and feel a blueberry hit my throat in a flush of chocolate. It bursts, in a little explosion of sour sweetness, tart and fresh.
“So, where to now Lance? Ditching on college homework again?” He leans on his hand and grins, though he sounds exasperated.
I take the straw out of my mouth long enough to correct him. “Uh, no. It’s not ditching-” I take another sip, pausing to savor it and swallow. “It’s called postponing. And it’s a perfectly acceptable practice.”
Hunk’s only reply is a long-suffering sigh, and he leans back to wipe his hands on a nearby towel. “One of these days, it’s going to go back and bite you.”
“I’ve been doing this since freshman year. I think that one more day won’t kill me.” I settle down on the stool by the counter, leaning on my elbows.
My buddy just rolls his eyes, turning back to his barista duties, wiping the counter and restocking the topping ingredients. Being the assistant manager of Space Castle, he took a lot of pride in his drinks, making sure all the berries and syrups were fresh and all. Not even the meanest customer could turn up their nose to Hunk’s coffee, and especially not Hunk himself. Nine times out of ten, if he offers you a hug, you took it. The guy’s like a giant teddy bear.
“So, what’s the plan? While you ‘postpone’ your homework?” He says, making air quotes.
I finish off the drink, feeling my belly warm happily. Man, Starbuck’s got nothing on this.
“You know.” I aim the cup at the trash can and nail it in one. Bingo. “The usual.”
Hunk just snorts and continues cleaning one of the pump nozzles. “Usual. You’re waiting for me to finish up, so I can go with you downtown where you’ll spend a few hours looking at everything in every store, and buy nothing.”
“And then it’s off to Pidge’s house, where we’ll play Overwatch and marathon Star Wars, tell Keith how ugly his mullet is, and then eat Chinese food until eleven.” I grin. “You coming?”
“Heck yes.” He screws on the brightly shining nozzle back onto the bottle of caramel syrup, then washes his hands quickly. “Give me a minute. We have to wait for Shiro to come over and take over his shift, and then we’ll go.”
Shiro, if you don’t know him already, is the Dad Friend™. He’s strong, reasonable, makes the big decisions, and makes dorky puns and jokes. He’s also the most accomplished student at Garrison Uni, built like a Dorito and looks like he could kill you. In reality, he’s just a cinnamon roll.
He’s also dependable to the point where he could lead you through the universe against evil cat aliens, but that’s another story. The point is, today that title was meaningless.
He never showed up.
“Where is he?”
It was about twenty minutes after Hunk’s shift by now. All the things were laid out and prepared for Shiro’s round, me and Hunk were sitting on chairs in our jackets and stuff, and the sidewalk outside was empty of any Dorito man.
Hunk just frowned and tapped the tabletop anxiously, staring out at the street. “I’ll text him. Maybe there was an accident?” He said, but we could both tell he didn’t mean anything by it. We’d texted and called him several times before, and with no reply.
I just shrugged. The clock on my phone now read 11:05. Shiro was now twenty five minutes late, and that was a series of words I didn’t think was possible for me to say.
Even as I was thinking those words, my phone buzzed. So did Hunk’s. And a quick look at the screen was enough to tell us who it was.
We both grabbed our phones, almost knocking them onto the pavement as we scrambled to read the group text Shiro sent.
Group Chat: Like Nya
DadFriendinator3000: Hey, my arm’s messed up. I’m in the hospital right now. Hunk, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to take over today. Can you take over my shift?
I’m really sorry about all of this. Really really sorry.
<11:06 am.>
LiteralPrincess: Oh no!
I’ll come over later with some cake. Coran made some lasagna, and it’s not bad, I’ll bring some of that too.
<11:07 am.>
FabuHunk: Don’t sweat it, Shiro. I got it covered. Rest up, I’ll take over your shift! 👍
<11:09 am.>
PidgeIdgeWidgeon: Matt says he’ll be coming by later with your senior project. He’s asking if you need any pain medication for your headaches?
<11:10 am.>
LanceALot: Stay cool, buddy. I’ll drop by with some coffee for you. 😎☕💙
<11:10 am.>
“Dude.” I look up and see Hunk looking back at me, a weird expression on his face. Like he was about to jump off a cliff but was at peace with it. Or he ate a piece of unripe fruit that he knew was unripe.
“Another shift. Shiro’s shift is always during rush hour, too. And Shay, she’s not coming today, she’s got a project with a petrified Balmera, I can’t do this, what do I do, what do I do-” He was hyperventilating a little, sweat beading on his forehead. Hunk got nervous easily, and it wasn’t good for his health.
“Buddy. Calm down. Here-” I take the cafe key sitting on the table and open the door, pulling Hunk in with me. I help him sit on one of the blue plastic seats. “It’ll be fine. And you know why?”
Crickets.
“I’m going to take that silence as a ‘I don’t know Lance. Why is it going to be fine?’ And I’m going to tell you.” I stare him dead in the face, and he seems to register it a little. A flare of hope sparks somewhere.
Then, that hope was replaced with something like exasperation. “Oh, no Lance. Don’t tell me-”
“That’s right. I, Lance McClain, am going to help you run this joint.”
For PidgeythePidgimon @utterandcompletetrash !! They requested comfort and healing for Shiro and platonic Shiro and Pidge! I hope you have a very merry christmas! Thank you for this request, it gave me the incentive to learn how to draw shiro! - @allysparkling
