fic rec friday 33
welcome to the thirty-third fic rec friday! where, on friday, i rec five of my favourite fics.
1. Rose-Colored Boy by melancholymango
“I missed you, you know.”
“Yeah?” Lance sighed, warm and giddy, clearly not absorbing how serious the words truly were. Keith nodded his head for a few seconds, not trusting himself to speak around the size of his emotions. He was suddenly brought back to the years alone on the whale, when all he’d had to keep him going was memories of his friends, of Lance.
“Yeah.” Keith said, more certainty in his voice now. He reached down, hesitantly threading his fingers through Lance’s and giving his hand a squeeze. Lance tensed next to him. “I still do.”
“I mean, I’m right here.”
“Are you? You still seem pretty far away.”
again i know im not really big on those fics that make the team out to be deliberately cruel, but sometimes its cathartic tbh. sometimes you remember canon and ur just like yeah what if he got angry. what if someone got angry for him. what then. and mango gives us that
2. Swamp of Sorrows by SwissArmyKnife
Pike gets exposed to acidic ooze, which leads Block (& Keith) to make a few discoveries about their party’s rogue.
“We can't leave them like this,” Meklavar said of Valayun and Pike, who’d been laid beside the fire. "Look at how bad those welts are." She came up with a bottle of oil and a cake of soap. "I can smell water nearby. We can get them washed and roll them in a blanket to sleep off the spore. What do you think?"
"I think it's our only choice," Takashi said.
monsters and mana fic!!!!! everybody say YES to righteous anger on pike’s behalf. and also say yes to pike bc i love him. this fic is interesting bc its a little tense and awkward bc this ragtag team of misfits doesnt quite trust each other yet but they also cant quite stop themselves from caring about each other. so even though they dont all agree on eveyrthing and dont agree about all, they do agree that pike needs more care than he got. also unrelated but the fact that shiro’s m&m name is fucking takashi kills me every time like man just wants to be himself 💀
3. Beneath the Champagne Sea by SwissArmyKnife
The paladins make a diplomatic visit to a planet with sexual dimorphism roughly opposite that of Earth. Women are larger and more powerful, while men are leaner and smaller. Cue their horror at gaunt, sickly Pidge and mild disgust with the ’womanly’ Shiro. Lance hits the sweet spot. He's got the build and features to draw the eyes and the charm to keep them. Their hosts are quite taken with him, in particular the daughter of the queen, whose forwardness is a comic reversal of Lance’s usual dynamic with women. Lance likes the attention and finds her intriguing, but eventually things take a discomforting turn.
Lance tried to step around her, wanting to walk away from a conversation that seemed less and less likely to end well, but Leh’n seized his wrist before he could. Her grip was tight, and freeing himself would require an act of aggression, which he still wanted to avoid. ‘Think of the mission, of how important it is to get the castle up and running again,’ he coached himself.
Still, that did nothing to stop his blood pressure from skyrocketing as Leh’n leaned closer and said. “I am not accustomed to reluctance.”
i swear to god that ive recced this before, but i couldnt find it in my records so here it is!! this fic is endlessly fascinating. the exploration of gender roles is super interesting, considering who is impacted in this fic and how. the discussion about beauty standards, power imbalances, the alien wrench in things was so cool! and i think lance, who is very much someone who rides that gender lines in terms of presentation of hobbies and even chracter traits, makes sense as the main character here. interesting think piece.
4. you had me at merlot by @ryomakun
“Oh my God,” Lance says as he covers his face. Keith’s tinny voice blares from his laptop speakers: “What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.” See, this joke might have been funny if someone charismatic and charming had said it, but Keith’s flat voice and even flatter expression effectively kidnaps, tortures, and then decapitates any chance of it being remotely humorous.
--
Keith accidentally starts a YouTube channel. Lance, of course, refuses to be left out. It goes about as well as you'd expect. (Ft. copious amounts of wine and a truly shameless number of references to MyDrunkKitchen, DailyGrace, and general pop culture)
this fic is HILARIOUS. its one of the firsts i ever screenshotted for the scrapbook i have of fics that made me laugh out loud. i offer you this one part that really made me giggle:
““It tastes good,” Keith says petulantly as he glares at the accusing finger Hunk has pointed at him. “No offense Hunk but that stuff you gave me for my twenty-first tasted like feet and antiseptic.”
“That was a merlot,” Hunk wails. “The good kind, too!”
Ignoring them, Lance stands in front of the rum selection. This is why he didn’t want to bring anyone. They might call him loud and embarrassing, but at least he doesn’t yell inside WalMart about the virtues of a “real red wine.” An elderly couple passes through, eying the bickering three. Lance resolutely pretends he is here shopping by himself.“
the way they are so ridiculous that LANCE of all people is embarrassed of them...cinema. also this fic is peak bc it has klance as enemies to lovers and childhood friends to lovers at the same time. iconique
5. Flayed by @admiralcanthackett
Lance gets hit with a face full of spores and it leaves him wracked with pain. Touch is the only relief he can find.
yes i know i tag this author all the time but in my defense there was a point in my life where i was OBSESSED with faer fics. truly. anyways this one has unexpectedly protective keith, like to a very high degree, and im loving the heavy themes of trust and emotional as well as physical vulnerability
that’s it for today!! i’ll see y’all back next friday for the next fic rec post!!!
