Part of my Voltron “Bedtime Stories” Oneshot collection
Read on Ao3
Lance is convinced he saw a mermaid, even if nobody else believes him.
“Lance, come on,” Hunk said, “It’s getting dark.”
“She’s coming back,” Lance said bitterly, sitting on the dock, “I know she is,”
“Lance….” Hunk held his head in his hands, “Look, I know...I know what you think you saw but-but maybe it was just a dream or something.”
“Doubt me all you want, Hunk,” Lance said, looking through the binoculars at the ocean’s surface, “I know what I saw, and she’s coming back.”
Hunk sighed. “I’m going to be in the house. Please come in at some point, I don’t want you catching cold.”
Lance nodded absentmindedly. When their parents took them on a joint vacation out to a beach house, Lance had been excited to spend all his time with Hunk. But that was before he got stuck in an undertow the other day and dragged out to sea. Lance was a good swimmer, but the ocean’s waves were rough and he was having trouble, until he got help from a mysterious stranger. A stranger with beautiful big blue eyes and a long, long fish tail.
He was determined to see her again, believing she’d return. Well, hoping. Wishing. He wanted to see her so badly, to thank her.
As Hunk warned, the sun set over the distant horizon, leaving the ocean an inky black. Lance’s binoculars became useless. He put them to his side, using his own eyes to look between the waves for any sign of light.
One by one, the lights of the beach houses went dark, leaving Lance with little more than the moon and stars to see. He should probably head back in, he knew. Even if she did show up, ten feet away with a big sign over her head that read ‘hi’ he wouldn’t be able to see it.
He slumped on the wooden dock. Who’d’ve thought sitting and doing nothing but stare at the ocean all day would leave someone so tired? Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a second….recharged for the walk home…
Next thing he knew, he was waking up, blinking his eyes open, and staring up at the stars. And the stars….the stars were blinking back at him.
His eyes focused in the dim light and he saw the silhouette of a young woman, but a very strange young woman, with two long flaps on her head like hair and big wide bug eyes that were nearly black.
He jolted, realizing who it was. She slid back, hopping off the deck, but he reached out to her, “Wait!” he called, trying to grab her wrist but it slipped out of his hand.
The call apparently got to her, as he watched her silhouette sit in the water, torso above the surface. She looked up at him, waiting. “Who are you?” He asked. She didn’t respond. “Do you speak English?” Still, nothing. “No Español either, huh?”
She tilted her head, using the dock to lift herself up and examine him. Lance put a hand to his chest. “I’m Lance.”
The girl mimicked him, putting a hand on her own chest, “Imlance,”
Lance let out a giggle. He must have been in a disney movie or something. Gingerly, he took her hand, putting it back on his own chest, “Lance,” he corrected her.
“Lance…” She repeated, thinking. She took his own hand and put it to her chest in turn. “Plaxum.”
“Plaxum,” Lance repeated, “that’s beautiful.”
Plaxum said something to him in a series of clicks and squeals. Or maybe she was just making noise, it was hard to tell. “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” Lance said. “I….I wanted to say ‘thank you.’ For yesterday.”
She tilted her head again, probably still not understanding. He didn’t know how to mimic the word ‘thanks.’ “Thank you,” he repeated, putting in all his earnestness and honesty that he had to give.
“Thank you,” She repeated, mindlessly. He smiled. Close enough.
There were more clicks and squeals in the ocean, making her turn her head. “Will I see you again?” Lance asked. She looked confused. “Here.” he patted the dock, “Tomorrow, when it’s night.” He pointed up at the sky.
He wasn’t sure if she understood or not, but she nodded. Then, she dived back into the water and he saw a flick of her long blue tail as it disappeared into the darkness.
Summary: When Ruby Honorè was not quite two years old, her mother died of a stroke. Since then, Lance has raised her alone with a smile that grows more tired and fake with every day that passes. He’s running of fumes but that’s no reason to impose upon his friends. What he really needs is to just do something for himself for once. Maybe, that something could be Keith, the guy who was dumped so brutally he ended up passed out drunk on Plaxum’s headstone.
Words: 6867 (it’s long, sorry)
Notes: I’m getting no where with this. Have the first chapter in the hopes that it inspires me to keep going...
(Summer, 2017)
He was a dick, Keith had to keep reminding himself. He knew he was a dick, he’d learnt the hard way, but god was he pretty. With his dark eyes and thick lashes and nose that turned up at the tip. With the way he talked with his hands and pushed his fringe out of his eyes when he got excited about something. He was talking about something, then -- some anecdote from the office that day -- and his eyes flashed with a smile and Keith had to remind himself for the thousandth time that night alone that he was a dick.
“Xander.” Keith shut his eyes as he interrupted.
He could feel the stare for a moment before Xander gave a soft laugh.
“Oh no,” he said. “What’s the matter, baby? I haven’t seen that face for a while.”
“Which face?” said Keith with a frown.
Xander grinned for a moment and then mimicked his boyfriend’s expression.
“This one,” he said, voice low with exaggerated grumpiness before he flicked back to his easy smile again. “You only make that face when something serious has happened. So tell me, what have I done? Is it because I put too much powder in with the last load of dirty clothes? I didn’t want to eat your mum’s scones? Did I steal the blankets again, baby?”
Any other day, any other dinner, any other moment that hadn’t required as much determination as this one had, Keith might have rolled his eyes with a scoff and a laugh. But not that day. Not that dinner. He’d worked too hard for this.
So he just levelled his stare back at his boyfriend of the last three years and said, “Xander…” once again and the smile slowly dripped off the other man’s face.
Xander blinked slowly before his gaze dropped to his wine glass. He drained a mouthful before he placed it back on the table-cloth with a sigh, eyes closed, head bowed. The sound of the conversations around them -- a dozen half-sentences from a dozen different tables -- and the chink of cutlery was all that echoed between them for a long moment.
“You know, don’t you?” is what Xander finally said.
Keith nodded. “You didn’t exactly try to hide it.”
“Then I don’t understand why we’re here. We both know you’re about to kick me to the curb.”
“I thought --” Keith swallowed dryly and tried again. “We’ve known each other so long. I wanted to trust my own judgement a little. I wanted to let you explain.”
Xander tossed his head back, scoffed, and threw the last of his wine down his throat.
“What do you want me to say, Keith? I stuck my dick in another man. You happy now?”
Keith was silent. All he could hear now was his heart beating in his ears. His eyes were wide, his mouth was dry and he had to sit on his hands to keep himself from physically reaching across the table and throttling the man in the middle of the restaurant. But, most of all, he felt like he might cry and that was the last thing he’d allow to happen.
“You did what?” He finally forced the words out passed his teeth.
Xander blanched, his hands falling back to the table, limp.
“That wasn’t… that wasn’t what you wanted to talk about?”
“No, Alexander,” Keith spat, “What I wanted to talk about was the almost three thousand dollars that have mysteriously disappeared from our account over the last few months. But forget about that. We both already know all about that. Let’s talk about your problem for a moment.”
“Oh, you don’t have to break out the sarcasm on my account. I’m sure you were saving that for a really special occasion.”
“Oh, fuck off, Xander. Just tell me the truth. How long?” Keith was feeling the dark circles under his eyes. He hadn’t slept properly for almost a fortnight already and this was really the last straw.
“I don’t see why it matters,” said Xander.
“Was it just once?”
“You’re not going to forgive me anyway.”
“Twice? Or was this a usual thing? Is this where all that money went?”
“There’s nothing I can say to make this better. You’ll never accept it. You’ve never --”
“Stop!” Keith finally snapped, no doubt earning nosy stares from a few other diners in the restaurant. “Stop trying to make this my fault. You’re the one who cheated. You’re the one who stole. I just want to know why. And then… And then I don’t know.”
“You’re not the forgiving type,” Xander drawled.
Keith took a deep breath and clenched his nails into his thigh below the table, taking the pain and the time to reign back in his anger as Shiro’s calming voice flashed through his mind.
“Well,” he said softly when he’d regained control, “you haven’t made any attempt to earn it, yet. What do you even want, Xander? Because I don’t think you actually want to be forgiven.”
Xander reached for his wine glass again and, finding it empty, gave a disappointed huff.
“What do I want?” he chuckled. “I don’t think we’re salvageable at this point, Keith.”
“Salvageable? We’re not a fucking shipwreck on the reef.”
“Yes we are.” Xander stood up. “And I want out.” He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair. “The ship’s already sunk, baby. I’m just saving myself.” Then he turned and walked out of the restaurant, pulling on his coat and tucking a twenty into their waiter’s breast-pocket on the way.
Keith stared after him for an indeterminable amount of time, skin numb and hackles raised, ready for the fight that he was never going to get. Then he pulled out his wallet and emptied all of his cash onto the table, stood up, strolled across the hall into the bar, and prepared to empty his account as well. If that bastard wanted to steal from him, Keith was going to spend any of his money left in their account on booze.
***
It was summer and the valley was stinking hot. Heat settled between the mountains like fog, sun beating off the cement and the tall buildings hid everything below them from even a hint of breeze, glass reflected glaring light into every eye. Lance was feeling grateful for being too poor for anything other than a house in the steep and hilly outer suburbs of Altea where the wind could still at least blow off the mountains, cool and fresh, to take the edge off the heat.
Unfortunately, any benefit of the cool mountain air was completely negated by the fact that, that morning, Lance awoke to chocolate-brown eyes and the full weight of both a very hairy dog and a five year old child lying on top of him.
“Wake up, Papi,” Ruby whispered at the sort of volume a young child might use when they hadn’t entirely grasped the concept of whispering. “It’s Saturday!”
If Lance smirked before he wrapped his arms around her, engulfing her in blanket, and rolling over, well… no one could prove anything.
“Five more minutes, baby,” he mumbled as she squirmed and giggled and kneed him straight in the stomach. Arrow, their Border Collie, barked once as she was rolled straight onto the floor. “Just let Papi sleep for five more minutes.”
“That’s what you said last week!” she practically shouted from where he’d buried her. Arrow ran tight circles of excitement on the floor, Lance could hear her tail slapping periodically against the leg of his bedside table.
Lance sighed and Ruby cheered.
“Alright,” he said. “I’m awake.” He sat up and pulled his still-wriggling daughter with him. “What are we having for breakfast today then, Ruby-Rubes?”
“Waffles!” She threw her hands in the air.
“Right. Waffles it is.”
There was something of an art to getting a child ready in the morning, especially when there was also a dog involved who often confused plain ‘leaving the house’ with ‘going for a walk’. It was an art that Lance had yet to master. Soon after Ruby was born, he’d spent hours at his parents’ house, watching his sister with her boys or his mother with his younger siblings and just marvelling at it. They certainly had it down.
“What are you doing?” his mother had asked once when she’d caught him.
“I’m learning,” he’d replied. And boy did he still have a lot to learn.
The first time Ruby tried to leave the house, she still had waffle all over her face. The second time, she wasn’t wearing shoes. The third time, Arrow escaped and had to be wrangled back inside. But eventually, he settled her into her seat, ran back into the house because he forgot his keys (twice) and they could finally leave.
Ruby sang as they drove and not to the music that was quietly playing from the radio. It wasn’t any sort of song that Lance knew, more a chant of things that passed by the window outside.
It’s Saturday and we’re driving in the car.
And I see a bird and a truck and a… a… a man in a blue hat.
Papi is driving and it’s Saturday.
And, despite not knowing the words (he doubted there were any official words), Lance soon found himself joining in.
It’s Saturday and we’re driving in the car.
It takes a long time but it’s not very far.
It’s just down the hill passed the fountain on the corner.
The man in the hat couldn’t look much warmer.
The best moments were when he could get her to laugh. She loved when it rhymed, though she couldn’t quite get there herself. And it was moments like this when the car was full of laughter and Ruby’s cries of ‘no, no, Papi! That’s not right! Stop being silly!’ and the sun shone through the windshield like the walls on a greenhouse that Lance could forget about where it was they actually went every Saturday morning.
He ducked into the alley beside Shay’s shop and hoped he could get back to the car before a parking inspector found it. Then, with Ruby wrestled out of her seat again and her tiny hand in his sweaty one, they strolled inside.
“Good morning, Mr McClain,” Shay beamed from the middle of an explosion of colour and dark, waxy leaves.
Shay’s florist was an odd sort of place. She shared the building with her brother. His coffee shop sort of melted into her florist without a single wall in between until the coffee-shop-goers slowly found themselves sitting at their tables, engulfed in tropical leaves and brilliant floral blooms. It was tucked away down a small side street and Shay’s brother, Rax, was a bit of a prick -- both things that should have left it deserted -- but it had a loyal following and something of a cult status on the west side of the valley.
Lance opened his mouth to reply just as Ruby broke free of his hand and disappeared into the foliage. He shouted a warning after her but, truthfully, he wasn't that worried. They'd spent a lot of time at Shay’s. Ruby knew where she was going.
Lance finally turned with a smile back to Shay, leaning against her counter.
“Morning, Shay,” he said. “You're looking as fresh and lovely as your flowers, as always.”
She just laughed and turned back to training the small orchid she'd been working on when they came in. “I suppose that is something to be glad for, if it is true. Give me one moment.”
She finished on the orchid and bent to pick up first one fifty pound bag of fertilizer and then another, hoisting them both easily into her arms and disappearing into the back room. Despite how many times he had seen something similar, Lance felt his stomach squeeze at the reminder of just how strong Shay was. She could probably break his wrist with one hand if she wanted to and he was saved only by the knowledge that she never would -- precious, kind-hearted soul that she was.
She smiled at him again when she returned, patting some dust off her apron, and came over to the counter. “Now,” she said, “your order?”
“Just the same as always, thanks Shay,” Lance said with a blasé wave of his hand and she began making up the bouquet; tiny orange rose buds filling the spaces between the tall gladioli and the shorter daisies.
They talked while she worked -- stripping and pruning and wrapping the flowers in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible -- they always did. Shay had a special talent for making everything you said seem incredibly interesting and it made talking to her, spilling your every thought to her, far too easy. In fact, Lance only noticed how long he’d been there when he felt a sharp tug on his pant leg and looked down to find Ruby grinning up at him with something sticky on her face.
“What have you been getting into, Ruby-Rubes?” he asked laughingly, kneeling down and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe her face off with.
Ruby just grinned wider and pulled a half-eaten cupcake out from behind her back. The frosting was already all gone, licked away first, the way Ruby always ate sweet things.
Lance rolled his eyes. “And where did you get that, you little monkey?”
“That’s not free!” said a new voice, answering Lance’s question.
“Oh come on, Rax!” he shouted back in the direction of the voice. “That was clearly entrapment! You know she won’t say no if you offer one to her.”
“Still not free,” the voice replied and Lance sighed.
He payed Shay for the bouquet, thanking her again for doing a beautiful job as always, and hoisted Ruby onto his hip to go and pay her grumpy brother.
***
The cupcake was long gone by the time Lance pulled up beside the tall, iron fence of the cemetery. It was a small place, still fairly new, located on the meeting point between the hilly suburbs and the skinny valley of the city. It was a steep lot, though, despite how close it was to the valley floor. So steep, in fact, that when spring arrived and the snows started to melt, the caretaker would worry the coffins would be washed from the hillside with the meltwater.
They never were but that didn’t stop him complaining about his fears to anyone who stopped long enough to listen.
Ruby carried the bouquet, cradling it like a newborn after she’d been told off once too many times for crushing them. They dwarfed her until she was just a bouquet with a pair of legs sticking out the bottom, determinedly waddling down the gravel path. But still she wouldn’t accept any help. This was her job. She carried the flowers. That’s just the way it was. So Lance walked slowly behind her, shaking his head with a smile on his face and trying not to think about how easy it would be for her to trip when she couldn’t see her own feet.
Some days, Lance felt guilty that she didn’t need to be directed up to the grave anymore, that she knew the way by heart. A graveyard was hardly the usual haunting ground of a five year old. But then he’d just sigh, slap a smile onto his face and tell himself that it would never have turned out any other way. The alternative seemed somehow worse.
Ruby turned off the path at the exact right point and started striding over the grass, up the hill without even looking over her shoulder to check if her father was following (he was, of course). They crossed a meadow, full of tiny wild flowers and still empty of graves, and the row of memorial benches until the large walnut tree that had come to be their signpost for the grave came into view. But there was something else where the grave should have been. Or rather, something else in addition to the grave.
A man, his features made indistinguishable by the distance between them other than his dark hair, lay slumped against the gravestone. And all Lance could think was, ‘Oh please, God, don’t let it be a dead body.’ He really did not have the energy to deal with that. Or the energy to explain it to Ruby.
When she spotted the man, she dropped the flowers in favour of sprinting over and satisfying her curiosity. Lance swept them up off the ground and jogged after her.
It was not, in fact, a dead body slumped against the gravestone but, instead, just a very drunk man.
“What do you think he’s doing?” Ruby stage-whispered as she poked his shoe with a stick.
Lance took the stick and shook his head at her with a stern expression before he looked back at the shoe she’d been poking. Dress shoes. And expensive ones by the looks of it. He cast a glance over the rest of the man quickly. He stank like alcohol but he was still wearing what was probably quite a nice suit when it wasn’t wrinkled and covered in dirt. His face was so pale it straddled the line between ‘just plain pale’ and ‘very ill’, his eyelashes quivered as he dreamed, brushing against high cheekbones. And he frowned in his sleep.
“He’s just sleeping, baby,” he told Ruby quietly before putting one hand on the man’s shoulder and shaking gently. “Hey,” he said. Ruby crept behind him and peered at the man over his shoulder. “Hey, wake up.” The man didn’t so much as stir. “Oooi!” Lance slapped his cheek gently.
That did it. Suddenly, Lance couldn’t breathe and it took him a full thirty seconds of gasping to realise the man had come to and immediately punched him in the throat.
“Shit, sorry!” the stranger babbled, reaching for Lance’s hunched form but never quite touching him. “I panicked! I -- Oh fuck. Are you alright?”
“What the heck, man?” Lance rasped at him.
“It was just instinct. I don’t like being surprised.”
“You punched me in the throat!”
“You startled me!”
“I wasn’t just going to let you keep sleeping here!”
At that, the man finally looked around and his eyebrows drew back together again into a frown. “Where am I?” he asked.
Lance swallowed three times to make sure he still could. He could feel Ruby trembling behind his back, her nose pressed between his shoulder-blades and her hands fisted in his shirt. This was certainly turning out to be a bit of a different Saturday for them. He reached behind himself to put a comforting hand on her back.
“You’re in the cemetery, pal,” said Lance, still rubbing his throat.
“And who the fuck are you? The gardener?”
“Uh, the name’s Lance,” he said. “And I would have happily told it to you earlier if you hadn’t decided to go all Jackie Chan on me.”
The man wasn’t even listening. He was staring at the patch of grass he was sitting on and then, slowly, turned over his shoulder to look at the gravestone he’d been napping against, his face a kaleidoscope of emotions.
“Holy shit!” He scrambled backwards and then squinted back at the headstone. “Platea Honorè,” he read hesitantly and then continued in a voice that Lance was probably not meant to hear. “What am I going to do if she haunts me?”
“She’s not going to haunt you,” said Lance quietly. After all, Platea was already haunting him and even she couldn’t multitask quite that well from beyond the grave.
“You know -- ? Oh, that’s why you’re here,” said the man dumbly.
“She’s my wife.”
The man grimaced and looked away but didn’t say anything in reply.
There was a sharp intake of breath behind him and then Ruby popped up over the back of Lance’s shoulder and pointed very decidedly at the man. The man, in his defence, only flinched slightly at the sudden appearance of a child.
“You’re Keith!” Ruby shouted jubilantly.
“Keith?” said Lance.
“Huh?” said the man, then he turned to Lance. “There’s a kid.”
Lance rolled his eyes. “Yeah, so I’d appreciate it if you watched your language.”
“How does it know my name?” asked the man who was apparently Keith.
“She,” corrected Lance. “And I don’t know. How do you know the smelly man, baby?”
Ruby groaned. “Pa-pi! You know! From Uncle Hunk’s garage! He looks just like Keith from the garage.”
Lance looked at the man again carefully. He supposed, maybe under that jacket could be the arms he had come to associate with the guy who hung out in the back of Hunk’s shop all the time -- the one whose name Hunk had helpfully supplied without any prompting at all. And maybe if he took his hair out of that stubby ponytail it’d be long enough to fall into the mullet he knew. But Keith was… Keith was the guy with the pretty face who didn’t say much and made the shop a better place just by being there with the grease on his fingers and his toned arms and brooding, bad-boy air. He wasn’t some guy in fancy shoes and a tailored suit with his hair styled into something resembling publicly acceptable, even if it was full of leaves.
Lance shrugged.
“You… You know Hunk?” said the man who was looking more and more likely to be Keith.
Lance opened his mouth to reply but Ruby got in first. “Uncle Hunk’s the best! He bakes me stuff and lets me watch him work on the cars and he doesn’t get tired when he gives me shoulder rides. Uncle Hunk’s the best.”
Keith stared at her for a long moment, clearly unused to dealing with children, before he nodded. “Right,” he said and then looked around again. “I should probably… go. Sorry for, you know,” he mimed a punch as he awkwardly got to his feet, “and sleeping on your wife’s grave and swearing in front of your kid and… yeah.” And then, with one stilted scratch at the back of his neck, he turned and started walking away.
Lance watched the man stumble away, rubbing one hand through his hair and occasionally dumping the twigs his fingers collected onto the ground, and couldn't help the amused smile on his own face. Even if he didn’t quite live up to the fantasy he’d built around the Keith in Hunk’s shop.
“So…” Ruby's voice brought him out of his reverie, “he doesn't live at Uncle Hunk’s?”
“Apparently not,” Lance replied. Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey Ruby-baby, what do you think about walking Keith home? I bet he does live at Uncle Hunk’s. We'll be super-spies and go undercover to prove it.”
Ruby may have looked like a miniature version of her mother but the mischievous grin she gave at that was all Lance.
“You run after him now, make sure he doesn't get away. I'll just say bye to Mummy and then I'll be right there,” he said.
Ruby nodded hard once and bounced where she stood before sprinting off after the strange man her father’s best friend knew. Lance watched her for a moment to make sure she didn't trip or that Keith didn't turn out to be a child abductor -- not that he didn't trust Hunk’s judgement of character -- before he turned back to the grave in front of him.
Placing one hand on the stone, he traced the words engraved into it, and forced a smile onto his face.
“Heya, Plax. Guess it's Saturday again, huh?”
The headstone didn't reply.
The cemetery was quiet, as they tend to be, with only the far off sounds of traffic and the mountain breeze whipping at the tips of leaves, the sound of Ruby calling out to Keith across the wildflower meadow. It was filled with the tiny everyday noises that are so quickly dismissed that, most of the time, they're not even registered as noise; bird song, a dog’s bark in the distance, someone nearby was mowing their lawn. But when it's quiet, quiet as the grave, then everything seems loud in comparison to the silence you receive from the one thing you wish could talk back. And Lance noticed all of these things as he sat there, waiting for Plaxum to reply.
He turned so his back was leaning up against the stone and leant his head back onto it. It was cold and hard and lifeless but, in his mind, he could pretend it still gave a little beneath his weight before wrapping warm, soft arms around him. In his mind, just for a moment, just one morning a week, he could pretend she was still here.
“You probably think I should stop coming here,” he said. “That this shouldn't have to be part of Ruby’s life -- that enough time has passed and I should… Except you'd say it in a much smarter way. Probably quote some Darwin at me. How you were never supposed to be here at all -- survival of the fittest, and all that.
“Sorry. You're right. I know you're right. I mean, not about me. Not this time. I belong here with you. But Ruby… what other five year old spends their weekends in a graveyard? But, I don't know, I guess I just wanted her to know her mum, even if she only knows her as ‘that photo beside her bed’ and ‘one stone among many in a park’.
“Sometimes I worry, you know, that she doesn't even realise that they're… that they're supposed to be the same person? The photo and the stone, I mean. I want to think that she remembers you. I can't think of any other reason she'd be so excited to come here every week. But, you know… she probably won't. When she's older, she'll forget all about you and… that just… it's not fair…”
He took one long, shaky breath, let it out again, and looked up at the sky.
“I’m so scared, Plaxum. Because I'm so tired and I don't know what I'm doing and Ruby is so preciously perfect at the moment and I’m going to screw up somewhere and I… I miss you. And… I just wish you were here.”
***
(Winter, 2004)
The sound of a long groan and a head hitting the table woke Lance with a snort. He quickly wiped the drool from his face (and the open textbook he'd been napping on) and looked around the library to be sure no one had noticed.
A girl sat at the table next to him, two thick French braids of dark brown hair creeping over her skull and well down her back. As he watched, she sat up again, huffed once through her nose and set her pen back to paper with a determined expression. It was an odd thing to be so focused on but Lance couldn't look away from the small frown crumpling her forehead between two perfectly shaped eyebrows. That was the face of someone who'd walk to the moon and back just because someone told them it was impossible. Her eyes, as dark as her hair, shone with fierce concentration, flicking back and forth reading the same passage in the novel she held in one hand over and over again. Lance watched as she chewed her tongue and then her lip in frustration and he couldn't stop himself from checking his own appearance quickly in the reflection off a window before walking over to her and leaning against the corner of her desk.
“Candide, huh?” he said, thanking god for high school reading lists. At least he'd actually read this one. “Voltaire. Very classy.”
The girl looked up at him and, good lord, did she have eyelashes for days. Lance had to work to keep the expression of casual assistance on his face.
“Need a hand?” he said.
She stared at him for a long moment and Lance was sure she could see right through him. But was that a bad thing? Was it a good thing? He couldn't tell anymore because, holy shit, she was still looking at him with those big doe eyes and he didn't have a coherent thought in his head.
“You've read it?” she asked, skepticism hiding in the shadows of her words.
Lance blinked for a moment in silence, trying to remember how words worked. “Oh sure!” he said at last. And then, employing all the bullshitting skills that a public school education had granted him, launched into a vague analysis of Voltaire’s Candide, complete with a few very choice phrases. ‘Dramatic irony’. ‘Political satire’. ‘Metaphysical representation’. ‘The human condition’. ‘The separation of Church and State’.
He had no idea if any of it was actually true or even relevant but it sure sounded good.
The girl was silent for a long moment once he'd finished.
“So, uh, did that help at all?” he prompted. He'd pulled the chair over from his desk by then and leant his elbow onto her desk with all the suave casualness he could muster.
“Yeah, actually,” she said. She had a bit of an accent and Lance couldn't decide if it was adorable or just a little funny. “The longer you talked, the more I realised you were wrong. The only way I could realise you were wrong was if I knew what was right. Thanks for letting me know I knew more about this stupid book than I thought I did.”
Lance took the kick to his ego like a champ, the product of much practice. “No problem.”
He was about to beat a hasty and shamed retreat when she spoke again.
“So have you actually read it or was that just the product of two minutes research before you came over here?”
Lance chuckled. “Oh, I've read it all right. Back in high school. English lit just makes no sense.”
“Urgh, tell me about it,” she replied.
“Why is it so vague?” he said.
“What do people mean ‘there are no wrong answers?’ Of course there are!”
“Just give me a fucking method!”
There was silence for a moment. Then the girl smiled.
“I'm Platea,” she said.
“Lance,” he replied.
***
(Summer, 2017)
The little girl was still talking to him at the speed of light, holding him by a handful of his pant-leg so he couldn’t get away, and Keith had no idea what she was talking about. Where the hell was her dad? What sort of irresponsible parent just let their kid wander around a graveyard? He tilted his head to try and see around the large tree to where he’d spent the night and even that tiny movement sent his brain washing against his skull with nausea.
There was revenge and then there was idiocy.
And getting completely and totally blind drunk, to the point where he couldn’t even get home by himself, had definitely crossed over the line to idiocy.
“So then Uncle Hunk said I couldn't keep them because they weren't really mice at all, they were rats, and Daddy-Papi said even if they were mice, I couldn't keep them because mice are dirty. Isn't that mean? I'm sure the mice have to take baths as well. Wouldn't the little mice get in trouble from the daddy mice and the mummy mice if they didn't take baths? Keith?”
Keith blinked down at the little girl still dangling off his pant leg. He hadn't been listening in the slightest.
“Hmm,” he said in a vaguely agreeing tone and that seemed to be all the encouragement she needed as she launched back into the story.
Keith looked up again, forcing his brain passed the insistent washing to peer around the tree again. The girl’s father -- what did he say his name was again? -- was finally standing up, dusting off his chinos and walking towards them.
The girl cut off mid-sentence with a little gasp and Keith could finally pull his pants back up his hips as she let go of his leg and ran over to her father. The man took both her hands with a bright smile.
“Do the thing! Let’s do the thing!” said the little girl, reaching her arms towards her father in the universal gesture of ‘up!’ and the man just chuckled lowly. Keith heard a quiet ‘uno, dos, tres’, they’re joined hands bouncing in time with the count, before she put one foot on his thigh, the other on his waist and then plonked herself down onto his shoulders like this was some acrobatics act.
“How long did it take you to get that right?” Keith asked as they came over, still talking and laughing and the little girl prattling away about something else. Suddenly, he realised he could have made a break for it while they were distracted. It was too late now.
The man gave a self-depreciating smile and said, “Almost a whole hour. We learnt it in the pool and she was pink all over from the belly flops by the end of it.”
“But now I'm really good at it!” she insisted.
“You’re the best at it, baby,” said the man. “You win the Lance-climbing competition.”
She cheered and the man -- Lance? -- winced as she pulled on his hair.
“Come on, then,” said Lance and started heading down the hill.
“What?” said Keith.
“We're walking you home, oh hungover one. Make sure you survive the trip.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “Nothing is going to happen to me on a three minute walk,” he said but started after Lance anyway.
“Not with us here to protect you, it won't,” Lance replied.
“Onward!” shouted the little girl, tugging on her father’s hair again but, this time, he just laughed.
***
Shiro was cleaning. It wasn't that his apartment was particularly dirty, and it certainly wasn't dirty enough or large enough for him to have devoted the entire morning to this like he had, it's just that cleaning was easy. Logical. And there's nothing that brings a calming sense of control quite like an easily accomplished task. So he cleaned. He put on some soft jazz, like the kind his dad used to listen to, and he cleaned. He wiped benches and vacuumed floors and scrubbed the shower, concentrating on the passage of dirt from surface to cloth with far more focus than it required, all so he could forget the way he'd woken up that morning shouting and covered in sweat.
Cleaning was better than that.
Which is exactly how Keith found him when he burst into the apartment that afternoon shouting, “Holy fucking shit, Shiro! I'm a fucking moron!” and Shiro tried to stand up from under the kitchen sink, smashing his head and swearing in turn.
But Keith didn’t notice. He was already off, words spilling from his mouth at a hundred miles an hour. His boyfriend must have done something again if the way his name was constantly prefaced with the word ‘fucking’ but there was also something about a little girl and a man with skin the colour of spice and a smile that Keith felt conflicted over because he couldn’t decide if he wanted to punch it or kiss it.
“So, in conclusion, I’m an idiot,” he said, collapsing onto Shiro’s couch.
Shiro sighed and chucked his dirty cloth into the sink.
“Were you cleaning?” asked Keith, one eyebrow raised, before he could say anything.
He frowned in reply. “Don’t start.”
“Shi--”
“Don’t.”
Three seconds of silence passed, a whole conversation crossing between the two in expressions alone, while Keith stared down his friend before he let out a frustrated groan and looked away, beaten. “Fine!”
“We’re talking about you now, anyway,” said Shiro, strolling over to where he’d left his shirt on the back of a dining chair hours ago and slipping it on. “Start again from the beginning and maybe try to go a little slower this time.” He tried a grin but the bitter expression on Keith’s face quickly wiped it away.
Keith looked away again, facing forward on the couch at last and glaring at the black screen of the TV for a long moment.
“It’s nothing…” he said eventually.
“It didn’t sound like nothing a minute ago. Most of it flew straight by me but I gather ‘fucking Xander’ has done something?”
Keith gave a short, breathy laugh. “We broke up,” he said. “Or, rather, he dumped me. And I’m an idiot.”
Shiro just stared at him for a long moment, one eyebrow raised.
“Shiro… it's really not that --” he was cut off by the other man flomping onto the couch next to him.
And so Keith sighed and began the story again; about why Xander was a dick, why his bank account was now empty, why he was still very hungover at two in the afternoon, why he woke up in a graveyard -- and about the little girl and her father he met there.
“And, look,” said Keith, “just because I got brutally dumped doesn't mean I'm going to fall into the arms of -- no, that's not what I was trying to say… What I meant to say was that I met a very pretty boy -- he has dimples, Shiro! You know I'm weak against dimples. But he’s pretty obviously straight because he was surprisingly cool about me sleeping on his wife’s grave, not to mention forgiving about me punching him -- he surprised me, okay? Don't make that face. You're just as bad when someone sneaks up on you sleeping. And… did I mention I was just dumped? So I'm sad and I can't go home because Xander’ll be there and I'm already lone-- But for a second there, like a complete idiot, I actually thought about going for it. Because he was pretty and nice and… and straight. And apparently I'm in some sort of hurry to get my heart broken again. Fuck. Just, do you see my problem here, Shiro?”
Shiro, for his part, was still pretty confused and the only reason he hadn't actually started laughing at Keith’s tangent-filled story was because of the completely twisted expression on Keith’s face. This was genuinely hurting him -- of course it was. Shiro couldn't laugh, no matter how amusing the actual telling of the story was.
So he closed his eyes and tried to draw the facts out of what Keith had said.
“Okay, so let's break this down,” he said at last and Keith turned to stare at him with a face that clearly said, ‘you're not my captain anymore, you don't need to use that voice’. Shiro ignored it. “Easiest problem: you don't want to go home. Fine. You can stay here for a few days. But Keith, you know you'll have to go back there at some point, right?”
“I think you're underestimating how good I am at avoiding things I dislike.”
“Keith.”
“Alright! Fine! I'll go back to my flat in couple of days. Hopefully Xander won't be there and I can grab my stuff and start looking for a new place.”
Shiro gave him The Look.
“What?” said Keith.
“Well… I guess it's a start, at least,” Shiro mumbled. “What do you want to do about this boy?”
“Nothing. He's straight.”
“He could be bi? Or pan?”
Keith scoffed. “Yeah but how many people do you know who are actually bi?”
“Keith!”
The word wasn't even out of Shiro’s mouth before Keith realised what he'd just said and his face twisted with guilt.
“Shit. Sorry. That was out of line,” he said.
“Don't apologise to me,” said Shiro. “Apologise to the bisexuals of the world.”
“You're right.” Keith nodded.
Shiro had been been mostly joking when he demanded an international apology. So he was more than a little surprised when Keith flung open a window, stuck his head out into the street and shouted, “I'm sorry bi people! I'm sure you exist!” And when he turned back again, Shiro had completely lost his inner battle and was on the floor in laughter.
“Hey, come on,” said Keith, nudging Shiro with his toe and fighting his own losing battle to keep down a smile. “We're supposed to be talking about me, remember. You insisted. Unless you'd rather talk about how fucking spotless your apartment is at the moment?”
“No, no. Please,” said Shiro as he wiped a tear from his eye but made no move to get back up off the floor, “let's talk about you. So, the boy?”
“Forget about the boy,” said Keith. “He's not even the problem. Just a pretty stranger with poor timing. He's got a kid, anyway, and god knows I'm not ready for that sort of shit.”
“Right. What else was there, again? Sorry, your story kind of… tended to wander.”
“I'm sad.”
Silence filled the room again for maybe three seconds; Shiro lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, Keith draped across the couch.
“Star Wars and pizza?” said Shiro when the moment passed.
“As long as you're paying,” said Keith. “If you'll remember, I'm now broke as shit.”
lance: so i have a question, but don’t get offended please. i’m just genuinely asking.
plaxum: okay..... go ahead.
lance: so on earth there was this movie called the little mermaid. and it was about this mermaid who got a wish to have two legs so she can be with the love of her life. uh... is there something like that for you guys?
plaxum: depends on why you’re asking me, lance.
lance: well i wanted to take you on the blue lion? show you around? show you part of my world so to speak... ha.
plaxum: [smiling] why are you laughing?
lance: disney reference. doesn’t matter. your answer?
plaxum: not that i know of. but you can show me your lion while i show you the depths of my world?
