Hi,,, um my birthday is on the 29th I would like to request a fic with lance with appendicitis and maybe the team thinks he’s overreacting idk you don’t have to do it I love you ❤️❤️❤️
Happy Birthday, April 39th anon! (if you didn’t see that post then I’m sorry that joke made no sense) I hope it’s as lovely as you are! Here’s a fic!
Lance made another high, whining sound in the back of his throat, grabbing at his stomach. He’d been complaining of a stomachache since the night before, right after dinner, but this, Keith thought, was getting ridiculous.
“Huuunk,’ Lance whined, “I can’t believe you’d poison me like this.” Hunk frowned, looking as if he was going to apologize, but Keith cut him off with an eye roll and a sharp tone.
“He didn’t poison you,” Keith snapped, “none of the rest of us are having problems. You probably just ate too fast.” Lance was prone to doing that, but he shook his head.
“This isn’t that,” he insisted. “It really hurts.” Keith felt a small pang of sympathy for him, feeling the familiar fondness wash over him that he felt any time Lance dropped all the dramatics and was just calm for a moment.
“If it hurts so much, go to your room and take a nap,” Keith compromized. That way, Lance would feel better when he woke up, and they didn’t have to listen to him complain for the next few hours.
Lance shivered on the couch, looking like he was contemplating it, before shaking his head. “Nah,” he said simply. “Good here.” He closed his eyes and snuggled into the blanket that Hunk placed over him.
“Lance, you can’t sleep here,” Keith argued. “We can’t just tiptoe around you all day.”
He shrugged. “Then don’t,” he said. “I don’t care if you wake me up. I’m not moving.”
Keith rolled his eyes again, but didn’t argue further. “Whatever,” he caved, “but that means you don’t get to whine at us if we’re being too loud for you to sleep.”
Lance was already out.
Three hours later, he was still on the couch, awake but shaking, curled tightly in a ball. He was starting to think that something might be seriously wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand up to go find anyone as every time he tried to straighten up, it backfired--just like high school, he thought with a biter smile.
He laid there for a while, waiting for someone to walk by so he could get their attention, slipping in and out of either sleep or unconsciousness, he wasn’t quite sure which.
“–is asleep in there,” Pidge’s voice argued just outside the common room in the hallway.
“He said he didn’t care if he was woken up,” Keith argued.
“Why don’t we just play in my room?” Pidge offered.
Keith huffed. “Because the graphics are supposed to be awesome, and your TV is small,” he replied.
There was a pause while Pidge seemed to consider it, and Lance held his breath, hoping that they’d decide to come and sit on the couch. He really, really needed someone. The pain had gotten not only more intense as the day had gone on, but had concentrated itself into one knife-like, pinpoint sensation in his lower right abdomen.
“Well, fine,” Pidge finally gave in, “but we’re not going to shout at the screen this time.”
Right. Like that was gonna happen.
Lance opened his eyes and tried to blink through the fever haze, but everything was happening a lot faster than he’d anticipated and asking for help was harder than he’d expected. How was so much time passing every time he blinked?
He didn’t register Pidge sitting down next to him on the couch, or her questioning how he was feeling. Keith brushed it off, saying he was just asleep.
“His eyes are open,” she argued, and Keith’s heart skipped a beat.
“Uh,” he stammered. “Lance? You good?”
He heard the question like he was underwater, but it was good enough. He didn’t trust the tremulous hold he had on his nausea to survive speaking, so instead he reached his hand a few inches to grab Pidge’s wrist.
“Woah, Lance,” she breathed, “you really look bad. Does your stomach still hurt?”
He squeezed her wrist.
“Keith, go get Coran,” she instructed just as Lance lurched forward and started to dry heave over the side of the couch. With a grimace, she angled him so that he was on his side, wincing at the heat that had clearly been trapped under the blankets with him for the past few hours.
The next time Lance opened his eyes, the pain was all but gone.
“Guys, he’s waking up!” Hunk called excitedly. Lance smiled at him.
“Hey,” he greeted, wincing against the dryness of his throat. “Water?”
Hunk shook his head. “Not yet, buddy,” he said, reaching for a bowl and extending it toward Lance. “But you can have an ice chip, if you want.”
Lance grabbed several in his fist, but Keith swatted his hand hard enough that he released all of them back into the bowl. “Hunk said an ice chip,” he scolded. Lance glowered, but obeyed, taking a single chip (the largest one he could find, about three times the size of most of the others–suck it, Keith) and letting it melt in his mouth.
“What happened?” he asked. He couldn’t remember much after his nap. There was something about Pidge and Keith playing video games, maybe?
Pidge took the bowl away, but not before Lance could grab several more ice chips and stuff them into his dry cheeks.
“You had freaking appendicitis,” she explained. “It burst while you were napping, so Coran had to give you surgery.”
He closed his eyes, trying to remember any of that, and opened them when a cool rag was pressed to his forehead, easing pretty much all the pain and tension he’d felt in the past day and a half.
An angel?
No, Allura.
Well, okay. Both.
“Hey, Princess,” he greeted. “Thanks.”
She didn’t smile. “Lance,” she said, her voice tan and pinched. “Why did no one know you were ill?”
Well, shit. He’d told them, but he figured Allura would be a lot less angry at him for hiding it than she would be at Keith and Hunk for ignoring it, so he just avoided her eyes and lied.
“I guess I just didn’t want to seem weak,” he fabricated, hoping that would be the end of it. It wasn’t.
“You could have died, Lance,” she said sternly. “If you value your status as a paladin of voltron, you’re going to have to be a team player.” That hurt.
And Keith couldn’t take the guilt any longer.
“No, Princess,” he argued, “Lance–he told us.” He frowned and kicked his shoes on the ground awkwardly. “He’s been telling us since last night.”
Her eyes shifted from disappointed to firey.
“Is this true, Lance?” she asked without looking at him.
He squirmed. “In their defense, I was being whiney about it,” he said weakly.
She turned gravely to him. “I don’t care if you took out a marching parade to complain about it, really,” she said, her words knife-sharp. “They should have taken you straight to the med bay.”
Keith looked mortified, and so did Hunk. “I’m–I’m so sorry, Lance,” Hunk said, sniffling dangerously. “I thought–you know what, it doesn’t matter. I was wrong.”
Lance shook his head. “Guys, don’t–”
Keith refused to meet Lance’s eyes. “Me too,” he admitted.
“We’ll have a more detailed conversation about this later,” Allura promised, threatened, something in between. Lance shuddered and was distantly grateful that it was his appendix that had burst–it was probably less painful than that conversation with Allura would be.
Suddenly, Lance’s eyes began to close against his will, and he panicked, shooting out a hand to grab Allura’s. “I feel–weird,” he breathed, struggling to keep his eyes open.
“It’s alright; you’re okay,” she promised. “Your pain medication was automatically re-administered. It’s a bit sedating. I’m sorry; I should have warned you.”
He relaxed, both in relief and because that pain medication was strong.
“Get some sleep, Lance,” she said gently. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”
