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mrskurono · 4 years ago

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title: Regret Nothing || Hanamaki x fem!Reader a/n: man idk anymore just thinking about Makki 24/7 is my job now word count: idk it’s a drabble tags: fluff, domestic au, angst if you squint, dirty joke at the end character(s): Takahiro Hanamaki (hq)

The one sided shouting match in the living room sounded lively as ever for a Saturday.

Peeking your head around the corner to see your kids pointing at the tv going on about something you were destined to be filled in about later. What you didn’t see was your husband. Certain he was apart of the foolery going on if they were complaining about videogames.

“You two, where’s your father?” All eyes are torn from the screen immediately to look at you.

That classic unenthused look they inherited from their father was shared between both tweens before shrugging.

“Dad got a text from uncle Tooru and told us to keep playing.” Your oldest shrugged it off. Returning to the two player game where the youngest had already pressed resume on their game.

“I think he went to the bathroom.” Your youngest popped off without tearing their attention away from the screen.

“Dad had to poop probably.” An addition by the oldest.

You sigh with an eye roll, “Thank you detectives. Make sure we get you two a puzzle game next time for those skills you got there.” The threat of education on their free time earned a groan from both of them. Making you grin and ruffle their hairs before going to find their father.

As suspected Takahiro wasn’t in the bathroom. If gaming time was on the line you’d seen that man out weight both kids to prove he was the ultimate winner. So it was weird that he’d told them to keep playing. On a Saturday too. This was their cheat day to play together. So when it was mentioned a text from Tooru distracted him. You were a little worried since most the time you were included on those groups texts.

Running through what could have been sent, nothing really comes to mind. Issei had said both Hajime and Tooru were doing good last Sunday when everyone had dinner. And if it was an emergency then of course Takahiro would have told you.

Combing through your own thoughts to find your husband not in the bathroom like both kids had told you. You find him back in your bedroom in fact. To your surprise actually.

“Hey, the kids are loosing that stupid game of theirs. Did they finally beat you?” You ask with a smile as you approach him seated on the bed. More than surprised by the mystery text, you’re unsure of what to think when you see old albums at your husband’s feet. With the oldest one in his lap. Open to pictures of graduation of all things. A crease forms on your forehead and you rub your hand along his shoulders, “What, did big star-kawa need an old photo for a cheesy interview?”

No response. Your frown deepens and you take a seat next to him.

“Love what’s up with you the kids said Tooru texted you and-”

“Do you regret marrying me?”

Blindsided by such a question. You take a moment to even comprehend the kind of inane question that was. Instead you can’t fathom why he even asked that.

“Takahiro what are you even talking about?” You look at the album spread in his lap then to his face, “What crap are you even on to ask that?”

He reached up and palmed the back of his neck with a little shrug, “I’m sorry...I just...Tooru sent a text about the anniversary of his first medal. It wasn’t that bad but Issei last week at dinner. And Hajime opening another fitness center....You could have done so much better than me y’know? Living abroad or at least living some place with three times as much space and-”

“Hah!”

Certainly not the reaction the man was looking to hear. It was enough that he took his eyes off the old photos to look at you literally snorting at his words. His turn to frown Takahiro didn’t see what was so funny about it all. To him it felt true.

“First off, why look at this one? I hated your uniforms so much.”

“Hey!”

“Oh just hush-” You take the album from his lap and tuck it back in the box. Only to thumb through to the third one in. Plucking it from the confines of old musty box and setting it on your lap, “Now this one.”

Takahiro frowned, “I mean, that’s not even the wedding album. What one is that one? The kids or moving or-”

“It’s my favorite album is what it is.” You answer him as you swipe your hand over the face of it.

Unlike the others which were neatly labeled. This one bore no name. No baby’s first. No wedding photos. No post high school. No nothing. It was nameless and blank.

Grumbling Takahiro was still upset that you blew him off. Even more so when you opened to the middle of the album at random to what was clearly a set of blurry pictures. To the untrained eye this was the reject pile if there ever was one.

“Do you remember that one?” You ignore his sour face and point at the waterlogged picture of what appeared to be a bowl of fruit.

Scrutinizing it a bit closer he had to think a moment, “...that was that fake fruit bowl my sister thought would be funny to give us for our first apartment....god but the photo got wine on it after that one stay at home date we had.”

“That was such a nice bottle of wine.” You shook your head, “A real shame we spilled it.”

“We?” He snorted, “I told you that kitchen was too small for decorations and to dance.”

“Oh how about this one?” You point at the rabid blurred face of both of your kids. Somewhere in the three to six range. The picture clearly unmarked by a date but with the way your oldest had a missing front tooth and the littler of the two sporting bangs almost identical to Takahiro’s in high school, it was clear they were still little.

“That was my oldest sister’s birthday party god they ate so much cake I could have killed her.” Takahiro groaned at the war flash back of the mess and trouble of sugar high kids at their aunt’s house.

“How about this?” You pointed at a picture.

One that stumped him in fact. Takahiro leaned down and tried to make out what it was with the awful sun glare that skewed literally everything in the photo. Not to mention the wine stain from ages ago. Meaning this was an old photo he was drawing a blank on.

“...is that you or me? Where we were? I don’t even remember that.”

A smile blossoms on your face and you lean your head into your husband’s shoulder, “That was right after graduation...we had that big trip planned but everyone coped out at the last second. So you and I went instead.”

“Oh the seagull thing!”

You nod and trace your fingers over the assorted poorly taken pictures. Some of them newer and some of them older. All of them clear rejects to the real well done albums. But still something about them made you happier to look at than anything else.

“If you’re gonna ask me if I regret marrying you. Then I want you to ask yourself the same thing.”

For a second he looked appalled, “Of course not! You are my everything! Marrying you was one of the best days of my life, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“See,” You close the book and take a moment to cup his round cheeks in your hands, “So that’s your answer.”

Takahiro closed his eyes and let his face rest in your palms, “But...you could have been traveling the world...living in luxury. I just...I could have done more for you. Could have been more.”

“Takahiro Hanamaki-” Your stern tone made him open his eyes to you, “Outside this room are two of the most smartest, annoying little mini you’s I’ve ever met and I would have never had them if you didn’t give them to me. They’re that wonderful because of you. Because you’re their dad. Because you’re an amazing father and an even more amazing husband.” You take a moment, swiping your thumb over his forever chubby cheek and smiling to keep yourself from tearing up, “You’ve given me the world. And then some. I’ve never regretted a day in my life with you in it. Being with you...I regret nothing.”

Choked up for a moment. The man laughs, be it too keep from crying himself. Takahiro wipes at his face and pushes his forehead against yours, “Even though I’m just a lousy stay at home dad huh?”

Again you laugh, this time pulling his face close to yours so you can kiss him hard and long. It draws out for a second before you look up at him and peck him once more on the lips, “I’ve never seen anything sexier than you taking care of those kids. Fuck living in Argentina. The sexiest place in the world is right here with you.”

Takahiro’s face breaks out to the biggest grin as he wraps his arms around you, “You uh...was pretend to make another one of those mini me’s you think are so cute?”

“They’re on the second boss fight,” You grin with a kiss to his cheek, “Hurry up and shut the door and we can do more than pretend.”

#hq #hq!!#hq makki #makki #makki x reader #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu makki #hanamaki takahiro #hanamaki x reader #hanamaki takahiro x reader #hq hanamaki #haikyuu hanamaki #hq x reader

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thatgirlonstage · 8 years ago

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Summary: Lance wakes up in a hospital on Earth to discover he has been missing for four months, with no memory of Voltron or the Galra. Drawn inexplicably to the desert where they found him, he discovers a hut full of research and notes that may provide the key to his missing memories. With secrets and conspiracies surrounding him, and the Garrison potentially hiding far more than he could ever have imagined, Lance grows to trust the notes in the desert - but he may not believe the person who claims he wrote them.

Chapter Four:

The first thing Lance saw was paper.

There were reams of it scattered across the room, stacked high against the wall, books piled haphazardly in corners and toppling onto each other on shelves, posters covering the peeling wallpaper, rolled up maps and star charts shoved into cardboard boxes, newspaper clippings with headlines circled in red pen, colored Post-It notes stuck on everything, all of them scrawled over with the same messy, spiky handwriting.

The second thing he noticed was the conspiracy board.

A massive corkboard covered most of the wall to his right, beside a single narrow door that presumably led to the rest of the hut. Lance gaped at it: it looked like it had fallen out of every crime thriller ever, complete with color-coded string connecting the dots from dirty pencil sketches to photographs to a map that sat dead center, with a giant black circle around the words ENERGY SOURCE and several X’s marking out a triangle.

The third thing he noticed was how much dust he had kicked up by opening the door, as he went into a coughing fit.

When he had cleared his lungs and wiped the tears from his eyes, he took a few hesitant, stumbling steps closer to the conspiracy board. Pictures of lions dominated, some photographs of what looked like cave drawings, others messy sketches that had clearly been rubbed out over and over by an increasingly dirty eraser, creased and torn along the edges. For some reason, the sight of the lions made Lance’s heart jump into his throat, although he couldn’t recall ever seeing something like it before. Annotations in the same spiky handwriting covered them, but none of them made any sense. What did “NAs around?? WHO LIVED HERE?” have to do with what looked like a mathematical calculation? Why was there a yellow Post-It that just said, “changing art styles” with three arrows pointing to different photographs on it? Why was there a photograph of nothing but a cave entrance? Why was there also a world map with the constellations charted across it, showing where they were visible?

“Does that guy with the telescope live here?” he wondered aloud, and then winced, wondering if he might have alerted anyone else in the house to his presence, but as much as he strained his ears, everything remained silent. “Only if he’s been sleeping in that park for a few months straight, judging by the dust,” he muttered to himself. He turned and surveyed the room.

He didn’t think he’d ever seen so much paper in his life. If he thought Cal kept an impressive number of physical books even though digital copies were less than a quarter of the price, it was nothing compared to whatever the person who lived here had. They were piled everywhere: on the shelves against the back wall, on the desk and shelves on either side of the front door, underneath the wooden slab sitting on top of some concrete bricks that Lance thought was supposed to pass for a table (helping to hold it up, by the looks of it), even stuck on top of the tower of what looked like Garrison reject tech. Lance frowned, moving closer, and his eyes went wide. This was Garrison reject tech. The two back-to-front G’s that made up their logo were pasted onto the corners, although at least one looked like it had been scratched off. “What the…?” he murmured. The Garrison was dedicated to keeping their technology scarily modern, so it wasn’t unusual for them to donate outdated but still perfectly serviceable technology to the electrojunk yards in the city where people could go scavenge them. Most people in the city probably owned a printer that had been thrown away by the Garrison at some point. This was different, though. For one thing, some of this was a lot more sophisticated than a printer – Lance thought he recognized a machine Hunk had told him could be adjusted to scan for, record, and convert almost any frequency to levels that could be heard by human ears – and he doubted it would get tossed in with the Garrison’s normal electrojunk. For another, some of it wasn’t just old, by technology standards it was ancient. The holoscreen projector looked like it was decades old, probably older than Lance himself, and had clearly been repaired and retrofitted over the years. He ran a hesitant finger along the top of the frequency scanner and it came away coated in dust.

Rubbing his hand against his pants, he took a few slow steps over to the table. There was an empty water bottle and an open, empty black can that according to the label had once contained beans but now had nothing but some nasty congealed juice at the bottom of it sitting on top of a few sheets of paper. One of them had something written in all caps and red across it, and Lance carefully, with one finger, shoved the bean can aside to get a look. It said: DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. There was a date written underneath and circled four times.

Lance’s throat constricted and he wondered if he was going to start coughing again. He stared at the paper until he thought he might burn a hole right through it. The world seemed to tumble into chaos around him. He clenched his fists, trying to hold onto reality with brute force. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears.

The date written on the sheet of the paper was the night Lance had gone missing.

He didn’t know how long he stood there staring at this sheet of paper with its frighteningly coincidental date before he reached a shaking hand into his pocket and pulled out the new phone he’d finally bought. He was halfway through typing in Detective Hopkins’s contact before he paused.

“What would I even say…?” he asked his phone. “Detective Hopkins” sat at the top of his screen, waiting to be pressed, an alert to the police two taps of a finger away, but instead he deleted the letters of his contact search one by one and slowly put the phone back into his pocket. “Not yet,” he muttered. “I need something more than a piece of paper if I’m going to explain why I’m out here at all. Plus, walking into this hut probably counts as breaking and entering, doesn’t it? Oh, shit, am I breaking the law?” He shifted from foot to foot, suddenly paranoid that Detective Hopkins was tailing him and was about to burst through the door and arrest him. Making a split-second decision, he walked over to the door on the right wall and twisted the knob.

The door opened onto a sparsely furnished kitchen, boasting nothing more than a single cupboard and a square of counter space, a rickety old gas stove, a rusty metal sink, a mismatched set of two chairs and a table, and a squat little fridge that was making a frightening rattling sound as it ran. At the opposite end of the room another door was cracked open to a tiny square of a bathroom, and a ladder led up to some kind of attic. Lance, still slightly paranoid that the owner of the hut was going to appear in front of him and shoot him for trespassing, walked over to the fridge. Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand hesitantly on the handle, and yanked it open. He slammed it shut again as fast as possible, his free hand coming up to cover his nose. Unless the mold in there mutated and came to life and tried to kill him, he was happy to let whatever remnants of food there were rot in there for eternity. It settled one point for him though: he was certain now that no one had lived here for months. And, judging by the mess in their refrigerator, whoever used to be here had left unexpectedly.

Just for good measure, he finished exploring the hut. The bathroom was miniscule but functional. The water ran brown with rust and sand for the first few minutes after Lance turned it on, but eventually cleared. He splashed his face clean of the dust, although he was careful not to swallow. The cracked ceramic floor was outlined in the sand that had gathered between the crevices. The sink had a glass with a toothbrush and almost empty tube of toothpaste sitting on it, and a comb with four of its teeth missing. The shower was marked only by its wide metal head and a flimsy, tattered curtain hanging off two metal rods; the drain was set into the floor. A few strands of black hair were curled over it.

Up the ladder, there was an almost empty attic. The slanted ceiling was so low that Lance could only stand fully upright in the exact center. There was a mattress with crumpled sheets and a thin blanket thrown across it, and a cardboard box. A few scattered pairs of socks, boxer shorts, and a black t-shirt made a loose pile of dirty laundry next to the mattress, but otherwise the room was bare. Outside was also mostly uninteresting: a well for groundwater explained how the house had plumbing, and the concrete attachment to the house had a generator connected to a set of solar panels around the back of the hut, which explained how the fridge was still running, as well as containing a few rusty gardening tools, but that was it. Lance went back inside to the main room and stared at the date glaring at him from that sheet of paper again. He reached down, hesitated, and then reasoned that his fingerprints were already all over everything.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he shrugged, and picked it up.

Examining it gave him nothing new. There were fragments of printed text on the back, but he was pretty sure that was just because it was scrap paper. He sat down on the couch, turning the paper over and over in his hands. DON’T FORGET – TOMORROW. The words mocked him.

On a whim, he reached over and grabbed the nearest book off a shelf next to him, disturbing a cloud of dust as he did so. The spines of all the books were already thoroughly broken, so it fell open on his lap. It was a history of the region. A quick scan of the table of contents told him that it began more or less in the 1600s and worked its way up through the end of the last century. The earlier chapters in particular were stuck full of Post-It notes. He flipped through it slowly, seeing sections of the text underlined and circled, accompanied by exclamation points and question marks.

The page it fell open to, the one where the reader’s annotation marks were so heavy they almost obscured the actual text, contained a picture similar to the ones on the conspiracy board and a single paragraph. Lance read.

One peculiarity is the prevalence of cave drawings of what appears to be a female lion, which fill countless caves in one concentrated area (see Map 2.4). While the scholarly consensus is that they must actually be drawings of cougars, they bear an uncanny resemblance to a female African lion in the proportion of the head and their build. As of yet there are no authoritative studies on these drawings since access has always posed a problem – first because of the terrain and climate, and in more recent years because of Galaxy Garrison’s restrictions on people living or working in the area due to safety concerns over pilot training and weapons testing. The little research that has been done found several patterns that repeat across most of the drawings with slight alterations, suggesting an evolving mythos.14 However, the story depicted does not appear to be tied to any other myths or folktales from the region. Even stranger, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the very oldest of these drawings might date to roughly 8000 BCE, around 4000 years older than any other cave drawings found in North America, while the newest ones may even have appeared after colonial exploration and settlement began in the 19th century.15 This makes little to no sense given what we know of the movements of Native American populations through this region (see Chapter 3). The working theory among scholars is that the various tribes present at different points in history each discovered these cave drawings, interpreted them, reinvented them to fit their own myths, and then redrew their version in a cave nearby. More in-depth interpretations of the story being told in these drawings, its significance to Native American culture, and the history of the region, will have to await further research.

Scrawled in the top corner of the page was a handwritten annotation: “If completely fictional, why consistent patterns across tribes/time? What was start of myth?” Lance worried his bottom lip. He set the book down on the table and grabbed the next one without paying any attention. The cover was a startling green on black pattern, with the title written in such big font it almost completely obscured the design: ALIENS: The Secret History of Galaxy Garrison. He groaned, covering his face with his hands.

“Nope. Okay, if this isn’t telescope man’s house, it’s the house of his even crazier cousin,” he said. “Nope, nope, nope, I’m done. I am… I am done with this. Time to go home.” He shoved the books back onto the shelf, stood up, and marched out the door. The sun was beginning to fall into the west, dipping below the mountains. Lance took a swig from his water bottle, swung himself onto the hoverbike, and took off towards town, refusing to look back as the strange little desert hut shrank into invisibility on the horizon behind him.

Lance was singing, stirring peppers, onions, and snap peas together, when Cal walked in. He gave him a cheery wave, and reached back with to turn down the quick-paced Spanish music blasting from a speaker on the counter, continuing to dance side to side, swaying his hips along, as adjusted the heat on the stove.

“And I’d never seen eyes like hers before,” he sang, imitating the singer’s vibrato on the last word. “Hey, how was school?”

“You’re cooking?” Cal asked, dropping his backpack off his shoulder with a thunk. “What is that? It smells delicious.”

“Nothing special,” he shrugged. “Just kind of a stir-fry, fast and easy. I was thinking of making fricasé de pollo one night if you’d like, I just need to leave it to marinate the night before.”

“Since when do you cook?” Cal asked, bending over to untie his shoes.

“Since Hunk.” With a quick twist of his wrist Lance shook some salt over the pan, keeping his hand high to avoid any drops of hot oil. “I had the worst crash in the flight simulator I’d ever had, my advisor told me I’d never get into the Garrison, I got back a theory test that I flat-out failed, hid in a bathroom in the basement for three hours before I limped my way back to the dorms during dinnertime in order to avoid running into anyone, and ten minutes later Hunk turned up with the most delicious black bean soup I’ve ever eaten in my life. Probably would have been even better if I didn’t keep crying into it. Hunk said he’d wanted to do something more traditionally Cuban, give me a taste of home and all, but this was the best he could manage since he wasn’t even really supposed to be in the kitchen in the first place and had to scrounge for ingredients. He kept apologizing, he was so anxious, meanwhile I couldn’t even keep my voice steady long enough to actually thank him for it.

“So then like a week later, once I’d pulled myself together and convinced my teacher to let me retake the theory test, I was determined I was going to cook something for him, you know, to thank him. I managed to get into the kitchen by telling the chef I was Hunk’s friend – he worked there for some extra cash on weekends and one of his moms was a chef, he could cook better than anyone else in that kitchen – but I ended up with the saddest, driest, burnt-up fried plantains you’ve ever seen in your life. It was a total disaster. I wouldn’t have dared try to make him eat them, I just threw them away. But I must have had the most pitiful puppy-dog look on my face after that because Hunk knew something was wrong, and when I finally confessed what had happened he was so touched that he insisted he get to teach me to cook. We spent Sunday mornings in the kitchen since the simulators weren’t available until noon.”

“Hunk was your roommate back in prep school, right?” Lance scraped the spoon slowly around the edge of the pan.

“Yeah. Sweetest guy I’ve ever met,” he said. Cal tucked the laces inside his shoes and set them carefully in a boot tray.

“I met his moms,” he said. Lance kept his eyes fixed on the pan. “They were lovely people. His brother too.” Lance stabbed a pepper with the fork and sampled it. Almost done, could use another couple minutes, he decided. “So, you planning to share that or what?” He sent Cal a relieved grin.

“Patience, patience,” he admonished, waving a spoon at his brother. “It’s not done yet.” Cal slid onto a chair and crossed an ankle over his knee, watching expectantly.

“Cooking, speaking English in the morning, you really have changed a lot,” he mused. Lance shrugged.

“None of this is recent,” he said.

“Guess we don’t see each other all that often anymore.” There was a moment of quiet, the Spanish singer still crooning gently from the speaker. Lance murmured the lyrics under his breath, swaying almost imperceptibly. He felt Cal’s eyes on the back of his neck but didn’t turn around. Another few stirs around with his spoon and he stepped back, satisfied.

“There’s rice in the pot,” he gestured. Cal grabbed a plate and helped himself. The two of them moved around one another in sync, navigating the compressed little apartment kitchen to set out silverware and water, Lance dropping a used cutting board and knife into the sink to be washed later. They ate in comfortable silence, the muted sound of a guitar from the speaker and the indistinct noises of people having their own dinners in the apartments above and below providing a soundtrack to their quiet company. Only after both their plates were scraped clean did Lance sit back, crossing his ankle across his knee to match Cal, and ask if he had any critiques.

“Not a one. You know I’m terrible at cooking, why didn’t you do this before now?” Lance shrugged, throwing his arms over the back of the chair.

“I was recovering from being an invalid. Show some consideration to your little brother.” Cal rolled his eyes.

“Right. Well, you’re cooking dinner from now on. You want to stay in this apartment, you’re going to earn your keep.”

“Hey! That wasn’t in my contract!”

“I’m changing the terms of our agreement. Older sibling privileges.” Lance could have sworn the glint in Cal’s eyes was almost mischievous.

“You are the most— the most insufferable— you dirty little f—”

“Lance,” Cal gasped in mock horror. “Language, please.”

“I’ll language you!” Lance growled. He launched himself at Cal, trying to yank him off the chair, but couldn’t make him budge.

“Please, Lance, you know you could never win when we fought.”

“Maybe not. Buuuuuuut… I do know your weak spot,” Lance gave Cal the evilest grin he could and Cal met him with a glare.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said suspiciously, slowly placing his foot on the floor.

“Oh I would,” Lance said. He went to his knees, grabbed Cal’s foot, and tickled the bottom. Cal shrieked, kicking at him, but Lance hung on grimly to his leg and continued to tickle. Cal was somewhere between screaming and laughing, trying to shove Lance away, but his position from the chair was too awkward and he couldn’t get to his feet with Lance hanging on to his leg.

“You absolute ass,” he cried. “Two can play at this game, you know.”

“No!” Lance shrieked as Cal bent over and reached for his ribs. He let go of his grip on Cal’s leg to knock away his hands. “Sorry, sorry, truce!”

“Not a chance,” Cal said, jumping to his feet. Lance crab-walked backward until he managed to flip over, trip up to his feet, and attempt to sprint away. Cal caught him and knocked them both onto the air mattress, his fingers tickling agony into his sides.

“Let goooooooo,” he groaned through involuntary laughter, slapping ineffectually at his brother’s arms. “You’re an adult, you’re supposed to be too old for this.” He squirmed, trying to wiggle his way out of Cal’s grasp, but he had Lance pinned down, still digging his fingers mercilessly into his ribs. “Calixto Sanchez, if you don’t stop I am going to burn every single one of those dinners you want me to cook for you.” Cal paused, squinting at him, his knees digging into Lance’s hips.

“You wouldn’t eat burnt food for the next two months just to spite me.”

“Try me,” Lance dared. Cal stared him down a moment longer, then flipped off of him. Lance sighed in relief, gave it a single beat, and dove for Cal’s feet, throwing his torso across Cal’s legs to keep them in place.

“You CHEAT!” Cal shouted, trying to shove him off. Lance couldn’t hold his position long before Cal managed to pull him away and they devolved into wrestling. Lance discovered there was a lot more of him since the last time they did this: his limbs had stretched long and he was all angles now, all elbows and knees and bony shoulders that he could shove up against the block of muscle that was his brother to try and push him off the mattress. They were almost evenly matched for a few minutes, but Cal eventually managed to shove Lance onto his stomach and pull his arms behind him. Lance kicked ineffectually for a few seconds, like he was swimming, but Cal was sitting on his back and he couldn’t reach him.

“Okay, okay, you win, you always win, I’ll cook nice things for you,” Lance groaned, and buried his face into the air mattress. Cal didn’t say anything, only released his grip, but Lance could feel the smugness rolling off him in waves. “No need to be so damn proud of yourself.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cal said in a tone that told Lance he knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Suuuuuuure,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. He flipped himself over onto his back. “You wanna watch a movie tonight?” he asked. Cal shook his head.

“Some of us have homework to do. On Saturday maybe. Oh, speaking of which, Louisa’s said she’s going to come visit on Saturday. Midterms were this week so she can take a bit of a break.”

“Sweet,” Lance said, spotting the pot of rice still sitting on the stove and remembering he still had dishes to do. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet, and ambled back over to the kitchen. He pushed the volume on the speaker back up, rolled up his sleeves, and turned on the sink, running the water over his fingers until it got hot. “You know, it’s a pretty dumb idea to build a school out in the desert,” he reflected. “The town has the lake, I know, but the Garrison’s far enough out that it can’t be easy to cart all the water they need all the way out there.” He said nothing about the strange little hut with its personal well that seemed so wildly impractical, so far from everything.

“Well they needed a big open space that no one else wanted so they could just claim it as theirs and then they wouldn’t ever have to worry about flight regulations or anything,” Cal said offhandedly, opening up his computer. Lance paused, hands submerged in sudsy water.

“Wait, so, how much of the desert is the Garrison’s private property?” he asked. Cal frowned at him.

“I don’t know exactly but it goes on for miles. I mean, that’s how they keep the town from expanding out in that direction, they own all the land.” Lance felt his breath hitch but tried to keep his voice calm.

“So… If someone were… living out in the desert…” Cal shook his head.

“They couldn’t be. Well, not legally anyway. But like you said, why would anyone want to live out in the desert anyway? There’s nothing out there.”

“Right,” Lance muttered, scrubbing oil residue forcefully off a pan. “Nothing but a whole lot of sand.”

He spent almost ten minutes standing on the porch without quite managing to grab the doorknob. He very nearly convinced himself to turn around and go back to the city. This was almost definitely the worst idea he’d ever had. The knowledge that he was now trespassing not just on the abandoned house of some weirdo but also technically on Garrison property, in a house they couldn’t possibly know about because Lance was sure they would flip their shit if they did, full of what might, he was realizing, be stolen Garrison tech, and books all about how the Garrison was really an alien cover-up organization or something of the kind, made his heart pound painfully against his ribs every time he started to move toward the door. He paced on the porch, muttering to himself.

“Maybe someone built this house before the Garrison even got here? And then just… refused to leave? Because clearly someone’s been living here within the last year even if they’ve been gone for a few months at this point. But how did the Garrison not notice it ever? We are pretty far out, so I get why they might not have noticed it since they arrived, but they must have, have surveyed the property or whatever you call it when they first bought it, right? Okay, so if the house wasn’t here when the Garrison arrived, who built a house in the middle of the desert on government property? Who does that?” He turned back and caught sight of the broken-down fence, partially buried in sand, that marked out what he thought must have once been a garden. “Some, some weird… hermit… farmer… obsessed with aliens… Okay, Clark Kent or whoever the fuck…” He turned, faced the door, and before he could think any more about it, shoved it open.

He half expected to see some wild man with long wiry hair asleep on the couch, or Garrison lieutenants waiting to arrest him, but it looked exactly the way he had left it yesterday. He picked his way gingerly across the room to the stacks of paper against the back wall. Brushing away the dust, he grabbed a handful of pages off of the first stack, settled on the couch, and started to read.

The same date that he had gone missing, that was written on that “Don’t forget” paper, was written in bold across the top of the first page and circled. There were a series of calculations written out, all in that same spiky handwriting. At one point, the writer seemed to have made an error or a series of errors, because the math got so crossed-out and scribbled over that it became nearly illegible. Lance, glancing around, spotted a pencil lying on one of the bookshelves, seized it, and finished out the calculation in the margin so he could read the whole thing. It took him a couple pages to figure out exactly what he was calculating: this guy was, for some reason, tracking the movement of stars by hand, calculating, if Lance had to guess, how they would appear in the sky on that particular date. Hit by a thought, he jumped to his feet and walked over to the star chart superimposed on a map of the world pinned up on the conspiracy board. The star chart hadn’t been printed off the internet, he could see now, it had been rendered and printed off on this guy’s own computer, from his own calculations. Lance whistled.

“Wow, okay Kent, can I call you Kent? I’m going to call you Kent, it sounds better than ‘freaky conspiracy guy.’ You really do not trust the Garrison, or… anyone, do you? How long did this take you?” he wondered, looking at the sheaf of papers in his hand. True, it wasn’t like he had tried to chart every single star in the sky, mostly just the big constellations and the planets, but it would still have been painstaking to finish – and clearly, judging from Kent’s endless errors and redo’s, math was not his greatest strength. One margin next to a particularly blacked out scribble had “WHY THE FUCK CAN’T I DO MATH” written next to it.

“Okay, so, you plotted the stars on this date. Whoop-de-do. What of it?” Lance chewed his lip, looking at the map that took up the center of the conspiracy board. He touched it lightly with the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I should…” He let the thought trail away. Taking off on his rental hoverbike into the middle of the desert, again, without a clue what he was looking for or if there even was something to look for, on the basis of a map in the abandoned shack of a crazy person, seemed like seriously pushing his luck. “Save it until I’ve worked out what Kent here was up to,” he decided, and then turned back to survey the chaotic room with its piles upon piles of paper in dismay. “…If I can,” he muttered.

He plopped back down on the sofa, setting the star chart calculation sheets aside on the table, and reached for another handful of paper. This one was topped with the question “What does ‘arrival’ mean?” and that same date. Underneath, there were bullet points brainstorming an answer.

The lion?

ALIENS?

(The lion could be an alien???)

A message?

A disease?

A meteor / some other kind of disaster?

Some kind of ‘chosen one’ bullshit?

People?

People returning to the caves?

The bullet points went on, each straying further into desperate imagination than the last. Lance flipped the page, and found a grocery list scrawled on the back:

—ramen

—jerky

—batteries

—frozen pizza

—mac & cheese

—potato chips

—eggs if they’re cheap

—toothpaste

Lance raised his eyebrows, spinning the pencil between his fingers, and after a moment’s hesitation, set it against the page and wrote in small, neat letters, “Your insides are rotting, Kent.” He shook his head, setting the sheet of paper aside, and picked up the next one, turning it horizontal to read it. This one had “THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING” written in the center, and “PROPHECY” written at the top, surrounded by question marks. There was a dotted line drawn between them. Next to it were various thoughts: “If you had the ToE you could predict the future,” “Is a partial ToE possible?” “We can predict the movements of the stars, stands to reason there are other steps between that and a complete ToE that would allow you to predict other things,” “Attractions like gravity? Forces in the universe with predictable patterns we just haven’t documented/understood yet?” and then, in the corner, in very small letters, Kent had written, “Maybe it’s just magic.”

Lance sighed, setting the paper down. “I could spend months trying to pick apart this guy’s mind,” he said to himself. “Kent, what the hell were you trying to figure out? What do you mean by prophecy and arrival?” He stared forward, zoning out, when the corner of a newspaper peeking out from under a photograph on the conspiracy board caught his eye. Curious, he pushed himself to his feet, and pulled up the picture of the mountains to find himself confronted with the sober face of Takashi Shirogane, staring out from over the top of his obituary. Although the picture had been left untouched, the writing was scrawled over in red Sharpie. Kent had written himself a reminder in huge, bold strokes: “REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES.” Lance caught his breath. No one had quite believed it when the Kerberos mission had been reported to have crashed. No one could believe that Shiro, first in his class and the best pilot the Garrison had seen in a decade, would make a ‘pilot error’ that would get himself and his whole crew killed. It simply didn’t make any sense. It sounded crazy, it sounded like a conspiracy theory, and they would never have really questioned whether the Garrison was telling them the truth, but the doubt lingered in people’s voices when they talked about it, in people’s eyes when they glanced at each other as they heard the news.

Had Kent discovered something? Did he know something, have some concrete evidence that the rest of them didn’t know about? Almost everything else in this shack was covered in question marks, confusion and uncertainty bleeding out of every line of writing. There was absolutely no doubt in the bright red Sharpie. Shiro’s picture watched him, his young face serious and proud. REMEMBER THE GARRISON LIES. Lance touched the newspaper clipping lightly with the tips of his fingers.

“Okay, Kent,” he said softly. “I’m listening.”

#voltron #my writing #written in sand #memory fic #lance #klance #keith kogane #writing that tickle war was so pure #that was my apology for dbs lol #in which lance discovers a conspiracy nut and nopes the fuck out #again

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seandfraseruk · 7 years ago

Text

Useful Tips For Moving

Make Lists and Labeling Your Boxes

Labels for moving house

Make up a list to help you to record what’s in each box or container. Devise your own system but keep it simple and ensure that it will allow you to easily identify where everything is packed. For example you could use numbered labels and cross refer these to a list or notebook. In other words you could have a box numbered “6” and a reference to this in your notebook listing the contents of box number “6”.

Heavy packaging

Do not overfill! Please ensure that you do not overfill your boxes and cartons, remember that they have to be lifted. Your furniture removal men are fully trained but they are not supermen. Also, boxes that are overfilled may break under the strain.

Do not underfill! This may seem stupid after the previous tip but partially filled boxes may collapse if heavy items are placed on top of them. Try to distribute your things evenly in the available boxes.

Ensure that you have sufficient packing materials It is essential that you have plenty of paper, bubble wrap, cartons and containers. You will also need lots of adhesive tape.

Beware of news print! When packing your valuable and fragile possessions please remember Packing for home removals with newspapers that newsprint will rub off. Use plain paper where this may be a problem. Your ornaments, glassware and other delicate items can first be wrapped using newspaper. The containers holding these items should be clearly marked as “fragile”.

Consider a color code system You may want to consider using colored labels or otherwise marking your containers with a different colour for each room in the house. This will allow the removal men to place the containers in the appropriate room.

Take care with your soft furnishings Ensure that you don’t place heavy items with sharp corners on top of sofas and other upholstery. These can be damaged quite easily if you do this.

Pack ahead Start packing two or three weeks in advance. Keep only essential items aside until the last day or two.

Small items Boxes are preferred to bags for small items. Bags are easily torn and difficult to stack.

Suitcases and luggage Where possible use your suitcases and other luggage to pack some of your things.

Do not pack important documents Remember to keep important documents aside. This will obviously include any documents related to the house sale and your removal.

Packing food Food should be removed from cupboards and packed before the move. Ensure that all caps and screw fittings on jars and bottles are secured.

Paint and other liquids Ensure that any paint or other liquids is contained in leak proof containers. Pack in plastic bags before placing in boxes to minimize the effect of any spillages.

Children If you have young children it would be advisable to look for baby sitters while the move is taking place. You will be stressed enough without trying to look after the kids.

Pets If you have pets you should consider what is to happen to them on the day of removal. It is generally better that they are removed from the premises before the move takes place.

Fridge and freezer Remember to defrost your fridge and freezer no later than the day before your move. Ideally you should run the contents of these down over the last couple of weeks before you go.

Appliances Kitchen appliances such as fridges, freezers or washing machines that contain water should be drained and allowed to dry before removal.

Garden tools and equipment Ensure that any petrol driven equipment is cleaned and drained of fuel well before the move.

Evening meal You should make arrangements for your evening meal in advance of your move. You don’t want to be trying to cook whilst the place is in turmoil. However people can get short tempered when hungry so treat yourselves to a take-away if necessary.

Painting and carpet fitting It goes without saying that it is far easier if you can get your decorating and carpet fitting done in advance where possible.

Lamps Remove all lamp shades before the move. this would include table lampshades, ceiling and wall lamps if you are taking these with you.

Beds Most beds require to be dismantled before they can be moved. Consider this and plan accordingly.

Elevator and parking If you need to use an elevator or if parking spaces are a problem ensure that you get these organised beforehand.

Flat pack (Self assembly) Furniture Self assembly furniture does not usually move well. It is better if you can make arrangements to have this dismantled before your move. You should also arrange for someone to reassemble it at your new home.

Plants If you have plants you may want to consider leaving these with a friend or neighbor. Some plants are delicate and may be affected by dust and paint fumes. It is better to leave these until you are settled in.

Administrative matters related to moving home Utilities (Telephone, Gas and Electric) You should ensure that you have read your utility meters before leaving. You should also have made the appropriate arrangements with the utility and telephone companies for transfer of your services.

Essential items Keep all your essential items together in a suitable box for the day of the move. These will include things like your credit cards, keys, wallets and mobile phones.

Medication If anyone in the household requires regular medication or items such as asthma inhalers ensure that these are kept safely aside. Remember that you may be working in dusty conditions.

Your old house Should your old house be getting left empty for a period ensure that everything is turned off and that you pass the keys on to the estate agent.

Scheduled deliveries Remember to cancel your milk, newspapers and any other items that are delivered to your old house.

Television supply Should you subscribe to any satellite or cable television services arrangements will have to be made to get this transferred.

IMPORTANT Please ensure that you have spoken to your neighbors and where necessary, arranged to leave parking places clear. Also all walkways, pathways, stairs and passages should be clear of any obstruction to allow us free movement to your property.

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