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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year ago

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The first bout of whispering, Shiro can ignore. He’s a teacher by trade, after all. Astronaut, sure. Paladin, even. But he always expected to be a teacher, trained for it, and he knows when you put a group of teenagers in a room and expect them to start learning by lecture, there’s going to be some whispering. He’d be concerned if there wasn’t, frankly.

But as it keeps happening, again and again, to the point where it’s almost constant, Shiro begins to lose his patience.

“Lance, Hunk,” he says, catching himself long before then. He tries to smile, gentle but firm. “Everything okay?”

The two boys clam up immediately. Lance even begins to lean slightly away from Hunk, although Shiro’s not sure he notices.

Shiro frowns, puzzled at the reaction. That’s — uncommon. He’s seen embarrassed, seen sheepish, seen unbothered, even seen downright rude, but Lance looks almost… afraid. And Hunk looks at him with a lot more anxiety than the situation calls for, but Shiro is beginning to notice that that’s just Hunk.

The both mutter some semblance of apology, and Shiro moves on quickly, unwilling to dwell on the incident too long.

For the rest of the briefing, he keeps an eye on them. He’s still focused, of course, as their break-in and recon on a nearby Empire warship is not only hugely dangerous, but will also be hugely beneficial, but he lets his notes do a lot of the talking for him. He flits his eyes to the pair every so often, and while Hunk meets his eyes on occasion, smiling slightly, Lance keeps his head down, hunched over his tablet.

Shiro notices that the tablet is powered off. He doesn’t write a single note.

His shoulders are hunched up to his ears.

———

“Alright, kiddo, good job.”

Keith grins, stepping backwards and bowing to finish the fight. Shiro bows back, matching his smile.

“You did great.”

“I know,” Keith says cheekily. “You’re getting easier and easier to beat. Probably because you’re elderly.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Am I.”

His annoying little brother hums, completely unconcerned. He steps off to the side and starts swinging around his training stick, very clearly showing off. “Mhm. It was super easy to fight you. I just went whoosh, smack, bam! —” he punctuates every sound with a swing and slash of the stick — “and every hit just landed. Honestly, I think a punching bag would have been more of a challenge. Adam is a way better spar partner than you. I wish I was shot into space with him.”

Shiro’s eye twitches. It’s a clear goad, he knows it is. Keith isn’t even trying to hide it. He’s a twerp with too much energy and too much experience pressing all of Shiro’s buttons — a favourite button of his, of course, being the bit of…healthy competition Shiro has always had with his boyfriend.

(He’s well aware of the irony. He hears Adam pointing and laughing in his head every time he endures Keith’s complaining about Lance pulling his mullet, so to speak. In fact keeping his mouth shut about the parallels is the only thing keeping him from throwing Keith down the laundry chute. He’s waiting for a moment when the reveal can be well and truly devastating.)

Shiro manages, with herculean strength, to step away from his turd of a brother, putting his training stick away.

“I am leaving,” he says loudly, pointedly turning away. “I said I’d train one hour with you and not a second more.”

He feels Keith’s pout more than sees it. “Coward.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shiro snorts, waving his hand dismissively. He hears swishing sounds, and the clicks of buttons — Keith is starting up his own training. Again. “Don’t be late for dinner or I’ll send Lance after you.”

“Can’t promise I won’t maim him,” Keith mutters. “Sometimes I just want to wring his neck.”

Shiro is very familiar with that feeling. Or at least the raving about it. He used to feel great pleasure in driving Adam to that point, just because he was hot when he was mad. But Shiro values his limbs — or at least what’s left of them — where they are, so he keeps the comments to himself as he makes his way out of the training room, meandering back to his own quarters.

He takes his time showering and redressing, knowing he’s got some time before dinner. He thinks Hunk even managed to wrestle Coran out of the kitchen, which means no food goo. It also means that he’s banned from even breathing near the kitchen until the food is fully cooked and completed — which is a bullshit ban and one based in false accusations — but he’s sure he can help set the table, or something. Stir a pot. He’s good at that.

He towels off his hair, not bothering to style it, and takes his time walking over to the kitchens. The castle floors are cold under his bare feet, he finds himself wishing he had the lion slippers Lance made him. They’re very warm. He never wears them because he’s terrified of ruining them, but it’s so icy in here that he might start having to, or else he’ll freeze.

As he approaches the kitchen, he hears voices. He freezes, quieting his steps and pausing behind the wall to listen. Hopefully no one else walks by, or that will be humiliating.

“— all you have to do is ask, Lance, just casually, it’s not even —”

“— it is even, Hunk, it’s the worst and I’m not doing it, why would I inconvenience —”

“— it isn’t! Not even a little! It’s the smallest tiniest thing!”

“Hunk —”

Hunk throws his hands up in exasperation, spoon going flying and splattering some kind of blue sauce all over the cabinets. Neither of them even blinks at it.

“I am tired of watching you struggle, Leandro! Heaven forbid you ask for help!”

Shiro frowns. That’s not good. That sounds serious.

“I asked for help,” Lance huffs, arms crossed over his chest. “I asked you, didn’t I?”

“I don’t count and you know it,” Hunk says sharply, mirroring him. “I already knew.”

Lance looks away, clenching his jaw. His fingers are tangled in his jacket’s sleeve, tense.

“You don’t have to help anymore if it’s too hard,” he mumbles. “I can handle it myself.”

Hunk softens. “It’s not that, Lance.” He wipes his hands in his apron and pulls Lance to his chest. Lance goes, although he doesn’t move his arms, burying his face in Hunk’s shoulder. “You know it’s not that. If that’s all we have then I’ll keep doing it, damn the consequences.” He pulls back slightly, nudging Lance back so he can look him in the face. “You can just do better, dude. All you gotta do is tell Shiro about your —”

A hand claps over Hunk’s mouth, cutting him off, and Lance squeaks, “Hey, Shiro, hello, hi!”

Shiro startles. He scrambles upright before Hunk turns all the way, so at least he’s only seen crouching by the door like a weirdo by one person.

He clears his throat. “Uh, hi.”

“You’re banned from the kitchen,” Hunk says, muffled. How he looks so mighty and dignified with Lance’s hands still very much pressed to his face is well and truly beyond him. Shiro is frankly awed.

“I just came to help set the table,” he assures, hands held up in surrender. “Promise I’ll stay away from the actual food.”

Hunk narrows his eyes, but must decide he could use the help, because he nods, stepping backwards so Lance’s hands fall back down.

“Alright,” he sighs. “I’m making stew. You can set out utensils if you must but know I’ll judge you heavily for it. Lance, come help me finish up.”

Lance scrambles after him, avoiding Shiro’s gaze like he’s sure he’s going to get yelled at. Shiro watches him go, perplexed.

———

The next few days are, for the most part, manageable. Their mission goes well, Keith is surprisingly mellow — Shiro suspects the little nerd has discovered a library of some kind — and distress calls are minimal. All in all, Shiro should be taking the time as the blessing it is and catching up on some much needed R&R.

Instead, he’s worrying about the Blue Paladin.

Shiro can’t say he knows him well. They’ve hardly been in space a couple of months, after all, and while Shiro must have taught him a couple times — he was in the piloting program so it’s almost impossible that they didn’t cross paths — the Garrison is huge, and Shiro largely teachers younger students. Shiro can’t recall teaching a Lance, anyway.

But he can tell something’s off.

Besides the fact that Hunk keeps looking at Lance with concern, the Cuban seems…withdrawn, almost. He still works hard in training and smokes them in any kind of long distance, but there doesn’t seem to be any joy in it. Even his arguments with Keith seem halfhearted, which Keith will never admit leave him agitated as much as it has Shiro’s eyebrows raising. Shiro is sure, basically, that something is the matter, and surer still that he has to be the one to fix it.

How exactly he should go about it…well, that’s the part he’s struggling with. He knows Lance is kind of star-eyed around him, even though they’re on the same playing field, so Shiro’s not sure just regular talking to him about it is going to do something. And he seemed pretty resistant when Hunk pressed, in the conversation Shiro overheard. He’s just not sure what to do.

Luckily, the situation starts to resolve itself.

“Hey, Shiro, can I talk to you?” Lance mumbles into his breakfast, as everyone else is distracted by Pidge and Keith’s loud argument about cryptids (Shiro has heard it too many times at this point. He’s tuned it out).

Shiro blinks. “Sure,” he says, trying to keep the shock out of his voice. “Now?”

“Uh, after we eat, maybe.”

Shiro tries very hard not to seem over enthusiastic. He sucks at that, so it doesn’t work, and it seems to make Lance more stressed, which only stresses Shiro out more. By the time everyone has finished up and people are starting to file out to various tasks, the tension between them is so thick Shiro feels as if he might suffocate.

Suddenly, as if he propelled himself, Lance springs to his feet, snatching his bowl and Shiro’s and powerwalking towards the kitchen sink. Shiro, startled, follows him.

“You okay?” Shiro asks softly, noticing the whiteness of Lance’s knuckles, clenched around a sponge, and the robotic way he scrubs it across a dirty spoon.

Lance says nothing. He keeps his eyes trained resolutely on the soapy water, spine ramrod straight, nerves bleeding from him in waves.

Hesitantly, Shiro rolls up his sleeves, standing beside him and beginning to dry what he rinses. As Shiro gets close he gets tenser, shoulders hiked up to his ears, but as the minutes drag on, empty kitchen echoing the sound of swishing water and clanking cutlery, he begins to calm down. Shiro watches his face relax, easing its worries twist, and terror fade from his brown eyes.

He hands Shiro the last clean dish to dry, then pulls the plug on the sink, darting over to grab a hand towel and starting to dry.

“Can you write mission plans in pink?”

The words rush out of him, like he’d been holding them between his teeth for God knows how long and they’d finally spilled out. He looks almost nauseous after he says them.

Shiro blinks. That was…not what he’d expected.

“…Why?”

“It’s perfectly okay if you can’t,” Lance continues, as if Shiro had not spoken. “I mean, whatever. I’ll figure it out. I’ve gone without this long, after all, and it’s totally doable. Of course there’s the migraines and the agony but that’s all light work. It’s war, after all. Ha.” He chuckles nervously.

He’s shrunk in on himself, looking almost small. Shiro stares at him with a dropped jaw and wide eyes. Lance doesn’t even notice, eyes focused intensely on the hand towel, breathing worryingly erratic.

“I just swore to Hunk that I’d ask, you know. He said it wouldn’t hurt. And of course it wouldn’t but I don’t need it. It’s just. You know.”

Shiro cannot stress enough how much he doesn’t know. He hasn’t felt this lost in a while.

“Pink makes the letters stick to the page. And I know that sounds stupid as shit and that’s because it is stupid as shit, unfortunately. Dyslexia is the dumbest thing in the world, actually. And who named it that? You know how hard that word is to spell? It’s hard. They should have called it — I dunno, I just mean, it’s whatever. It’s fine. I’ve handled it this long. Uh.” He looks up, finally, and maybe he doesn’t know how to make sense of Shiro’s expression, because he winces, shame overtaking his face. He sets down the towel and gestures vaguely behind him, stepping towards the door. “I’m just gonna — go. Sorry. See you later. Sorry.”

He all but flees out of the room. Shiro barely manages to snag the back of his hoodie, holding him in place.

“Lance. Chill a second. Give me time to respond.”

Lance looks deploringly at the door, then back at Shiro. He looks like he’s accepting his death. Shiro can’t help but feel the teensiest bit offended.

“I’m not going to bite you,” he says, aghast. “Jesus, kid. You’re going to give me a complex.”

To Shiro’s great relief, the remark makes Lance grin. Some of the tension eases from his face.

“You sound like my mother.”

“From what I’ve heard, that’s a compliment,” Shiro says lightly. He pulls out two chairs, orienting them so they’re facing each other. He deliberately takes the one farthest from the door, so Lance doesn’t feel trapped. He gestures to the other one. “Sit.”

Lance does.

“Now. From the beginning and with a little less fear, hopefully. Tell me what’s up, kiddo.”

Lance looks down at his hands, where he’s picking at a scar on his wrist.

“Um. So. I have dyslexia. I can’t read too well.”

Lance cringes as he says it. Shiro wonders who he has to kill for putting the idea that this is something to be ashamed about in his head.

“Cool,” Shiro says, as encouragingly as he can manage. “The main character of my favourite book series as a kid had dyslexia. I was jealous of everyone who had it. I used to pray for it.”

The revelation startles a laugh out of Lance, like Shiro hoped it would. The tension melts right off of him.

“You prayed?”

“Every night,” Shiro affirms, grinning. “I even crossed my eyes and pretended when it didn’t work. My mother didn’t believe me for a second.”

“You’re a dweeb,” Lance says, sounding kind of awed. Like he’s shocked that Shiro, too, is a nerd loser on this castle full of other nerd losers. “Dyslexia sucks.”

Letting his face settle into something more serious, Shiro nods. “I imagine it does.” He reaches over and squeezes Lance’s hand, subtly stopping him from picking at the skin. Keith has the same bad habit. “Writing in pink helps?”

Lance shrugs. “Sorta. Dunno why. But things are less squiggly when they’re written in pink or red. Not perfect, but it’s something. I can hardly read at all when they’re in black; it’s like my eyes are spinning out of my head trying to focus on ‘em. Gives me migraines like you would not imagine.”

“And thus Hunk whispering the plans to you so you don’t have to read them,” Shiro surmises, the whispering during briefings suddenly making sense. Guilt twinges in his belly.

“Yeah. Sorry about that, by the way. Didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Of course not,” Shiro says gently. “I get it now. Sorry for not understanding.” He frowns, remembering something. “I should’ve asked beforehand. Or suspected something, or known better, really. I had a kid a few years back in one of my astronomy courses. Li-something. I marked all his stuff in red for the same reasons.”

Lance makes a very particular face. Warning bells go off in Shiro’s head.

“I appreciated that very much,” Lance says politely.

It takes a moment for it to click.

Shiro considers banging his head against the table.

“Please tell me no,” he begs, ears reddening.

“It was a great honour to be renamed by the Takashi Shirogane,” Lance insists.

“I had you in my class for three years!” Shiro says, aghast. “I — I called you Li all the time! In front of people!”

“I didn’t want to correct you! That’s — embarrassing!”

Shiro cradles his head in his hands. Dear God. He knows he’s not great with names, but — Jesus. To rename a kid. Blatantly. Other teachers must have thought he was some cruel jackass.

“I think there was a Li McKinney ahead of me in roll call,” Lance offers, patting Shiro’s back delicately. “So. Pretty easy to mess up.”

“Did you write your name as Li on tests? And assignments?”

“After the first couple times, yeah. Hunk laughed at me. At a certain point I’d just dug myself too deep, I think.”

Shiro sighs, dragging his hand down his face. It’s still quite hot. He looks up at Lance, who’s mouth is twitching.

“You were short as shit back then,” he observes, trying to picture the kid in his class. “Like, shorter than Pidge.”

Lance scowls. “I was — saving up on growth spurts. Yeah. So. Purge that from your memory.” He smirks. “Like my name.”

Shiro groans. “I’m never hearing the end of that, am I.”

Lance smiles. “Probably not. I didn’t know you were uncool. It’s interesting. I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”

Shiro rolls his eyes, but reaches over to mess with Lance’s hair, like he would Keith. Unlike Keith, Lance freaks out way harder, screeching something about hard work and artistic expression.

He smiles. “Glad you came to talk to me, kid.”

Lance sticks out his tongue, but he looks pleased, too. “Yeah, yeah.”

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autisticlancemcclain · 2 years ago

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Beast.

That’s how everyone describes him. Town to town, village to village, whispered voices describing Prince Keith’s roaring temper and snarling fury. The manners of a lone wolf and attitude of an angry grizzly bear, those are the rumours. He’s vile, he’s mean, he’s ugly and horrible and rude.

And Lance is supposedly engaged to the asshole.

To be wed.

Is this really what he has to look forward to, in life? Trading himself away for his future husband's riches, essentially? A life of luxury and opulence in exchange for his soul? He might as well make a deal with the devil. He might be able to stay at home, then.

“We’re here,” Marco says softly. He pulls on the reins, stopping Blue – the McClain's horse – in front of the impossibly tall iron gates. He swings off the saddle, landing soundly on his feet before reaching up a hand to help Lance.

Lance snarls at him, heaving himself off himself and stepping away from his brother, busying himself with stroking Blue’s broad, soft nose.

“Lance,” Marco tries, sighing heavily. “C’mon. I know it’s not…ideal, but it’s a castle, right? I know you’ve always wanted to live in a castle.”

Lance grits his teeth, keeping his back to his brother. Rage makes his hands shake and clench where they’re wrapped around Blue’s mane, so he forces himself to relax.

“You don’t know anything about what I want. None of you do. None of you care enough to know.”

“Lance, stop it. You have to know that none of us wanted this –”

“There are four things I know, brother,” Lance spits, finally turning to face him. Marco starts at the anger in Lance’s expression, the vitriol in his tone. Lance stalks forward, and Marco takes a small step back on reflex. “I know that the town gathered to choose one young person to be engaged to the prince, as is custom.”

He takes another step, but this time Marco stays where he is.

“I know that every single person in the town, man and woman and child, made their vote.”

He takes one final step, milimeters between him and his brother, jabbing his finger into his chest. Marco remains where he stands, face stony.

“I know that there are nine other people besides me in my family. And I know that there were only three people in the entire village who didn’t vote for me.”

Finally his face crumples, anger finally giving way to the pain churning in his chest.

“I know that six of you at least decided I wasn’t worth keeping. And for that, you’re all dead to me.”

Marco says nothing. His face remains impassive, not even a glint of sympathy or even pity in his eyes. Nothing but stoicism. Lance thinks of how his mother had already had a bag packed for him when the results of the lottery were made public, how she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. How his father wasn’t even home to see him off. How he wasn’t allowed to see his niece and nephew one final time. How he heard his siblings arguing over who would have to escort him to the castle, how Marco had drawn the short straw.

His heart hardens in his chest. He averts his eyes, wiping his cheeks. He’s only embarrassing himself.

Lance wraps his hands around Blue’s reigns and guides her to the gates with him. “I’m taking Blue.”

“Wait, Lance, you can’t –”

Fitting, that Marco speaks now.

“Consider it my dowry,” Lance snaps, and slams the gate behind him.

He ignores Marco’s calling, taking the first turn he sees on the cobblestone paths to finally duck out of his brother’s sights. Marco won’t follow him past the castle’s gate, anyway, but he’ll give up faster if he can’t see Lance, and Lance is tired of hearing him. He deserves the walk home, anyway. Lance hopes it takes him a couple days. Maybe he’ll send Blue back when he’s in a better mood.

If he’s ever in a better mood. Seeing that he’s basically locked into a fancy prison for the rest of time, now.

“C’mon, Blue,” Lance mutters, tugging her along. She noses gently at the back of his neck, but trots along happily. “Let’s find you a stable or something, huh? I’m sure a fuckin’ stone from the ground of this place is worth the entire town. If they don’t have a stable, I'm rioting.”

Lance keeps grumbling as he guides Blue along random paths, stumbling over poorly-kept paths overgrown with roots and vines. “Some place this is, huh, Blue? Our cluttered kitchen is more organised than this place. What kind of rich asshole prince doesn’t pay a groundskeeper, or something? Weirdo.”

Blue neighs at him, looking at him in a way that’s almost chastising, if a damn horse can look chastising.

“I’m allowed to call him names! He’s basically forcing me to marry him because he’s too horrible for anyone to fall in love naturally!”

At another one of Blue’s looks, Lance huffs, kicking a random rock off into the distance. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll be nice. But, like, proportionally. I’m not going to kiss his royal ass, or anything. I’ll just refrain from kicking him when I’m so inclined.”

This time Blue’s whinny is almost amused.

Lance maybe needs to see if there’s someone his age around here to make friends with, or something. He’s going batty if his only friend’s a damn horse.

“Oh, hey, that looks like a stable. No other horses, though. And how old is that hay?” Lance pokes at the pile, which disintegrates to nothing at his touch. “Well, that’s not very welcoming. What kind of castle can’t afford some decent hay?” He guides Blue gently into one of the admittedly spacious stable stalls, carefully untying her saddle and harness and hanging it on the wall. He guides her head into a thankfully full water trough, and then sets off in search of some food for her. He hums quietly as he peeks his head in each of the other stalls, then steps outside of the stable. “There’s gotta be something somewhere.”

But there really isn’t. Lance must look for twenty minutes before he finally gets frustrated, stomping back to Blue’s stall with his hands on his hips.

“This stupid place is barren,” he tells her. She lifts her head from the water for a moment to neigh softly at him, nudging him gently. He presses a kiss in between her eyes, then pats her on the side before stepping to the side. “I’ll find you something, though,” he assures. “I’ll be back in a bit, okay? I’m gonna poke around ‘til I find somebody.”

He takes his time strolling around the castle grounds, whistling to himself and poking through every door he finds. He finds several garden sheds full of old, rusty tools, and several gardens that are completely overgrown with weeds. Every window he looks through is so caked with dust and cobwebs that he can barely make out anything. Every side door has a lock that’s completely rusted shut.

“Am I in the wrong castle, or something?” he mutters to himself. All earlier feelings have completely faded in favour of confusion. He may not know much about princes and royalty and riches, or whatever, but he’s relatively certain that most castles don’t look so…run down. Tired. Old.

Abandoned.

Finally he makes his way around to what must be the front entrance, with doors several dozen times the size of him. He runs his fingers over the grain of the wood, feeling a surface much rougher than he expected, like wood that hasn’t been oiled in years. Several rose briars grow across the door, holding it shut. Lance has to jog back to one of the garden sheds and use a dull pair of garden shears to hack them away. (He feels bad for destroying such beautiful plants, but decides he’ll save the buds and make a flower crown for Blue later. She looks adorable in pink, so she’ll look like a horse fit for a prince once Lance has finished braiding the roses into her mane.)

He’s expecting the door to be jammed shut, like all the others he tried, so he gives it a very hefty shove to try to encourage it to open.

And then lands on his ass with a yelp when the door opens easily.

“I love my life,” he announces to no one but the dank, dark entryway. “It is so wonderful here. First I get married off to some rando without any input, and then this entire stupid castle exists. If one more bad thing happens to me I am going to simply cry until I dry out like a salami, and then I shall allow myself to be eaten by crows.”

Lance swears he hears a muffled giggle.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

No response.

“Okay, I’m a little kooky, but definitely not so much that I’m imagining people laughing at my truly excellent jokes. I won’t bite, you know. And I promise I’m very charming and only a little miserable about my situation.”

There’s another giggle. He’s sure of it, this time. He tries to follow the sound, but it doesn’t really get him anywhere, because this stupid castle apparently decided to splurge on the creepy and imposing factor and skimp on all the lighting. He stumbles forward, hands outstretched, seeing if he can find an oil lamp or something. Hell, even a stick he can light with the scattered matches he has in his bag. He finally finds what feels like a table of some sort, and runs his fingers over it – grimacing at the thick layer of dust – until he finds what he thinks is a candelabra, which is hilarious. The place can’t afford a rag to wipe off the surfaces, but it can afford a real-life candelabra.

“I hate rich people,” Lance says mildly, striking the match on the rough door and lighting the three half-melted candles.

“Careful with that match, kiddo. This place is really flammable.”

Lance shrieks, throwing the candelabra – the living candelabra! The talking candelabra! What the fresh fuck! – to the ground and scrambling backwards. The candelabra clatters to the ground with a curse – what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck – rolling a couple feet before straightening itself out and bending its arms to its centre as a man might bend his arms to put at his waist.

The candelabra has a face, in the wax.

“What the fuck is going on,” Lance whimpers. The candelabra’s face seems to soften. Lance fights back hysterical laughter at his own mental pun, even though it’s objectively hilarious. It’s not the time. Now is the time to freak the fuck out.

“Hey, hey, take a breather,” the candelabra says. It has a deep, smooth voice, that makes Lance think of those shiny knights in the stories his Abuela used to tell him.

“You are a talking candle,” Lance responds.

The candelabra huffs. (Can the candelabra huff? Does the candelabra have lungs to huff, or is it just an attitude thing? Did Lance hit his head on the way to the castle ground, and is now dreaming?)

“My name is Shiro,” the candelabra says. He smiles softly. “You must be the fiancé.”

Lance decides, right in this moment, that he’s just going to accept his weird delusions until he wakes up. It can’t hurt, right? Nothing can be worse than being married off to Some Guy, prince or no.

“That would be me,” Lance says, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his tone. “Mail-order bride, at your service.” Shiro makes a face, wax eyebrows furrowing, so Lance decides to take pity on him. “Yes, I’m the fiancé. My name is Lance.”

“It’s good to meet you, Lance.” Shiro blows out the candle on one of his arms and holds it out. Lance shakes it, wary of the hot wax. It’s not Shiro’s fault Lance is in this garbage situation. “I’m sorry there was no one here to greet you. Over the years we’ve gotten a little…lax, in our hospitality.”

“That would explain the general air of despair and misery.”

Shiro laughs again, brightly and fully. “You’re a witty one, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told. My suitors lined up along the block, you know. I’m sure Prince Keith had to fight them off with his bare hands. Shame he ditched before we could be properly acquainted. I suppose we have the rest of our lives to get to know each other.”

“I’m sure it’s not proper for me to laugh at jokes at the expense of my Prince,” Shiro says, in a way that tells Lance he is holding back giggles.

Lance is very proud of himself. He may never be the smartest or strongest person in the room, but he’ll be damned if he’s not the funniest.

“I’ll wear you down eventually,” Lance says, waving a dismissive hand. “Now, do I get to meet the coathanger butler and duster french maid, or are you the only talking furniture?”

———

next chapter

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