#enjoy this so you aren't hating me for posting writing during your party hahaha

[curionabang]

Andromeda

Gifted to: @tacaofodaci (happy birthday!!) Pairing: Shklance Rating: G Summary: Shiro and Lance surprise Keith with a gift. 

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, and Lance has been playing video games since six this morning.

Keith rolls over onto his back on the couch, stretching out his legs as he masks a yawn in his hand. He traces the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes, imagining that they’re drawn out to make various shapes—birds flying high in an open, blue sky. Horses galloping in grassy fields, boyfriends without Cheeto-dusted fingers who aren’t currently screaming about some skull-faced boss who keeps killing them in whatever stupid game has captured their attention for the last week and a half.

It’s not a bad life, not exactly. It’s a lazy, hazy kind of life. It’s slow like the drizzle of rain outside, de-saturated and more leisurely than all of the exhilterating battles that he’d grown so used to in space.

But when he thinks about it—when he reaches forward with a slack, sleepy hand and combs it through Lance’s hair and Lance tips his head back, letting out a small, thankful groan—he isn’t so sure that he’d trade this for any romanticized memories that he might have of soaring through the sky.

“Shiro’s been gone for a long time, hasn’t he?” Lance is distracted, even as he cranes his neck to ask this. He pauses for a moment to curse and press the buttons on his controller a little bit more aggressively, but his character still dies miserably on the screen in front of them. “He said he was getting milk. Do you think this is one of those things where the dad says he’s going out for a pack of cigarettes on Christmas eve and never comes back?”

Keith scoffs, pulling his hand from Lance’s hair and rolling over so that he’s staring at the worn, unwoven fibers of the couch.

He can feel Lance’s body heat even as he pulls away, pressed against the couch as Lance leans back, his socked feet sliding noiselessly against the hardwood floor. They spend a lot of days like this: Lance, with his video games. Shiro, running errands.

Keith, tethered between both of them, always on the threshold of distracting himself from his boredom with a long jog, or a trip to the gym. A walk to the park where he can pretend, for even a moment, that he’s found himself alone in the wilderness again.

It’s not that he’s unhappy, no. It’s not that the company, or the life itself is boring.

But Keith wonders if he’ll ever be the kind of guy who can settle as comfortably as Lance or Shiro into an average routine. He wonders if maybe the window for growing accustomed to an average life closed for him a long time ago, and he’ll always find himself itching for something else—be it a fight, the flight, or the starry galaxy that lies just beyond the night sky.

“Maybe we should call him.” Keith’s voice is muffled against the couch, but he can feel Lance shifting against the couch at the sound of it. “I mean, it’s raining… and you know he gets lost a lot.”

Lance’s laughter isn’t nearly as grating as it used to be, and Keith barely jerks at all when he reaches back to stroke his shoulders. He can hear the controller clicking against the floor as Lance sets it down, and he can feel the air displacing and Lance’s body heat shifting as he turns around to face him more fully.

“He’ll be fine,” Lance says, pressing the thumbs of both hands into each of Keith’s shoulder blades, grasping him loosely in some semblance of a lazy massage, “He has GPS on his phone now. And if he gets lost again, we’ll just have to find him and maybe… get one of those tracker chips implanted in his skin or something.”

Keith breathes a laugh.

“Or we’ll have to put one of those leashes on him like they do with little kids.”

“Sounds kinda ki—”

Lance’s words are cut off by the sound of a key turning in the lock of their apartment door. It’s a simple click, just loud enough that they can barely hear it from the living room, before the door creaks open and Shiro’s voice calls out through the kitchen, the narrow hallway, and all the way to the couch, where they’re currently curled up together.

Lance doesn’t stop rubbing his shoulders, even as Keith attempts to pull himself up to peer around the corner into the hall. He can’t see much more than a sliver of the kitchen from this position, but he can still make out the shape of Shiro struggling with a few hefty, overfilled grocery bags.

“How many gallons of milk did you get?”

Shiro laughs at the question, leaning around the corner to send him a wink and a charming smile, but noticeably, no explanation.

“Sorry it took so long,” he says, expertly avoiding the question in a way that immediately flares up an annoying, itchy kind of suspicion inside of Keith, “you know how those grocery stores are. You go in for one thing, something else catches your eye—before you know it, you’ve bought half of the store and you don’t know how you’re going to carry all of it all the way home!”

Lance laughs at his bad joke, but Keith narrows his eyes. There’s a clicking and a strange, heavy breathing in the background of Shiro’s words, echoing against the kitchen walls, clacking against the tile. He gets the sense that they’re not alone anymore—that whether Shiro realizes it or not, there’s something else lurking just around the entrance of their apartment—and he’s immediately on guard.

He reaches into the pocket of his pajama pants, his fingers ghosting over the handle of his knife. Lance’s hands have dropped from his shoulders to the small of his back, attempting to work out the stressed knots that he finds there. He tenses up when he realizes what Keith’s thinking about doing, reaching forward hurriedly and wrapping his fingers around Keith’s wrist.

“Whoa, Keith, it’s Shiro, okay? What do you think you’re doing?!”

Keith turns to him, his eyes narrowed into mere slits, before he nods his head in the direction of the kitchen, lowering his voice so much so that he hopes that whatever is creeping just around the corner won’t hear him.

“I don’t think he’s alone in there,” he hisses, “I think something followed him home.”

Lance’s eyes are wide, his mouth pulled flat and tight as he flicks his gaze from Keith’s face to whatever is still going on in the kitchen. Within seconds, a wide grin breaks out over his lips, and he tips his head back, letting out the loudest, least stealthy guffaw that Keith has ever heard.

Keith lurches forward, intent on slapping a hand over his mouth, but Lance catches it easily.

“Hey Shiro,” Lance calls out, “Keith thinks you dragged some kind of monster in with you. You wanna come in here and show him the terrifying beast that he’s gotta fight in order to rescue you?”

Shiro doesn’t laugh as hard as Lance, but Keith can still hear the sound of it drawing nearer from down the hall. He blanches immediately, tearing his wrist out of Lance’s grasp and crossing his arms over his chest. He feels like an idiot, for even thinking that something so exciting could happen here on Earth.

And just as soon as he thinks about it, about the concept that he’s actually disappointed that there really is no chance of a monster or some kind of alien beast presenting itself to be fought, he feels even more foolish than before.

He feels like a sham, like a liar.

He feels guilty, for even considering that he might miss the action and the excitement of the life that they all readily left behind at the end of the intergalactic war.

Lance seems to sense the dip in his mood, and he wraps an arm around his shoulder, squeezing on the couch next to him and smashing Keith as close to him as humanly possible.

“Don’t feel bad, Keith,” he says, grinning down at Keith with such a dizzying level of charm that Keith momentarily forgets what he was even so angry about, “You were right, he did bring something home. And hey, how would we survive without our fearless protector here, always dutifully eager to save us from, you know… this.”

Shiro rounds the couch just as Lance finishes his sentence, motioning in the air at the little creature wriggling around in Shiro’s arms.

It’s startling, for a moment, seeing something so small in Shiro’s big hands. It’s a dark dot of fluffy fur and oversized ears and paws. Its little black beads of eyes stare at him with an excited sparkle, from under a mop of shaggy hair. It’s whining now, letting out little aggravated yips and half-barks as it struggles to free itself from Shiro’s arms.

When Shiro finally relents, setting it on the floor, it scampers clumsily across the hardwood, its claws scraping and tapping as it bounds over the distance between them. It props itself up on the edge of the couch, standing on its hind legs, with its paws digging into the edge. It seems as though it’s very eager to be lifted up. It seems as though it’s focusing all of its attention on him now, and it wants nothing more than to climb upward and do… whatever little dogs do when they really want to reach a specific human.

Keith swallows thickly, turning his head from Shiro, then to Lance. His voice catches in his throat. His hands shake, and he hesitates for a moment before reaching forward and hovering his fingers just above the puppy’s head.

It laps at his fingers, bouncing just slightly, as though begging to be picked up. It yips at him then, as though demanding just that.

“You brought home a… dog?”

He’s having a whole lot of trouble piecing this together.

Shiro found a puppy, somewhere in the city. It isn’t damp, so he didn’t pick it up from the street. And Lance isn’t surprised—if anything, he’s acting as though he’s been in on some kind of elaborate plan all along, and Keith has a looming suspicion that if he were to go into the kitchen, none of those grocery bags would contain any milk.

“Why would you bring home a dog?”

Shiro laughs bashfully, running a hand through his hair. He takes a few tentative steps forward, taking the puppy in his hands and lifting it just enough so that it can drag itself onto the couch fully. In record speed, it’s in Keith’s lap, and it’s so rambunctious that Keith has to physically hold it back so it doesn’t start licking his face.

He doesn’t have a lot of experience with dogs. He never had a static home long enough to have a pet. The only time he’s ever touched an animal was when he was skinning one for dinner, and even then, hares and scorpions were few and far between under the oppressive heat of the desert sun.

It seems so desperate, so excited to lick him, and after a moment, he doesn’t have the heart to keep holding it back. It bounces forward eagerly, lapping at his cheeks, his chin, and every stretch of skin that its little tongue can reach.

“She’s a rescue,” Shiro tells him, “I saw ads for the shelter in the newspaper, and I know you’ve been kind of… cooped up here. I mean, Lance and I both know how hard you’re trying, we really do. We realize that this isn’t the life that you would have chosen, but you settled here because it’s what we wanted. And we understand that it isn’t exciting, like maybe… you would have liked. But we thought, maybe… once she gets bigger, she can keep you company. The two of you can go jogging together. She can go with you to the park. There’s a big dog park just outside of the city, and the bus lets you take dogs, so both of you could go out there and spend the day by the lake, or running the trails, or just… enjoying as much of the wilderness as this place can offer you.”

Lance pipes in near the end, his voice so animated and genuinely hopeful that Keith feels too bad to even glare at him, “And she’s a mix! Just like you, Keith! Galra, Human. German shepherd, uh… what else is she?”

“She’s a lot of things,” Shiro tells him, “they have canine DNA tests, but you know… she’s just herself. She doesn’t need to know everything about herself to know that she already loves you.”

Keith peers down into the puppy’s big, brown eyes. She looks back at him, as though somehow she can tell what he’s thinking—that he’s connecting all of the dots between them, that he feels like an idiot for finding camaraderie with a stumpy little creature who’s spent the last five minutes covering him in her saliva.

“Is her name Milk?” Keith asks, because all of the other questions swirling around in his head feel too raw, too loaded for how much emotion he feels comfortable showing right now, “is that why you kept making those jokes about ‘going out for milk’? Because she’s Milk?”

Lance barks another laugh. Shiro covers his hand with his mouth.

“No, uh… the shelter didn’t name her. That was just a cover-up so you wouldn’t figure out what we were doing.”

Keith raises a brow. It all seems very silly to him, but he doesn’t fuss about it. After all this time, he still can’t wrap his head around why other people don’t just say what they mean—why Shiro and Lance couldn’t have just told him that they were getting a dog, as though the action itself could have been sullied by his mere knowledge of what was going on.

It still would have been nice, he thinks. And it would have been easier, without the needless surprises. Without the added inconvenience of lying.

“So… what are we supposed to call her then, you know… since she doesn’t have a name?”

Shiro and Lance both stare at him for a second, as though they don’t understand exactly what he means. Shiro is the first person to move, his smile returning even broader as he draws nearer, sitting down on the edge of the couch, just inches away from Keith’s socked feet.

He reaches out, scratching the puppy behind the ears. She seems to like it enough, but she’s still staring at Keith, and he resists the urge to glower down at her. She seems expectant, and he has no idea what she wants. Already, all of this attention is starting to become a little overwhelming.

“She wants you to pet her.” Lance’s words are a mere breath against the side of his face. Keith almost thanks him, but the sarcastic tone of his voice is enough that Keith offers him a glare in response instead, pausing for a moment before he mirrors Shiro’s movements.

And that seems to work, but he refuses to give Lance any credit for it. She nuzzles close to him, winding about in a small circle before lying comfortably in his lap.

“Well, we thought, since she’s your dog, you should name her.” Shiro answers his question in a soft voice, stroking a hand down the length of the dog’s body, before resting it on top of Keith’s own. “We can help, if you can’t think of anything, but you know… my grandparents always used to say that naming something made it yours. And no one could ever take that away from you. So… Lance and I—we kind of thought, maybe… you’d like to name her. To make her yours.”

Keith stares at him for a moment, wary and unsure. He swallows once more, peering down at the puppy in his lap, as she lets out a long breath and seems as though she might be falling asleep. He’s never held anything quite as fragile before. Through the fur and the puppy-fat, he can feel each of her tiny bones. He realizes, with growing dread, that she’s terribly, terribly breakable.

He doesn’t know why anyone would ever think that it was a good idea to trust him with something so soft.

But he thinks about what Shiro told him—about starting over, about finding something new and exciting in the monotony of their newfound everyday. He thinks about the galaxy that sleeps beyond the star-speckled blanket of night, about the many planets carrying on their own lives now that the war is over: thriving, rebuilding, learning to live in peace for the first time in many, many years.

“I guess… I’ll call her Andromeda,” he says, “you know… like—like the galaxy.”

Lance snorts.

“That’s cool, but I’m gonna have to call her Ann. I am not gonna remember that word jumble.”

Keith glares at him again.

“Call her whatever you want,” he grumbles, “she’s mine, and I’m calling her Andromeda.”

He doesn’t miss the way that his words make both of them smile. He does miss the way that Andromeda cuddles closer to him, yawning wide, all prickly baby teeth. He can’t ignore the growing warmth in his chest, or the feeling that maybe…

This is an exciting new beginning. This is just another page turning in his life.

This is the part where he finds his happy ending, without needing to leave his loving boyfriends behind.

And he can’t pretend that it doesn’t mean a lot to him, that they knew how difficult settling into normalcy has been—that they cared enough to try to fix it. That even now, after all this time, they haven’t figured that he’d get over it, learn to live with it, just accept the fact that Voltron is finished, the war is over, and there’s nothing left for him within the stars anymore.

He smiles then, dragging his fingers through Andromeda’s long, silky fur.

He tells them, “Thanks, this… means a lot. It really does.”

He doesn’t tell them that he’s so happy right now that he could cry. He doesn’t tell them that he’s never regretted slipping into this life, for even a second. He doesn’t tell them how much he appreciates them, how much it means to him, to be loved by someone else for the very first time in his life.

He doesn’t tell them how desperately he’s in love with both of them.

How he never wants to lose either of them, ever again.

But somehow, he gets the feeling that they know all of this anyway.