#i thought the skin markers were out of stock but it was only the brush/fine nib. the brush/chisel nib was in stock luckily! only the

[prettyallfriends]

just spent €250 on alcohol markers.... nyall i have never used alcohol markers in my life (i got €200 by surprise from the government so its not like a MASSIVE expenditure especially considering a beginners set would probs cost like €40 easily)

[acsmithwriting-blog]

“Anything New?” - A Short Story by A.C. Smith

Anything New?

Aquarius gave Pisces the news. With her hood up, she pounded on Pisces' door. "Hey!" She pounds harder. "Open up, little minnow!" Aquarius shouts up at her bedroom window, and Pisces, she finally wakes up and unlatches the door. "What?"

"Sagittarium is playing this Friday! At the Leo Plaza. You're going, right?" Pisces' eyes lit up and died the way an old light bulb blows when you throw the switch. She says to Aquarius, her voice low, she says, "You know I can't." "But it's Sagittarium!" "I know."

"Look," Aquarius says, pulling her hood up. "I've got a plan. You turned me on to listening to them, and I know how big a fan you are. We're sneaking you in." She smirks, hand on her hip.

"But how? There's no way I'll get in." Lifting her right arm, Pisces shows Aquarius her tattoo. The Pisces sign in black on the inside of her wrist. The stigma. "As I said, little minnow, I have a plan."

Pisces didn't like Aquarius' plans, but she meant well. And she was right. She had to see them live. Nine years back, before the updated restrictions were enforced, Pisces would wake up every morning, drink a glass of tap water, and make it to the record store five minutes before they opened. Pisces always wanted to be the first to listen to any new release. Any record. "Anything new" was her favorite type of music.

The manager with the keys every morning, A Leo, he was always excited to see Pisces there sitting at the front door. One morning when Pisces asked the manager, "Anything new?" What was new was Sagittarium's first album, "Circles." Pisces was the first person to buy it, back when they were allowed, and she instantly fell in love with their music. After the new enforcement codes went into effect, Pisces, she had to ask Aquarius to buy them for her.

The weekend comes up fast. Friday morning, Aquarius shows up with her boyfriend, Taurus. And his best friend, Leo. Aquarius was wearing a tight red dress with adjustable shoulder straps that pulled her cleavage up to her neck. Taurus and Leo, they had some hip new black pants adorned with chains and studs. Sagittarium T-shirts on. All of it underneath raggedy robes with large hoods. Aquarius bangs on Pisces' door again. "Open up, little minnow!" The door flies right open, Pisces shaking with her hands balled up in front of her chest. She asks, so what's the plan?

The boys, Leo and Taurus, they played chess in the front room while Aquarius painted Pisces' wrist. The brush, dipped in cream colored paint, sliding cold across her tattoo. It nearly matched her skin tone, but not enough. Blowing on it, Aquarius says not to worry. She brought her makeup bag, too. "We'll get in blended in right. And tonight, you'll be a Libra!"

Pisces half smiles. "Well, it looks great. But, um. What about my Sign Card?" Aquarius put Taurus to work two days back with some laminated cardstock. He's a graphic designer. Good with photoshop. At least enough to fool the security guards at the festival entrance. "Reach into my left pocket," says Aquarius, blowing on the painted skin.

Pisces digs for the card, and looking at it, she finally lets herself feel excited. She thinks maybe she'll get to see them after all. Aquarius, still blow drying the paint, breath after breath, she says, "I've already bought two tickets. So, it shouldn't be any trouble. Okay, I think it's dry." She blends it in with foundation to match Pisces' skin, and then draws the Libra sign tattoo in permanent marker. "Good enough! Just be mindful not to rub it." Aquarius smirks, proud of her ingenuity.

It's time to leave, and everyone throws their robes back on. Pisces leaves her legally assigned Sign Card under her pillow. "Libra." She says, holding it to her chest. The others exit first, and Pisces lifts up on her doorknob so it'll line up with the latch to lock.

After the four of them make it out of the Pisces district. After they get two whole blocks away, they check around them to make sure nobody will see, and they toss their robes aside. Pisces wears a two-piece outfit Aquarius brought for her. It's a bit too big, but Aquarius finds a few safety pins in her makeup bag, and they cinch it up to fit. It's a black tank top and skirt with a shimmering blue stripe running diagonally from shoulder to hip. Black stockings with the same royal blue hem run up to the middle of her ashen thighs.

"You. Look. Hot!" Aquarius squeals, and Pisces blushes.

Walking there, Pisces isn't used to being a Libra. So, Aquarius has to keep pulling her out of the shadows. Telling her, "Honey, you're fine. Libra, remember?" "Oh, right."

"And," Aquarius whispers into her hear. Her breath hot through Pisces' hair, she says, "Stop covering your wrist like that. People are going to think you're a Pisces. Act proud, girl!"

By the time they arrive at the Leo Plaza, Pisces feels confident about her "Libra walk." She tells herself, approaching the ticket gates that nobody will even know she's a Pisces.

Just act natural.

The guard checks her tattoo, then her card, and she hopes he didn't notice her hands trembling. Inside, the four of them scope out a spot to set up, but it's crowded. Leo, Aquarius' boyfriend, he says they'll go do some scouting. "Hold your chin up a little higher," Aquarius whispers, her teeth clenched together.  Pisces listens, and raises her chin. Telling herself, Tonight, I'm a Libra!

The right perimeter is the food side. Two-dozen food trucks selling the best from around the world. Overpriced, but you can't bring your own in. The left side has sideshows. Circus attractions. Games that scam you. Dartboards painted with big, fat minnows. The word Pisces painted into its sun-bleached pink scales with a million tiny holes from years of playing darts. Knock down the pins with the ball to win a purple moose. That kind of thing. Everywhere sat couples on blankets, some with flags proudly displaying the face of a lion. A scorpion of glowing stars. The Scorpios. Blankets with more space than people. The loners.

Flags with oversized crab claws pinching a lion and a fish in half. Mostly, these ones were Libra frat boys. The second best. Leos might be some high-hat cats, but Libras never get off their high horse. They check out a few of the games, and Aquarius gets a sniff of something and has to go find and eat whatever it is. "I'll catch back up with you!" She disappears into the crowd. At the first tent, the walls are lined with prizes. Stuffed animals ranging from small to large, bottom to top. Pisces noticed a small section to the left, one of the smallest prizes. A stuffed minnow. Cornflower blue with magenta fins. When she asks the staff how she can win a fish, he asks her, does she have a dog at home? "What" She asks. "Why?

"Nobody wants those, 'cept for as chew toys." He chuckles and fans his hand out. "All you gots to do is pop one of thems water balloons. Three darts. Five coins." The Carnie, Pisces sees his wrist when he drops the darts into the wood in front of her. An Aquarius.

"Okay," Pisces, who reminds herself that tonight, she's Libra, says, "here." And leaves five coins out. Half her money.

"One balloon! That's all for the fish." He steps out of the way.

On the dartboard, two balloons are painted to look like eyeballs. They're clipped up and hanging over the painted fish's face. Pisces throws the first dart. It's front heavy, making it nosedive early and land on the tip of the painting's fin. Before she can throw the second dart, a voice next to her, he says, "If you miss I'll pay for three more." On his wrist, the Capricorn symbol tattoo. Its sun-faded ink stretched and skewed from growing with age. He smiles at her.

"Thanks, but I'm not going to miss." Is that what a Libra would say? Pisces wonders. She looks forward and takes aim. The second dart lands just beneath one of the huge, bulging water balloon eyes. Capricorn gives the back and forth glance, and doesn't say anything.

The last dart lands, spilling water into the grass as the one eye deflates. The Aquarius Carnie hands Pisces the fish, and she shoves it into her purse to swoon over later. At Capricorn, she shrugs and explains that it's a chew toy. "Of course." He laughs. "Hey... You're a Libra, right?"

"Obviously!" Pisces scoffs, overtly looking at the paint on her wrist. "So, you think you could cut us in line for the Ferris wheel?"

Pisces had never been on one, and thought she would probably be afraid of heights. She didn't know for sure. "I can do that?" She asks, not thinking. "Please, you guys are basically Leos."

She tries again to play along. "Oh, stop it."

"A bashful Libra? Ha!" He grabs her hand and says he'll buy her a snow-cone first. They cut in line with the card Aquarius' boyfriend made up. The home-laminated Libra Sign card, printed with middle-class black ink got them to the front of the line, but the rules clearly stated: No snow cones allowed.

Pisces got a lemon brain freeze and tossed what was left into the waste bin. They stepped into their two-person gondola, and Capricorn said, "Don't worry. It only takes a couple of minutes to go around. We'll be out before the band's on." The door clicked shut behind them. They started moving. The sun had just set, but the Ferris wheel lifted them high enough to see it set again. They only just met, and Pisces thinks it might be the sugar high, but her heart flutters when he grabs onto her hand. His palm wet against hers after a hot day. The extra light from the sunset nobody but them can see, it isn't helping. Pisces is sweating through the paint on her wrist. She notices it starting to crack through, and keeps it tilted so Capricorn won't see.

When he asks her what kind of dog she has, Pisces thinks, What kind of dog would a Libra have? An Australian Shepard, she tells him. How many siblings does a Libra have? What is a Libra's favorite sport? He asks, were her parents Libras, too? What is a Libra's favorite flower? Food? Phone number? The wheel begins moving, or the sun goes down again. What did a Libra drive here? Pisces, she's trying to keep up. Act natural. What does a Libra listen to? She answers honestly, for once. "Anything new, I guess. I like Sagittarium." "Well, then you're in the right place."

That's the last thing he said to her before his double-take at her wrist. "Is that... Paint?" Pisces had gotten distracted by his questions. She wasn't mindful enough to hide it, but she tries lying. Lies are not a strong-suit for Pisces.

"Let me see that!" Capricorn grabs her by the elbow, jerking Pisces toward him. She pulls back, but it's too late. His grip is strong, and he's thumbing at it. Scraping it away, smudging his thumb with the fake skin. Latex, dyes, and makeup powder smeared into a ripple. Wiped clean off from the layer of building sweat beneath it. From the heat, and the worry. Her tattoo shows.

Pisces.

The gondola's door opens to the line of people they cut in front of. Capricorn's jaw buried in his shirt collar, he yells, "Pisces!" pointing at her. The crowd outside murmurs. They're not even allowed in. Capricorn steps out holding his hands halfway up. He disappears into the crowd saying he's got to wash them, and the people turn their heads back. Looking at Pisces.

She tries to bide her time and escape the corner she's in, lying like a Libra. "Oh please, that Aquarius." Flicking her wrist. A dismissal. "He's such a prankster." Tattoo hand on her purse, she shows everyone her fake Libra card with the other. Pisces puts on her best poker face, making her way outside just before someone finally shouts, "Show us your arm!"

Pisces turns to run, but a large Taurus man grabs onto her. He pulls her wrist out and lifts it up for all to see. "A Fish!" He shouts, tossing her forward. She catches herself, but already people are pulling little white cylinders from their bags. Their back pockets. Pisces turns to run, going face first into a few people. They pop the caps off their little bottles. The tops punched with various sizes of holes. They shake out fish food. The flake kind. Green and orange transparent because it's so thin. The air stinks like stale sea brine from a thousand tiny flakes snowing down over Pisces.

They chant, "Fish bitch! Fish bitch! Fish bitch!" Pumping one fist, shaking fish food down with the other. Pisces eyes wet up with tears, and the flakes pick it up, soaking onto her skin. Like flecks of glitter surround her eyes, but they're too large, and they don't shine. They just stink.

She gets up and starts to run. Her only sense of direction is away from the music, because that's the way to the door. The people, most of them have a second bottle. Inside, a reel of fishing line with a hook at the end. It's got lead weights attached for easier throwing. With tears and fish food swelling up, blurring her vision, Pisces makes the longest bounds her short legs allow her to. Behind her, spinning hands build momentum for the hooks. They let go and send them flying. Chasing after Pisces. Most of them miss. One, a triple-sided hook, snags onto her leg beneath the skirt. She pulls it forward, taking another step, and it rips backward, taking a chunk of skin with it. Behind her, someone yells "Ooooohhweee! I almost had her!"

Others, still chanting "Fish bitch!"

Others, throwing hooks on lines as Pisces runs away. Hooks shoot past her. They grab into her hair. Cut into her tank top. Dig into her shoulders. Her back. Both sides of her legs and arms bloodied and pouring red.

The next thing she sees is an arm fly up. The next thing she feels is like a wall in her face. And it's black.

When she wakes up, it's black out. Pisces tastes iron in her mouth. When she tongues at it, there's a raw spot where her canine tooth used to be. Her eyes feel swollen. From being hit, or maybe an allergy to the food flakes, she didn't know. Every inch of skin stung when she pushed herself up, away from the earth. Next to her, her purse. With both hands she dove into it. Her crimson stains from hook wounds forever tear-dropped into the thin polyester fish design.

Pisces knew she had better not get caught being outside after curfew. Especially without her Sign Card. Above her in the sky, the Leo constellation. The lion's tail pointed the way home. It was a long walk, but nothing is quite as bad when you've got a plush animal to hug onto.

End-

[bobodelrey]

i’ve been trying to fix my pride fandom: voltron legendary defender ship/rating: klance//g words: ~4k summary: Lance's soulmark showed up on his wrist when he was eight--the only problem is, he can't read it. It's in another language entirely.So the obvious answer, of course, is to get it covered with a tattoo. other tags: modern au, soulmate au, college 

also available on ao3.

Lance sticks his right arm out, wrist up. “I need you to cover this.”

The guy behind the counter—his age, likely, though it's hard to tell through the haze of his hangover—levels him with a look. A look that clearly says that he is not in the mood to deal with whatever bullshit Lance can manage to cook up.

Then he goes back to looking at his phone.

Lance clears his throat, shaking his wrist in the guy's direction. “I need you to cover this,” he repeats a little louder. “Please?”

He finally looks up, locking his phone and setting it down on the counter. He's Asian, and could easily be considered attractive if it wasn't for what he called his “hairstyle.” The sweat bands on his wrists that were popular in middle school didn't help things either.

“Fine,” he agrees, a hard edge to the word that Lance is too tired to take proper stock of. Maybe, it he hadn't spent the night before drinking and maybe, if he had eaten something before he had decided to march into the tattoo parlor closest to campus, he would have cared.

Lance nods, a single sharp jerk of his head downward, and waits. He's going to jump out of his skin if this takes any longer, nerves setting his teeth on edge, head pounding in time with his heart.

He waits for the guy behind the counter—he hasn't caught his name, yet, and Lance isn't going to ask just yet, not when it could crop up in general small talk while he's getting the mark on his wrist covered up—to say anything to him, to make a move toward the back, to ask Lance what he wants for a tattoo.

Instead, he pulls out a bandaid, opens it up, and before Lance can properly process what in the hell this guy is doing, places it directly over the mark on Lance's wrist.

“Done.”

There's a curl to the guy's mouth that Lance is pretty sure means he's pleased.

“That's not what I meant.”

The guy shrugs. “It's covered.”

Lance narrows his eyes, taking a step back from the counter. He can't exactly argue with that logic, but sticking a band aid on it isn't what he meant.

“I'll be back.” It's nearly too Terminator-esque for his tastes, but he means it. “And your mullet is horrific,” he shouts over his shoulder.

*

He was eight when the characters showed up.

He had been brushing his teeth at the time, elbowing for room at the sink between two of his sisters. He was more focused on his teeth than his wrist at the time, as most people typically are.

Halana had noticed it first, eagle eyed and nosy as she was. She had smacked her hand against the mirror, mouth full of toothpaste, excited noises making their way to her lips.

Lance had scrunched up his nose and kept brushing, because Halana did things like that too often and it wasn't like he could understand her anyway.

But it had attracted Sophia's attention, and her eyes had affixed on Lance's wrist in the mirror. She had started screaming for their mother immediately, and it had scared Lance half to death because he thought something was wrong.

Instead, his mother had sat him down and explained to him the concept of soulmates and soulmarks and everything else that had gone with the territory.

It was an incredibly traumatizing time for eight year old Lance, made worse by the fact that he couldn't read his soulmark. They were character of some sort, and even then Lance wasn't much one for linguistics.

But it was, nevertheless, the name of his soulmate. He just couldn't read it. It wasn't English, certainly, which his mother and countless other told him meant that his soulmate, whomever they were, was unlikely from America.

He was never one for covering it up, instead going with the hope that no one would notice them instead. It was rare, he was told by the expert his mother had taken him to at the age of ten, to have a name in a completely different alphabet on his wrist. Rare, but not impossible.

By the time he was twelve, he has resolved to himself a handful of things: That he was going to work for NASA, that aliens were definitely out there somewhere and whas going to find them, and that he would likely never actually meet his soulmate. Which was okay, because he was a realist and he knew that the first two would take up all of his time.

*

Lance is far more clear headed than he was the day before when he walks into the tattoo parlor, bell jingling merrily above the door.

“I need a tattoo covered,” Lance says. There's another guy behind the counter with the one from yesterday, also Asian but more imposing. The scar across the bridge of his nose, coupled with a patch of white hair, draws Lance's eyes immediately. “With ink, this time.”

His current nemesis opens his mouth, likely to retort, when the other guy chides in warning, “Keith.”

'Keith' deflates immediately, shoulder's slumping as he side eyes his co-worker for a moment before turning his attention back to Lance.

“Fine,” he says shortly. “What kind of tattoo were you thinking of getting?”

Lance's mind sputters to a stop for a moment; he had been more than prepared to fight for this, too stubborn to go to another tattoo parlor because this one, specifically, was posing a challenge. There was very little Lance loved more than a challenge.

“Just put, like, a black bar? Or an equal symbol for marriage equality or some shit? I don't care.”

“You don't care?” A beat. “You want me to cover a tattoo you already didn't want with something you don't care about?”

Keith, despite being so against giving him a tattoo in the first place, is up in arms about this. It surprises Lance for a moment before he realizes that anyone with a mullet has to have a skewed set of priorities.

“I just need it covered, dude.”

“Done,” he says, sitting back smugly while tossing the marker back under the counter.

Lance sputters for a moment, unbelieving. His mouth is wide open, and the voice in his head (Pidge calls it reason; it sounds more like Lance's mother) is telling him he's going to catch bugs with his mouth like that.

His jaw clicks shut abruptly, annoyance bubbling up in his chest. This guy is infuriating.

“I'll be back,” Lance threatens, stepping away from the counter again, intent on leaving.

“Good,” Keith snaps back. “Make an appointment.”

A handful of business cards are thrown bodily in Lance's direction on his way out—Lance manages to catch most of them, far more than he'll ever need, and is out the door in a heartbeat.

He's almost back to this dorm by the time he looks at the business cards, all of them the same:

Voltron

Keith Kogane

Something in Lance stirs when he reads the name, but he assumes it's his stomach. Lunch seems so far away.

*

Later, he relates the whole story to Pidge and Hunk over soggy pizza slices and open textbooks, marker dried over his soulmark. The two of them are his best friends, and they understand his tenuous relationship with his soulmark—Hunk has one himself, though he's already found his other half, and Pidge never got one at all.

“Why do you keep going back to the same place?” Hunk asks, flipping back in his textbook to reread a passage he only half absorbed. “I mean, wouldn't it be easier if you didn't have to deal with Mullet Man?”

“This is Lance,” Pidge says, shoving a slice of pizza in their mouth. “He's too stubborn to do anything else but stick with Plan A.”

“I am not!” Lance objects immediately, slamming his text book shut. He remembers, a half second later, that he still needed it open to a specific page, and begins to skim through it again hastily.

“Lance, your plan B if you didn't get into college was to join the circus?” Hunk reminds. “I'm not saying that's extreme, but it was a little extreme.”

Pidge, eyes wide with this new information, sets their pizza slice down and fixes all of their undivided attention on Lance. “The circus?”

“I'm a man of extremes, Pidge.”

Hunk, spotting the devious gleam in Pidge's eyes, cuts in before the situation gets so far out of hand that there's no hope of salvaging it.

“Why do you want your mark covered up anyway? There's still a chance you could meet them, buddy.” Hunk has tried this line of reasoning with his best friend before, and had doubled down on it when he met the girl whose name was on his wrist.

“What if I don't want to?”

“And by that, he means he still hasn't managed to translate the characters on his wrist, nor has bothered to try,” Pidge jibes.

Lance can't argue with that, because what they've said is true. So he steers the conversation away again, saying, “I wanted to be a lion tamer. Maybe one of those people on the high wire?”

Pidge cackles, “You'd clearly be a clown!”

*

It's another week before Lance wanders through the door of Voltron, right on time for his appointment. The interior is empty, like is has been for each of his last visits, artwork decorating the walls and not a single customer to be found.

Keith is the only one behind the counter again, lower lip tucked up behind some of his teeth as he focuses on his phone.

He still hasn't looked up by the time Lance reaches the counter, so Lance does as most post-pubescent males do—he slams his hands down on the counter top and hopes for the funniest possible reaction.

Except, Keith doesn't jump. He just looks up from his phone, glaring at Lance like he's the anti-Christ or something.

Lance grins and holds his right arm out toward him, wrist up. Keith rolls his eyes, but locks his phone and puts it underneath the counter.

“What was it you finally decided on?” Lance had gone through and made the appointment over the phone after his conversation with Pidge and Hunk, more firm in his decision to cover up his soulmark than ever.

“Just put a bar over it,” he says, dropping his arm to the counter. “Like, all the way around so it looks like a band and whatnot.” It's not original. It's not artistic. But it's going to work for him.

Keith is, understandably, unimpressed.

“Do you even know what these mean?” he asks. Lance can't tell if it's out of derision or curiosity. “Or did you get them at some kind of frat party and regret your decision?”

“I wish.” The words are out before Lance can think about them properly, but that's the problem with being him most of the time—he doesn't come equipped with a brain-to-mouth filter. “It's one of those soul-identifying marks or whatever,” Lance says dismissively by way of explanation.  “Kind of diminishes my chances with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

Keith fiddles with one of the sweatbands around his wrist—Lance has managed to keep his mouth shut about those, for now, but he can feel whatever good manners he has breaking down—before sliding a few papers across the counter.

“So. Just need you to print your name, date and sign where it says . . .”

Lance does as he's told, printing his name as nicely as he can (“You have the handwriting of a kindergartener,” Pidge says in his head; maybe he should get that checked out—he's certain he's only supposed to have his own voice in his head, and Pidge being part of his voice of reason likely means nothing but trouble), and signs the papers with a flourish.

He pushes them back in Keith's direction when he's done, hands shoved into his pockets and balled into fists with his nerves. He can't actually believe that he's doing this—that he's getting his stupid soulmark covered up once and for all, he's never going to have to actually see it again, he's never going to have to think about it again.

Keith glances over the paperwork, fiddling with his sweatbands again, and all of Lance's willpower not to say anything about them breaks. “You know, those were popular in, like, middle school, right?”

“Do you have a problem with me?” Keith demands. “Because I don't actually have to give you a tattoo! I don't have to cover up your soulmark! I can let you wander around with it until you go somewhere else and stop bothering me!”

“Yikes,” Lance says after his initial shock. “Someone didn't eat their wheaties this morning.”

The frown Keith graces him could easily curdle milk.

He shucks the sweatbands off, throwing them to land beside the register. He doesn't break eye contact with Lance even once, bringing his hands back to the counter. “Better?”

There's a challenge there, and Lance isn't quite sure what all of that is about. He just made a comment and might have, maybe, purposely, escalated the situation.

“I mean, yeah, chill? I was just saying.”

Lance's eyes catch on Keith's wrist, red and wrinkled from where the sweatband was.

“Lance McClain,” he reads slowly. And then he laughs, short and dry. “Ha, that's my name! Funny.”

Keith is staring at him like a deep caught in headlights, like he can't really believe what he's seeing.

Lance pulls a face at him. “There's seventeen people in this country with the same name, my man. Now can we get this covered, or . . .?”

“There's seventeen Lance McClain's in this country?” Keith repeats, almost like he can't really believe himself. He sounds strangled.

“Uh. I just said that? I'm sure one of them has your name and whatnot?” Lance is starting to feel more than a little jumpy, like his skin is going to dance off of his skeleton. “Like, is this going to be a problem? Because I can go elsewhere, I guess.”

He doesn't really give Keith a chance to answer—he's already backing up and away from the counter, resolutely not looking at the other man, and his wrist is itching, burning like it hasn't in a long time, and why his lungs feel like they're going to blow?

Lance barely hears Keith before the door closes between them:

“That's Korean on your wrist!”

*

“How'd it go?”

Pidge is the only one in his dorm room—Hunk must be out somewhere with Shea, and Pidge never stays in their own room anyway.

“I, uh. Didn't get my tattoo.”

Pidge looks up from where they're spread out on Hunk's bed, blankets piled up high around them. Lance can smell the open bag of Doritos from where he's standing, and he doesn't even want to question just how long Pidge has holed themselves

“What, did they run out of ink?” They snicker at their own joke as Lance shucks off his coat and kicks his shoes off.

“No.”

“Did you chicken out?”

“No?” He doesn't count leaving because the guy who was going to cover his soulmark happens to have his name on his wrist as chickening out. Not entirely.

“The name on his wrist is the same as mine.”

“The same as yours as in polyamory, or the same as yours as in literally your name?” And. Well. Pidge always catches onto things a little too quickly for Lance's melodrama to fully mature.

“The second one,” Lance says. It isn't a big deal. Nope. Not at all. Not even remotely.

Pidge practically chokes on their spit before launching a textbook at Lance's head. “You're a goddamn idiot!”

He barely manages to dodge the offending object, slamming himself backward so hard his head knocks into the wall.

“What the heck, Pidgeon!”

“He has your name on his wrist!” Pidge's eyes are wide behind their wire framed glasses, and he's never seen them so crazed other than the time he threatened to pour cream soda all over their keyboard. “And you just? You left?”

“Yes?”

There's pause that feels like it stretches miles. It makes the hair on the back of Lance's neck prick up, and his palms begin to clam.

“Do you remember that day you woke up naked in the quad with lipstick and glitter smeared all over your face?”

He has uncomfortable flashbacks; he doesn't know, exactly, how he ended up there.

“Because, you know,” Pidge rolls on, “I have the video of how you got there. And if you don't go back to the that tattoo parlor, I am going to upload it to every social media site and everyone will know your shame before you do.”

Lance questions, for a moment, if Pidge is lying. And if they aren't lying, then could he possibly live with what is on the video? He doesn't remember anything from that specific night, but waking up buck ass naked in the quad with a pidgeon perched on his dick was bad enough.

It's better, probably, not to doubt Pidge.

Lance tucks his feet back into shoes and scoops his jacket up, and leaves Pidge to their own devices.

*

He passes Hunk on the way down the stairs. His best friend is beaming, steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

“Heya, buddy!” Hunk greets, effectively stopping Lance in his tracks.

“I need your advice,” Lance blurts. It's exactly what he wasn't going to say, but Hunk has always been more than willing to listen to Lance's problems—he is, also, the one that was encouraging him not to go through with the tattoo.

“Oh, no. Is your tattoo already hurting you? Are you nauseous? Did you eat before you went in like you were supposed to? You can't take any ibuprofen yet I don't think—it's a blood thinner, y'know, and you don't want that to bleed anymore than it needs to but--”

“Hunk,” Lance interrupts, “buddy. I didn't get the tattoo.” He keeps on down the stairs, fully intent to be on his way.

Except, Hunk turns around and follows him back down the stairs, out into the chilly night outside of their dorm building.

“What happened?” There's no joke about running out of ink or breaking needles—that's Pidge's area, a hundred percent. With Hunk, it's always been genuine concern and gentle understanding.

“The guy I've been dealing with the whole time—the one with the mullet? I made fun of the sweatbands he wears over his wrists. So he took them off.”

Hunk waits for the rest of the story patiently, even as they reach the quad and cross it. He's always had this way of making Lance talk, of causing Lance to divulge more information than he necessarily wants to just because he's Hunk.

“He, uh. Has my name on his wrist. But there's seventeen Lance McClain's in this country,” Lance explains. The night is cloudy, cold, and the street lamps are giving off a yellow lighting that is doing terrible things to his complexion.

“Okay. So there's seventeen people—including you—that have that name. What do you think the chances are of walking into the same tattoo parlor where someone has that name on their wrist?”

And Hunk—Hunk could probably go into schooling for being a councilor, or something, if this whole engineering degree doesn't work out for him.

“You can't make me do math at a time like this, Hunk,” Lance whines instead, leaning his head on his best friend's shoulder. “It's inhumane.”

“They're infinitesimal, Lance. Less than one in a million.”

“Is this the part where you tell me fate sent me into that tattoo parlor?”

“What do you think you are, some kind of Disney Princess?” Hunk jokes, elbow going into Lance's ribs.

Lance blows a raspberry at him rather inelegantly, relishing the childishness of the action.

“He also says that the characters on my wrist are Korean and, uh. I'm pretty sure he's Korean, Hunk.” Lance perches himself up on the brick wall, heels digging into the mortar. Hunk sets his coffee down and hauls himself up beside him.

“I get that you've had these weird ideas about your soulmark—we've been friends since we were ten, dude, you can't deny it—but is this freaking you out because you might have actually found your soulmate, or is this freaking you out because they're a dude.”

Lance snorts, snatching Hunk's coffee cup out of his hands. “You know I don't have a problem with that.”

“With what?” Oh. Hunk wants him to admit it.

Out loud.

“With, uh.” Lance rolls his shoulders, attempting to gesture dismissively. “The whole being a dude thing.” He's never actually admitted his bisexuality to Hunk—he's always just kind of known.

Of course, walking into a bathroom to catch Lance making out with another dude their Junior Prom might have given him a pretty big hint.

Lance looks to his friend, waiting for the conversation to pick up.

“Now, while I'm glad we've had this heart to heart, it's really cold out here. So I'm going back inside, and you're going to Voltron.”

He really needs new friends.

*

Lance strolls into Voltron again, hands shoved in his pockets. The florescent lights inside are nearly blinding after being out in the dark; he has to pause for a moment just inside the door to blink tears out of his eyes.

Keith is still sitting resolutely behind the counter, and Lance wonders again if they ever actually have customers of if there's some mysterious benefactor just paying the bills.

“Hey.” Keith looks up at him for a moment before looking back down at his phone, acting like he hasn't seen him.

“It's. Uh. Come to my attention that I was a bit of a dick.”

Keith keeps looking at his phone, shoulder's stiff as a board.

It's incredibly unnerving, and Lance—he isn't used to being in the wrong, to having to own up to his mistakes, to even openly admitting he's bisexual.

And to be faced down with this gorgeous tattoo artist, this guy who is in all probability his freaking soulmate, is compounding that.

He feels like he's going to die from a heart attack; he should have taken Pidge up on creating his last will and testament before he left.

“Like, I mean. A seriously huge dong. And it was definitely uncalled for. I just—of all the tattoo parlor's I could have walked into, and I picked the one with my soulmate working behind the counter. So, uh, whoop-de-doo. Also, about your sweaty wrist band things, I'm sorry I made fun of those. Like, I get people want to cover up their soulmarks and whatnot—I mean, that's why I was even here in the first place—and it was really . . . insensitive? Is that the word I'm looking for?

“Anyway, it was insensitive of me to ask you to cover up your name even though it's on my wrist. And for making fun of your questionable fashion choices—like, maybe thank me later for not making fun of your mullet out loud?--and. Uh. For like every other time I've been in here?”

He knows that Pidge would have wanted a video of this. It's more than enough blackmail material, and it's the first time Lance has had to actively apologize in years.

Keith finally looks up from his phone, face expressionless. He's not moved by Lance's apology at all.

“There's a diner about a block from here,” Keith says in lieu of accepting Lance's heartfelt apology. “We could go get dinner?”

He's surprised, for a moment, that Keith would still want anything to do with him—considering how much of a dick he's been since the moment he walked into Voltron, he was expecting something quite different.

Lance clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Sure.”

He's not sure what it will lead to, but something feels like it clicks in his core when he walks out of Voltron, side by side with Keith.