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soylentramen · 7 years

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Words are like toothpaste

Inspired by @lordzuuko’s wonderful Voltron Family AU. The kids are in middle school. The toothpaste thing is not my invention – I’ve seen it posted around a couple different places, and I just love the concept.

——–

“What did you say?” Lance asked the boy sitting across the table from him, his shoulders tensing.

His group partner shrugged, gluing another piece onto the diorama they were making in class. “I mean, it’s like with my step-dad, right? It’s not like either of them is your real dad, so why do they get to tell you what to do?”

Lance jumped up from his seat, the legs of the chair screaming as they dragged along the tile floor of the classroom. Before he could do anything with his tightly-clenched fists, though, he felt a steady hand on his shoulder. “Just ignore him, Lance,” came Hunk’s calm voice. “He doesn’t know anything about our family.”

The younger boy didn’t move for a moment, his slender frame shaking with the need to do something. But then, just as quickly as it had come, his temper left him in a long, slow breath that had him sagging in his chair like a deflated hot-air balloon. Sparing a final glare at his partner, he put the whole conversation out of his mind and went back to his work. And that was the end of it…

… until the next time he and Daddy Keith got into an argument. It wasn’t even anything that important; it just sort of escalated from heated discussion to, “What would you know? You’re not even my real dad!” before he had a chance to filter the words through his brain first, and then everything just… sort of… stopped. The expression on Keith’s face was not unlike the expression of the fish Lance had caught the last time they went camping: wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and struggling for breath or words or anything, really. “I…” Lance started again once he found his voice, and the sound seemed to break Keith out of his stupor.

“Go to your room,” he said, and his voice was so, so quiet. “Do your homework, and don’t come out until we call you for dinner.”

“Please, Daddy Keith, I….” In that moment, Lance’s one wish was that he could have unseen the way Keith flinched at the familiar name.

“Lance. Go. To. Your. Room,” he said, his tone clipped and eyes closed to hold back the tide of his emotion. “Now.” Once the boy had gone, Keith allowed himself to lean against the wall and slide to the floor, the strength having left his legs. He was still sitting like that, knees drawn up to his chest, his face buried in his arms, when Pidge came back from her computer club some time later.

“Daddy Keith?” she asked, coming to a stop a short distance away in the hall. “Are… are you okay?”

He looked up with a start, hastily scrubbing at the moisture around his eyes. “Yeah, sweetie, yeah.” He paused to clear his throat. “Just… a little tired. It’s been a long day.” He stood and offered her an approximation of a smile. “Wanna help me get dinner going? Daddy Shiro has a long shift today, so I’m sure he’ll be happy to come home to find everything all ready to eat.”

Pidge wrinkled her nose slightly at the suggestion. “I’m no good at cooking, just ask my home ec. teacher. What about Hunk? Or Lance?”

“You and Hunk could both help, if you wanted. We could have some family time. Lance is on timeout in his room at least until Daddy Shiro gets home, though, so we’ll have to do without him.”

“Uh oh. What did that idiot to this time?”

Keith shook his head. “Pidge, honey, that’s not a good word to call other people, especially your own brother,” he chided gently. “And we don’t gossip in this house, do we?”

“No, we don’t. Sorry, Daddy Keith.”

He felt a genuine smile on his lips as he reached out to ruffle her hair. “I’ll let it go this time, but just try to keep it in mind for the future, okay, peanut?”

“I will.”

“That’s my girl. Now, how about a hug before we track down your brother?” If he held her a little tighter and a little longer than normal, she didn’t complain.

By the time Shiro got home, the table was set and the food was prepared, and Keith, Pidge, and Hunk were only wearing a few of the ingredients on their faces or clothes. “Thanks for making dinner, love,” he said, swiping a bit of sauce from Keith’s cheek with his thumb. “It smells delicious.” He looked around a bit. “But… where’s Lance?”

Sighing, Keith looked away down the hall. “In his room. If we’re ready to eat, please let him know he can come out for dinner.”

The meal was pleasant enough, though Lance and Keith were both uncharacteristically quiet. Hunk and Pidge left the two of them to their own devices and instead discussed their days with Shiro, who decided he would worry about the others later. When everyone was finished and the table was cleared, Lance stood quietly, running his hand nervously over the hair at the back of his head. “Well, I’ll just… uh… I’ll get going back… to my room, then.” Without waiting for anyone to reply, he scurried off and vanished behind his closed door again. Shiro followed him with his eyes and then turned a questioning gaze on Keith, who heaved an exasperated sigh.

“I can tell it’s been eating at you all evening,” he said, waving Shiro toward Lance’s room with a flick of his wrist. “Go on, go talk to him. I don’t particularly want to repeat what he said.”

Nodding, Shiro walked down the hall and knocked on Lance’s door. “Hey, buddy. Can I come in? I wanted to talk about whatever’s been bothering you and Daddy Keith tonight.” He waited a moment for a response, and then began slowly opening the door only to wind up with an armful of tearful brunet a moment later. “Hey now, easy. Deep breaths. Let’s go sit on your bed, can we? Let’s talk it out. It’ll be okay.”

Snuffling pitifully, Lance stepped out of the hug and hurled himself onto his bed. “No, it won’t. I ruined everything,” he wailed.

Shiro sat carefully on the edge of the mattress and ran his hand soothingly over Lance’s back. “Shhh, it’s okay. I’m sure you didn’t ruin anything. Just tell me what happened.”

“I… I got in a-a fight with Daddy Keith,” he started, his words punctuated with occasional hiccups as he struggled to master his breathing again. “And I s-said something really… really mean, and now he’s never going to talk to me again, and it’s all my fault, and I don’t even know why I said it, I just…”

“Okay, okay,” Shiro cut in. “Slow down there, bud. What did you say?”

“I said… I said that he wasn’t my r-real… my real dad.” At Shiro’s sharp intake of breath, he buried his face in his blankets again. “I didn’t mean it,” he added quietly, though the down comforter muffled the words almost beyond recognition.

“I…” Shiro began, only to pause, searching for the right words. “I think I see now why you two were acting the way you were. I’ve got an idea. I’ll be right back, buddy, okay? We’ll figure this out.” Shiro ducked out of Lance’s room and returned a moment later with an unopened tube of toothpaste and a heavy-duty paper plate. “Okay, sit up.” He handed both the toothpaste and the plate to Lance. “So, you’re feeling pretty upset right now, right?” Lance nodded. “Okay. I think what might help you feel better is to open that toothpaste and see just how fast you can squeeze it out onto that plate. Does that sound fun?” Lance nodded again, attempting a smile. “Okay, then. Let’s do it. All of the toothpaste onto that plate, just as fast as you can.”

Sticking his tongue out slightly in concentration, Lance began squeezing the toothpaste onto the plate. Then, at Shiro’s prompting, he applied more pressure to the tube to increase his speed. At one point, his grip slipped, and a glob of toothpaste striped the bridge of Shiro’s nose, causing them both to break into genuine laughter for the first time all evening. Once the job was finished, Shiro turned back to Lance. “All right. Are you feeling a bit better now?” When Lance nodded again, he continued, “Okay, good. So what we’re going to do now is to see how quickly you can get all this toothpaste back into the tube.”

Wide-eyed, Lance looked quickly between the uneven loops of spilled toothpaste on the plate and the crumpled, empty tube, his face falling. “But… but, Daddy Shiro, I don’t think I can….”

“No?” Shiro followed his gaze. “You know, you may be right.” With one finger, he swiped the toothpaste off his nose and added it to the plate. “You know, this toothpaste is a lot like your words. It may make you feel better in the short term to say a lot of things without thinking, but once those words are out….” He gestured to the plate. “You can’t take them back.” Next, he pointed at his nose, where a thin residue of toothpaste still remained. “Sometimes, you’ll even miss your intended target. And if you’ve ever bitten your cheek and forgotten about it until you started brushing your teeth, you know that sometimes words can find the little things that bother a person and really make them hurt. That’s what happened with Daddy Keith today.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “The truth is, Lance, we know that we’re not your birth parents; there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about it, that we don’t worry about whether we’re doing the right thing, or if maybe you three would’ve been happier with some other family. But we do our best, and… and I think we do all right, most days. So, Daddy Keith has been biting his cheek, and today you just got some toothpaste in it. But I bet it would help him feel better if you apologized. Okay?”

Leaving the empty tube and the plate of toothpaste on Lance’s desk for the moment, the two of them exited the room and set out to find Keith. When they found him reclining on the couch with a book, Shiro gave Lance a gentle nudge forward and cleared his throat. “Lance has something he would like to say,” he said once Keith looked up. Keith’s only response was to arch an eyebrow and lay the open book across his lap. “Go on,” Shiro prompted quietly.

Trying to formulate the best apology, Lance shuffled slightly from foot to foot. “Um… Daddy Keith, I… I’m….” Any plans he had managed to form went out the window when he finally managed to speak. “I’m sorry I hit you in the face with a plate of toothpaste.”

“… What?” Keith glanced between Lance, who was growing increasingly flustered, and Shiro, who was failing at stifling his laughter, and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. “You didn’t hit me with toothpaste, Lance, you….”

“I know!” Lance interrupted, frustration evident in his own voice. “I know what I did, what I said, and… and, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, even when I said it. I just… I wasn’t thinking, and the words just came out. I almost got in a fight with someone at school the other day when he said that to me about you, so I don’t… I don’t know why I even… You both are our real dads, no matter what anyone says, and I just… I’m so, so sorry….”

There were no longer any dry eyes in the room as Keith jumped up from the couch, his book forgotten. He pulled Lance into a tight hug. “Oh, sweetheart. It’s okay. I forgive you. Everyone says something they don’t mean every once in a while. It’s what you do afterward that counts.” Standing up straight after releasing the embrace, he looked at Shiro, tilting his head to one side quizzically. “Do I want to know why there’s toothpaste in your hair?”

#lordzuuko #voltron family #voltron legendary defender #voltron lance #voltron keith #voltron shiro #sheith #sheith family #think before you speak #what are tags

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