#lost lance AU

[crackship-connoisseur]

erm. *scratches head and walks away*

[autisticlancemcclain]

part one

———

Keith can feel it bubbling up inside him.

He’d like to think he’s grown to have a handle on it, the rage. It’s no longer his first reaction to things, no longer his response to everything. He’s not the little kid who trusted no one and hated himself for things that weren’t his fault anymore. He’s grown. He’s learnt to recognise how rarely he truly feels anger; how often it is pain, or sadness, or fear that he doesn’t know how to handle.

He knows this feeling is terror. He knows he is looking out into the endless, endless sea and quavering, in his mind, rendered mute at the future he may have, or lack thereof. What he is feeling is fear, at the roots of things.

But anger is all that’s bubbling up, anyway.

“Are you fucking serious!” he shouts, rattling the boat with the force of his rage. “You got us lost?!”

Luckily, or maybe unluckily considering their situation, Lance has never been the cowering type. He’s just as stubborn and headstrong as Keith, evident in the way he carefully sets down the useless GPS, jaw set, and turns to face Keith.

“I was not the only fool to inebriate myself in a largely unmanned vessel,” he shoots back. He’s doing that thing he does, when he’s furious, when he’s convinced he’d backed into a corner and on his own, where he speaks like a fucking decorated college professor so no one can accuse him of being stupid. ‘Lawyering up’, Keith has always called it. And usually it makes him sad on Lance’s behalf, knowing exactly the string of experience that has led him to that response, but right now it only pisses him off.

“Oh, cut the fucking bullshit, Lance. You were supposed to put down a fucking anchor!”

“I did!”

“Fucking obviously not!”

Lance’s fists clench, and a muscle jumps in his cheek from the tenseness of his jaw. His next words are growled, practically spat in Keith’s direction.

“I put a fucking anchor down, Kogane. It was the first thing I accomplished. It was a current anchor, and I’m certain I set it properly.”

Keith yells, wordless, just a loud shout so he doesn’t explode with everything inside him, gripping his hands in his hair so tightly it hurts. “Well, obviously fucking not, Lance, because I’m at fucking sea right now! Surrounded at all sides by fucking water!”

“How is it my fault that the anchor failed?” Lance shouts, finally cracking his careful composure. It satisfies Keith in a horrible kind of way, to see him just as frantic and furious as Keith is, no bullshit. “Huh? Want me to fucking take it up with the fuckers at the hardware store?”

“I’d love that, except you can’t, because you fucking got us lost!”

Something snaps in Lance’s expression, and he lunges forward, but before Keith can react, he brushes past him and dives overboard, crashing into the gentle waves. It takes Keith several seconds to fully register what the fuck just happened, and by the time he drops to his knees and leans over the side of the boat, Lance is several feet away and rapidly swimming farther.

“Lance!” he shouts, panic replacing the anger in his voice. The only thing worse than being stranded is being stranded by himself. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Lance pauses, treading water as he glances over his shoulder in Keith’s direction. “Avoiding doing something I regret, ” he says shortly. “I either shoved you or jumped myself. One of those is a significantly less shitty decision.”

Keith stares at him for a moment, then pinches the bridge of his nose, taking several seconds to exhale as long and loud and exasperated as he can. He’s almost annoyed to find a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“Lance,” he says, pursing his lips, “get the fuck back here, you pillar of dumbass.”

For several minutes Lance doesn’t, likely just to out-stubborn him, but eventually gives in and paddles over. He pauses at the edge of the boat, reaching up one hand to steady himself and letting the rest of him just float.

“I’m not going to yell anymore,” Keith says after several moments. He means it, too; he knew yelling and fighting wouldn’t solve anything but chose his fury over his fondness for Lance, and he wishes he hadn’t.

Lance shakes his head before he can finish. “Nah, I think a little yelling was necessary. I did get us lost. Well, kind of. Fifty-fifty, I think.”

“Fifty-fifty?!” Keith responds indignantly. “I think the fuck not, Oh Captain My Caption! Eighty-twenty at best!”

“That’s absurd. Fifty one-forty nine.”

“That’s not a real offer, jackass. You just brought yourself back up to ninety-ten.”

Lance flicks a drop of water at him, grinning. “Sixty-forty?”

Keith sighs. “I’ll take it.” He holds out a hand. “Come up, dorkbrain.”

Lance grabs his hand, smile widening. Keith realises his mistake a milisecond too late.

“Oh, you motherfucker —”

Lance yanks him into the sea, cackling as he sputters sea water on his way back up. His cackles turn quickly to shouts of alarms, though, when he reads the murder in Keith’s expression, and quickly he books it, swimming as fast as he can to the opposite side of the boat. Keith chases him with full intent to drag him under and drown his bitch ass, but unfortunately Lance grew up with a fuckin’ mermaid tail, or whatever, and Keith has to call it when he genuinely starts to worry he might drown from exhaustion.

He grabs the rope on the side of the boat, heaving himself up until his elbows hook over the edge, legs dangling in the water. Lance mirrors him, still on the opposite end. Keith is gratified at least to find him panting, out of breath as well. The look at each other, and reach a wordless agreement, climbing back onto the boat and flopping on the floor. The take a minute, chests heaving, to catch their breaths, sobering as they look up at the cloudless sky and truly realize the predicament they’ve gotten themselves into.

“Well, it could be worse,” Lance says quietly. He continues before Keith can ask him how the fuck that could be. “I mean, I planned for this to happen. Not, like, I planned for it to actually happen to us, but I packed a bunch of emergency supplies on the off-chance that we would somehow get stranded.”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “Yeah? For how long?”

“Well, long as shit, I would suppose. I packed enough for six people to last a month.”

“So the two of us are set for God knows how long.”

They lapse into silence, both pondering the seriousness of their strandedness, the reality of the helpless situation they’re in. They have food and water, sure, and a few other survival things, but what about shelter? Something that’s not a hard boat to sleep on, or old pillows? What about when it gets cold at night, or it rains, or they run into something bigger than their boat? They’re totally lost, communications dashed, GPS unavailable, and honestly still a little hungover. They are, objectively, in for a fuckin’ rough one.

A hand reaches over and wraps around Keith’s, startling him from his thoughts. He looks over at Lance, but Lance looks pointedly away, gaze fixed firmly at the sky, something unreadable written on his face.

“You know, not that it fixes anything,” he starts quietly. He hesitates a moment, long enough that Keith opens his mouth to ask him to finish his sentence, before continuing. “But I’m grateful, at least, that it’s you I’m stuck with.”

His words hang in the air, a heavy blanket settling over them. Keith’s face heats. The tiniest of smiles pulls at his lips, and he squeezes Lance’s hand as he looks away.

“Yeah,” he whispers, “yeah, I lucked out there.”

[aquabian]

making a weirdcore voltron au, its called lost souls :D

i only have one design and a half done but heres lance

hes a angel jester 🗣🔥 the people love lance

anyway heres some little lore pieces of him i did on my ig, forgive me for the mistakes i was doing this at 1am 😭

and then heres him and pidge

(they/her for pidge and he/him/her for lance 🗣🔥)

[sege-h]

When I say this is the au where Kamina lives, I Mean it

Even if I don't know what leads to this moment yet

[isacksteban]

any time renault nando is mentioned i have to resist the urge to scream and slam my head into a wall

[dreamofcamelot]

Where’s my mlb Merthur au a girl has dreams

[pbjamie17]

Voltron AU‼️‼️

(Lots of Coran and Lance bonding because Coran is the best uncle :))

When Lance was 10, he was locked out of his first room in the castle. It was his parent's–King Alfor & Queen Melenor–office. He'd been caught by a maid scribbling family portraits on very important legal documents.

Allura thought it was hilarious. She knew her twin brother was a trouble maker, but she never thought he'd actually get banned from a room. Melenor believed he had it coming, but that didn't mean she wasn't a twinge upset that her son wouldn't be bursting into the office sharing whatever strange fact he learned that day, usually regarding unique Galra behaviors.

The next thing Lance is banned from is meetings. Well, just the meeting room in general. He was 15, and it might've effected him more than he'd ever admit to his father. Or his mother. Or even Allura.

But the one person he did admit it to was Coran. His father's right-hand man. His best friend, his- well, Lance wasn't exactly sure what they were, but he didn't press it.

After he'd been kicked out of meetings, Lance had been sentenced to a constant monitor to make sure he wasn't causing any problems. That monitor was Coran. At first, Lance hated it. He hated being babysat like he couldn't take care of himself.

But it didn't take long for Coran's helicopter parenting to calm down. Eventually, he'd just wander around the castle, blabbering on about how much things had changed since he was younger, and despite the pulling feel in his stomach to wander off, Lance followed. He helped Coran with repairs, and even had his interest in Galra etiquette renewed when the older Altean mentioned them.

His happy days didn't last more than a few months, though. After Lance was banned from two more things.

First, it was family photos. After a particularly infuriating photo shoot, where Lance had refused to make a straight face, Alfor pulled him aside and announced that he didn't want Lance in the photos until he could learn to behave himself. So, never.

Hearing his father's words made Lance want to break down, sobbing and begging for his forgiveness, but he didn't. Instead, he made a sarcastic comment and ran off before the king could see how hurt he was.

Unfortunately for King Alfor, banning his son had the opposite effect of what he'd hoped for. Lance began acting out more instead of less, and his stunts became more and more chaotic.

Rumors about the Royal Alteans began to spread, and after an especially great show involving a lot of illegal drinks and a public appearance from the prince, Alfor knew he had to step in.

He approached Lance about a week before the twin's birthday. Lance was told that at the end of the birthday party, the king would make an announcement.

At the end of the day, Lance would be sent to a border patrol ship at the edge of Altea's reign. Which was a far distance from the atmosphere itself.

Lance almost laughed. Sure, he'd been a bit of a handful as of late, but he didn't think that it was that bad. But the king made it clear his mind was made up. He said that Lance could return to the ground as soon as he proved himself.

So, on his 16th birthday, Lance was banned from one final place.

His planet. His home. The Castle of Lions.

♡⑅*˖•. ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .•˖*⑅♡

Sorry, this probably sucks ass, but I had time on my hands and an AU in my head.

I'll probably update more about this, and maybe even upload it on Ao3 at some point, but just so you know, in this universe the war starts a few months after Lance and Allura turn 19, and Lance still hadn't returned to the castle by that point, but yada yada we'll get into that later. ;)

[antiquepearlss]

Did I just listen to a song from West Side Story after months of forgetting it existed and immediately begin to think of the Freckle and Team Awesome Siblings? Yes. Yes I did.

Did I just spend and hour writing a small fic despite the fact that I have another wip I need to finish plus an inbox full of requests I said I would do? Yes. Yes I did.

Do I regret it? No. Because Freckle Sibs and Eugene angst.

Rapunzel clenched her teeth. For the first time in her life, she was angry at Varian, her little brother. Which she felt guilty for, none of this was his fault, he lost his brother, his closest family member, he was hurting too. She desperately wanted to feel anything else than anger at him. She just wanted to be angry at the boy, the monster that killed her love. But no, Varian, her sweet lovely Varian, was defending him.

“A boy like that, who’d kill your brother, forget that boy and find another.” She began to sing, overcome with grief and rage. She turned to the young ravenette who was standing still, grief plastered over his face. If the Saporians had never tried to take the Coronans turf this never would have happened. Eugene would be alive and she wouldn’t have to wipe her or Varian’s tears. Her scowl hardened. “One of your own kind, stick to your own kind.” 

Grief and pain flashed across her little brother's face, and he promptly turned his head as he clenched his fists. She could feel the mix of anger and pain and heartbreak emanating from him. The room was filled with it. But unlike her, he was being stubborn and idiotic. 

She forced back a sob, her grief being pushed back by her rage. Varian was being blind to young love. He wasn’t thinking straight. She once prided him on his optimism and big heart, as she shared it with him. But eventually reality had to set in. Why it sat with her and not her baby brother, she wasn’t sure. 

Well, she was. He was blinded by young love. Young love with a murderer.

“A boy like that, will give you sorrow. You’ll meet another boy tomorrow. One of your own kind, stick to your own kind.” 

She would never force Varian to be with someone he didn’t love, but why couldn’t he have gotten with Faith, or Jane? Not Saporian scum. Clearly, they were all cruel inhumans. Bent on destroying her life. They took away her Eugene, and now they were trying to take away her Varian. They murdered her love and used cunning and trickery to manipulate her second love.

Varian scowled and he turned away, unable to even face his sister in her grief induced rage. He had never seen her like this, he didn’t want to, he couldn’t stand it. And he couldn’t stand that in a way, he was perpetuating it. He had hurt her. By being in love.

He swallowed back a sob. He lost his brother and he was going to lose his sister. Over some boy he met 48 hours ago. But he loved that boy. He was in love.

Rapunzel didn’t understand. Varian loved Eugene and he was heartbroken, utterly heartbroken. He wasn’t sure how to even go on after his death anymore. But, his death was inevitable. This gang war, this cycle, someone was always going to end up dying. Eugene was always going to end up dying by a Saporian’s hand. It just happened to be Hugo who was holding the knife. But he knew Hugo, he knew he didn’t want to kill his adoptive brother. It was all just a horrifying, unfortunate situation. But Rapunzel was too wrapped up in her grief to see it that way.

She, like him, had been against the turf war, the separation, the hatred. But, after years of the fighting, and then seeing her fiancée’s body in the morgue, the hatred had gotten to her too. He couldn’t say he blamed her, but why couldn’t she see Hugo was just another victim too?

“A boy who kills cannot love, a boy who kills has no heart.” Rapunzel sang angrily over Varian’s thoughts. His attempts to, avoid her, in a sense, hadn’t worked. She angrily stomped over to him  and grabbed his chin. She was gentle, but the anger in her eyes was more painful than if she had clawed him. 

“And he’s the boy who gets your love and get your heart. Very smart, Varian. Very smart.” She spat. 

Varian glared at her and ripped his head away from her hand. He rushed through the curtain acting as a door, desperate to get away from her. But she was quick on his heels, her grief and anger lacing her melodic voice and cutting through his heart. He held his hands over his ears, clawed his hair, and grit his teeth.

“A boy like that wants one thing only. And when he’s done he’ll leave you lonely. He’ll murder your love; he murdered mine. Just wait and see, just wait Varian, just wait and see.”

Varian’s grief, and building anger, boiled over. How dare she. No, he understood why she was mad, he sympathized with her. He was mad too, but she didn’t understand. He needed her to just listen. He turned to her, the neon signs from outside the kitchen window providing enough light to see her, contrasting with the eerie shadows of the small, darkened, run down apartment. All of Rapunzel’s paintings, crafts, and thrifted decor did nothing to offset the darkness that was cast in the wake of Eugene’s death. The darkness of the evening seemed much darker now.

“Oh no Rapunzel no. Rapunzel no.” He sang back, trying to be calming and loving. He wasn’t mad at her. He desperately just wanted her to listen, to not let her grief blind her and for her to be her open-hearted self again. “It isn’t true, not for me. It’s true for you, not for me.” He walked up to her, face to face. He felt tears begin to burn in his eyes, Rapunzel’s glare softened very slightly, so he continued.

“I hear your words, and in my head, I know they’re smart.” Because he did. He knew Rapunzel had every right to be angry and to hate Hugo. He knew that he should be angry and hate Hugo. But he didn’t, because he loved him too much to blame him. And he couldn’t stand Rapunzel, his sister, hating him and trying to get Varian to hate him.

Didn’t she always say that hate was the root of the problem here? What caused this war? Didn’t she see she was perpetuating this cycle? That she will end up just like Eugene and Andrew?

He loved Hugo. He wasn’t going to end up like them, like she was becoming. 

“But my heart, Rapunzel, but my heart, knows they’re wrong. And my heart is too strong. For I belong to him alone, to him alone. One thing I know, I am his. I don’t care what he is. I don’t care why it’s so. I don’t want to know.” While he sang, trying to get through to her, she stubbornly repeated her earlier words. “A boy like that, who killed your brother, forget that boy and find another. He’ll murder your love and he murdered mine. A boy who kills cannot love. A boy who kills has no heart. And he’s the boy who gets your love and gets your heart. Very smart, Varian, very smart!”

Both of their voices cracked, and their respective dams broke. Rapunzel was giving him the most angry, hateful, pained look. Varian glared at her. Both, through their tears. 

Whilst singing, Varian’s nervous restless nature had backed the two of them into the nearly pitch black bedroom Varian had claimed.

“Oh no Rapunzel no, you should know better!” He practically screamed. “You were in love, or so you say!”

Varian panted, sweat and tears mixing down his face. Rapunzel looked about the same. They were standing toe to toe, two broken hearts. Two grieving hearts. Rapunzel was angry and hateful, she was hurting. And he was making it worse.

He never wanted to see the face she was making at his words again. The pain, the hurt, the betrayal. It hurt him. 

His glare softened and he took on a gentler tone. He took her hands and sat down onto the worn down mattress. She joined him, the dip brought them side to side, touching.

“You should know better.”

“I have a love, and it’s all that I have. Right or wrong, what else can I do?” “I love him, I’m his. And everything he is, I am too.” He leaned his forehead onto hers as he crooned. She leaned into him with a sob.

Because she could understand Varian. He fell in love easily but he had never fallen as hard as he had with Hugo. The two were practically made for eachother. One look at them and she had begun to plan their wedding. And she knew, down in her heart, past the grief induced anger, that Hugo loved Varian. That Hugo was a good person. He had left the Saporians. Sure he had a rivalry with Eugene, but he wasn’t a murderer. He had just happened to be holding the knife.

She didn’t forgive Hugo, she didn’t think she could yet, if ever. But she couldn’t blame Varian for loving him. And she couldn’t live with herself if she ever convinced him to abandon his love for him. They were made for eachother, they were deeply and madly in love, they were best friends. 

They had what she and Eugene had. How could she take that away from Varian? Especially when she knew Eugene could be a bad person, and had hurt her family? Not the same way Hugo had, but she didn’t want to be hypocritical. Eugene had hurt people and he had changed. He had invited his baby cousin to come live with him and doted on the young boy, treating him as a cherished little brother. He used to be a selfish thief, and had remained a gang member. But he was also a doting and loving fiancée, and a loving brother, with big dreams for their family.

They were the only family they had left anymore. She wasn’t going to leave him, she wasn’t going to hurt him. 

She couldn’t live with herself, and she didn’t want Eugene to look down from Heaven to see the two most important people in his life separated. To see that she abandoned his baby brother, their baby brother.

Besides, love changed a person. It changed Eugene. There was no way Varian’s love wasn’t going to change Hugo, if it hadn’t already. 

She knew that man felt remorse, guilt, for what he had done.

In a way, a very small way, that was enough for her.

She could feel their anger subside as she placed a hand on Varian’s cheek, and cried with him. She listened to him sing through his tears, she knew he knew she was listening to him.

“I have a love, and it’s all that I need. Right or wrong, and he needs me, too. I love him, we’re one. There’s nothing to be done. Not a thing I can do. But hold him, hold him forever. Be with him now, tomorrow, and all my life.”

Rapunzel let the words sit in and resonate with her. She understood. She absolutely understood. She opened her eyes along with Varian. She smiled weakly at him. Her eyes were pained, but loving. Varian reciprocated the look. 

Rapunzel loved Eugene despite all the pain he had caused, and Varian loved Hugo despite all the pain he had caused. 

And Rapunzel loved Varian. And Varian loved Rapunzel. They were best friends, siblings, family.

Rapunzel pulled her little brother into a hug which he gladly accepted, wrapping his arms around her like she was a lifeline, and burying his head into her shoulder, the shawl she wore still reeking of death from the morgue. She wrapped her arms around him supportively, protectively, lovingly.

The two sang in unison.

“When love comes so strong, there is no right or wrong, the love is your life.”

[lost326]

yo Voltron fandom remember this?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159153/chapters/18698024

[arrow-v-flash-polls]

The two are great detectives along with being supportive fathers to hero children who don't always understand what's going on but are there to make sure good prevails. The two only met the once in cannon but do you like to see the two together romanically, prefer them more platonically or rather not see the two together at all?

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

hiii uh. dunno if this will make any sense, im kinda just throwing my thoughts at you

OKAY. so. been thinking about kuron(again) and the thing im just realising how ALONE he is, at least at the beggining. the people he thought of as his family fucking KILLED him, stole his body, and then basically forgot about him for YEARS. and after being ressurected- like, in the first few days, weeks, months- did kuron had ANY support? anyone to lean on?? to help him adjust to being alive again?

i know he starts to meet new people and make friends, and thats great! but. at the beggining....... lance was in a coma 'n shit, team voltron propably wasnt too enthusistic about helping kuron, and it just hit me that, at least the way i understand it(i might be wrong), he had to figure EVERYTHING out by himself

thats FUCKED dude

Oh god yes!!! To be honest i dont really have like a detailed idea for this part of the story like at best i have this one idea where Veronica is the first one to find him. Like in my head Veronica has been trying to track down Lance cause he ran away/didnt give the address once he moved out, isnt picking up his goddamn phone and literally dropped from the face of the earth and she cant find a trace of him. That was until apparently Lance?? 'Attacked' Shiro?? Like Shiro's fine just fainted and on bedrest and according to Curtis, Lance was saying something about "he is still in there" before apparently using Magic?? Somehow?? And taking something? From Shiro?? Yeah Veronica has no fucking clue. But a lead is a lead and she was able to track down Lance's new home only to find 1) a guy butt fuck naked coming out of a quintessence filled tub like the girl from Shining and who looks a bit like her boss. 2) her brother unconscious. She instinctly about to pull a gun on him except Kuron just slips and hits the floor, so now Veronica has two men she needs to drag to a hospital. Joy.

So like yeah Kuron's first stranger-to-acquintance-to-friend is Veronica. She neither has the history of All That™ the others have with Kuron, knows a bit about the clone situation to not be weirded out by it, but also doesnt really care about the whole Evil Clone thing™, cause i am so sorry but she has seen this man fall on his face first 5 times and counting, cry over a fridge ad that had kittens in it, and try to name himself Frank Shelley, even if he somehow becomes Evil~ Veronica is sure she can just Take him down easily, and like what is she supposed to do? Just leave him? He clearly has even less of an idea what is going on and she cant in good conscience leave him like this.

And thing is that Veronica does want to support Kuron, because he deserves that! It's the right thing to do and he deserves that! But at the start he really is a stranger to her and Lance is more of a priority to her than he is, and he is like one of the only leads that explains what is going on with Lance. And while she wont admit this but Kuron can tell and like logically He Gets That™!! He Gets That™!!! And he wants to help Lance too!! But he's also someone who is used and thrown away by everyone around him and this shit hurts like hell. Like this is a recipe of disaester for both of them and will result in a shouting match but right now Kuron is too high on pain meds and pain of being alive again to truly get into it so.

So like physically he isnt really alone in figuring this out, Veronica is trying to help him as much as she can help him, and the hospital staff she dragged him to are really nice to him as well. Emotionally......well there is effort. Vero is trying! Heck she even defended him when Shiro suggested they should lock him up cause he was a danger to everyone and is evil. She is trying but she also has her own trauma, whatever is going on with Lance, her family having separation anxiety, her job, etc etc and she can only do so much, and like Kuron is also trying but he is also dealing with so much and pushing it into the back burner and my guy is just not having great time at all. So like yeah he did had to figure out so much himself

[crackship-connoisseur]

uhhhhhhm some kissy stuff for a thing

[autisticlancemcclain]

Keith kind of feels like he’s breaking the law when he steps on the marina.

He’s not, of course. The docks are open to the public, and he is The Public. Well, one of them, anyway. But looking at the myriad of speedboats and yachts parked (parked? Is parked the right word? God, Keith doesn’t know shit about boats), Keith is getting a little nervous. He feels like his shitty credit score is tattooed on his forehead, like a honing beam of judgement for the various rich people he can see drinking on their luxury boats at eleven in the morning because none of them have jobs. What the hell is Lance doing inviting them all on a ‘boat trip’, anyway? Lance sure as shit can’t afford a boat. He probably can’t afford to rent one, either. Keith once witnessed him pay for a single pack of ramen with a ziploc bag of pennies.

Keith stops at the parking spot (??) Lance texted him, glancing down at his phone, squinting, then back up at the boat at spot 93. It’s a decently large boat, but not equipped to live on. It doesn’t necessarily look like a party boat, but not like it’s for fishing, either. It looks, to Keith, like a decently nice boat. Probably a few ten thousand dollars.

Did Lance steal this fucking boat?

No, right? Lance isn’t good at stealing. Well, he’s not good at not getting caught. He’s shit at lying and usually just bats his eyelashes until he gets his way. He’s not even that successful at it. Certainly not successful enough to flirt his way into boat ownership. Probably. There was that time he flirted his way out of a speeding ticket, but still, a boat? That’s —

“Keith! Keith! Hi! Over here!” Keith startles at Lance’s voice, craning his neck over to try and see over the bow of the boat. He knows that tone of Lance’s voice — he’s definitely leaning over something and waving like a lunatic, beaming brightly, brown eyes squinted in his enthusiasm.

“Lance?” Keith calls, smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Where are you?”

“Behind you, dummy! Turn around! You got the wrong boat!”

Keith whirls around, yelping as he slips in a puddle and his stupid flipflops — he knew he should have ignored Shiro and worn his boots — slide out from under him. He windmills his arms to no avail, landing flat on his ass.

Lance hyena laughs, because he is a horrible jackass who thinks Keith’s pain is funny.

Resisting the urge to roll off the dock and drown himself in the marina (if only because he can see some really long seaweed growing in the water and the idea of it touching his legs or something makes him want to throw up) Keith pulls himself to his feet.

“Let me up,” he grouches.

Lance wipes a fake tear from his eye, tossing down an honest-to-god rope ladder. “Oh, that was the good stuff. Hey, buddy, do you maybe want to trip again? I could use the laugh.”

“I’m gonna strangle you with this rope the second I get up there.”

“Mhm. Sure, Mullet. Mutiny your captain.”

“Ha!” Keith swings his legs over the side of the boat, pulling it up after him. “You’re no captain, you dork.”

Lance sticks his tongue out at him. “Am so! My boat, after all.”

Keith accepts Lance’s hug, squeezing back just as tightly. Lance’s hugs are always tight. He hugs like he’s seeing you for the first time in months, like he won’t see you again for ages, like he’s saying it’s-good-to-see-you and hello-goodbye and I’m-going-to-miss-you all in one. It’s intoxicating. It makes Keith want to hold him for eternity.

“Having a boat does not make you a captain,” Keith teases, forcing himself to pull away and act like a normal person. “How’d you get this piece of shit, anyway? No offense.”

Because this boat is kind of a piece of shit, especially compared to the one he was mistakenly in front of earlier. It’s not, like, falling apart or anything, but it’s a little rusty in some parts, and a whole heap smaller. He can stand at one end of the boat and walk maybe fifteen steps to the other end, straight across. The end he’s on has a cooler — filled with booze if he knows Lance, and he’d like to think he does — and some crates of what Keith can only assume is boat equipment (again, Keith doesn’t know shit about boats). The other end has the steering wheel, and dozens and dozens of pillows and blankets at the base of it. The inner walls of the boat have several cute paintings, ranging from silly doodles that are painted with the confident hand of a child and beautifully intricate landscapes.

Lance smiles again when he sees where Keith is looking, running gentle fingertips over a blocky drawing of some imagined creature.

“Veronica got this project boat with her ex girlfriend forever ago,” he explains. “It didn’t work when they got it. It didn’t even have an engine. She’s been rebuilding it forever, and I’ve been helping!”

Keith grins. “You mean you’ve been handing her tools and running errands?”

Lance glares. “I — did other things! I painted it!”

“That’s true,” Keith admits. He glances at the many paintings again, colourful and bright and dorky. “They’re nice.”

“Nice,” Lance scoffs, but there’s no hurt in his voice. “This boat could be in the Louvre!”

Keith has to physically shove down the gooey shit he wants to say to that. It’s not easy. His brain is annoying.

“Where’s everyone else?” he says instead. “I’m never the first person to these things.”

For the first time since Keith arrived, Lance starts to look a little troubled. “I was going to ask you that, actually. Hunk said he and Pidge were going to meet up at your’s and Shiro’s house? And Allura and Shiro have barely spent a day apart since they started that project at work, so I figured she was coming with you guys.”

“I thought the team was meeting up with you,” Keith says slowly. “Shiro left before me.”

For the briefest of seconds, Lance’s face collapses into something absolutely crestfallen. Just as quickly it shutters, and his eyes dull as he physically forces a pleasant look on his face.

“I’m sure they’re on their way,” he says. “I’ll call them, maybe they —”

Something uncomfortable begins to churn in Keith’s stomach. “Lance —”

“—hopefully they’re all okay —”

“Lance, maybe —”

“Hey, Lance!”

Pidge sounds downright giggly, which is beyond unusual. Keith can’t remember the last time he described Pidge as giggly. Maniacal, sure, sweet even — occasionally, Keith might add — but never giggly.

Immediately he’s suspicious.

“Hey, Pidge,” Lance says. There’s so much hope in his voice that it’s painful to hear. “You on your way over?”

There’s rustling over the phone, and a muffled hey, no pushing!, then some more rustling.

“We actually can’t make it,” someone says apologetically.

The crestfallen look is back on Lance’s face, and this time he can’t quite fight it off.

Hunk continues, totally oblivious. “This huge thing came up at work, so me and Pidge are swamped, and we figured if we couldn’t make it then it wouldn’t be a whole crew thing, so Shiro and Allura figured it would be best to finish their project too —”

“That’s fine,” Lance says. His voice is reedy. He hangs up in the middle of Hunk promising to reschedule sometime soon. The muffled bang of his phone hitting the wooden floorboards is deafening, a million times louder than the waves beating softly up against the side of the boat. Keith is completely frozen where he stands, looking at Lance with wide eyes.

What the fuck was that? Never in the time that he has known them has any one of his friends been so…callous. He’s spent his whole life measuring himself to Shiro’s example, for fuck’s sake. He’s always been proud to have friends as good as his, because they are good: good friends, good people. Sure, they’re all a little weird and scatterbrained and all over the place, but they’ve never blatantly blown someone off before. Especially not Lance; not when he’s been planning something for them for weeks. He’s hardly talked about anything else, even if he wouldn’t tell them any details so as not to spoil the surprise. He practically glowed every time he had the chance to bring it up, and that’s not just Keith’s opinion.

“Lance,” Keith tries, walking over to where he stands, motionless at the helm. He doesn’t so much as twitch at Keith’s voice, as if he doesn’t hear him. “Lance?” Keith tries again, hesitantly putting a hand on his arm. Lance startles at the touch. He looks lost for a moment, then he plasters that same plasticly pleasant look on his face.

“Lance,” Keith says again, for the third time in a row. It’s pleading, this time. Please don’t pull that with me.

But Keith doesn’t have the words for that, so Lance doesn’t hear it.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind taking this trip with just you,” Lance says, puffing out his chest in that bravado way of his he does when he’s trying his hardest to be obnoxious. “I mean, the stink of your mullet is a little suffocating, but I think I’ll manage.”

Beginning to feel like a broken record, Keith says his name again. He can’t quite keep the hurt out of his voice, for Lance and for him, really. It feels almost like a betrayal, like everyone would let then down like this, without so much as a word of apology. He can’t imagine how upset Lance must truly be.

“Unless you have somewhere to be, too?” Lance says loudly, cutting him off. His expression hasn’t changed, but there’s something almost pleading in his eyes, like he’s begging Keith to drop it, to take the bait, to change to subject.

Keith is most definitely reading into things. But he changes the subject anyway.

He raises an eyebrow, decking Lance in the shoulder. “I’m not the stinky one, Mr Axe Body Spray.”

“I have never used Axe in my life!” Lance shrieks, incensed. Some genuine incredulousness bleeds into his voice, which is both relieving and gratifying — it’s good to know that Keith can rely on his ability to rile Lance up in one sentence. “It’s a tasteful designer cologne that Rachel gets me for Christmas every year because she has no idea how to buy presents for people!”

“Yeah, that you fuckin’ bathe in.”

“I put a little bit on my wrists and neck, you jackass —”

“— and your arms and legs and face and hair and —”

“I am going to shove you overboard to be eaten by orcas, you shithead.”

“Yeah, yeah. You gonna take me on this boat ride you promised, or are you gonna keep stalling?”

Rolling his eyes and grumbling, Lance starts the engine, clumsily guiding the boat out of its parking spot (?????) and starting out to open sea. After sailing them far enough that they nearly lose sight of shore, Lance kills the engine, dragging the cooler over to the nest of pillows.

“I bought half the liquor store,” he says, voice muffled as he ruffles through it. “You see, the original intent was to get all six of us plastered, and getting Hunk plastered is both difficult and expensive.” He sounds a strange mix of bitter and amused, which Keith feels is understandable. He finally finds what he’s looking for, bottles clinking as he yanks two out. “I hate vodka, and since Pidge isn’t here to clown me for it, I’m drinking this entire bottle of bellini instead. I brought you scotch, since you are the soul of an angsty cowboy trapped in the body of an annoying nerd.”

Keith takes the offered bottle. He recognises the brand — it’s cheap, it’s gross, and it’s fucking concentrated. He takes a swig and gags.

“Lance, this shit tastes like gasoline.”

He bottle of something hits him in the chest, hard.

“Ow!”

“Gatorade! I thought ahead!”

Sure enough, Lance has thrown — rudely — to him a half litre bottle of red Gatorade, Keith’s favourite.

“It’s double smart, because not only does it make alcohol taste less shit, but it’s got electrolytes so you won’t get a hangover.”

Keith tilts his head questioningly. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Works for me,” Lance says, shrugging.

“Yeah, but you get drunk off two shots, twig boy. Fuck, you’re already tipsy and you’ve only had a third of that bottle.”

“And this bottle was only eight dollars! Hell yeah to me!”

Keith snorts, clinking his bottle with Lance’s and taking a swig, chasing it down with the Gatorade.

He makes a face. Unfortunately instead of making the scotch taste better, the scotch is making the Gatorade taste worst. Ugh.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot the music! I brought your favourite album too, emo boy.”

Lance scrambles to his feet, tripping immediately on one of the many pillows. Keith surges forward, thrusting his arm around Lance’s chest, barely keeping him from faceplanting on the floor.

“Jesus, Lance. You’re the worst lightweight I’ve ever met.”

Lance giggles. The tension that had strung his shoulders after the call as melted away, at least a little. Keith doesn’t even feel the buzz of the alcohol yet, but he’s definitely feeling a little looser.

“How about you sit down, huh? You’re gonna fall on your face. Did you eat today? You don’t usually get this tipsy so easy.”

Lance squints, thinking for a minute. “Fuck, no. I made myself eggs this morning but then Sylvio was late to ballet and Lisa had already left to take Nadia to football so I had to take him and by the time I got back I barely had enough time to pack everything and get to the boat and —”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, amused. “Get some of the food from the cooler. I’ll get the music. Where’s all the stuff?”

“Second crate,” Lance says, mouth full. Gross. “The one with the Moana stickers.”

Keith takes another swig of scotch, makes a face, and then sets it down, ambling over to the box. Between the waves gently rocking the boat and the slight heaviness of his limbs that he’s starting to feel, he barely makes it without tripping just as much as Lance would have, but hey. He successfully conned Lance out of picking the music, so who’s the real winner here?

“Lance, you pretentious indie dweeb!” Keith exclaims, laughing. In the box is a bright pink Bratz CD player that he no doubt stole from the back of one of his sister’s closets, and a stack of maybe forty CDs.

“Physical media rules!” Lance cheers. “Fuck subscriptions!”

Rolling his eyes fondly, Keith locates the album Lance was talking about, loading it into the disc drive and pressing play.

The future is bulletproof, the aftermath is secondary…

He carefully nudges up the handle, trying carefully to walk with the waves so he doesn’t drop Lance’s player as he brings it back to the pillow nest.

“I think you’re actually just too broke to afford Spotify, dude.”

Lance shrugs. “Eh, that’s part of it.” He tosses the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth, washing it down with another gulp of bubbling peach wine right from the bottle. Keith follows his example, making a face again, because Lord above the Gatorade does not help at all.

“Yeah? What’s the other part?”

“You sure you want to know?” Lance asks, setting down his wine and scooching closer to Keith. He crosses his legs and puts his hands in his lap, leaning forward, dark eyes wide and expression serious.

Keith nods, intrigued.

Lance’s eyes turn mischievous. “Well, you see, my favourite music is garbage pop music.”

Keith has been in the car with Lance before. He’s well aware. He’s heard more Kesha and Justin Bieber than any one person should ever have to, and he even likes their music well enough. Lance is just insane.

“Believe me, I’m aware.”

“And as you may also be aware, I am contractually obligated to be the most annoying person in any room.”

Keith snorts. “Okay?”

“Think about it, doofus. When I pull out the CDs, all the pop lovers roll their eyes, because they think I’m a pretentious indie asshole.” He gestures to Keith, referencing his earlier comment. “Exhibit A.”

“…Fair. Carry on.”

“But when whatever badly dubbed party music I’m in the mood for starts blaring from my speakers, all the indie people think I’m a poser! It’s a win-win.”

Keith laughs outright. He knows the exact kind of indie people Lance is talking about, and just imagining their scandalized faces is funny.

“No one pisses people off quite like you, Lance McClain. I’ll give you that.”

Lance preens. “Thank you. It’s a gift.”

They work their way through their respective bottles, and then they split a cooler, both of them well past tipsy by the time the album ends. Lance wobbles over to his CD selection and ruffles through for what feels like ages, whooping when he finds what he’s looking for. He flashes to case at Keith, showing ‘KARAOKE TUNEZ’ written in Lance’s loopy handwriting.

“No way,” Keith protests, although not very hard.

“Yes way!” Lance insists. He grips onto the steering wheel, heaving himself up. The boat lunches slightly, making them both laugh, but finally he’s steady on his feet — or at least as steady as you can be while drunk — just as Taylor Swift’s Love Story starts blaring. He grabs Keith’s hands and pulls him up, and both of them almost go tumbling again, but they manage to stay upright, leaning on each other and laughing themselves stupid.

“We don’t need them!” Lance yells as the banjos go off. Keith is so plastered that he barely remembers who Lance is talking about. It takes him a solid thirty seconds to remember that there were supposed to be four other people on this boat, drinking all this booze, and Keith and Lance have plowed their way through a good half of it on their own. Oops. “Sing louder, country boy!”

Keith does. He sings himself hoarse, actually, as Lance’s mixtape clicks through every great song from the last forty years, dancing around and shaking his head and revelling in the fact that there’s no one there to watch him. No one but Lance, who’s pretending to throw dollar bills at him.

It’s the most fun he’s had in ages.

He stops drinking at some point — not by choice, but something bumps the side of the boat and his bottle goes flying — but by then it doesn’t matter. He’s so plastered that everything is glowing and warm and fantastic and he’s dancing with Lance and he can’t remember what feeling bad looks like, or why he’d even bother in the first place. All he cares about is watching the sun go down, cheering with Lance as it does, then dancing around with him in drunken circles until one of them trips, dragging them both on top of the pillow next in a giggling mess.

“Let’s just stay here for a while,” Lance suggests. His voice is so slurred that it sounds more like Lez jussay ere for whi’, but Keith thinks he’s got it. “The stars are nice.”

Keith snorts. “Sure. Stars. Not because you can’t stand, or anything.”

“I can so stand!” Lance protests, but he’s laughing too much for any true argument to come through. “Lemme — I’ll show you!”

“Sit down, dumbass,” Keith says, grabbing his shirt and yanking him back down. “You’re gonna go overboard and drown. Just — lay back with me a while.”

Lance looks at him a while, squinted look fading into something more open and relaxed the longer he stares. The lights on the boat are dim, but the darkness around them is so deep that they get swallowed up. Under the stars, Lance’s eyes are so brown and glossy they’re black, blacker than the ocean. Keith feels there’s a bigger danger drowning in them than in the sea.

“Okay,” Lance says softly. There’s a flash of his teeth as he smiles. Keith watches as his silhouette flops backwards on the pillows, arms resting in a heap around his head, beat-up pink converse slapping the ground as he relaxes his legs.

Keith takes a few more seconds to look at him. There’s not much to see, illuminated by the tiny lights in the boat, but Keith takes a moment anyway.

A hand shoots up, very narrowly missing smacking him straight in his nose. Long fingers curl tightly around the collar of his loosely-buttoned shirt and the next thing he knows he’s being yanked down, yelping.

“I’m not lying here alone, Mullet-head. This is a party.”

“Yeesh, okay, I’m coming.”

Lance doesn’t say anything more, bar a quiet huff of amusement, as Keith settles next to him. They lie in silence next to each other, their earlier energy slowly cooling down, just watching the stars, rocked by the gentle waves.

Keith is out like a light in twenty minutes.

———

When Keith wakes, three horrible things hit him at once: his head pounds, his mouth tastes like rotten fish marinating in dog shit, and everything around him is so, so goddamn bright it honestly feels kind of targeted. Fuck the sun.

“Lance, I hate you,” Keith mumbles, because he feels like blaming Lance is a safe bet. He squints until he locates the asshole in question, who is curled up with all of the pillows — which explains why Keith is currently laying on the cold hard floor — and still sleeping peacefully.

Ugh. How dare he.

Cursing, Keith drags himself to his feet, having to pause for a while on his knees to orient himself and fight down the nausea. When he’s finally upright, he stumbles over to the cooler, thankfully still cold, and gulps down the first water bottle he gets his hands on in three seconds. His next bottle he drinks a little more carefully, swishing the water around his mouth to substitute for brushing his teeth until they can get back to shore.

Once he actually starts to feel like a person again, complete with rational, semi-linear thought process, he looks around himself with fresh eyes. They’re a lot… farther out than he thought they were, but he figures everyone feels like that once the shore is out of eyesight. They can’t be too far, the boat’s gas tank isn’t all that big. They don’t seem to have lost anything overboard while drunk and dumb, which is good. He sees all three crates from before they left, and the cooler is obviously still here. Lance is still actively hogging every single one of the pillows, a couple blankets as well, totally dead to the world. Keith checks his phone, noting with a sigh of relief that he still has about half battery life, and it’s not even that late in the day — ten o’clock; plenty of time to ride home and recalibrate before work tomorrow. All is well.

He finishes his second water bottle, tossing the empty plastic back into the cooler for lack of other places to put it, and stumbles back over to the helm and the pillow pile.

“Lance,” he tries, poking him half-heartedly. “Time to wake up.”

Lance groans, grabbing one of the numerous pillows and shoving it over his head.

“Oh, come on. It’s ten in the morning. You’ve had a ton of time to sleep. Time to go home.”

“Keith, fuck off.”

Keith will deny the automatic quirk of his lips at Lance’s gravelly, sleep-heavy voice, along with the immediate and reflective satisfaction that bubbles up when Lance is annoyed.

It’s his own brain. He’s allowed to think and feel whatever the hell he wants in his own brain, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.

“If you get up now, I promise to let you have first pick of the leftover sandwiches.”

There’s a pause, considering, and then a long, drawn-out groan as Lance bitchily unburies himself from the pillow pile and crawls over to the cooler.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Keith mutters, grinning.

It takes Lance’s zombie ass twice as long as it took Keith to wake up, because Lance is the most vampiric person Keith knows. The only time he ever sees the sunrise is when he just decides not to sleep through the night. Keith doesn’t think he’s woken up before eleven in years.

“Ready to head back?” Keith asks, once some of the life has returned to Lance’s eyes. He only grunts in reply, but that’s not a huge surprise. It’ll be another forty minutes until Lance can make himself speak again.

Keith settles against the side of the boat, rearranging the pillows so he can sit comfortably and dick around on his phone while Lance steers them back to shore. There’s no signal this far out, so he just ends up switching between cleaning out his camera roll and playing Temple Run as discreetly as he can, because he and Lance have a lowkey competition going on for this game for the past three years now, and Keith will not lose. Lance may currently have the upper hand but not for long, baby, because Keith has —

“Shit,” Lance says, very very quietly, and Keith feels dread pool in his stomach like a rock.

“Lance?” he questions, and inconspicuously as possible. “All good?”

“Fine,” Lance says, only his voice sounds very high-pitched and not fine, because Lance is a garbage liar. “Everything is manageable. No need to worry.”

Keith abandons his game, looking up to give Lance his full attention. He’s got one hand white-knuckling the steering wheel, despite the calmness of the waves, and the other jamming a bunch of buttons on a little device. His face is grey in panic.

“Lance, tell me what’s wrong.” He tries his best to keep his tone even and calm, but it doesn’t go well. The panic wells up in him and it wells up fast, because he can see nothing but blue skies and sea and the captain of the goddamn boat he’s on is looking like he’s on death row.

“Well, it’s all fine, really, but the thing is that the GPS is doing its level best to tell us where we are and it’s having a bit of a moment. A struggle, if you will. Honestly not that big of —”

“Lance,” Keith interrupts, sealing back the bile in his throat, “please tell me we’re not fucking lost.”

Lance laughs, high-pitched and humourless and scared. “Sure,” he says, once he’s gotten ahold of himself. “I won’t tell you.”

[justaz]

watching one of my favorite childhood movies princess protection program and thinking of a klance au. god they’re horrible. look what they’ve done to me. they take over everything i love.

[azsazz]

Shots & Spins

Hockey!Azriel x Ice Skater!Reader

Summary: Req from @kristijenner19: I saw you were thinking about hockey!AZ because same. How about a fic where she's a figure skater and they're trying to teach each other their respective sports. Imagine poor Az trying to do a spin/jump/twizzle and a reader who can barely ever make a shot into a goal

Bonus points if they switch their skates and have to re-learn how to skate with the new blade

Warnings: Mild panic attack, mentions of readers injury (torn ACL), trauma from coaches (verbal) mentioned.

Word Count: 3088

Other Fics in the Hockey!Az AU: Penance, Shut Out, Out of Order, All's Well That Ends Well, Brr-eakdown

HOCKEY SZN SOON MY LOVES 💙💙

Notes: I swear I meant to make this cuter but of course, I had to give it some angst 😅

_________________________________________

“What is this?” You question. You’re probably being rude, with your nose scrunched in disgust. With the way you’re holding the pair of skates as far away from your body as possible, you’re pretty sure you look like the biggest bitch on all of campus. But for the life of you, you can’t figure out why Azriel has handed you hockey skates.

“They’re skates,” Azriel answers. You rip your glare from the offending skates at his obvious response. Your heart stumbles in your chest at the sight of his pink lips twitching, begging to reveal that grin he spends most of his time expertly hiding.

You don’t even realize you’re leaning closer in anticipation, so eager to see that smile until the hitch of his breath snaps you back to consciousness.

You rock back on your heels so quickly you nearly tumble over. Would tumble over if it weren’t for Azriel’s quick reflexes, his large hands enveloping your waist and steadying you back on your feet.

“Thanks,” you reply flatly, dipping your chin to the ground to hide your flaming cheeks. There’s not an ounce of amusement in your body.

“You’re welcome.” You don’t like the smugness in his tone or the way he’s playing with you. Tilting your face back up, you muster all the annoyance lancing through your veins at his retort, shooting him the nastiest glare.

“That’s not what I meant, Az, and you know it. Why am I holding a pair of hockey skates?”

Azriel sits on the bench beside the empty arena, and you want to pout. Why would you want to spend any more time at the rink than you already do? You’re bone-fucking-tired and your knee is feeling stiff. You overdid it in practice this week, trying to get back into the shape you were in before the time you’d been forced to take off, and it’s hitting you hard. All you really want to do is crawl home, roll out your muscles, and dive into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

When you don’t join Azriel, he says, with a humor you don’t feel, “Don’t tell me you forgot about our little bet. Or how you so gracefully lost it.”

Of course you hadn’t forgotten. Who could forget losing at something as simple as a race across the arena? Afterwards, you tried to blame it on the differences in the ice, how it was colder and harder than you were used to, as it was prepared for the hockey team’s game later that weekend.

A rookie mistake, honestly. One that you’ve been kicking yourself over up until this very moment. Well, if you could kick with your injured leg, that is, you’d be doing just that.

You grind your teeth as a memory rises to the forefront of your mind. Your coach’s voice rings in your head, shrill and reprimanding. Why would you take such foolish chances? You need to get your head in your sport or you’re never going to make it on the Olympic team, let alone the University team.

Shame presses down on you, and your eyes prick at the criticism you should be used to by now. Your private coach from your time before Velaris University, Amarantha, had been very creative with her insults, always coming up with comments worse and harsher to cut down any semblance of confidence you had in your sport.

You bet she’s thrilled that you won’t be back in her presence until you’re healed enough. If you heal enough to relearn the very trick that took you out of the running for the Olympic team in the first place.

It must be a thing, coaches insulting their prodigies. You glance at Azriel from the corner of your eye and wonder if his coach is the same way. If Rhys is brutal with his teammates.

And you hate losing. It was Azriel who you wished forgotten about the bet you’d so stupidly agreed to, but here he is, wearing the same look that got you into this position in the first place.

You take your time studying him as you mull over how to get out of this. Azriel’s broad shoulders take up the space of two people, and his deep, dark hair falls over his brow, growing out into the perfect flow all the players seem to be sporting right now. You wonder if it’s superstition or they actually like the look. His thick lashes sweep as he bats them, and your cheeks take on a pink hue as he pretends to preen under your attention.

“Look,” he all but sighs, giving up his act. He leans back, reaching over to grab something out of sight. When Azriel rightens himself, he holds a pair of figure skates, a sheepish smile on his face. The apples of his cheeks mottle with pink. “I got myself figure skates, so we can both look like fools out there. Together.”

Fuck. The sentiment makes your throat tighten. He doesn’t have to be so damn thoughtful, you’re hardly even friends for Mother’s sake.

“Fine,” you manage when you can speak again. You plop onto the bench beside him. Your knee throbs dully in protest, but it’s nothing you haven’t been able to smother before. You’ve worked through worse conditions than hockey prepped ice, have skated in casts and aches so deep you weren’t sure you’d be able to compete at all if it weren’t for your raw love for the sport and your brutal stubbornness, holding yourself to the highest of standards.

And it’s not like you’re going to be doing your usual tricks. No, that’s all Azriel. All you have to manage is a few forward spirals, twizzles, and perhaps an axel just to show off a little, because there’s no way he’ll be able to recreate all of that in one go.

You just hope your knee stays steady for a few more hours.

The both of you lace your shoes in silence. The hockey skates are so different from your figure skates, you note. The blade is much thicker than you’re used to, more curved too. The boots are shorter, and you grimace at the lack of ankle support.

Not to mention you’re not entirely sure how well you’ll be able to stop without your toe pick.

Azriel leads you to the ice. You step on tentatively, giving the new skates a test. They have a lot more give than you’re used to. They’re not as snug, but easy enough to navigate. Muscle memory kicks in and after a few sluggish runs up and down the ice, you think you’ve gotten the hang of it.

The rest of this bet should be a breeze, especially compared to how Azriel is faring.

His face is contorted with a concentrated frown. He looks stiff as a fucking board, which make you giggle and him complain about. “How the hell do you wear these things? I can barely even move my ankles!”

“Practice makes perfect, young Padawon,” you tease, testing how best to shift your weight on the new blades. The pressure on your knee isn’t terrible, thanks to the looseness of the hockey skates.

“Yeah, yeah,” Azriel waves you off. He trails behind you at a slower rate, focused on getting used to the stiffness of the figure skates on his feet. “Just wait until we scrimmage.”

Ugh, no thanks. This is just perfect for you, the both of you out on the open ice, all alone. You don’t want to ruin this peaceful bliss by bringing your competitive personalities into it.

“I knew if we raced under different conditions I’d have won!” You exclaim, zipping past Azriel again, showing off. He glares playfully, but you’re much too busy admiring your skates to notice the way he’s tucked his lip between his teeth, hiding a satisfied grin.

His toe pick digs into the ice, grinding down as he gets a feeling for the foreign piece, but his eyes stay glued on you.

“Ready for a stick and gloves already, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know,” you throw a smirk back in his direction, crossing your arms over your chest and cocking a brow. “You ready for twizzling?”

“Twizzlers?”

You roll your eyes at his lame joke, but your heart still skips at his wry smile. It’s more than cute. You push off your blade, moving closer to him.

Which is fine, until you try to use your toe pick to stop, only for the realization to hit that there isn’t one on these skates.

You go barreling into Azriel, who catches you in his arms. Your motion throws him off balance and before you even have the chance to squeeze your eyes shut and brace yourself, you’re both falling to the ice.

Azriel hits with a grunt that reverberates through your bones. You’d think that Azriel breaking your landing would be less painful than it is, but with the way the muscle is packed on his body, he’s just as hard as the ice that’s no longer beneath your feet.

“Sorry,” you cringe. It comes out breathless and embarrassment flushes your cheeks, but you’re frozen to your spot and all too aware of how his large, warm hands are wrapped firmly around your waist.

“No worries.” Your lashes flutter as his breathy whisper caresses your face. He’s probably just winded, that’s why he sounds like that. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. “Didn’t think to remind you how to stop.”

“I know how to stop,” you argue, but there’s none of your usual fire tainting the words. You can’t even muster one of your famous glares that you reserve for the normally broody hockey player. You break eye contact as the humiliation begins creeping in. You scratch your nail distractedly down the waffled fabric of his olive colored henley. “I just…forgot, I guess.”

The hitching of his breath in his chest shifts your body and you jolt, the situation slamming into you like a truck.

You scramble off Azriel, grimacing at the sound of your blades clinking against his. His grip loosens, hands falling away as you slip to the ice beside him.

You shoot to your knees, then not-so-carefully climb to your feet. Azriel holds his hands out from where he’s still lying on the ground, like he’s more than ready to catch you again should you fall.

You’re positive the heat of your cheeks could melt the entire arena’s ice right now. You need to get the fuck out of here before you embarrass yourself further. You need to never show your face around here again. You’ve already transferred schools once, what’s one more time?

Azriel calls your name, but you hardly hear him over your racing thoughts. If the sheer embarrassment wasn’t enough, Coach Weaver’s voice now fills the rest of your head, screeching about your recklessness and how you could’ve injured yourself—

He’s quicker than you thought, or you’ve been trapped in your mortified headspace for too long because Azriel’s on his feet, towering over you and pulling you into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” your voice trembles and his hands tighten around you. He lets you bury your face into his chest and pretends not to notice the tears dampening the fabric of his shirt. You’re fucking trembling, and his heart is pounding just as hard.

This is all his fault.

“Breathe, sweetheart, breathe,” he tries to console. He looks around frantically, like one of the sports therapist students or coaches might be walking past the rinks this late at night. There’s no soul in the building besides the both of you, everyone resting for their busy weekends of competitions and away hockey games. “Please.”

You focus on his words, how he guides you, three seconds in, three seconds out. You focus on the soothing patterns he’s drawing down your back, focus on the beating of his heart and latch onto his scent: night-chilled mist and cedar.

“Sorry,” you croak when you finally manage to calm yourself and slide a step back. Your gaze sits pointedly on the ice. You don’t want him to see you like this, a woman who’s about to fucking crumble.

“Don’t be,” Azriel says softly. His hand finds your face, and as much as you don’t want him to, he lifts your chin. You don’t fight it, emotionally exhausted. You should have asked for a raincheck, but you can admit to the fact that Azriel’s gentle touch is a comfort that you can’t help but lean into.

Sad, hazel eyes meet yours. They’re more golden brown than green, a forest of hues backlit by a burst of gold. Your breath hitches as he drags a thumb softly across your lips. They part, even though you don’t mean them to, and the whisper of breath that leaves you passes over his hand, crawls up his arm, and sends shivers down his spine.

“You okay there, sweetheart?”

You’re not sure you can hold yourself together enough to answer his question without completely melting into a puddle at his feet.

Your silence must be answer enough. Azriel takes both of your hands in his own and guides you back toward the bench where you left your shoes. His grip is reassuring, and you’re so tired that you don’t even have it in yourself to sling a witty remark his way.

For what might be the first time in your life, you allow yourself to be taken care of.

You can’t even muster a chuckle at the way he stumbles over the toe pick on his way off the ice, or the way you’re waddling in these skates. You feel anything but graceful and strong right now, but with Azriel’s hand in yours, it’s not as off-putting as you feared it might be.

“Sit,” he says, keeping his fingers clasped around yours as you heed his command. It brings you eye-level to his hands, puckered and pink and scarred to hell. They’re beautiful in every way. He embraces his story, and it’s an incredible strength, one you’re much too terrified of attempting to recreate.

“Azriel, no,” you protest, jolting forward when he lowers himself to his knees before you. You plant your hands on his shoulders, ready to force him away because you’re more than capable of taking your own skates off.

He catches your wrists, and you didn’t think his eyes could soften any more, but they do, and you melt. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Let me take care of this for you.”

You try to swallow past the knot in your throat to thank him but are unable to. Instead, you nod and reluctantly sit back.

Azriel’s gentle with his movements, like you’re a wild doe that he’s helping free from a snare. He unties the tight knots, and your heart pinches when he struggles for a moment. You wouldn’t notice if you weren’t watching so intently, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Like he knows you need to see this.

You carefully keep your mind from wandering into how good he looks like this before you.

He slips the first skate off, and you stretch your toes. It’s a reflex. Azriel smiles, peeking up at you just in time to catch your blush. His gaze ducks away before you become embarrassed, setting your foot down and holding your other ankle, lifting to get to work.

You hiss softly at the ache in your knee.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” Concern laces his voice, and you’re quick to reassure him.

“No, no,” you cringe a little at the lingering sting. “It’s nothing.”

“Sweetheart.” Azriel says sternly. Seriously. “That reaction wasn’t nothing. What’s wrong?”

You sigh, defeated in more ways than one. You don’t want to admit that the injury that threw your entire career off-kilter is acting up again. You’d rather not have anyone know.

Perhaps Azriel is different. Or, maybe he’s forcing you, because the gold in his eyes is intense, pinning you to your spot. His mouth is set in a straight, firm line. He looks like he means fucking business.

You avert your gaze. You’ve never admitted defeat like this, but if Azriel can wear his scars so proudly, maybe you can too.

“I tore my ACL a few months ago.” You admit, sniffling. You can feel the shock in Azriel’s gaze, but you refuse to look him in the eye. He’s the first person at this school outside of your coach who’s hearing it. You’ve never been so vulnerable, especially with someone you hardly know. You press on nonetheless. “It’s been fine up until now.” A white lie. “But it’s been a little sore since I started practicing my jumps again.”

“How many months is ‘a few’?” He questions, and he’s not going to like the answer, so you opt for brushing over it.

“I’ll go back to seeing my therapist,” you offer instead, but even you’re not too sure how much truth your words hold.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Azriel says, and you don’t want his sympathy, but you’re too exhausted for your usual anger to stir to life. “You need to take care of yourself, before it gets any worse.”

His sentiment has your nose stinging, eyes prickling once again. What the fuck is wrong with you these days? Get it together, girl. You can cry in your own room, not in front of the hot boy who’s helping you with your godsdamned shoes.

You drag your gaze back to his. “I will.” You think.

He studies you for a moment before nodding, accepting your answer whether he believes it or not. You don’t have it in yourself to care right now. No, you just want to be back in the safety of your dorm.

Azriel is even more careful removing this skate and helping you slip into your shoes. He makes quick work of his own, and while his head is down, you admire his stature. Broad shoulders and chest that tapers into a tight waist, an ass for days.

You’re not done drooling over him when he stands, offering you a hand.

You slip your palm into his, ignoring the electricity that zips down your arm. You’re hyperaware of him by your side, and it’s only when he’s absolutely sure that you’re steady on your feet that he drops your hand.

You try not to feel too disappointed at the loss.

“Let’s get you home, sweetheart,” Azriel offers, and you trail him from the arena, your heart feeling a bit fuller with the nickname.

_________________________________________

Azriel Hockey!AU Tags:

@whyonearthisyourusernamethi-blog @going-through-shit @crazylokonugget @lilah-asteria @girl-who-writes-stuff @moosemahboi @sherayuki @lyinginameadow @acourtofatboydreams @blackthorngirl @shadowsingercassia @evergreenlark @hannzoaks @bloodicka @whyshouldihaveanam3 @elle4404 @cherry-cin @quinzzelx @i-am-infinite @feeriqueivre @blightyblinders @kennedy-brooke @nyxbranwenn @dee-writes-smut @konaanaria13

[astonmartinii]

brother's best friend | lance stroll social media au

pairing: lance stroll x fem schumacher!reader

there's something about the guy your brother tells you is off limits...

MASTERLIST | MY TIP JAR

mickschumacher

liked by estebanocon, lancestroll and 1,099,458 others

tagged: yourusername

mickschumacher: happy birthday to the biggest pain in my ass

view all comments

user1: y/n is so mother that her birthday really should be a national holiday

yourusername: what ass? babe you built like an ironing board

mickschumacher: you're talking real loud for someone who has a smaller ass than me 🤨

yourusername: you wanna get the tape measure out ???

user2: I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE

liked by lancestroll

yourusername: HAH

mickschumacher: i'll give you this one FOR ONCE only because it's your birthday

yourusername: you're SO generous

user3: both mick and y/n really got the unhinged gene from michael

user4: now we know why toto separates them in the paddock LOL

lancestroll: mick you were such a cute kid, what happened?

mickschumacher: EY stay out of it this is schumacher business

mickschumacher: or at least call y/n ugly too ugh 😩

lancestroll: my dad taught me that it's wrong to tell lies sorry

mickschumacher: BACK UP ??? what's that supposed to mean?

yourusername: is no one allowed to compliment me anymore?

mickschumacher: NO. especially not a man. especially not an f1 driver. they're all whores.

estebanocon: ????

maxverstappen1: ????

lancestroll: ????

yourusername: is that why you got dropped? too bitchless?

mickschumacher: HOW DARE YOU? I PULL. I DO.

yourusername: sure you do

mickschumacher: that's it. if you're going to use my loneliness against me, then i invoke the kat stratford rule. you can't date until i do

yourusername: that is so horrifically tragic. who says i'm not already seeing someone?

this comment has been deleted

mickschumacher: I SAW THAT

user5: everybody pray for y/n

user6: for real i think mick lost all of his patience at haas 😭

yourusername

liked by lancestroll, mickschumacher and 983,409 others

yourusername: all my birthday wishes came true

view all comments

user7: cue the mick meltdown

mickschumacher: WHAT 😭 THE 😭 FUCK 😭

yourusername: yes?

mickschumacher: does ten things i hate about you mean nothing to you?

yourusername: no ! but i like [redacted] more

mickschumacher: you can use [redacted] all you want but i will literally break in to your house I'M GETTING IN THE CAR

yourusername: soz girlypop but i'm at [redacted]'s house xoxo

mickschumacher: don't think i won't call sebastian i know he has you on find my friends

yourusername: go for it buddy i am completely confident in mine and seb's relationship

mickschumacher: @sebastianvettel pick up your phone

sebastianvettel: leave me be mick, i have met [redacted] and i think he's a great match 👍

mickschumacher: WHAT

user8: well that was dramatic

user9: get that man back in the car before he genuinely runs across europe looking for y/n

user10: i love how they're all going along with the [redacted] nonsense

user11: i know seb was having way too much fun with it

estebanocon: happy birthday y/n, i hope [redacted] treated you well !

yourusername: why thank you esteban, i have had a great time

mickschumacher: do not tell me you know as well :(

estebanocon: i don't but saying [redacted] is super fun 🤩

lancestroll: [redacted] does make them sound like a criminal

mickschumacher: when i found out who it is, they may become part of a criminal trial

lancestroll: okay buddy...

yourusername: thank you lance, at least someone here is talking sense

mickschumacher: don't use my friends against me 🤨

yourusername: maybe he's my friend too dumbass

user12: or more 😏

mickschumacher: do not even speak that into existence

user13: i need it to be lance or at least another driver just for mick's reaction at this point

lancestroll

liked by estebanocon, yourusername and 1,077,487 others

tagged: yourusername

lancestroll: just appreciating the birthday girl

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user17: WAIT !! let me grab my popcorn 🍿

user18: i am sat for this mick meltdown

user19: it might be an all-timer

yourusername: before mick inevitably throws all his toys out of the pram... i love you sir lancelot !! thank you for the amazing birthday and for being the best boyf eva xxx

lancestroll: i love you too darling, glad we could spend all this time together before the season starts again

yourusername: booooo i don't wanna share you :(

lancestroll: you could just join me ...

yourusername: do NOT threaten me with a good time

user20: i think i can hear mick having a tantrum from all the way across the world

mickschumacher: ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO. NOPE. NADA. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. DELETE.

lancestroll: you done?

mickschumacher: NO I AM NOT. TAKE YOUR MOUTH OFF OF MY SISTER. THE ONLY SCHUMACHER YOU WILL BE KISSED BY IS MY FIST

lancestroll: bit too late for that

mickschumacher: HALT. i do not need to know that :(

yourusername: have you got it out of your system? because i really love lance and i'm sorry we kept it from you, but we thought it was best while we figured it all out

mickschumacher: i am happy for you. all i want to see is you happy, and if that is lance so be it. just no pda in front of me

lancestroll: you're saying this like i'm a monster? i'm literally your friend, surely that's a good sign?

mickschumacher: wait. i thought we were best friends :(

lancestroll: yes! we're bffs ! best friends forever + este

estebanocon: yes we love you mick even when you scream all the time and call us whores?

yourusername: gosh you're such a drama queen, have this heart to heart in the group chat this is a birthday post for ME

user21: well this got suprisingly heartfelt

sebastianvettel: happy birthday y/n, i'm happy for both of you!

yourusername: thank you seb ! x

lancestroll: thank you seb, wingman of the year

mickschumacher: WHAT

yourusername

liked by mickschumacher, lancestroll and 923,766 others

tagged: lancestroll

yourusername: my boyf just won point with broken wrists, what the fuck are y'all doin?

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user24: this was so sexy of lance honestly

maxverstappen1: winning the race bozo

yourusername: the question was clearly rhetorical genius

maxverstappen1: i don't care 🤷‍♀️

user25: i always forget that these two technically grew up together

lancestroll: the doctors said i still need to be looked after, will you be my sexy nurse?

mickschumacher: EW this is exactly what i was talking about. keep this shit to yourselves

mickschumacher: PLUS, i don't think that would be wise with broken wrists

lancestroll: gotta ruin all of our jokes now?

yourusername: so me being a sexy nurse is a joke :( ?

lancestroll: no! you can definitely look after me and you're definitely sexy

yourusername: good good. sit back and relax baby

user26: what if we also want to be seen by sexy nurse y/n?

mickschumacher: choke

lancestroll: choke

fernandoalo_oficial: so no mention of my podium 🤨

yourusername: bore off old man you've got completely functioning wrists

fernandoalo_oficial: still impressive no?

yourusername: cry me a river

lancestroll: it was very impressive fernando

fernandoalo_oficial: at least one of my kids respect me

yourusername: god i think being a drama queen is a requirement for being an f1 driver

user27: she's not wrong

fernandoalo_oficial

liked by lancestroll, yourusername and 1,452,887 others

fernandoalo_oficial: accidentally acquired two kids this season

view all comments

user28: grid dad fernando is back baby

user29: who is the mum and can i be her?

yourusername: soz mark beat you to it

oscarpiastri: does that make us all siblings?

mickschumacher: absolutely not. the schumacher gang is very exclusive

fernandoalo_oficial: who said i claimed you?

mickschumacher: as if you wouldn't want to claim me

yourusername: soz mick, looks like only one of us slays

lancestroll: fernando has taste 💅

mickschumacher: i hate you both

yourusername: love you too x

user30: golly gosh these girlies are so dramatic

user31: lance, y/n and oscar is the chill trio we need

yourusername: also thanks pa for the cute pic x

lancestroll: and for not complaining the whole time

yourusername: SOME people could learn a thing or two ....

mickschumacher: hey! i am a good photographer you're just ugly

lancestroll: you take that back

mickschumacher: you were my friend first you should be on my side :(

yourusername: you snooze you lose mickster

lancestroll: :p

user32: so glad that this relationship is bringing out lance's sassy side

user33: now all we need is the return of the racing point hair

yourusername: i'm on it 🫡

yourusername

liked by estebanocon, lancestroll and 1,099,432 others

tagged: lancestroll

yourusername: the romance books didn't lie, there really is nothng like your brother's best friend

view all comments

user34: boyf!lance got me going feral

user35: third pic is defo going platinum on pinterest

lancestroll: all the turmoil was worth it :)

yourusername: turmoil being mick pouting at you for like three hours

lancestroll: i am a sensitive man! i don't like people being upset with me :(

yourusername: mick is just a drama queen, probably his way of hazing you, or distracting himself from being lonely

mickschumacher: for that lonely comment you just got yourself stuck with a third wheel

mickschumacher: FOR LIFE

estebanocon: and me !! don't forget about meeee

user36: my fave unproblematic foursome

yourusername: hold your horses babe two of that four are siblings maybe we should reword this

sebastianvettel: is mick finished now? can i safely go back on my phone without getting ten billion calls about you and lance?

yourusername: yeah i think he's got it out of his system

sebastianvettel: good. but you and lance are still on babysitting duty for putting my through this

lancestroll: not the punishment you think it is we love those kids

yourusername: plus lance is cute with kids and gives me major baby fever

sebastianvettel: oh no...

mickschumacher: WHAT ABSOLUTELY NOT NO BABIES YET I ONLY JUST ACCEPTED YOU DATIGN I DON;Y WANT TO THINK ABOUT... THAT

yourusername: but baby lancelots would be so cute :(

lancestroll: baby y/ns would be cuter

yourusername: that's it. seb sorry we will be a little late

mickschumacher: DELETE

fin.

note: this request has been in the bank for a while and i know i took a lil creative liberty but i hope you enjoyed!! also thought lance deserved some love after the recent tomfoolery ... alas! happy new year and i hope everyone has a great new years eve xx