#theyre such losers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

autisticlancemcclain · 1 year ago

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“You dragged us out of bed at eight thirty in the goddamn morning for what?”

“You remember how you got married on a random Thursday without telling anyone?” Hunk says, instead of answering the goddamn question. Keith and Lance both groan as loudly and obnoxiously as they can. Lance makes a point to yank their blankets over his head as he falls back onto the pillows.

“Just ignore them,” Keith whines, slinging an arm around Lance’s waist and pulling him back in. Lance goes willingly, inclined to follow those instructions.

“Nope. Nuh-uh.” Something soft and round pelts Lance on the shoulder, then the hip, then lands square on his head. “Up you get.”

“Fuck off,” Lance gripes again, peering over the covers to glare at Pidge, who is gleefully digging through their sock drawer to hand Hunk more ammo.

“Nope. Get up, losers.” Hunk huffs. “God, I don’t even understand why this is taking you so long. You went to bed at eight-thirty. That was twelve hours ago. There’s no possible way you’re still sleepy.”

Lance pauses. He glances over at his husband, who’s grinning just as wolfishly as he is.

God, Lance loves him so much. Verbal communication is for dweebs. They’ve got this shit in the bag.

“We went to bed at eight thirty,” Lance agrees, pretending to be nonchalant.

Keith hums, following along, leaning back with his arms folded behind his head like he’s the most unbothered bitch on the planet. “Right, right, we did.” He pauses for dramatic effect. (It will never cease to amaze Lance that people think the Black Paladin is some sort of stoic, serious asshole. How even he used to think that. Keith grew up with Shiro, for fuck’s sake. There’s not a bone in his body that isn’t at least a little melodramatic.) He glances over at Lance, finally giving the game away with a wide grin. “But I don’t remember us doing any sleeping.”

“Funnily enough, me either!”

It takes Pidge and Hunk a moment for the implication to sink in, and their identically disgusted faces when it does immediately make Keith and Lance burst out laughing.

“You two are nasty,” Pidge protests, throwing eight more sock pairs with increasing violence. Keith and Lance are too weak with laughter to stop her, barely holding their hands in front of them to stop the onslaught. “I hate you. Hunk, suffocate them.”

“I’m considering it,” Hunk mutters darkly. He shakes his head rapidly. “God, the imagery.”

The best part is that it isn’t even true. They walked up to their room at eight-thirty, got ready for bed, talked for maybe three minutes, and then fell asleep immediately like old people. It was excellent.

But fucking with his friends is always fun.

“Just be downstairs in twenty minutes,” Pidge says, aiming another ball of socks at Keith’s head. Keith manages to catch it, and Pidge scurries to hide behind Hunk before Keith can whip it back. “We’re going out.”

The two disappear before they can ask anymore questions, making a point of loudly stomping down the stairs and ignoring their questioning.

“We could just ignore them,” Keith suggests.

“That’s true,” Lance agrees. “We could even have sex for real? That would piss them off.”

For a second Keith looks like he’s really considering it. He gets that cute little furrow in his brow that he gets when he’s concentrating. It does wonderful things to Lance’s ego, that the thought of sleeping with him gets the same furrow of concentration that fighting a war does.

But eventually, as Lance knew he would, Keith sighs. “We should probably see what they have planned.”

Lance smiles. “Maybe.” He heaves himself up, offering a hand to Keith to pull him out of bed, too, then drags him to the bathroom. “Let’s get dressed.”

———

They make it downstairs twenty minutes later, dressed and ready to go. The kitchen is overcrowded, as it usually is, with Hunk and Adam cooking something delicious at the stove, Pidge standing guard over Shiro so he doesn’t curse the kitchen with his presence, and Veronica trying and failing to look cool for an earnestly oblivious Allura. The real grownups — Coran, Krolia, Miguel, Marcela, and Lisa — are chatting over some fresh fruit at the table, Luis trying and failing to convince the twins to eat their food instead of throwing it at each other. Marco is nowhere to be found, likely having escaped to the garage when the kitchen got too loud.

They’ve been home and settled for quite some time, now. But all his family safe and in one place still makes something fragile clink around in Lance’s chest.

“Well good afternoon, mijos,” Marcela teases.

“It’s barely nine, Mamá,” Lance says, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek before taking a seat. Keith hesitates a second, then Marcela taps her other cheek, so Keith follows Lance’s example and then kissing his own mother hello before sitting down next to Lance. His face is a little red by the end of it, still unused to the casual affection, but his smile is small, pleased.

“I never get any kisses hello,” Shiro grumbles into his coffee mug.

Keith doesn’t miss a beat. “That is because you are irritating.”

“Can it, boogerbrain.”

Adam slides a plate piled high with pancakes between them.

“Before you two kill each other,” he says drily. The fondness drips off of him, made even more evident by the way he pinches Keith’s cheek as he walks past, slides his hand down Shiro’s shoulder as he sits next to him. His diversion is successful, however, and both brothers call an unspoken truce in favour of stuffing their faces.

“So,” Pidge says, mouth full, several minutes later. “You guys got married on a whim.”

Keith glances at Marcela. “That is an exaggeration,” he says loudly, as if Lance’s mother isn’t well aware that her son is the type of dumbass to say yes to an impulsive wedding proposal.

“It’s really not,” Allura, Hunk, Shiro and Pidge say at the same time.

Keith scowls.

“Anyways,” Hunk continues, “since y’all didn’t actually let anyone know you were getting hitched, we never got to do fun wedding things. Like a bachelor party.”

“Or an actual wedding,” Allura points out, which is met with various snickers.

Lance leans back to exchange a contemplative glance with Keith. While he doesn’t and never will regret the way they got hitched, he supposes there are some things they missed. Having a dumb drunk party with their friends doesn’t sound bad at all, actually.

“Alright,” Lance says, nodding. “We’re down for that. What are we doing? Heading to the beach?”

“Oh, no,” Veronica says, grinning wildly. She pushes up her glasses as if she’s a dorky anime character. “Get ready for something way better.”

———

An arcade.

Their friends have dragged them to an arcade.

“I haven’t been to one of these in years,” Keith comments, taking in the bright lights, strange and minorly unpleasant smells, and sounds of screaming children.

Lance squeezes his hand. “Me either, but don’t worry. We’re going to crush it.”

“Hey, whoa, hold on,” Veronica says, making a T sign with her hands. “It’s a bachelor party.”

Keith and Lance blink at her.

“Yes,” Lance says, extra slow so she can understand. “For us. We got that.”

Veronica continues to look at them like they have a couple screws loose — which would normally be fine, because that’s a particularly favourite expression of hers to wear around Lance, only the rest of the team is looking at them funny, too.

“Since when do bachelor parties involve both parties?” Hunk clarifies. “Split up!”

“What? No way!” Keith protests. He pulls Lance closer to him. “I married him, so I get dibs!”

“Nope, no way,” Allura says. “I already called dibs on Lance. You get your own team to lose on. Good luck.”

Look.

Lance is loyal, okay? He made a vow. Keith is his number one. His ride or die. Blah blah blah.

However.

Before he fell in love, before Keith was the person he turned to, before Keith was his friend, even, Keith was his rival.

And rivalries don’t just die. They just get pushed aside, really. He lets go of Keith’s hand and sidesteps towards the Blue Paladin. Keith’s face of betrayal makes him smirk.

“What,” he taunts, leaning back all casual-like. “Afraid to lose, Kogane?”

Like clockwork, Keith’s face smooths into something cocky and testy and really, really hot.

“Like hell, Kogane,” he scoffs. “I’m going to grind you to dust.”

Hunk claps his hands. “Excellent. Keith, you stand by that plant, Lance stand across from him. It’s team picking time. Keith gets to pick first because Allura already threatened violence if she doesn’t get Lance’s team.”

Allura smiles primly, skipping over to stand with Lance. Her braids — courtesy of Lisa and Sylvio — swish cheerfully behind her, pink beads clinking. Lance high-fives her when she gets close.

“Ready to annihilate them?” Lance asks.

Allura grins. “We won’t even need anyone else.”

Blue’s presence roars in both of their head at the same time, proud and smug.

“Dibs on Hunk!” Keith shouts.

Lance gasps in betrayal. “What? No!” Keith only sticks his tongue out at him, and to Lance’s horror, even Hunk is grinning!

“Sorry, man,” he says, not sounding very sorry at all. He accepts Keith’s fist bump. “Keith is just the obvious winner, here. You know I pick the non-losing side.”

“I’m cutting you out of my will,” Lance informs him. He is, too. Hunk can have squat, since he’s a quisling.

“Just choose your next teammate, goober,” Hunk says.

Lance turns back to the pool of options, gaze critical. His initial strategy had been to choose people with opposite strengths to him — those better with luck games, or trivia. But if Keith’s strategy is to choose people that will cripple Lance, then he needs to adjust accordingly. If he loses this he’ll never forgive himself.

“Shiro,” he says definitively. Having Keith’s brother in his team will make Keith sloppier, because Keith physically cannot handle being on an opposite team of Shiro without the absolutely blinding urge to beat him. He’ll be so focused on one-upping Shiro that he’ll be less focused on doing games properly.

They spend the next ten minutes carefully choosing their teams and making faces at each other. In the end, Keith’s team is made up of Hunk, Adam, and Veronica. Lance’s team has Allura, Shiro, and Pidge (everyone else decided to step away from what they knew was a competition that was bound to get out of hand and stay home — which, fair). The second the teams are finalized, Lance pulls everyone away, guiding them to a little corner of the arcade so they can Strategise.

“Okay,” Lance starts, mentally planning a map of the arcade and its games. “We need to out-ticket them, so prioritize high-payout games first, skilled games second. Anything that’s a guaranteed thirty tickets is a game worth playing a few times. Anything you know you can demolish, hit hard.”

“Are we cheating?” Shiro asks.

“Foul play at least,” Lance confirms. “Pidge, feel free to accidentally make machines work better for you. Allura and Shiro, feel free to bat your eyelashes and weaken Veronica and Adam with your wiles.”

All three teammates nod seriously.

“Will do. And you, Lance?”

Lance grins, unbuttoning his blouse and stuffing it in his bag, leaving only his cropped red t-shirt that makes the brown of his eyes look darker. He clips on some sparkly earrings, then slathers on some lip gloss.

“I am going to make it impossible for Keith to focus. Let’s go!”

———

(Keith watches as his husband hunches know a huddle with his team, face drawn and serious as he explains his plans and ideas. Shiro, Pidge and Allura watch him with similar intent, splitting off after a couple minutes of discussion with the seriousness they once employed marching into battle.

“We’re going to lose, aren’t we,” he asks the group at large.

Hunk pats him heartily on the back. “Most definitely. Let’s go, team!”)

———

There is a lot of chaos, as one might expect.

The arcade is certainly not empty. Parents chase after unruly children, unruly children chase each other. Many young teens hog games in an attempt to turn a profit on their token investment. Hobbyists are worse. Regardless, competition sings in Lance’s veins. He spends inordinate amounts of time at the shooting games, knocking out shot after shot — in one game lasting so long that he amasses a crowd of awed spectators.

“Holy smokes!” one child yells. “He’s been here forever! He can’t lose!”

“You think he’s a super spy, or somethin’?” their friend whispers.

Lance smirks. Or something.

As the point counter in the top left corner of the game ticks higher and higher with every zombie he slays, he starts to imagine how he might gloat with his upcoming hoard of tickets. Drape them like a scarf, perhaps, and sashay past Veronica? Count them very slowly by Adam? Get Shiro’s help in forming them in an L shape and point them in Keith’s direction?

Before he can decide, there are several annoyed shouts in the small crowd behind him, and seconds later someone pops up next to him, filling his nose with the scent of pine and sandalwood. Keith plants himself behind where Lance is seated, arms on either side of him, and leans over so his head hangs upside down in front of Lance’s, blocking his vision.

“Hey,” he says, grinning.

Lance shoves his face away. “Buzz off! I’m trying to beat you!”

“You’re hogging the zombie game, is what you’re doing.”

“Duh!”

Lance shoves his face away again and this time he goes, which should make Lance suspicious, but his guard is down and his focus is elsewhere. After a moment, he hears his husband clear his throat three times, just like he does before he addresses a crowd of people as the Fearless Black Paladin.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“People of the arcade!” he shouts, and lord above Lance married a drama queen no matter what anybody says about it. “Are we going to let him hog the zombie game?”

A voice that is most definitely Lance’s irritating sister calls out: “No way!”

Another voice, Lance’s traitor best friend, calls out: “He’s had it for twenty minutes! I demand justice!”

The crowd, either bolstered to air their grievances due to other aforementioned complaints or just happy to be part of a mob, take up the chant: “Off the game! Off the game!”

“The people have spoken, sweetheart,” Keith says, smirking so wide his eyes scrunch up.

Lance rolls his eyes, but he’s annoyed to find that he can’t quite suppress his smile. “You’re a dick for brains.” He purposely misses his next shot, ending the game, and the crowd cheers. The screen flashes once, then a red number pops up in the middle: 456. Tickets begin to shoot out of the slot.

Lance turns towards his husband and chuckles evilly, taking great joy in his newfound scowl. “Try to keep up, baby.” He tears his last ticket from the slot, gathering them up and patting Keith on the chest as he walks by. Allura, Pidge and Shiro whoop and cheer for him, high fives and fist bumps all around as they all show each other how many tickets they’ve garnered so far — well over a thousand. They’re killing it.

They spend the next forty minutes flitting from game to game, winning forty tickets here and ninety there, even losing a game or two. They spend half their time actually playing and half their time messing with the rest of their friends, calling out confusing answers for trivia games or straight up poking and prodding at them to mess up any games of focus. It’s a miracle that any of them manage to win at all, really.

After a couple hours of play, the two teams have mostly evened out — Lance hasn’t been keeping exact count of his tickets, or anything, but his pile and Keith’s pile look about the same.

“I have an idea,” Allura shouts over the noise of the arcade. “A final win!” She tilts her head towards one of the larger games in the arcade, blasting pop music through the area and flashing bright lights.

DDR.

Lance grins at her. “‘Llura, you are a genius.”

She preens. “I know.”

“Shiro! Pidge! Cover for us!”

They nod, and Allura and Lance rush to the Dance Dance Revolution machine, quickly flipping through the options as they see Keith and Veronica booking it through the crowd through the corners of their eyes. Finally they land on the best option for them, and Lance slams the start button just as Shiro tackles his brother to the ground. Synth beats blast through the speakers, and Aqua’s Barbie Girl starts to play — game on.

“Fuck!” Adam shouts, knowing they’re about to lose.

Lance cackles. If there’s one thing he and Allura can do, it’s absolutely crush this game.

And they do — the hit every beat, perfectly, not even one misstep. Every stomp is in unison, every pop of their hips coordinated. (They had weeks and weeks on the space road trip. They know what to do.)

By the time the song ends and Allura and Lance step off the machine, tickets flying through the slot, Keith’s team has accepted their defeat with hanged heads.

“Hand over half your tickets as a losing tax and bow before your queens,” Lance says smugly, as he and his teams twist their tickets into ugly crowns, wearing identical smirks.

“All hail the winners of pressing little buttons on dinky arcade games,” Veronica drawls because she is a sore loser.

Allura winks at her. “Thank you for your concession, insect,” she teases.

Veronica goes bright red. Lance snickers.

They make their way to the prize booth, handing over their absurd number of tickets. Pidge uses hers to buy a ridiculous amount of candy. Allura goes ham buying a bunch of Earth trinkets to bring back to Coran. Shiro sees a dookie little toaster from the seventies that is devoted entirely to cooking hot dog buns, laughs himself to tears, and buys it immediately. Lance buys himself a giant stuffed lion that happens to be blue, because once he sees it it’s impossible not to. The four of them goad their gifts to the losing team as they trade for their own shit, much to the annoyance of the grouchy employee.

It’s stupid. It’s juvenile. Every single one of the prizes is cheap.

It’s so, so much fun.

On the walk back to the house, Keith falls into step with Lance, pulling him back slightly from the rest of the group. They all shoot knowing smiles in their direction, for once not feeling teasing, and jog ahead to give them space.

“Got something for you,” Keith says casually, looking straight ahead.

“A consolation prize?” Lance jokes.

Keith grins. “Something like that.” He digs around in his pocket, closing something in his fist and holding it out in front of him. He makes no move to open his hand or offer the thing to Lance, walking on casually. Lance is burning with curiosity.

“You remember when I first asked you to marry me?”

Lance snorts. “Out of the blue, on a random Monday, in the common room? Yes, I remember the day my life changed forever.”

Keith’s smile gets softer. He reaches over with his free hand and links it with Lance’s.

“You told me I needed a ring to ask you.”

“Mhm. And we got one later.”

“That’s the thing.” He stops them, turning to face Lance head on, indigo eyes bright and sparkling. “I got us wedding rings. But never used one to pop the question.”

He takes a tiny step back, and then sinks to one knee, holding up a cheap diamond ring from the prize booth. Lance laughs out loud, and then gets choked up by the emotions that flare up at the sight of his husband on one knee, and tears build in his eyes.

“Lance Kogane,” Keith says dramatically, but there’s a look of real seriousness in his eyes, a stubborn streak of love. “I kind of botched the asking, my first time, so I’m going it again: will you marry me?”

“Yes, dorkbrain,” Lance chokes out. “Of course.” He holds out his left hand, and Keith slides the dinky little ring onto his forth finger, resting it above his real wedding ring. He stands up and wraps his hands around Lance’s face, leaning in and kissing him softly.

“Just checking,” he whispers.

Lance smiles, leaning their foreheads together.

Fitting, he thinks, deciding to stay right where he is for a while, that they’d do everything backwards.

How lucky he is.

———

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