#yes she says stupid unfiltered stuff sometimes but she loves her friends okay

[autisticlancemcclain]

The tears are the worst fucking part.

They always are. They come out when she’s angry or hurt and embarrassed, and they make her feel like a little girl, which only ever makes her feel worse. It sucks to feel like you can’t hold your ground in an argument because your eyes are burning and trails of tears are blazing hot down your cheeks.

But she didn’t even get the chance to argue.

“We’re not punishing you,” Shiro had said gently, guilt visibly lining his features as her first tear fell, which only made her snarl at him. “But your bond to your element could use some strengthening, Katie. It won’t take too long, I’m sure of it.”

Just a couple vargas, he has promised her. Gather the list of ingredients for the next few meals, and see how the exposure to a natural environment makes you feel, map out your relationship with your lion. Easy peasy.

Easy for everyone else to say. The rest of them seemed to bond with their lions like it was fuckin’ easy, snapping up their elemental control like it was second nature. Hunk was as solid as the rocks and earth he represented, and it showed in the way he was and the way he acted. Shiro felt like the awesome and incredible presence of the sky to everyone he met. Keith was the most fiery person she had ever met, probably. He acted like he was powered by a raging inferno, always moving, always flickering. Lance was —

Well. Lance was water, simple as that. Everything he did was as playful and stubborn as a running river. Even his expressions have the same practiced fluidity of them, like he grew up imitating the tide.

She supposes he did. She supposes it makes sense, that he is the one sent with her, to help guide her along, so to speak.

It still kind of stings.

“Could you stop fucking humming,” she snaps, glaring at her teammate.

He doesn’t even glance at her. “No.”

She rolls her eyes, tears making her breaths stutter, and wipes some of the wetness off her cheeks. It doesn’t really work, and mostly just smears it around, but she’s so bitter that she’s kind of beyond caring.

She hates this. She hates this stupid mission, she hates this stupid forest, she hates her stupid element, she hates that Lance will not stop fucking prancing around, and most of all she hates that she can’t figure this shit out on her own.

She hates that she has to be babied.

“Oh, hey, these are the sugarplums for the not-lamb stew.” Lance stops abruptly, gentle hand on her arm to stop her, too. She resists the urge to yank it away, desperately reminding herself that it’s not Lance’s fault she’s so angry, not his fault that humiliation burns through her, not his fault that she can’t get her shit together. She’s already snapped at him once — more than once, if she’s being honest — and he’s gracefully ignored it. If she keeps pushing, he’ll snap right back, and then they’ll both be miserable.

Plus, she doesn’t actually like snapping at Lance. He doesn’t deserve her lashing out, he’s only trying to help.

“You sure?”

Pidge looks at the small purple fruits , feeling a little helpless. She has no idea how Lance has distinguished them from the various other fruits and seeds hanging from the hundreds of other trees. She has no idea how the hell she’s supposed to memorize all of this garbage. How something as frustrating and unique and random as nature is supposed to be her element, the one thing that represents her, deep to her core.

It’s not fair.

“Yep!” Lance chirps. He crouches down, starting to pull at his laces. “The bark has more linear pattern structures, see? And the leaves are smooth, not serrated, and much darker than any other fruit trees we’ve passed. And it smells like plum jam.” To her great confusion, he pulls off his shoes as socks as he explains, only standing once his bare feet are on the backed earth and moss of the forest floor.

“You’re going to get a sharp rock to the foot,” she says, unsure as to why he’s decided to ditch his shoes in the places he probably needs them most.

He snorts, kicking his shoes to the side and turning to face her, making obnoxious kissy faces and poking at her relentlessly.

“Aw, is Pidgey worried for my health and well-being?”

She scowls, shoving him away. “Nevermind. I hope you get tetanus and lose your whole leg.”

Unfortunately, her threat only makes him grin wider. He blows her one last dramatized kiss before turning to the large tree, wrapping his sweater around the trunk, and using it to scurry up the tree almost faster than she can register. By the time it occurs to her to question him, he’s already ten feet in the air, shifting his weight to a steady enough branch.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yells.

Lance looks back down at her, raising an eyebrow. “…Getting…fruit…?”

“There’s fruit down here!” She gestures to the dozens and dozens of fallen but perfectly good plums on the ground, many of which she’s already scooped up and put in the bag Hunk gave her. “All the fruit-bearing branches are like thirty feet in the air, and the branches are way too thin! It’s too risky!”

“Well, Pidgeon,” he says, hooking his knees around a branch to hang upside down, shooting her a wink and a pair of finger guns, “that’s the fun part!”

Before she can yell at him again to get the hell back down, he’s flipped back upright, scurrying up rapidly thinning branches to reach the higher, juicier fruit.

Pidge heart pounds.

“Lance, get down here!” Her voice is reedy with panic, but he ignores her. “You’re going to get hurt, you colossal fucking dumbass!”

But no matter how loudly she cusses him out, he keeps climbing, barely even pausing to make sure a branch can hold his weight before using it to get higher. He climbs as easily as he walks, as easily as he shoots — like it’s second nature. Despite his ease, Pidge can fucking use her brain and see that as scrawny as Lance is, the branches are scrawnier, and he is going to fall and die and Pidge is going to have to watch it happen.

Just as she’s about to call backup, Lance forty feet in the fucking air and without even the distant thought of a rope, Lance ties his hoodie — filled with fruit — to his back, stands on a branch, and fucking leaps the hell off.

Pidge screams at the top of her lungs.

But instead of falling to his death, Lance lands on a branch jutting out from a neighbouring tree, maybe five feet below the branch he leapt from.

Pidge’s yell catches in her throat.

He’s fine.

He continues like that for the ten seconds it takes for him to make his way down, hopping from branch to branch like a chickadee, smiling so wide his brown eyes are nearly creased shut. He looks elated; the happiest she’s seen him in ages.

Slowly, some of her fear starts to fade.

“You fucking scared me,” she says harshly when his feet are back on the floor. Her heart is still galloping.

Lance shrugs. “I told you I’d be fine.”

“No, you told me risks were more fun, then you jumped down a fucking tree.” She accepts the fruits he hands her, replacing the less appetizing ones she already had in her bag. “Taller than your lion.”

“Yeah, because I’ve done it before.” He places the last sugarplum in the bag and then ties it shut, securing it to his back and then throwing an arm over Pidge’s shoulders. He starts walking in a random direction, and Pidge struggles to keep up with his wide strides.

“…Oh.” She supposes that makes sense. He looked comfortable as he climbed.

They walk for the next several minutes in silence. Pidge notices that the tear tracks on her face have dried, and the terror she felt for Lance earlier has replaced her anger, her embarrassment.

She wonders if that was the point.

“Hey, look at that.” He points to a small, budding yellow flower dotting the base of a tree. “That’s hairflower. They grow at the bases of confler trees, because the confler trees always host sodiko birds, which are their biggest pollinators. Cool, huh?”

“How do you know all this stuff?” she blurts, barely letting him finish his sentence. Some of her earlier frustration bleeds into her voice, but luckily it doesn’t sound too accusatory. “I don’t — we’re not even on Earth, but somehow you recognise all the random wildlife. Nature is supposed to be my element. I don’t — I don’t know why I’m struggling so bad when you have it so easy.”

Lance trips over his feet, slightly, stumbling. He removes his arm from her shoulders, stuffing his hands in his pockets. His shoulders hike up somewhere near his ears, hunching his posture.

Guilt churns in her stomach.

“Lance, I didn’t mean —”

Did she?

What did she mean?

“I’m not dumb,” he says quietly.

She swallows. “I know.”

“It’s — I’m not good at the classroom shit. I have to try really hard to understand what a textbook is telling me, and I never understand instructions that aren’t explained to me three times in four different ways. I can’t even begin to understand all the fancy shmancy engineer stuff you and Hunk do. I will not pretend to understand how Altean alchemy and magic works.” He looks at her finally, and hurt clouds his eyes, but his voice is steady, firm. Practiced even, like it’s not the first time he’s had to explain this. “But I’m not dumb.”

“I know,” Pidge repeats, quieter. She doesn’t know how to take back her words, to say them better. How to fix how she feels, honestly. Because it was a lie, her backtracking — she did mean what she said. It was a mean thing to say, a mean thing to think and believe, and she had allowed herself to think it, to feel it, to say it and believe it.

That’s not fair to Lance. That’s not fair to her friend.

It isn’t even true.

“I know,” she repeats again, firmer this time. “I’m sorry. I forgot. But I know you’re not dumb.”

He hesitates for a second, but then nods, accepting her apology. He puts his arm back around her shoulder.

“I’ve always been better at learning things I can do, physically, or things that I can see have a purpose. Like dance, or shooting, or learning the names of cool things like plants and rocks. I’ve always been good with names and faces. And piloting, too, I hope I’m good at that.”

She hates the doubt there, and hates more that she might be part of the reason. “You are. Good at piloting, I mean.”

He grins at her. “Thanks. You are too, you know. Even though all this element shit is a learning curve.”

She snorts despite herself. “Not to you. You’re the living embodiment of water, basically, you naiad.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I spend time in it. I go to the pool, like, every day. I don’t even play mermaids all the time. I do boring meditative shit, because apparently that’s what Blue needs.”

She looks at him in shock. She hadn’t considered that anyone other than Shiro really meditated, or that anyone else had to work towards working with their elements. Especially not Lance. “Really?”

He nods excitedly. “Yeah, man! I thought I was good, but when Hunk unlocked his earth weapon thingie, I asked Blue what was up and she said I just needed more practice letting elemental quintessence flow through me, whatever the hell that means. Apparently it’s easy to summon when you’re panicked, but if you want to do it on a more regular basis you have to learn how to recognise it, so you can call it.”

That makes sense, she supposes. But she still feels like she’s missing something.

“How the hell am I supposed to frolic around a forest between missions? There’s not exactly one in the castle.”

Lance shrugs. “I don’t know, genius. You figured out how to turn a magical lion invisible, can’t you puzzle out how to grow a garden in space or something? Aren’t you a science nerd?”

Pidge stills.

Oh, duh.

It’s such a simple solution — plant a garden. She used to have a garden, back home, that she and her mom worked on regularly. Her mom would show her how she genetically modified plant seeds, and then they’d monitor the new plants and plant traits together.

Suddenly she understands why Green is the lion of curiosity and science as well as nature — the two are linked, everywhere, even in her. She belongs in the forest as much as she belongs in the workshop.

She can do so many weirdo experiments. Isn’t that what science is, basically?

“I owe you one,” she tells Lance, walking again beside him.

He chuckles, adjusting the bag of fruit on his shoulder and nudging her with his elbow. “You owe me twenty. Now, come on, we have lots more stuff to gather. I’ll show you how to identify it.”

[thundersnowstorm]

Wait hold on ndkslsnwk I’ve never considered Theon/Robb/Rhaenys now I feel like I need to know so much more about that omfg like that’s so interesting??

okay aldkjksldj so the basic outline to how theon x robb x rhaenys ends up happening is still in flux for me, but i have a Lot of thoughts on the matter so here’s me processing them via word dump. maybe if i get my act together someday i’ll actually write the proper 10k fic this deserves.

as always, under the cut because i do Not know how to be concise

at some point before rhaenys ever came north, robb and theon went out drinking and got lowkey plastered. it’s a lot easier to be honest about serious stuff when you can blame it on the alcohol, y’know? and they’re just sitting outside talking and drinking, and then one of them kisses the other. later, neither will remember who initiated it. they’re both very drunk and uncoordinated and the kiss is sloppy and awkward and way more intense than either one of them will admit. 

the next day, neither of them speaks a word about it, and it’s forgotten. mostly. theon eventually convinces himself he just imagined it, because his memories of that night are very hazy and there’s just no way. robb doesn’t forget, but he doesn’t let himself think about that night. theon’s just a friend and he’s going to be married soon anyway, so what’s the point? 

intimate_rituals.jpeg

then rhaenys shows up and the events of crownless unfold as they do. fast forward through the long night (the north and humanity prevail, the others are defeated, etc etc etc). everyone’s back at winterfell now, and there’s no more looming war on the horizon. things are back to normal.

(well, as normal as normal can be when they’re all dealing with like, ptsd, and grief and anxiety and all the shit that comes with war and death. but that’s their new normal now, and they’re mostly dealing.)

it’s weird, living in winterfell without the constant threat of war. in an odd way, it reminds robb of a time long ago, before ned stark ever went south. obviously things are very different now, but it’s enough that he’s reminiscing a lot on those days. and, among other things, he remembers that kiss from so long ago. and then he tries to forget it again. it doesn’t go great.

rhaenys has always been perceptive. she watches, notices things. she watches robb and theon interact, and there’s a shift. not a shift in how they interact, but a shift in how robb looks at theon. she can’t describe it, but there’s something different about it.

oh.

here’s the thing. rhaenys went into marriage expecting very little from it. a discreet mistress at the very least, and, she hoped, a semblance of respect from her husband. even now, after years of love and marriage, there’s still part of her that’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. so she approaches this with the same ruthless practicality she uses in ruling. 

robb isn’t having an affair, she’s sure of that. but one of these days, he’s going to tire of her, and she’d rather not be blindsided by that day. with theon, there’s no risk of a bastard, and she trusts theon enough to know he wouldn’t be a risk to the starks if he became, for lack of a better term, robb’s “mistress”. 

(the effects of marriage as an institution in asoiaf on women is just. oof. but that’s a talk for another day.)

so rhaenys tells robb, plainly, that if he wants to sleep with theon, it would be fine with her.

robb, unsurprisingly, is a mixture of shocked and horrified and confused. regardless of whatever feelings he’s trying to parse through about theon, he loves rhaenys dearly and here she is, giving him a permission to have an affair. 

“do you want me to have an affair???”

what follows is the weirdest argument ever, in which they each say i love you approximately twenty times apiece, robb tells her she’s pushing him away, rhaenys tells him he’s pushing her away, robb denies and then promptly admits his feelings for theon, rhaenys denies and then inadverdently alludes to her insecurities about marriage, robb possibly gives her permission to have an affair, rhaenys lets slip she knows theon’s got feelings for robb, and it’s just a bizzarre mess.

this goes on for several days. all of winterfell is very confused, because it seems like the king and queen are fighting but they also keep very pointedly telling each other how much they care. it’s just. weird.

onion headline: town watches local couple fumble their way through polyamory negotiations. third person has yet to be informed.

eventually they manage to get beyond their defensive reactions and have an honest, unfiltered conversation. yes, robb has feelings for theon that are probably not going away anytime soon, but his feelings for rhaenys have not changed. yes, rhaenys has a lot of insecurities and she’s dealing with them the best she can. that being said, if robb wants something to happen between him and theon, she genuinely wouldn’t mind. she knows he loves her, this doesn’t have to change anything.

blah blah blah makeup sex

nothing happens for a while. robb’s still not entirely convinced that rhaenys is truly okay with the idea, and anyway, he’s not entirely come to terms with it either. but they’re talking, about theon, about Feelings and Whatnot, and things are better.

theon, poor guy, has no idea what is going on with the two of them. the two of them had some sort of fight that robb never explained, and now things are back to normal but they keep looking at him? but maybe he’s just imagining things. married couples can be weird sometimes.

anyway, there’s a hunting expedition one day and what seems like all of winterfell goes. at one point, grey wind smells something and leads robb and theon off on a separate path. it’s a buck, and before robb can grab his crossbow, there’s an arrow in the creature’s neck.

“stop showing off, theon”

so they dismount to strap the carcass to one of their mounts to take back. and they’re teasing each other, saying a lot of stupid nonsense, and the mood is high. anyway, somehow robb ends up kissing theon.

“what the fuck stark.”

theon’s mostly in shock. a little confused. a little indignant on rhaenys’s behalf, which he didn’t really expect but she has a way of creeping up on people and besides robb, ur a married man!

robb tries to explain everything. mostly it comes out as word salad. theon is just further confused.

the rest of the hunting party shows back up, rhaenys included, and they head back to winterfell. 

"i kissed him," robb says, once they're away from anyone who might be listening in. "yeah?" says rhaenys, arching an eyebrow. "how was it?"

okay confession time. a good amount of the reasoning behind this ship is that i just think the three of them would be hot together. so just. keep that in mind.

anyway, they manage to find theon after dinner and robb explains it all, properly. theon uh. doesn't quite know how to take it. bc he and rhaenys had talked about his feelings for robb, and he had always assumed nothing was going to come of it all. and he’s lowkey pissed at rhaenys and just very confused at robb and just. it’s a lot. he needs some time to process everything. 

but yeah, eventually the three of them end up in a sort of poly/ open relationship sort of thing

actually I think ms april ludgate described it best:

except rhaenys and theon are closer to "friends who will never admit that they're friends except they talk about emotions sometimes and maybe have sex but not like in a romantic way" but yeah

anyway. the three of them have enough issues to be a magazine and it's hardly smooth sailing but they make it work? also the sex is pretty great

thank u for coming to my ted talk.