Archive of Our Own ^beta

= ⭐ =

It all started rather innocently.

Lance was homesick and exhausted and strung out on this endless months of war. They all were. And he was going to do something about it, even if it killed him, which looking back at it all just might.

One quick study of the calendar convergence and an almost endless lecture by Coran later and he was armed with the knowledge that they had a few weeks/ movements to what on Earth would be the winter solstice. Give or take half a rotation or whatever mumbo jumbo Coran was spilling.

The winter solstice. That meant the holidays. Noche Buena, Christmas, the whole shabang. Perfect.

It did not take much to convince Shiro that this would make a great team bonding exercise, doubling as a means to increase their agility and on the spot reactions and thinking. Though if Lance was honest, he had a fleeting suspicion that Shiro was just as willing to participate in some holiday downtime as the rest of them. 

After all, their fearless leader was a big kid at heart. Shiro was not much older than the rest of them and all had been pushed to grow and mature way beyond their fragile age by the sheer force of being propelled in the middle of an intergalactic conflict. All the hardships that each of them had already experienced prior did not help the cause one bit.

But Lance was not going to dwell on the darkness. It was enough that it was plaguing his nights and much of his days. This was exactly what he was trying to combat here. And so he charged head on.

= ⭐ =

The days that had followed could only be described as intense bonding. Mostly in the terms that the entire team, including Coran and Allura, and then also Matt (who may or may not have been roped into spending time in the castleship on the pretence of false urgency by his gremlin of a sibling and then gladly staying) not only spending every minute in close proximity but working together on getting the castle ready for the festivities.

That had been Lance’s plan all along, for all of them to work together on everything. Otherwise the magic would not work its mystical ways.

They sat down, assessed the food supplies, devised a menu and produced a plan on who would be cooking what and when. 

Finding decorations for the castle felt almost like a mission. Just as dangerous as well. Sifting through 10,000 years old boxes of Altean and ancients know what other artefacts, in parts of the ship that they had not even properly explored since they started living here proved to be more precarious than extracting data from a minor Galra base. Or maybe the war had had effects on them they would need to unpack with a therapist. 

In any way, after a few days of searching and sorting, and quite a few (the actual number shall remain forever a mystery, and whoever dared blab shall suffer the eternal wrath of the rest) visits to the Medbay for cuts, bruises, spraint body parts, near or full-on fractures, weird insect bites, you name it, they finally had enough bit bots and knick knacks to spruce up the bridge, command strategy room, dining hall, what they had dubbed the family lounge and even the kitchen and some of the corridors and rooms. 

It had all turned out quite festive. A regular mishmash of completely uncoordinated colours and styles, creating an alien winter wonderland or creepy scarehouse, depending on who you asked, yet still none of them would change it for the world and would treasure it more than any other celebratory decoration to come. Because each and every one bulb of light was a smile, each “garland” a hearty fit of laughter, each decorative piece that supposed to resemble a star, or ball, or humanoid, or flora, or fauna, was a joyful tear shed in the presence of what had indeed turned into a found family.

Keith had taken it upon himself to drive the creation of the scenario on entertainment and every single person on board, mice included, had been stunned speechless by how extensive the list was. Days later Shiro was still pacing around the Castleship dumbfounded, randomly asking ‘how?!’ and prodding Keith’s cheeks, trying to make sure he had not been replaced by a clone or something. 

The list was extensive. There were board games, party games, movies, singalong moments, storytelling time, the works. And all the necessary props and materials had been neatly arranged in the family lounge, ready for when they would be needed. Pidge had quickly programmed an MC bot and celebratory software package that would take care of all their needs.

= ⭐ =

Everything was running more or less smoothly, until it didn’t.

The preparations had an extra overlay.
What would celebrating the holidays with your many siblings, albeit found, be without some harmless pranks? 

And it had started rather innocuous in the beginning. 

Some salt in Shiro’s dangerously sweet coffee. Or whatever alien spice Hunk was using for salt.

An improvised whoopee cushion on Allura’s chair.

Hacking Coran’s handheld device to play a Sea Shanty every time he typed. 

Then everything slowly but steeply escalated to an all out prank war of epic proportions. Every Paladin for themselves.
Nobody was safe and nothing was off limits. 

Pidge had changed the temperature of Keith’s shower from scolding to freezing in the middle of his morning routine, along with hiding his clothes, which had resulted in the red paladin running around the castle barefoot yelling bloody murder, brandishing his blade in one hand, the other trying and failing to secure the towel around his waist as fat drops of liquid dripped from his soaked hair. Sudz, water, not entirely sure.

Matt had been electrocuted. The culprit was still unsure, maybe Lance, maybe Hunk. There was likely some Pidge in there too. His hair stood upright for days, smoking. The smell lingered on even more…

Hunk and Shiro tried tricking Lance and Allura to kiss under some improvised mistletoe. The blue paladin was quick to catch on what was happening and was all but ready to explain to the princess the Earth tradition and get his smooch with the dopiest grin on his face when he received a punch in the face instead. And then a few slaps for good measure. Allura spent a couple of days apologising, trying in vain to explain that she was afraid of bugs, the ginosha in particular and the sprig looked suspiciously like it. Alas, nothing helped. Something got irrevocably broken in that moment and there was no fixing it.

It was getting progressively worse and worse. The Castleship had transformed into a de facto battlefield. Certain teams had formed along the way.

Pidge and Hunk had joined their engineering and hacking prowess, enlisting an army of flying drones and mini robots to their side.

Shiro and Matt had revived the strategic team they were during their Garrison days, going old-school making low-tech but highly effective traps with whatever they had on hand, which was in fact quite a lot. Hunting style traps with twigs and rope, buckets of hot and freezing cold liquids, black ice, broken pieces of glass and crystal, hidden ropes to trip… you name it. Those two were vicious.

Allura and Coran had harnessed the power of the castle, turning its entirety into something very similar to the training deck but infinitely meaner. Force fields erupted from the walls, floors and ceilings at random, some visible, some not, all incredibly painful. Then there were the lights. The way the Alteans were playing with their intensity and strobing effects was like a dark macabre concert that slowly drove one insane. 

The mice and their high pitched noises and screeching added an extra wicked layer to the Altean symphony of horror.

And then there were Keith and Lance, who of course were fending off for themselves. And mostly on the defensive. Until…

“Auch!” Lance squeaked out, as another body bumped into him, head on, full speed. “For quiznack’s sake, watch where you are going, you… you…”

The body nearly sagged into him and it took a moment before he sorted out that this was Keith. Typically he would recognise that fashion faux-pas mop of a hair anywhere but right now his fellow paladin’s mullet was so full of… he was not even sure full of what in all honesty… that the luscious dark locks were unrecognizable. 

“Hey Keith, buddy? Are you ok? Keith? Keith?!” Lance slapped the other boy gently on the cheek and that seemed to have helped Keith come to as two nebula eyes slowly blinked up and tried focusing on his own. 

“Head… head hurts… hurts… so bad…” Keith barely managed to utter after too many tense seconds.

Lance took better stock of his teammate, as much as he could in the dim flickering light of the kitchen corridor, and didn’t much like what he saw. A raging war yell split the precarious silence. That sounded suspiciously like Pidge. The little gremlin had a surprising dark side it seemed. Who knew. Definitely not Lance. Another warrior cry took the blue paladin out of his sudden musings. That one was a double. And the pitches rang very much like Matt and Shiro. 

This was getting too much out of hand. And by the looks of it Keith was out for the count. Quizznack, Lance was not sure how all of them were not out of commission by that point, especially with the number of injuries going on. And those were only the ones that he could ascertain from the chatter over the PA system. Ancients knew how much else all of them were suffering in silence. Like Keith over here… 

KEITH! Lance’s brain screamed loudly. He needed to take care of him asap. 

“Hold on buddy. I am going to take you to my room and we will get you all checked up and fixed up.” Lance whispered quietly as he heaved the other boy and started the slow drag down the corridors, keeping to the wall in the hopes they would not be seen.

= ⭐ =

By some miracle or who knows maybe Alfor’s ancient protection, Keith and Lance were able to make it safely to Lance’s room undetected. 

The moment Keith had been deposited on the bed, he had started giggling like an idiot. It made Lance equal parts creeped out and scared to death. He took a moment to finally properly check out Keith and assess the damage. It was worse than what he initially thought.

Keith clearly had a concussion, a strange bump on his head, all to go along with the myriad of cuts and bruises that were virtually everywhere and oh, there was also the gash above his left eye that was still steadily bleeding. 

“You complete knuckleheaded idiot…” Lance muttered under his breath, no bite to his words at all. “When are you going to learn to take better care of yourself?”

He shook his head in exasperation and carefully started taking off Keith’s clothes so they wouldn’t be in the way. 

“Stay still mullet, I will go grab a few supplies from the bathroom and I’ll be right back.”

He ducked into the adjoining ensuite and fast as lightning appeared back with a few towels, a basin of water and a med bag swinging on his shoulder.

He knelt down in front of his teammate and slowly got to work cleaning up and patching the many wounds, starting with the nasty gash on his head. Amidst the restrained half-sobs and grunts that came out of Keith’s mouth, despite his clenched teeth, were the first words the red paladin had uttered since their run in near the kitchen. 

“Lance… Can you… it hurts… it hurts so bad… please, can you…”

“I know, I am sorry buddy, I will try to be as gentle as possible but you have hurt yourself real bad here.”

“No… the light, can you… can you turn off the light… It hurts my head… it hurts.”

Lance blinked a couple of times until what Keith said finally sunk into his over exhausted brain. He quickly jumped to his feet and flew across the small room to lower the lights’ intensity to just the emergency strips on the floor. Good thing too, lest they got discovered by the others. Although Lance had a sinking suspicion that the rest of the team would be too preoccupied with pranking each other to miss the two of them. 

It took too long for Lance’s comfort to tend to all of Keith’s injuries. When he was finally done, he gently pushed the red paladin to lie on the bed, making sure to grab him extra pillows and a cozy blanket. 

“Try to grab some rest Keith while I check these medical doohickeys and see if there is something we could use to help, ok?”

The other boy could barely nod, his eyes fighting to stay open. The last thing he saw before finally losing the battle was Lance’s tired smile. 

= ⭐ =

When Keith blinked back into existence, it took a few moments for reality to sink back in. As if he had been sucked into a black hole of cotton. 

He took in the unfamiliar ceiling, wordlessly trying to look around. The various pictures, posters and mementos scattered around told him everything he needed to know - he was in Lance’s room. He had been here before a couple of times. Briefly. But the place was too memorable to forget. Unlike his barren quarters. 

All of a sudden, memories started flooding in. The prank wars, getting hurt, bumping into Lance near the kitchens, getting back to Lance’s room. Lance? Where was Lance?

Keith made a sudden jerky movement, trying to find his teammate, which he immediately regretted. The pain pinned him back to the bed with a sob.

“You are awake! No sudden movements dummy! You still have a nasty concussion, you need to rest.” Lance chidded, yet his voice was much more worried than angry.

Keith just grunted in ascent, and slowly and carefully turned onto his side so that he could see the blue paladin. Lance was busy typing away on a laptop connected to his handheld which gave Keith a moment to take in the room in more detail. His eyes wandered and finally settled back on Lance and the organised mess near him - the medical bag, the pile of discarded supplies he had presumably used on him, the bloody towels in the now empty basin, a mountain of rations. The last invoked a Pavlovian reaction and the red paladin’s stomach protested with a loud growl.

“Damn, I am so sorry.” He heard Lance say, before springing into action. “I get so distracted and forget everything else when I focus on a task.” He grabbed a few protein bars and some water pouches and gave them to Keith. “You are probably starving. You have slept for almost 10 hours.”

“Ten hours??! Holly fucking quizznack!” Keith simply grunted, lost as to what else to say.

“It can’t be helped, mullet, your body needed to rest and heal. You still need to take it slow. You need to start looking better for yourself, you know. You can’t be so reckless.” Lance didn’t even lift his head from the keyboard. 

Keith’s eyes flared. He wanted to retort and yell at the blue paladin but he was not wrong. Ancients know what would have happened if Lance hadn’t taken care of him. All the angry yelling died down in his throat.

“Why do you have so many medical supplies in your room? And rations? And what are you even doing right now? Please don’t tell me you are gaming.” Keith shot out instead.

“Don’t think I don't know what you are doing, Keith. Deflecting won’t work forever.” Lance turned his head and held Keith’s defiant gaze. “We are talking about this. Maybe not right now, cause priorities but after the dust settles, we are talking about this.”

Lance’s stare was equally as firm as his own, even more so. They stayed like this, fighting with eyes, for a few long minutes until Keith gave up, lowering his eyes with a defeated “okay”. Their relationship had settled into a more playful banter and rivalry than actual animosity around the one year mark in space. It had taken quite a lot of time, effort and external persuasion to get to a place of mutual understanding, surprised revelations and assumptions bashing. It was a precarious balance, teetering on the ledge of camaraderie and friendship but both of them worked hard on it daily. 

Satisfied with the response, at least for now, Lance got back to his devices and to answering Keith’s questions.

“For your information, I am not gaming. I am trying to hack into the Castle’s monitoring system, so that I can get a better picture of where the others are and what they are up to. If we are going to stop all this nonsense and get back to celebrating, we need to be prepared. We can’t go into all of this blind.” He emphasized his last sentence, punctuating every single syllable which made Keith audibly gulp. “I am not a hacker like Pidge and Matt, or even on the level of Hunk, but I know my way around a system, and I have been looking into the castle specs… learning and practicing,” Lance added reluctantly but by then the exhaustion had taken over and the filter was long gone.

“The key is,” he continued, “to make sure we are not detected. Which sadly I have not mastered yet but I am banking on the fact that all of them are distracted with pranking each other and by the time they notice it would be too late.”

“As for the rations, I was grabbing those from the kitchen when we bumped into each other.”

“So it’s no longer me bumping into you.” Keith attempted to tease.

“Shut up!” Lance almost squeaked.

“What about the medical bag?” 

An uneasy silence engulfed the pair as a coarse blanket. It took Lance too long to answer but Keith knew better than to push.

“The medical supplies… initially I had started pilling those up to study and see if I can learn to use better to help with field injuries but over time, they also… they also… fuck it… they also help me patch myself back up.”

Keith’s breath hitched. Lance had indeed become quite adept when it came to field injuries. No one had questioned how or why, they just accepted the boon and moved on.

“Why do you need to patch yourself up Lance?” Keith asked softly, his voice unsure.

Lance remained silent for too long. Even with his back turned to Keith however, the red paladin could hear the tiny muffled sobs that wracked his lanky frame. Keith stood very slowly, careful not to jostle his head and silently sat down next to Lance, glueing his entire side to his friend and taking his shaking hands in his own. 

“After the dust settles and we take care of this mess, you and I are talking about this, ok?” Keith mimicked Lance’s previous words. “We will figure it all out together, ok? I promise!”

Lance looked up and met Keith’s soft gaze. He gave a small nod and a tiny pained smile. It was a promise. Neither of them spoke about the tears that silently rolled over tan freckled cheeks. 

“Can I have a hug?” Lance asked tentatively. 

Keith smiles and quickly enveloped him in a warm hug. 

“Wow Lance, you move fast, you got me into your room, your bed and now hugs, maybe buy me dinner first next time?” Keith’s voice was wobbly as he joked, squeezing the blue and white shirt harder.

Soon Lance’s entire body was soon quavering with glorious laughter. “We might need to enroll you in joking lessons, mullet, because this was really, really bad.”

Keith simply joined in the laughter. He didn’t care, Lance could lecture him all he wanted once this was all over, for now what was important was that it had worked and once more there was a huge genuine smile on the blue paladin’s lips, just how it should be.

“Enough dillydallying though. Time for action.” Lance was back to business. “Take a look now, here are all their positions. We could approach it like so…”

= ⭐ =

In the end, Lance and Keith devised a quick and dirty two-stage plan.

Stage one - corral everyone in a common area. They chose the training deck as it had all the needed equipment.

Stage two - rope in and incapacitate everyone so they could talk some sense into them and stop this monster than the prank wars had turned into. 

And here on stage two is where the dirty part came in.

Apparently, when combined, two of the substances that ‘oiled’ and kept the training bots clean created a sticky foam that hardened almost immediately on contact with flesh. Don’t ask Lance how he found out about that.

With striking efficiency, Keith and Lance prepped the trap and got down to quiding the rest of the team to the spot marked with x.

It took some doing, they should be honest. And maybe they needed to trick the mice into helping out (which they would both deny vehemently, even under torture). But in the end, Hunk, Pidge, Matt, Shiro, Coran and Allura, were a pile of limbs, sticking out in various directions from an obscene amount of sticky purply green foam in the middle of the training deck. Like an abstract art installation. It was all very funny really. And Keith and Lance took the appropriate time to enjoy the levity of the moment. Which if you ask Pidge was way too long and way too smug.

The pair didn’t have to lecture their found family too much (although they did try) as a very ashamed Shiro and equally as abashed Allura, took the baton and after a profuse apology, thoroughly chastised the entire team for taking it too far. 

After removing the foam, (which proved easier said than done, but Lance was prepared), they assessed the damage to themselves and the castle. Treating the injuries took two solid days. Even more if you count the time it would take for Coran’s half moustache to grow back. 

Getting the Castleship into proper shape was a much bigger undertaking but it seems nothing an army of drones could not make quick work of. Especially in the hands of a Punk Team of expert hackers. 

With the help of Keith, Lance had put the rest of the team back on track with the holiday celebration plan. In the end, they were a day or so late from the original target date. But with all the space dilations and universal shifts, who was even to say that the original calculations were correct. Who even cared. ‘Nobody!’ is what Lance would tell you. What mattered was they were together, they were taking a moment to celebrate and be more than just warriors, be a family. They were marching to their own calendar anyways. And making a proper one with plenty of celebrations, all their birthdays and other important observances was the next ultra special important mission on Lance’s docket. And you should be sure that he would make sure it is completed in record time. After all, his little space family was the most important thing for him in the universe. Next to his lovely familia back on Earth.
Maybe not Rachel. Ok, also Rachel. 

Perhaps, he could rope in Keith to help him out with this one too. The way they had tackled the prank wars debacle was after all living in infamy, both of them making sure to rub it in their teammates faces every chance they got. 

Their heart to heart was still due. Mayhaps, he could ask after that.

After all, they did make a great team.

= ⭐ =