Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [82] [Shklance]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [82]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 1663
Summary: "Problems?" Keith asked dryly, standing with his arms folded as he watched Lance fiddle with his bayard. The weapon had not lit up in the slightest, its usually glowing bands dark. Lance scowled and pointed the weapon at the locked door again, but just as it had the last half-dozen times he'd tried it the weapon gave off no noise nor indication that it was supposed to do anything other than look threatening.



"Problems?" Keith asked dryly, standing with his arms folded as he watched Lance fiddle with his bayard. The weapon had not lit up in the slightest, its usually glowing bands dark. Lance scowled and pointed the weapon at the locked door again, but just as it had the last half-dozen times he'd tried it the weapon gave off no noise nor indication that it was supposed to do anything other than look threatening.

Lance banged his fist against the solid door uselessly, then let his arm dangle, the plasma rifle held against his body with his left hand. "This has happened before," he said, although he was still scowling. "In Shiro's memory."

Keith said, quietly, "you were in Shiro's memory?"

"Yeah." Lance sighed and shook out his arm, the bayard returning to its normal state in his hand. He half-turned and looked back at Keith, brow furrowed. "You sound like you didn't know that."

"I didn't." Keith's ears had gone flat against his head, mostly indistinguishable from his ruffled mess of dark hair.

"I know we discussed this," Lance said. He folded his arms and tilted his head, trying to remember when, exactly, they had discussed it. After a long moment of silence, he shook his head once and shrugged. "Okay, I can't remember discussing it with you but I know we did." He gestured back at the door. "But anyway, when we were in his, my bayard didn't work in the cell, but once we broke out of the established timeline all our shit started working like normal."

"That's all well and good, but we don't know where we are in that stupid little shit's memory," Keith said.

"Yeah, that does pose some problems," Lance agreed. Keith glanced around the tiny room and Lance did as well. There wasn't much at hand, no real furniture to speak of, windows large enough to see out of but too small to easily try to escape through. "Any ideas?"

Keith rubbed one of his hands over the vambrace on his left arm, then nodded his head. "I think I do," he said, and popped the latch on that portion of his armor. Lance's eyebrows shot into his hairline.

"Whoa," Lance said. "Are we actually doing this? Because I'm down-"

"God, shut up," Keith said, and tossed Lance his shed vambraces. "I don't want to shred the gauntlets on my uniform, okay?"

"...what?"

Keith peeled off the thick dark vacuum-resistant material, exposing his hands and wrists, and rolled the sleeves up to his elbow. He was still wearing his fingerless gloves under the paladin armor, and Lance was about to open his mouth to say something snarky when Keith shot him a glare and Lance actually heeded the warning given. There had to be something messed up in his head for him to actually shut up when Keith glared at him, and Lance snorted to himself about that thought.

Keith's hands didn't look all that different, at least not until Keith flexed one hand and Lance realized that instead of blunt, trim nails he had claws.

"Okay, so when we finally do get around to fucking around with you like that, we're putting you face down in the mattress, I don't want you taking out chunks of my shoulder blades...." Lance shuddered at that thought. "Shiro might be into it, he seems like he might enjoy a bit of pain play-"

"Lance, I'm giving you one last chance to shut the fuck up," Keith said, putting one hand flat against the door, feeling out the building material through his fingers. "Besides, I'm pretty sure that if anything Shiro would want to be tied up and fucked into the mattress himself." He put both hands on the door as Lance sputtered, his brain almost refusing the image of an alpha tied up and submissive.

Keith flexed both of his hands and dug his fingertips into the door. The claws made a god-awful noise, digging into the cheap plastisteel construct — and after a moment Keith shifted one hand further away, and where he had flexed his hand into the door there were five distinct indents.

"What are you doing?" Lance asked, bewildered.

"Trying to get a good grip on it," Keith grunted, the effort of digging his claws into the door obviously a larger strain than it casually looked.

"To do wh-!?" Lance hadn't even completed the sentence when the door let out a sickening crack and the hydraulic system that would usually make the door slide aside let out a mournful hiss as it vented vapor into the hollow interior of the door itself. "You can't be serious," Lance said, as Keith took a step back, satisfied. "Did you seriously just ... what did you do-?"

"Well, I was trying to just crack the door, but it sounds like I broke it internally and that works too," Keith said. He was holding the back of one hand with the other, massaging it a little.

"With your bare hands!?"

Keith looked over at Lance. His ears had been standing up again and they folded down slightly. "I told you," Keith said, the sharp crack of anger in his voice masking the hurt that Lance knew was there. "You know I'm a freak." He started rolling down his sleeves, before holding his hand out for the gauntlets and vambraces.

Lance gave them over wordlessly, before walking to the door to inspect the puncture wounds himself. "Holy shit," Lance said, putting his fingers over the jagged plastisteel. "My boyfriend could bend me into a pretzel without even breaking a sweat." He glanced back at Keith and beamed, but the expression quickly changed over as he darted out of the way. Keith's boot slammed into the door, leaving a sizable dent.

The second kick took the door half off its track, exposing the hallway beyond. Keith got his fingers in the gap and Lance rushed over to help, and between the two of them they pulled the heavy plastisteel door aside enough that they could squeeze out of the room and into the hallway beyond. "Okay," Lance said as they looked left and right down a corridor lined with identical doors. "Eeny meeny miny mo?"

"Idiot," Keith said, and hooked his hand on Lance's arm and fully expecting Lance to yank his arm away as if Keith would crush it casually. Lance didn't even flinch. "Come on." He yanked Lance to the right and Lance went without complaint, bayard in hand as they rushed away, looking for their way out of this mess.


#

"But we're not going to be able to form Voltron without Keith and Lance," Hunk said as they stood in front of the schematic of the Galran prisoner ship. "We can't take Black and Yellow out, they don't have the cloaking tech that Green does."

"We can't leave Pidge and Matt alone on the ship," Allura said. "We're going, Hunk."

"You mean, we're going," Shiro corrected mildly.

Allura straightened, a dangerous look on her face. Hunk held out both hands in a placating manner. "Princess, you just passed out, maybe it's not a good idea-"

"I'm going," she said firmly, in a tone that brooked zero argument. Coran sighed from his position at the forward console, and while he hadn't turned around there was clearly an eye roll in there somewhere as well. "Did you have something to add, Coran?"

"Hunk is right, Princess," Coran said, looking back finally. "You did just have a spell."

"A spell that has passed," she said. "Without the rest of the paladins we're going to need all the firepower we can get. I need you to stay with the ship and coordinate for us."

"This still doesn't solve the problem that if the Galran see two Voltron lions coming toward them they're going to greet us with a barrage of firing weapons," Hunk said.

"So we fly under the radar," Illianya said. "I'll pilot my fighter; the princess can take Rian's. We can provide enough cover fire for a distraction the radar technicians won't even notice the lions."

Hunk nodded a little at that. "If we can slave the IF/F frequencies of the lions to broadcast something Galran, then the actual signal profile for the lions will be Galra ships and only a visual check would show anything different."

"Good," Shiro said. "Can you slave the lions to a Galra IF/F beacon?"

"Give me ten minutes," Hunk said, and he was already halfway to the elevator. The doors closed behind him and Shiro looked to Illianya. "Do you think you can cause enough of a distraction on your own?"

Illianya looked at Allura, and then to Shiro. "What do you mean?"

"Princess, you'll need to take the shuttle," Shiro said. "Pidge and Matt are freeing prisoners, no matter what they say otherwise. We'll need some kind of transport ship for as many as we can get; while we might be able to steal some from the prisoner ship there's no guarantee that we'll be able to launch anything other than what we came in."

Allura, who had been about to throw down with the insinuation that she shouldn't pilot a starfighter, pulled back and nodded. "That's a good point," she said. "I will take the shuttle then, if you think you can handle it solo, Illianya."

Illianya smirked. "There's a reason I'm the flight commander, princess," she said, and then bowed slightly. "I need to do preflight, if we're launching right away." Without waiting to be excused Illianya hurried for the elevator herself, leaving Shiro, Allura and Coran on the bridge.

"You're certain you will be all right to fly?" Shiro asked Allura.

"Do not ask me again," Allura said, and Shiro nodded his head once, and looked back to the schematic, and the two green dots that identified the location of Matt and Pidge. They blinked steadily and then, without warning — one went out.