Chapter Text
Chapter 5
The next Christmas is different. The setting is the same – Lance’s mothers’ house is just as crowded and chaotic and full tinsel and tiny terrors. Lance’s nephew Davie is a year older and a year louder. Keith still doesn’t know what to do around a toddler. It’s still hilarious. What makes it even better is Jack sitting beside him, with a matching look of fascinated horror as Keith helplessly nods along to Davie’s enthusiastic babble.
“Is it still too soon to say that I’m a little relieved to have skipped this phase?” Jack mutters out of the corner of her mouth.
“I can’t judge, I skipped this phase too,” Keith mutters back before nodding and saying, voice stilted and awkward, “YES, that is a very shiny bow. No, you can’t – don’t – LANCE, HE’S TRYING TO PUT A BOW ON THE DOG.”
Lance tears himself away from gossiping with his youngest sisters to assess the scene.
“Keithy-kins, you’re thirty years old. Figure it out.”
Keith’s look of utter betrayed indignation mixed with Jack’s guffaws make everything worth it. Even when Davie falls off of the dog’s back – still clutching the bow – and begins to wail.
“Not it!” calls a pair of voices from the kitchen and Lance turns to see Carla and Acxa’s grinning faces as they pointedly put fingers on their noses like they’re all in third grade and nose-goes is still a valid way to get out of dealing with a screaming toddler.
Lance’s heart melts a little (a lot, his vital organs have turned to sludgey Frosty the Snowman mush) at the sight of Acxa and Lala trading conspiratorial glances like they’ve known each other forever instead of just having met a few months ago.
Davie’s mother soon rescues him from the injustice of a universe cruel enough to have gravity (and rescues their eardrums from his complaints) and order is restored. Lala is dragged into conversation by Andie and Sofi and Lance slips away to check in with Acxa.
He slings a careful arm around her shoulders – she’s still short for her age, and slight, but she’s gained an inch or two in height since coming to stay with them permanently. It turns out when you don’t actively want to avoid the other people in the house, you eat meals more frequently. She and Keith had a hair-dye adventure in early December; something about Acxa not wanting to go to a dance at her middle school, Keith insisting she participate in ‘meaningless social rituals’ anyway, and her saying she’d only go if she could dye her hair blue. Keith, in the interest of showing her how much he wasn’t bothered by her demand, did her one better and bought blue, teal, and purple hair dye. And then insisted on dying his own hair too. Just to prove a point. They both dyed their hair in the master bathroom (Lance had a lot to say about that when he came home to his bathroom looking like the aftermath of a muppet murder scene). Keith went subtle (as subtle as BRIGHT BLUE PARTY HAIR can get) and only did a single thick streak of purple fading into blue, then teal. Lance had to grudgingly later that it actually framed his face quite nicely.
Acxa dyed her whole head. Between the hair, the shiny purple combat boots Keith bought her for her birthday (Lance’s boy is a pushover and Lance is pretty sure Keith’s going to spoil his mini-me utterly rotten by the time she’s eighteen) and the silver pleather jacket she borrowed from Allura, she looked like a Lost Boy if Peter Pan was set in a Hot Topic.
Keith drew the line at letting her put on eyeliner (“You’ll poke your eye out or look like a raccoon, let Shiro teach you how to do it when you’re old enough for decent hand-eye coordination”) but Lance let her borrow some body glitter from last year’s Pride and by the time they were done she looked like a punk rock pixie. Maybe Keith’s not the only one who’s a pushover.
She went to the dance, drank punch, hung out with Narti, and declared the whole event “Decent, but undersupervised. Terry and Travis got into a fight in the parking lot and I had to break it up. Boys are stupid.” She’d wavered at that and added, “Except you two. You’re stupid in a good way.” And smiled like that somehow made up for her calling them stupid.
Keith had laughed and Lance dragged her in for a hug and over her head they resolved to volunteer to chaperone more school events. Clearly they were understaffed.
In the present, surrounded by Christmas cheer, Lance tugs on a strand of Acxa’s slightly faded neon hair.
“How’re you holding up?”
Acxa swats his hand away and leans into his side. “Fine.”
“If you need to go be quiet somewhere and read, that’s ok.”
“I’m fine,” she stubbornly insists; little jaw firm.
“You know, Keith had to go hide somewhere for a while his first Thanksgiving here. And that was before Davie was born, and Jack showed up. There’s no shame in needing a moment.”
She turns her head and hides her face in his side. He tightens his arm around her narrow shoulders.
“Acxa? Kiddo?” he says softly.
She sniffs and he drops down to a crouch immediately, glad they’re off to the side so her back is to a wall and his body can shield her from curious gazes.
“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on, kiddo?”
She sniffs again, cheeks blotchy red and pink. “I just…hic…I just don’t get it,” she hiccups out.
“Don’t get what, Pumpkin?” Lance is a fan of pet names. Always has been. He nicknamed his sister ‘Lala’ when they were tiny tots. He calls Keith ‘babe’ casually and ‘baby’ when things are too much. He’s still working out all the little affectionate things he can call his kid.
“How to…how to…to…to…I’ve never had this before. It’s so much.”
“Is it too much? Do you need to go home? Keith and I’ll go with you.”
“No!” she blurts, then flushes dark red, “No, I’m, I’m happy. I’m so happy. I don’t…I want to stay. I want to keep all of this. I never wanted to keep a foster family before. It’s a lot.”
Lance stares at her. He wishes Keith were here. He’d understand what to do or say. Or, maybe not. Maybe this is above Keith’s paygrade. Maybe there’s a reason Acxa sought Lance out. The thought that she might want him for something, for comfort, that she might feel the warm fuzzies he feels when he looks at their little family, warms something in his melty Frosty the snowman chest.
“Do you know how hard Keith and I worked to get you?” Lance asks, “Social Services has a lot of stupid paperwork and hoops to jump through. Keith was so mad,” Lance chuckles wetly and Acxa follows suit, “He’d come home and stomp around, muttering ‘why can’t we just bring her home?’. Every day. I think he stared down the social worker every single time he had to sign something. It took for-flipping-ever.” And it was actually really lucky in a twisted way that Acxa had gotten lost in the woods and Keith was the one to find her. That went a long way in convincing Social Services that her current placement wasn’t working and that Keith was a fit guardian.
“And I had to learn all the ways teenage punk Keith got arrested.”
Acxa snorts, “They’re all lame.”
“Come on! He told you? Before me?” Lance whines theatrically, a grin on his lips. “And it took a really, really long time to get everything in order.”
And then they’d had to sit Acxa down and ask her, very seriously, if she wanted them as foster parents. And Keith had been stony and stubborn and Lance had been a nervous wreck but she’d cried and said yes and they moved her into their house and into their lives. Nothing was perfect, not by a long shot. It’s never easy to fit into another person’s existence. Especially when you have Lance’s insecurities and Keith and Acxa’s truckload of mom/dad/authority issues.
But now they were here. And Keith and his dad were sitting next to each other on the couch like they were really, truly a family, and Lance’s mama was dancing with his mom in their kitchen, and his sisters and their spouses and children were filling the house with life and love. And Lance was trying to convince their twelve year old punk rock pixie that she was theirs and they were hers.
“But we did it. Because we wanted you to be part of our family. We want you here. We love you. You’re our kid.”
Acxa sniffs wetly, “Will you, could you…can you adopt me?”
Lance wraps her in a tight hug, “Of course, that’s the next step.”
“Thank you,” she whispers, clutching his shoulders “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
…
Over on the couch, Jack nudges Keith’s arm and tilts his head toward an out of the way corner where Lance was carefully hugging a shaking Acxa and she was clinging like a limpet right back.
“I think you got yourself a kid,” Jack says quietly.
“No shit,” Keith shakes his head, “Of course she’s ours.”
“Yeah, but I think she’s picked you two. She wants in on this whole family thing.”
Keith eyes his father and tries to read between the lines. “Yeah? Yeah, that’s…that’s good.” He finally manages awkwardly.
Jack clears his throat and looks away, grey stormcloud eyes unreadable. “What are you going to have her call you?”
“Huh?” Keith asks.
Jack clears his throat again, “Is she going to call you ‘dad’ or ‘Keith’ or what?”
Keith shrugs, he hadn’t thought of this. “Is it that big a deal?”
Jack eyes him, “Yeah, yeah, it is. Names have meaning. What we call ourselves and each other matters.”
Keith thinks of Lance calling him ‘babe’ and ‘baby’ and a million other spur of the moment ridiculous pet names. He thinks of Shiro calling him ‘kiddo’ and his mom’s calloused hand in his hair as she said “Hang on, babydoll, we’re going for a ride.”
(He thinks of dying his hair with Acxa, of splashing blue dye all over Lance’s pristine bathroom, and remembers his mom, dying her hair purple in truck stop bathrooms and flashing him a sparkling smile saying “sometimes you’ve got to shake things up, sometimes you need to not recognize the face in the mirror”)
“Do you want me to call you dad?” Keith asks, what could be understanding flickering like distant lighting in the depths of his brain.
Jack leans away, looks away, distancing himself from the conversation with his entire body, “It’s up to you, whatever works,” he says gruffly, the twang in his voice rough with something.
Keith eyes him, thinks about the word ‘Dad’. He’s never had a dad before. He’s had a Shiro, and Shirogane, he supposes. Lance doesn’t have a dad. He calls Lance’s moms by their first names, or sometimes ‘Mama’ or ‘Ma’. He can’t manage to call anyone ‘Mom’. That’s something best left to his own mother.
“I’ve never had a dad before,” he admits.
“Kind of new territory for me too.” Jack shrugs.
“Dad.” Keith half-mouths, half-says the word.
“I mean, Lance calls me ‘Texas Darth Vader’ so whatever you come up with can’t be worse,” Jack tried to joke.
Keith chokes on a snort, “What? He called you that to your face?”
“Is it really better if he’s saying it behind my back?” Jack asks.
Keith chokes on some choice words and just shakes his head. “Gah.”
“Really? I expected more profanity.”
“Lance says I have to cut back on the swearing in front of children. Since we have a real one now and not just my ex-interns.”
Jack snorts, “I feel like that ship’s sailed.”
“Yeah, I know.” Keith shakes his head and they sit in companionable silence for a few breaths.
Keith presses his lips together and thinks and remembers and decides to try something.
“Dad,” he says. Out loud, deliberate. Hard on the consonants. Unmistakeable.
Jack twitches but doesn’t respond.
Keith elbows his father, “Hey, Dad.”
Jack looks at him and there’s a thirty years of lost time in his eyes. He’d given Keith a painting for Christmas. It was gorgeous, a range of desert mountains and if you looked at them just right they became a lioness in reponse. The title was written on the back in dark, bold letters: ‘The Huntress at Rest’.
Jack’s stormcloud gaze softens into something close to the night sky just minutes before dawn. He slings an arm around Keith’s shoulders and squeezes. “Thank you, son.”
“You’d better fake a really good illness next time I want to get out of seeing Shiro’s stupid family,” Keith grumbles.
Jack’s chuckle rumbles through his ribcage. “You’d better come up with something real clever that doesn’t make me sound old when you’re telling your kid what to call me.”
Keith grins.
…
They’re setting the table for dinner and Keith has his hands full of green bean casserole (casseroles are still depressing food in Keith’s book and he has no idea who the fuck thought they were festive). Acxa sidles up beside him and leans against his side like a cat asking for attention.
“Casseroles are fucking depressing food,” Keith mutters.
“WATCH YOUR DAMN LANGUAGE, KID!” his father – Dad– hollers from the kitchen and both Acxa and Keith snicker.
“So Lance says it’s ok – ” Acxa begins and Keith shoots her a wary look.
“Lance says a lot of stuff is ok that is definitely not ok so I hope this is going in an ‘actually ok’ direction.” Keith says.
“Lance says it’s ok for you to adopt me,” Acxa blurts out, digging and elbow in his ribs for his interruption.
“Well yeah, duh, of course that’s ok,” Keith snorts, setting down the casserole and looking at Acxa. “Do you want us to adopt you?”
“Yes.”
There’s a star going supernova in Keith’s chest. It’s cool. “Great. We’ll start on the paperwork after Christmas.”
Acxa smiles one of her small, shy smiles, and wraps her arms around his waist, burying her face in his stomach. “Lance says you guys love me.”
“Lance is really into stating the obvious, then,” Keith says dryly, hugging his kid back, “And my Dad says you’d better come up with something cool to call him. He doesn’t want to be any old grandpa.”
“I don’t want to be old unless it gets me free stuff!” Jack yells from the kitchen, making Lance’s mama cackle.
“See?” Keith says archly.
Acxa snorts, “YOU GET A FREE GRANDCHILD, YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY!” she shouts back and Jack roars with laughter.
“What do you want me to call you?” Acxa asks very seriously as she detaches from the hug, helping Keith lay out silverware.
“Whatever you want, chickadee,” Keith says, the endearment slipping out, another one of the things his mother used to call him when she was feeling warm and fond and connected to the whole world.
Acxa looks thoughtful, “I think I’ll stick with Keith and Lance for now. We’ll see,” she raises her voice, “BUT JACK’S GONNA BE GRANDPAPPY.”
“I’m from Texas, darlin’,” he hollers back, “That’s not the most embaressing thing we’ve called our grandpas by a long shot.”
“I’LL WORK ON IT.” She challenges back and turns to Keith with a conspiratorial grin.
Lance comes out of the kitchen shouting “MAKE WAY FOR THE TURKEY!” at just the right moment and they move out of the way with laughter and full hearts.
Keith catches his husband’s eye and they share small, secret smiles. They’ll be just fine going forward.
They’re a family, after all.