Work Text:
Trying Hard Not to Smile (though I feel bad)
Wisdom Teeth
“I’ve had them for twenty-eight years I don’t need – ”
“You’ve had then since they grew in when you we were eighteen.”
“Well they’re mine and I don’t want them taken away.” Keith knows he’s being childish but he doesn’t want or need his wisdom teeth removed. This is why he doesn’t go to the dentist. Except Lance figured out he kept cancelling his appointments and now they’re here.
“Keith, they’re impacted, they’re…you should be in horrible pain, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Keith rolls his eyes, “They’re not that bad.”
“Keith. Babe, getting your wisdom teeth out is good, it will make you feel better.”
Keith shoots his husband a deeply suspicious look. The kind of look that says ‘I don’t know your game yet but when I do…’ “I don’t want to get my wisdom teeth removed.”
“Why? I mean, you’re an adult, you technically can do whatever you want but what you want makes no sense.”
Keith rolls his eyes, “I don’t want to be out of work for unnecessary dental surgery. And I hate pain-killers. They make my head all weird.”
“You mean they limit the excruciating pain?”
Keith huffs childishly.
Lance sighs but it’s in a ‘this isn’t over’ kind of way so Keith is not mollified.
…
“Lance?”
“Shiro?”
“Yeah, hey, what’s going on?” Shiro sounds all concerned and nurturing and it’s weirdly soothing.
“Okay, so you know how I made Keith stop cancelling his dentist appointments and his dentist basically ordered him to get his wisdom teeth removed and I convinced him to go through with it?”
“Yeah? Keith’s wisdom teeth came in late and our insurance didn’t cover a removal so we didn’t do anything…what’s going on, is Keith okay?”
“Okay, so I’m in the waiting room, he’s not out yet.”
“Lance,” Shiro’s voice is firm, grounding, “Why do you sound all panicky?”
“Because I can hear the drilling on bone and I’m a horrible person who convinced my husband to go through incredibly invasive horrifying-sounding surgery and I’m terrible and…”
“Lance,” Shiro’s voice cuts through his escalating panic and drags him back down to earth, “Lance, count with me, one…two…”
“Shiro, I’m so sor – ”
“Lance. Count with me. One. Two. Three.”
Lance sucks in a breath through his teeth and follows Shiro’s count, “One…two…three…four…”
They get up to twenty-one and then go back through again, this time in Spanish, and then once more in Japanese. Lance is pretty sure his accent is terrible on the Japanese, but he follows Shiro as best he can and focusing on the foreign sounds helps clear his head a little.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah. A little. Thanks, Shiro. But – ”
“Keith is going to be fine. You’re not a terrible person; you did the right thing making him get them out if they’re messed up. You’re a good husband. Just if teeth grow in all the way they…I guess you could say ‘take root’. That’s what the drilling sound is. It’s all perfectly normal.”
“How do you know?” Lance is twenty-fucking-eight years old, why does he sound like a child?
“Because I googled wisdom teeth removal procedures extensively when Keith told me he had to get his out.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it keeps me from worrying as much.”
“That’s weirdly comforting.”
Shiro sighs, the sound buzzes strangely in the phone speakers, “It’s going to be fine, Lance. Just fine. And Keith’s going to laugh at both of us for freaking out.”
“More like give me a really skeptical eyebrow like ‘what planet are you from’ and I’ll be like ‘sorry, I’m from the I-care-about-you,-you-asshole planet, where are YOU from’. And it’ll be really dumb and cute.”
Shiro laughs a little at that, “Sounds about right. Are you feeling better? I need to get back to work.”
“Yeah, I am. Thanks, dude. I’ll let you know when Keith’s out.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’ll make sure he sends you at least one high-on-painkillers text.”
“Perfect.”
…
Keith on painkillers is the cutest thing. He blinks a lot and stares a lot like a baby bird that’s just come out of its shell. And when he does talk it’s with an adorable laser-focused intensity like he’s picking out each word specially. And literally anything will make him giggle quietly to himself like it’s the funniest, most secret thing in the world.
Lance is tempted to video all of this for posterity, except he thinks Keith might kill him if he does.
Right now they’re at the grocery store pharmacy, picking up Keith’s prescription and a week’s supply of jello, pudding and chicken and stars soup. And Keith is staring at boxes of jello and packages of pudding cups like they hold the secrets to the universe.
“Babe, you picked a flavor yet?” Lance asks him, a little concerned by Keith’s laser-eye focus on mushy foods.
“Lance,” Keith says very solemnly, “Why is jello bright colors and pudding...all boring? Isn’t the pudding jealous?”
Lance nearly chokes on air. “What?”
Keith turns to look at him. “I’d be jealous. If I was pudding.” He says very seriously around the wad of cotton padding his poor abused gums.
And that’s how Lance winds up laughing until he actually cries in the gelatin/pudding aisle while his poor post-dental-surgery spouse stares at him and mutters “Clean up on aisle four,” around a wad of surgical gauze.
…
“I said what?”
“Shh, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter,” Lance soothes, until the façade cracks and a few snickers escape, “Except it totally does, babe, it was beautiful.”
“I can’t believe you let me be out in public.”
“It was perfect, you told the cashier her perm was ‘glorious’ and reminded me three times to tell Coran he should get a monocle to go with his moustache ‘because funny m words flock together’.”
Keith makes an inarticulate noise of protest and buries his face in Lance’s chest. Lance squeezes him tight and rests his cheek on Keith’s wild hair.
“Painkiller you was very sweet.”
“I hate everything.”
“Except me ~” Lance sing-songs.
Keith seems to consider this. “Except you,” he admits, “But Shiro’s definitely out of the will, the traitor.”
(Shiro has a video of painkiller Keith gravely explaining the importance of a monocle to Coran’s moustache aesthetic. Shiro refuses to disclose where he’s hidden copies of said video, but backups do exist and Keith is determined to find them.)
…
Glasses
It’s Keith’s own damn fault he has to get reading glasses. If he hadn’t bugged Lance so much about going to the eye doctor (and yes, for yet another year Lance is revealed to have better than 20/20 vision and no discernable eye-related problems…the jerk) Keith himself wouldn’t have been dragged there with him. There is such a thing as being your own worst enemy. Keith is afraid he’s rapidly slipping into that category.
“But I don’t want reading glasses,” Keith says flatly.
“You’ve actually probably needed reading glasses most of your life,” the eye doctor oh-so-helpfully explains, apparently immune to Keith’s glare. Admittedly, Keith had toned the glare down out of respect for the woman’s position as a professional (a professional with access to horrible burning, dialating eye drops that made it impossible to see anything for hours). He’s regretting his restraint now. “Did you go to the eye doctor regularly as a child?”
Keith gives her a flat look and wonders how to tell her that it was rare for him to go to school regularly as a child, and that was required by law. “No,” he says instead.
“Well there’s a good chance some of your problems now might have been corrected by early intervention.”
Keith sighs. He really didn’t need to know that.
“But for right now you’re really best off to get prescription reading glasses. I’d recommend you wear them regularly, but really your vision problems will be fixed as long as you use them for reading, writing and computer work.”
Keith is regretting convincing Lance this was a good idea.
…
“Hey,” Lance greets him in the lobby; “There’s a frozen yogurt place next door and a coffee place next to that and a sandwich place next to that. That’s practically breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I never want to leave this strip mall.”
“And there’s an attorney at the end of the row for when I decide to sue for the food-induced coma you fall into.”
Lance laughs, then pauses, “Wait, are you suing me for falling into the food coma or the food places for providing me with the food for the food coma? Because I’m either really against or really for this idea and I need to know which.”
Keith shrugs, “Why not both? Maybe I’m in a litigious mood.”
Lance narrows his (perfect, dammit) eyes at him, “Wait. You’re breaking out the thesaurus words,” and then, like a revealation, “You’re grumpy! Why are you grumpy, there’s literally all the best foods all in a row for you to pick from!”
Keith sighs. Why is Lance so scary perceptive when he wants to be? “I have to get reading glasses,” he mutters under his breath.
Lance blinks at him once, twice, three times.
Keith raises an irritable eyebrow.
Lance breaks into a grin, “That will be so fucking cute.”
Keith stares at him.
“That’s it, you’re not appreciating this opportunity.”
“Opportunity?” Keith asks incredulously.
“Yeah!” Lance is beaming and bouncing on his toes like a child instead of a fully grown man, it’s ridiculous (and adorable), “You know how jealous I was of Carly and Val when they got glasses when we were kids?”
“What?”
“Yeah! Every few years they’d get to pick cool new frames and Carly had these lenses that would turn into sunglasses in the right light, it was so awesome! I was mad, I wanted magic sunglasses and to pick cool frames! It was weird when they started wearing contacts – I didn’t get it, glasses looked like so much fun.” Lance shrugs, “Sunglasses just aren’t the same.”
Keith shakes his head, “They just seem so…inconvenient.”
“Yeah, but picking frames is gonna be fun. You’re gonna be so sexy,” he winks and Keith rolls his eyes.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Um, you mean ridiculously fun.”
“Whatever.”
…
“No one commented on the glasses,” Keith says like this is Deeply Suspicious when he comes home from work. He’s still wearing them, the simple, rectangular black frames complimenting his sharp features nicely – Lance wonders if maybe he just forgot to take them off. (They look good…like…really good. Lance congratulates himself on a job well done.)
“Yeah, the children have been texting me all day about them.”
“They’re not interns anymore, they’ve been hired, they’re basically grownups now.”
“Pssh,” Lance huffs, “The children are the children.”
“And my coworkers,” Keith patiently explains, the conversation familiar and comfortable as he dumps the contents of his messenger bag on the couch to sort through.
“The consensus is Alyssa’s been keeping the boys from making jokes all day, trying to spare your feelings, and Adela figured you didn’t want to make a big deal about it. Oh, and Alyssa doesn’t want you to be offended that she thinks you have feelings.”
“What?”
“Apparently you kind of project an aura of what-are-human-emotions-I-like-to-pretend-I-don’t-have-any-please-play-along.”
“I do not!” Keith protests.
Lance gives him a look. “You apparently once said to them and I quote: ‘I don’t have feelings, what are feelings, are they a food? What’s a feeling?’”
“I was quoting Pidge!”
“Uh-huh,” Lance says skeptically, “Anyway, Tony and Farid thought they were fake for like half a day.”
“They thought I what, just randomly grabbed some fake glasses from costuming?” Keith asks incredulously, “I take it back, they aren’t adults, they’re children, terrible children.”
“Then they wanted to make jokes about how you were getting old – ”
“I’M NOT EVEN THIRTY.”
“But the girls convinced them not to.”
“GOOD.”
“And now they’re back to speculating on whether or not they’re real.”
Keith sighs and buries his face in his hands, “Why are all my favorite coworkers such…children?”
Lance shrugs, “You should probably talk to them tomorrow.”
“Apparently,” Keith says dryly.
…
“I have a new secret weapon,” Keith explains the next day as he crawls into bed next to a halfway asleep Lance.
“Hmm?”
“Just standing and staring at someone while slowly cleaning my glasses gives them enough time to get antsy and admit any wrongdoing of theirs before I have to confront them about it.”
“Oh my god, you’re evil.”
Keith cuddles closer. Lance is warm and he’s cold. “And I can stare disapprovingly at people over the frames and slowly take the glasses off and face-palm if I want to make a point and…”
“You are using the very attractive glasses I found for you for evil.”
“Yeah.”
“Why is that so hot?”
“You’re really weird?”
“Oh yeah, that’s definitely it.”
“Definitely.”
They’re both grinning into the kiss when they find each other in the dark.
…
Appendix
“Shiro, I think I’m dying,” Keith complains into the phone.
“Keith, it’s four in the morning, you’d better actually be dying.”
“I think I have appendicitis and I’m gonna die.”
“Keith. That’s literally impossible.”
Keith is currently lying on the bathroom floor, curled into a tiny ball of misery and hoping he hasn’t woken Lance up with all the times everything he’s ever eaten ever has managed to escape his stomach in the past thirty minutes. Now that he’s run out of anything to retch he’s just shivering on the floor, curled around the stabbing pain in his abdomen and hoping the cold bathroom tile takes care of what feels like a fever. “No, I googled it before I called you. It could be appendicitis and I could die.”
“What have I told you about WebMD?”
“Dammit, Shiro, just ask Allura if I should call 911.”
“You don’t have appendicitis.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do,” Shiro cuts him off before Keith can protest further. “Fine, I will ask Allura what she thinks.”
“Thank y – ”
“Allura, can my little brother have appendicitis in the appendix he had removed when he was five years old?”
Allura’s voice is muffled but it sounds a lot like “Nghhhh, *sleepy gurgle grumble* NO.”
And then Shiro’s back with “She says no.”
“When did I have my appendix removed?” Keith demands, “And why don’t I remember this?”
Shiro sighs, “That time you actually did have appendicitis and scared Mom half to death. She drove all night to get you to a hospital. It was awful, I was there.”
“Why don’t I remember this?”
“You were five? I don’t know.”
“So what’s wrong with me if I don’t have an appendix?”
“Probably food poisoning. I told you eating convenience store chili was going to come back to bite you.”
“I feel horribly betrayed,” Keith huffs.
“Well, in a few minutes your husband, who is a nicer person than I am, is going to wake up and come take care of you so you should stop feeling betrayed soon.”
“No, Shiro, let him sleep, don’t wake him up…”
“Too late, Allura called him.”
“Ugh.”
…
And of course, just minutes after hanging up with Shiro, there’s Lance, with a soft voice and a cold washcloth and Keith feels microscopically less betrayed by the universe.