Chapter Text
Lance, for the most part, usually liked the sunset. It would provide incredibly bright and blurred coloured, creating a beautiful mesh of vibrancy which he felt he could stare at for hours.
Today, however, he wanted to chuck every paintbrush, pencil and his one cup of water that sat scattered around him at the soft orange and blue hues of the sky.
This was because Lance had been staring at it for almost an hour now, as he had been for the past couple of days. Yet he couldn’t stop looking, because no matter how frustrating the easy transitions between the colours seemed to be, he felt like he needed to transfer the sight before him onto the large A1 sheet that sat loosely on his completely trashed desk.
He wasn’t exactly obligated to completing the image, no where near actually. It had come as a whim around a week ago, when he’d been mindlessly trawling through the web when he’d found a practical gold mine of different varieties of sunsets and sunrises, and he’d silently promised himself he’d do the same as the artists he had found.
Cut to a week later however, and Lance’s mood had changed on that quite a bit.
It annoyed him to no end that no matter what he did, he simply could not get the colours right, and whenever he did something slightly good, it would smudge something else out, resulting in yet another mistake in the vast amount of colours he had already subjected his paper to.
He let out a low groan, silently cursing under his breath and let his pencil drop onto the carpet of his room, and then regretting that decision immediately because oh god that was a brush and he just got paint on his floor god dammit-
As he bent down to pick up the offending brush he, rather aggressively, blew a small strand of hair out of his vision, and when Lance started getting mad at hair, that was when he knew it was probably time for a break.
In an almost pained way, he pulled himself up from the leather seat he had ‘borrowed’ from Pidge a couple of months ago, and dragged his feet to the door, before making his way through the corridor and into the room that served as both their kitchen and living room.
To his utter and complete joy, he saw Hunk standing in the kitchen, bent over a plastic bowl which was filled to the brim with ingredients which Lance most likely could not name, because the furthest his cooking vocabulary went to was toast and instant meals. And coffee. He knew coffee quite well.
“Hunk, for the sake of my very life, please tell me that bowl contains something that will save me from the hell of my existence,” he draped himself over the counter, instantly using the most extravagant hand actions he could muster up to emphasise his current suffering.
“Ok so one, it’s just cookies, don’t let your hopes get to high, “ to late for that, Lance was already staring longingly at the bowl, “and two, it’s only five past six on a Sunday, what’s gotten you all ruffled up?”
“The sun,” Lance muttered, absentmindly fiddling with paint covered and previously white shirt he was wearing as he continued to stare at the small bowl Hunk was continually stirring.
“Gonna need a bit more of a description there bud, also please pass the chocolate,” Lance focussed in a bit more, and picked up the small bag to his left Hunk had asked for, of course not before stealing a handful of chocolate chips for himself.
“I dunno man, it’s just the sun is really hard to paint, and it won’t stop moving and I don’t want to take a picture because it ruins the quality and that’d suck and I don’t want any sucky paintings in my portfolio y’know?”
Hunk nodded along absent-mindedly as he started pouring out different amounts of the small pieces of chocolate, making sure to stir the portions in before adding any more, determined to get the perfect amount in without having to get out his rickety old weighing scale, which he was pretty sure lied to him ninety percent of the time he used it.
Lance continued on with his mini rant about the difficulty of mixing his limited amount of paint, eventually moving onto how small his window was, then to how small their apartment was in general, until eventually he had dived deep into a rather extensive debate as to whether or not the wood he was standing on was really wood or just plastic made to look like wood.
At that point however, Hunk had managed to get the small balls of dough into the oven, and after a firm thirty minutes of Lance rambling on about different topics while he added the occasional opinion, he was able to pull the cookies out of their small oven, and place them on the counter.
“Seriously Lance, I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t go through all the effort of designing the plastic to resemble wood.”
“Yeah but if they did that it would probably be way cheaper, because I’m pretty sure plastic is way cheaper than wood,” Lance darted up from his spot on the counter as he said this, attempting to snatch away one of the close to heavenly looking cookies sitting on a metal tray.
“Good point, but wouldn’t it also cost way more with all that design process? Also stop trying to burn yourself,” Hunk swatted away Lance’s invading hand, “patience man, patience.”
“But moooom,” Lance moaned as he pulled his hand back, still impatient but understanding his friend’s reasoning, “I want cooooookies.”
Suddenly, there was a small pitter patter of bare feet on the, still under suspicion, wooden floor of their apartment’s hallway, and a small mess of tangled hair and over sized clothes poked their head around the corner of the open room.
“I heard cookies, so I came, where that good shit at,” and yep, that was Pidge, always straight to the point whenever it came to food.
“Pidge!” Hunk let out a very overdramatic gasp, plastering a look of pure horror on his face, “how dare you use such, such language in front of me!”
A small smirk showed up on Pidge’s tired face, and as she began a slow stroll towards the small kitchenette, Lance could almost tell that she was planning something.
“Mother,” Pidge began in a small trawl, that small smirk still present, “although I am incredibly sorry for this horrid crime I have committed-“
Pidge shot out into a mini sprint at that point, doing what looked like a gymnast level lean over the stools in front of their counter to reach the tray that contained her prey, managing to grab two of the still rather hot cookies before bouncing backwards, the smirk now having evolved into a grin.
“I’m afraid to say that in my mind, cookies come over manners, so fuck this shit I’m out.”
It was at that moment that her plan failed, as Lance’s arm shot out, grabbing at one of Pidge’s small arms, “I think not little missy.”
Pidge glared at Lance, a look of pure determination on her face, but at a single glance at Hunk’s face, which he had warped into an incredibly pleading expression, puppy eyes and all.
“Curse your pureness Hunk,” Pidge muttered, returning the now slightly crushed cookies to the tray.
“I try.” Hunk smiled, although it was quite a devious one at that.
“I noticed,” Pidge agreed, before yanking her petit arm out of Lance’s now much looser grip. She took a moment to rub the area before continuing, “jeez Lance, was the death grip really necessary?”
“For Hunk, anything is necessary,” Lance claimed, before pulling a soldier’s pose and saluting to the now grinning boy to his left.
“Yeesh, stand down soldier, just cookies, not the pentagon.”
“Pidge, why is your first thought when I salute the pentagon?”
Pidge’s eyes flicked in the general direction of her room, which Lance knew to contain a very large and very complicated mesh of wires and screens, which both he and Hunk had been banned from even approaching unless they wished to meet death.
“No reason.”
“Pidge, if you’re hacking the pentagon from our apartment instead of that super-secret base in the university that I know you have, I will personally remove your face from the building.” Lance half threatened and half joked, although he honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the girl walked in one day with a detonator for some confidential super weapon.
“Ok so one, since when did I have a super-secret base? And two, relax, I’m just doing some research on some more old fashioned systems, no big deal,” Pidge retorted,
“Fine, but remember that I’m watching Pidge, alllways watching,” Lance made sure to draw out his words, both squinting and leaning towards as to make a point.
“Hunk, please tell me when I can take a cookie so I can run from Lance’s shitty 2001 references.”
Lance put a hand to his chest, rendered temporarily silenced by that horrendous insult Pidge had just made at one of his favourite childhood movies. To six year old Lance, Monsters Inc. was the shit. Hunk just sighed.
“Five minutes Pidge, no less.”
“But why though?”
“Because otherwise you’re going to burn your tongue-“
Lance but guffaw at this statement, “Hunk, I’ve seen Pidge throw back coffee right after it’s been poured into the mug, I’m pretty sure her mouth is numb enough by now to handle a hot cookie.”
“At least I don’t take ten minutes to even take a single sip.”
“Excuse me you little midget-“
“Double negative-“
“Children, stop fighting,” Hunk cut in, batting his hands in the general directions of his friends, “just wait for your treats.”
Pidge snorted, “Hunk, I’m four months younger than you.”
“Children.”
“I’d curse at you but I fear that the Gods would strike me down where I stand.”
“They probably would,” Lance stated, and both Pidge couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
Lance was, quite surprisingly, not late for work the next day.
He’d woken up at around ten past seven after getting an ever refreshing six hours of sleep, laid in bed for ten minutes and stared at his ceiling, refusing to get up, before making his way towards their rather small bathroom, which consisted of a shower that's water pressure resembled that of a tap, and a small toilet and sink.
Somehow, a couple of months back, Hunk and Pidge had managed to construct a small cabinet above the sink, and although Lance will never understand how, he will forever be thankful to them for it.
The room was also exclusively beige, the only spots of colour laid folded up on their towel rack, and Lance grabbed out for the pale blue one at the bottom, laying it on the floor next to the box of a shower, and then leaned in to turn the shower on.
While he waited for the water to warm up, he began scrubbing off his nightly face mask with a wash cloth he kept in the above sink cabinet, making sure to get all of the cream off before washing off the cloth and placing it back into the cabinet.
As he started to strip off his pyjamas, which consisted of a blue and pink ombre shirt that looked like it was about to fall off of him and some grey bottoms which fit him at least slightly better than the shirt.
Although he cared for his appearance for the most part, sleep was where he drew the line.
He also, with much reluctance, had to pull off the sports bra he wore while he slept. He knew it wasn’t the best of things to do, but hey, it was better than wearing his binder, right?
He took a good ten minutes in the shower, and another ten applying different lotions and sprays onto his skin, then yet another ten minutes in his room deciding on his outfit for that day. Of course, that was after his daily struggle against his binder.
Eventually, he decided on a simple white shirt, some slightly ripped grey jeans and a dark blue jacket. When it came to his piercings, he wasn’t feeling very original, so he simply chose his classic grey studs for his eye brow piercings, and a black stud for his left ear. He didn’t even bother with his helix piercings, as he really wasn’t bothered enough to dig to the bottom of the box where he kept his arrangement of studs and the occasional ring.
What he didn’t skip out on however was a small string bracelet, this one consisting of different shades of blue looped together. It was a simple, but he treasured it. It was one of many string bracelets he had received from his siblings, and he made sure to wear one every day.
After all that, he had about twenty minutes of free time, so with enthusiasm resembling that of a reanimated corpse, he shuffled into the chilled air of the corridor, instantly heading for the apartment’s kitchenette, or in other words, headed straight for the kettle.
As he filled the kettle up from the light coloured sink, he saw a small form heading towards him in his peripheral vision, “I swear that you have a sixth sense or something for whenever I’m making coffee.”
Pidge was wearing their classic 8am outfit of an oversized shirt that slipped down past her shoulder a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Lance would be willing to bet money that she had stolen them from her brother Matt, who lived a thirty minute walking distance away from their apartment.
“Well, it means I don’t have to sleep, so I do tune myself to know when it’s going to be available.”
“Magic,” Lance said, putting the kettle down on it’s base before blowing up his hands next to his head, with sound effects of course.
“Lance if I were magic I would’ve avada kedavra’d your ass a long time ago,” Pidge deadpanned back, before sliding her way past Lance and pulling herself up onto the counter.
“Harsh,” Lance stated, as he watched the short girl in front of him turn her back at an odd angle so she could reach the cupboard behind her and pull out two mugs, one significantly larger than the other.
“I try,” she slid off the counter, mugs in hand as she took the two steps it took her to get to the other side of the kitchenette.
They worked in a comfortable enough silence as they listened to the kettle begin to rattle, Lance absentmindedly pouring coffee beans into the mugs, while Pidge pulled out the milk and sugar for Lance.
“I still don’t understand how you can drink it when only 10% is actually coffee,” Pidge commented as she plopped the bottle and bag next to the mugs, and Lance couldn’t help but scoff at her comment.
“Pidge, unlike you, I’d like to be able to use my taste buds for the rest of my life.”
“Just saying, you don’t know the high that you’re missing.”
“Stop making coffee sound like a drug,” the switch of the kettle flipped up, and Lance barely hesitated before grabbing it up and pouring the boiling water into the mugs.
Pidge picked up the larger of the two mugs, and popped herself back up onto the counter before taking a quick sip of the still scalding hot coffee before responding, “dude, the caffeine in coffee is literally a drug.”
“Details,” he waved his free hand as the other began pouring milk into the remaining cup, “but until you can snort coffee, I’m not calling it a drug.”
“You can snort caffeine.”
Lance raised an eyebrow, “wait, so does that mean I can snort my coffee-“
“Lance no.”
“Lance yes.”
“I will kick you out of this building.”
“I pay more rent, you can’t survive without me.”
Pidge cursed under her breath, because she knew that she and Hunk couldn’t afford this apartment with Hunk’s part time shop at a café and her occasional freelancing, “since when did you use your brain.”
“Since when did you pay more than half of our bills.”
“You do know that once I graduate I’ll probably be earning more than three times your yearly salary,” Pidge took a long sip from her mug, a smug look making it’s way onto her face.
“Yeah right, by then I’ll have my new and improved portfolio finished, all the high end shops in the country will practically be begging me to work for them.”
Pidge couldn’t help but snort at the bold claim, “dude, you’ll be like thirty by the time you finish that portfolio, you’ve been working on the same piece for more than a week now,” with that an insulted look came across Lance’s face.
“Excuse me, you try painting something that you can only see for thirty minutes a day.”
“Have you by any chance heard of this magical thing called ‘taking a photo’?” She tilted her head slightly, one of her eyebrows raised slightly as the other stayed flat.
“Yeah, but photos just don’t capture it properly, y’know? It’s one of those things which only look really good when you see it with your own eyes.”
“Then why are you trying to paint it?”
“Reasons Pidge, reasons,” Lance waved his hand at her, as if those three words perfectly answered her questions.
They in fact didn’t answer her question, and Pidge couldn’t help but roll her eyes, “whatever loser, I’m gonna go put on human clothes, try not to be late today.”
Lance watched her petit form shuffle across the floor boards to her room for a few seconds, before taking a quick swig from his own mug, “try not to fall asleep in your orbital mechanics lecture today!”
“That was one time Lance!
“You do it every couple of lessons according to Hunk.”
“Hunk you traitor!” A muffled sound of confusion was heard from the end of the hallway, no doubt from Hunk, who usually didn’t wake up at the same time as Lance and Pidge because on most days his lectures never started before 10am.
With that Pidge’s door swung shut, and Lance glanced up at the clock, 8:07am.
He took a few more minutes to savour his still hot coffee, until the clock hit quarter past and he chugged the rest down, slamming the mug down before darting back into his room and rummaging around for his set of keys, which consisted of two keys and a dozen keychains.
Keys in hand and caffeine in his system, Lance was ready to start off his day, and as he made his way out of the door, he couldn’t resist yelling over his shoulder, “catch you later, nerds!”
Whether either Pidge or Hunk responded, he didn’t know, as he’d already closed the door and started heading towards the nearest set of stairs, and Lance still didn’t regret getting an apartment on the second floor, despite the fact that the room above them thought 3am was a great time to start blaring music.
If it meant that Lance only had to walk down four sets of stairs instead of eight, Lance regretted nothing.
As per usual, he started storming down the stairs, always determined to get to the last floor as quickly and as loudly as possible. Of course, doing it loudly wasn’t mandatory, but he did it anyways, as it added one more thing onto his list of small jabs he could get at his neighbours.
Of course, his neighbours had their own little jabs, but Lance had a lot more.
He made his way through his complex’s small lobby, which had a few second hand sofas and bean bag pushed into the left corner, a snooker table that was missing a couple balls on the right, and walls plastered with the tacky sort of paintings you would find in a 99p store. The walls were painted with an almost obnoxiously bright green colour, which unfortunately was the colour of almost all their rooms when they first moved in.
Lance, Hunk, and Pidge had unanimously agreed that it looked horrible, and spent their first two weeks living there covering the neon green with their own preferred colours. They’d ended up with almost everything being a soft beige, except for Lance and Pidge’s rooms, which had resulted in one of Lance’s walls being a soft blue, while Pidge had opted for replacing the neon green walls with a soft emerald green instead.
Back onto the lobby, it was obvious that not much care was put into it, but it was a relatively cheap building considering the area it was in, so Lance could understand the lack of care put into non-mandatory décor.
After only a few seconds of walking through the lobby, Lance reached and tugged open the steel framed glass doors, and took in a face full of the crisp and chilling morning air.
This was a personal favourite part of the day for him, the first breath of unfiltered air, and although it would never match the fresh scent of the countryside or the salty scent that came from a coast, he still welcomed it happily.
He let his eyes adjust to the change in light as he began strolling down the pavement, taking in the chill air and the strong gusts of wind that hit him every time a car sped by, probably at least slightly over the speed limit.
It took him a bit, but his car was soon in sight, and he couldn’t help the small smile that appeared on his face.
He took great pride in the small, second hand mini cooper. He’d gotten it for himself for his eighteenth birthday, after saving for the good part of the past year. And even after four years, almost five, he still loved it dearly. Maybe a bit too much, as by now the car had its own full name and backstory, all written up on a text document hidden in a locked folder on Lance’s laptop.
That was not something he would be sharing with anyone anytime soon.
A few more steps and he was fishing his keys out of his pockets and putting the lightest coloured key into the lock, jiggling it slightly so it set into place properly, then opening up the door.
As he was settling down into the worn leather seat, he suddenly realised that it was cold as fuck in his car, and was soon moving quickly to close the door and shove the key into the ignition.
He took a moment to fiddle with the less than perfect heating system of his car before zipping up his jacket and began to pull out of his rather tight parking space.
After he got out of the space, which had involved performing several different small twists, turns, and almost screaming because he thought he’d reversed straight into the car behind his’s bumper, the heating finally kicked in, and he let out a small sigh of relief.
He remained silent throughout most of the drive, occasionally muttering to himself when the cars in front of him were going to slow for his liking. It was a particularly uneventful drive, mainly because Lance hadn’t been bothered enough to turn on a different station on the radio, and the entire journey had the slight background noise of a couple voices discussing the changing prices in real estate. What fun.
It wasn’t long before he was pulling up to the free parking spot strategically hidden behind a long string of small businesses, Lance’s workplace being one. He had no idea how the general public hadn’t found out about it yet, but he honestly hoped they never would, because otherwise it would be full 24/7, which meant he would have to find a different place to park, which would most likely end up in him having to add another fifteen minutes onto his daily commute.
That was not something Lance wanted in his life.
He pulled in to the nearest spot, checked he’d stayed between the lines, then made his way towards the soft white painted building that was his workplace.
With keys in hand, he swiftly turned the lock, treating the two people in the back room of the store with a quite loud and exaggerated, “good mooooooorning.”
He couldn’t help the smile that came up when he heard the annoyed groan he got in response.
“Lance, today is not the day for this, don’t,” the one person in the room, Allura, spoke up.
Allura wasn’t an official manager at Castle Inks, but it might as well have. She was the one that made sure the small amount of staff that the equally small store didn’t: A, destroy the place, or B, scare away any potential customer with a ten mile radius.
She did quite a good job of it too.
On the subject of Allura, she was an immigrant from somewhere in England, and she still had quite a strong accent despite having lived in America for so long. She was definitely not someone to let others take charge, and Lance was almost certain that she could probably carry him like he was nothing, because she had the muscles of a god.
In all honesty, when she had first introduced herself to him, he was slightly in shock, because this woman, who was the exact image of what Lance pictured a model to be, with her vibrant silver hair and hot pink markings tattooed under her eyes that contrasted perfectly with her dark skin, was not only working at a no name tattoo shop nearer the outskirts of town, but was also going to be his boss for the foreseeable future.
Lance, who had never been good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut, instantly tried to use some of his less than perfect flirting moves on her. The results hadn’t been that pretty, and Lance was still surprised to this day that he had not lost his already shaky position as an apprentice right there and then.
Luckily for him, Allura had been in a decent mood that day, and he’d managed to hold onto his apprenticeship, and after almost five years, Allura had forgiven him for his original flirting attempts, nowadays she would simply roll her eyes when Lance dropped the flirt, as she had long since learned that it was just how Lance acted towards those he was close to, and she took his cheesy pickup lines and compliments with a grain of salt.
“Forget to sleep again?” Lance questioned, aware of Allura’s awful sleeping habits.
“I got really caught up in my commissions, one second I looked up at the sunset then the next the sun was coming up, I had two finished commissions sat next to me and my alarm buzzing from my phone saying it was time to go, I just threw on the nearest clothes and ran.”
“Did you even get anything to eat?” Lance raised an eyebrow, slightly worried for the woman in front of him, masses of hair pulled into a messy bun and head hung over a plastic cup, which Lance assumed contained coffee.
“No,” she mumbled, and Lance sighed.
“God damnit Allura,” he instantly set to work, going for the farthest left cabinet at the back of the small break room, reaching his hand into the part concealed by the fact the cabinet was at a corner, and pulled out a decently full box of cheerios.
Allura stared in confusion, “since when did we have cheerios…” she trailed off, and Lance continued with the short work of grabbing their half empty carton of milk and one of the few clean bowls they had, continuing to splash in some milk and then pouring in a bit more cereal than necessary.
Grabbing one of their many plastic spoons, he dropped it into the bowl, and then pushed it rather forcefully in front of Allura, “don’t ask, eat.”
Allura spared him one more confused glanced, before thanking him and proceeding to attack the bowl in front of her. It honestly wasn’t a very uncommon sight, as Allura forgot to eat almost as often as she forgot to sleep, and he, Shiro, and Coran made sure to keep enough breakfast supplies hidden in the back room in case Allura, or on occasion Lance or Shiro, was in need.
Lance had long since given up on giving Allura any sort of criticism when it came to her sleep, he had tried a few times in the past, but he had long given up ever since the time Allura had gone a whole week with a grand total of four hours of sleep. The woman was unstoppable, and incredibly stubborn when she wanted to be, and she was not changing anytime soon.
Lance instead decided to spend his time flicking through the break room’s small block of a computer, lazily scrolling through today’s appointments, checking if anything big was booked for either Allura or Shiro. He was quite a fan of large pieces, and often enjoyed peeking over his co-worker’s shoulders whenever one was in progress.
He groaned slightly when he realised most of today was completely unbooked, meaning that they could get anything requested from a few cursive words to an entire landscape in exact detail, even if the person describing it couldn’t say anything more than that there were trees and that the sky was clear. He really hated uncertainty in his job, because although most of their customers were decent people, they did get the occasional unsavoury character or someone who claimed they didn’t know what they wanted exactly, but know once they saw it.
Those kind of people really did piss him off, even on good days.
For the next half an hour, the only sounds in the compact break room was Allura making her way through her cheerios and coffee, and the small clicks that came from the old computer’s mouse.
That was until Lance realised that they needed to open shop in only a couple of minutes, and he realised that the store’s third six days a week worker, Shiro, wasn’t there.
“Hey, ‘llura?”
Allura made a small sound of response through her mouthful of cereal.
“Do you know where Shiro is? I just noticed he isn’t here, and that’s weird because he usually gets here an hour before me.”
“Lance, you usually get here after we’ve opened,” Allura deadpanned him back.
“That’s besides the point,” he waved his hand, dismissing the completely accurate point Allura had just made, “he’s not here now, and that’s about as uncommon as me being here early.”
“You’re not wrong there, but he sent me a message around eight, apparently his younger brother has transferred university for whatever reason, so he’s moving in with him and Matt, so he’s spending the day catching up and moving him in.”
“Wait, he’s letting him move into their apartment?” Lance raised an eyebrow, a bit of disbelief in his voice as he looked up from the computer screen that he’d been staring at idly beforehand.
“Yeah? What’s up with that?”
“Well for one, there’s no way I’d let any of my siblings move in with me, no exceptions. And secondly, won’t he intrude on his and Matt’s completely-obvious-but-they-won’t-admit-it relationship?”
Allura shrugged, “Shiro and his brother haven’t seen each other in forever if I’m right, apparently his parents banned his brother from talking to him that often after Shiro dropped out of uni.”
“Ah man, that’s gotta suck. I’d hate not being able to talk to my siblings just because of some petty reason like that.”
“Weren’t you just saying you wouldn’t let them move in with you no matter what?” Allura raised an eyebrow, a small smile tugging at her lips as she finished off her coffee.
“Allura, there is a big difference between talking with siblings and living with them.”
“Well,” Allura started, as she pushed herself up from the chair, “I wouldn’t know.” She smirked slightly at Lance’s annoyed glare, and started to clean up her makeshift breakfast.
“Oh I’m sorry misses single child, I forget that you have never experience the pain of having three small children jumping on your chest at 4am on Christmas because they want to open their presents.”
Allura let out an evil sounding chuckle, and Lance raised his fist, shaking it jokingly at Allura. He adored his family, but he really wanted to wake up at a normal time on Christmas at least once in his life.
Maybe one day.
“C’mon you nerd,” Allura jokingly hit the side of his head, a smile still prominent on her face, “let’s go tattoo some humans.” Lance’s smile mirrored Allura’s, small but real.
It was times like this, with even the smallest of interactions, that Lance could say that he completely and truly loved his job and the people that he worked with.
He wouldn’t trade this for the world.