Chapter Text
Christmas was Lance’s favorite holiday.
Since he had been a little child, the anticipation had never let him sleep through the whole night for most of December. The house was already loud and full year-round, but when Christmas drew nearer, there were even more people, louder voices, more laughter and singing. More hugs and kisses and smiles, family coming to visit that was usually far away, and delicious smells wafting through the house every day, though the best of the food was reserved for Christmas Eve.
And even as a little boy with no knowledge of English, Lance had turned on every cheesy Hollywood Christmas movie he could find. He liked the cheesiest ones best. They were about a different version of Christmas – different food, different music or maybe no music at all, the families so small and sometimes so cold to each other, and snow, always snow everywhere - but he loved them all the same, for the warm squirmy feeling they gave him.
Lance still loved Christmas as he got older, but he was aware of the not-so-great sides. Sure, his family was huge and close-knit, and the majority of them he saw multiple times per year, not only on Christmas, but it was different when they all had to meet under one roof, eat the same food, share the same space. With so many people, there had to be some who disliked each other, the kind of tension a four-year-old wouldn't pick up on, but an eight or nine-year-old could. Lance’s mother took the brunt of it.
The first time he saw her cry was on December 23rd when he was twelve. It was in the kitchen, and while Lance had been asleep for a few hours, tossing and turning and plagued by weird dreams, and finally woke and forced himself to fetch a glass of water, his mother had kept working on their Christmas Eve dinner. When Lance turned on the light, her figure on the bar stool in front of the counter with the batch of cooling sugar cookies didn't move, but he took a hasty step backwards.
He had stuttered something, and she had looked up, a smile on her lips but tears still soundlessly streaming down her face. He had gone to hug her, distraught, questioning if maybe he was still asleep and this was a nightmare, and she had shooed him off back to bed with an excuse. Lance couldn't find sleep again that night, the smell of the cookies and his mother's shampoo still so permeating. It took years for him to wonder if maybe she hadn't been crying because the cookies hadn't turned out great.
The year after that, Lance helped with the baking, and he didn’t see his mom cry again, but he knew it only meant he hadn’t caught her.
At fourteen, he spent Christmas at the Garrison, because the flight back home was too expensive, and he was the one hiding so no one would see him cry. The thin blanket drawn over his head, salty tears drying on his face, he thought of his mother, and how sometimes Christmas meant sacrifice and tears as much as it meant joy and celebration.
Now, in space, there was little time to think about Christmas, little time to cry. He did sometimes, in the beginning. But soon routine set in, some kind of pride in what he was doing, what they were doing. Lance lost track of the days. Time was passing, birthdays were passing, his teammates’ and his family’s and his own. Holidays were passing by, and they didn’t celebrate. Sometimes there was a cake, and they pretended it was someone’s birthday, but it was more to keep the morale than because they ever knew what date it was on Earth. Time was weird in space, and even Alteans didn’t have technology to convert space time into Earth time, a planet they had never been to.
So, by the time they arrived on Naskö, Lance had almost forgotten Christmas had ever been a thing. Almost. It wasn’t buried deeply enough that the sight of a small town covered in snow, with windows lit up yellow and pine twigs above entrance doors didn’t stir the memory. This town, small and yet the capital of a possible ally, looked like a stereotypical Christmas town from one of the movies he’d loved so much as a child: quaint and snowy and magical, in a quiet, everyday kind of way. Lance had to squint to even notice they were on an alien planet.
The paladins hadn’t known a lot about Naskö before they embarked on their mission: It was a small planet with a small capital, known for tourism and for how peaceful it was. Not for anything involving the war. The mission was a diplomatic endeavor but also a short holiday, and Coran and Allura had stayed behind, letting the paladins handle it on their own. And if the Alteans trusted them on their own without any extensive mission briefing, it couldn't be a difficult or dangerous mission.
The planet truly didn’t seem dangerous so far. But, as they approached the town on foot in their paladin suits, and Lance couldn’t close his mouth and was gaping at every picturesque, glowing, snow-covered house they passed, he thought a warning might have been nice. He had been catapulted into a childhood dream, and something of the Christmas joy he had missed for so long trickled back into him. It was difficult to keep his smile under control.
Hunk was, much like Lance, looking around with his mouth ajar as they passed the barrier into the town and crossed paths with the first Naskö-ian, a small but humanoid figure dressed in shades of red and green, smiling and waving at them.
“What’s going on? Is this normal for this planet?” Lance asked in a hushed voice.
Hunk turned his eyes to Lance and snapped his jaw shut.
“I think so. Otherwise Coran would have warned us, right?”
Pidge, who was walking two steps in front of them, snorted.
“Only if he thought this wasn’t normal.”
“Maybe there’s something in the files. There must be files about Naskö.”
Pidge agreed with a nod, but she was already scrolling through something in her visor, her posture was stiff, not as if there was anything worthwhile. Lance was about to reassure her – nothing less threatening than a Christmas town - when Shiro turned around.
“Keep moving, guys, you know we’re supposed to meet the government officials in the town center.”
Keith threw a look over his shoulder from where he was walking close behind Shiro. At least he didn’t stand out too much, his armor had the right colors for this planet. If Lance had known they were going to go to a Christmas planet, he would have insisted on matching outfits for everyone, even Keith, who didn’t seem like someone who would get into the holiday spirit. But that would have been the fun part of it, Keith’s grumpy face in an ugly sweater and a bobble hat. It was almost adorable. Lance’s lips twitched into a smile - maybe they would be lucky enough to get to dress in the traditional garb of a Christmas elf.
“What’re you smiling about?”
Hunk leaned closer to him.
“Oh, nothing. Just happy we’ll get to celebrate Christmas again.”
He met Hunk’s gaze, and his heart swelled at his best friend’s warm smile. Maybe this was all he needed to make wonderful Christmas memories again.
Even if there was little other information about the planet available, the paladins had a map of this small town, leading them to the center through cramped, narrow streets. Everyone they met was dressed in red and green, sometimes with a pointy hat, and carrying something – a pine tree too large for the small Naskö-ians, a basket of baked goods, a trove of books or clothes, and other, more obscure things Lance couldn’t identify in walking by. It was a town of Christmas elves. When he looked up, still all the roofs were dusted in snow, and chatter, singing in the distance and a faint tinkling of bells colored the air. It was like a December dream come true, and the dopey smile wouldn’t leave Lance’s face, even if Pidge’s frown deepened as she went further into the data and still couldn’t find anything weird about the planet.
“There has to be an explanation. It would be too much of a coincidence -”
But Lance didn’t care. He was just happy to have his Christmas and if they spent long enough here, even Pidge, even Keith, would be lulled in by the Christmas spirit. His ultimate goal: Spend a nice, stereotypical holiday with his team on this nice, weird stereotypical planet, with everyone in the holiday spirit.
It had been dusk when they had arrived, and now it was getting dark. Maybe it was always winter on this planet - the days always short, the snow always falling. The way so many humans imagined their perfect Christmas. It was a little weird to find a place so perfectly adherent to the idea of a holiday a majority of the people on Earth celebrated so far away from anything to do with Earth. But it was going to be fun. It was going to bring them closer together.
The town center was to the town what a clearing was to a forest. They broke free of the narrow streets into a little round place, where the waning sunlight illuminated the cobblestone pavement. In the middle, a group of five Naskö-ians waited, distinguishable from the other inhabitants by their longer and more colorfully decorated hats. Their hands were folded, and they all smiled warmly. The one in the middle stepped forward as the paladins approached.
“Welcome, paladins!”
They exchanged greetings. Lance shook all of their hands and grinned at them: They might have been small and frail, but their handshakes were firm. The officials and the paladins fell into step next to each other on the way to the place they would be staying at. Shiro, one step ahead of Lance, was mumbling something. One of the officials, almost half his height, stepped closer to him as they walked slowly.
“I have to ask,” Shiro started, a bit hesitant, as if he was embarrassed, “but are you… celebrating Christmas right now? Or is your planet always like this?”
The official blinked, as if he hadn’t understood the question.
“Always like what?”
“Always decorated like that,” Keith chimed in from behind, waving his hand around awkwardly, “with the lights and the trees and the… stuff.”
The official looked between Shiro and Keith as if he was contemplating whether an alliance with Voltron was worth it to have to deal with these weirdos. Lance cleared his throat and took a large step, so he was next to Keith. The official slid his eyes to Lance, more bewildered now. Lance just smiled.
“On our home planet we have a holiday to… to celebrate the midwinter and the birth of an, um, important historical figure, and the traditions look a lot like your customs and your planet in general. So, that is what we were all wondering. Have you heard of Christmas?”
The official was contemplating Lance now, face more neutral than before, looking up at him with warm, dark eyes, and feathery white eyebrows drawn into his face.
“No, we have never heard of 'Christmas'. Nor have we ever made contact with your home planet. It is very interesting that you have a holiday so closely related to Räk.”
His face lightened as they turned a corner.
“This will be an interesting topic to discuss later.”
Pidge was frowning, and now Hunk was leaning over to look at the archives she had stopped scrolling through, but he was more curious than distraught. Shiro looked a little puzzled, and Keith returned Lance's glance with a tilt to his eyebrows that meant he felt the same way about this as Lance did: The universe was vast and weird, and something strange like this was bound to happen to them sooner or later.
The corner led them out of the main town, and onto a road leading to a mansion, set on a small hill. Lance’s jaw fell again. It wasn't a huge mansion, just large enough to be more than a house, but it had a silent sort of grandeur, large gleaming windows and gold and green decorations blinking from corners. Against the dark blue sky, sitting on a snowy hill, it was a picture for a postcard or an animated winter movie. It was straight up a Christmas mansion, the place where children came when they dreamed.
“Are - are we going to be sleeping in there?”
Lance’s voice cracked at the question, but he couldn’t help it. His finger was shaking as he raised his hand and pointed at the mansion.
“Of course,” the official answered, swiveling back on Lance with a concerned frown.
However strange the Naskö-ian found the question, the other paladins agreed with Lance. Hunk was aw-ing quietly next to him, Pidge's eyes had gone huge and round, Shiro’s smile stretched all the way to his ears, and Keith was also staring up, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Inside, the mansion was like an old hotel, on the edge between fancy and run-down. Memories were woven into the tapestries and dropped between the fibers of the carpets. And everything was Christmas-themed, a little more alien than a hotel on Earth would have been: The stairs bent under their feet and some of the doors were too narrow and too low to fit through, sometimes through a dark passage there was a shadow in a color that shouldn't have existed, glittering and weaving itself.
The paladins were shown their separate rooms. None of them were too large, all of them with an attached bathroom and a color scheme: different, but all of them Christmas colors. Lance’s room was baby blue and white, some silver mixed in, stylized snowflakes scattered on the walls, the furniture painted white and the bedspread like a snowy landscape. It felt a little cold, but beautiful, and Lance loved the room instantly. The bed was not too large, but not as small as his bunk on the castleship, and it had a canopy. In the closet he found stacks of Christmas-appropriate clothing. As he took a sweater and scrutinized the pattern, he grinned at what the others would find in their closets. Especially Keith. He wished there was a collection of bizarre sweaters in Keith’s closet, and he would come to dinner wearing a red-nosed reindeer on the chest.
Lance’s smile was permanent now, and even in his cold room he was warm. This was already the best, easiest mission they’d ever been on. He picked out the darkest sweater, with a single glittery snowflake embroidered on the front and the lightest pair of pants and headed out.
In Christmas mansion, corridors led to where you needed them to go. Lance followed his nose and the rich, tangy smell of a savory winter meal. Lance’s smile grew into a grin. It smelled like a feast, like all his favorite dishes and every dish he'd ever wanted to try. He found the room the others were waiting in with the door wide open, and stepped through, eyes set on the dining table. He didn't see the Naskö-ian on their way out of the door. Lance froze as they jumped back and steadied themselves with a hand over their chest. Lance stared at them. Their wide eyes were almost fearful.
“What?” he asked.
They pointed up with a shaking hand.
“There’s a Müske in this doorway.”
In the doorway, above Lance's head, was a mistletoe, no different than mistletoes on Earth. Lance smiled at the poor person he’d almost had to kiss.
“Would it have been so bad to have to kiss me?”
It had been supposed to be a joke, and nothing in his friendly, humorous tone suggested otherwise, but the Naskö-ian shrank back as if he had offended them terribly.
“P-please,” they stuttered, and made a motion to shoo Lance into the room.
He obeyed, still confused. As soon as he was out of the doorway, the Naskö-ian hastened away, and he was left staring at the mistletoe. Maybe the Naskö-ians were a little shyer about kissing than humans were. Their reaction still didn’t sit right with him, and he vowed to apologize should he ever see them again.
The dining room was small and cozy, with a large round table and enough chairs to house the paladins and a few officials. Through an open door in the back, the delicious smell wafted into the room, and someone was making racket with an assortment of kitchen utensils. To the right, a large window looked out over the hill toward the small town at its bottom, now a speck of warm glittering lights in the mass of dark snow. And in the corner of the room, a large pine tree towered over everything. It touched the high ceiling effortlessly, and was of a shimmering, luscious green, with red and gold baubles geometrically distributed across its branches. Lance took a step closer involuntarily. It was too enormous to hug, but he felt the need to reach out and touch one of the branches.
Keith got there before he did. He stepped out of the peripheral of Lance's vision, arm outstretched, fingertip almost brushing one of the golden baubles. To Lance's dismay, Keith wasn't dressed in a gaudy sweater, but a sensible one striped in red and gold and dark pants. The light from the electric candles reflected in his hair and his eyes and he was so transfixed, as if something would happen once his finger made contact, that Lance settled back to watch.
Keith's finger touched the bauble. His awed expression changed to horror and he shied back, just as the tree did the same. Lance was frozen in his spot, eyes wide, as the Christmas tree shook its branches and lifted them, spun around its axis and shivered back into stasis, like a scared animal. Shiro hastened over from the kitchen, one of the officials hot on his heels.
“Keith, no!”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You probably touched a bauble, right? It sensed that you keep breaking them.”
Keith glared at Shiro but didn’t respond. The official fixed them with a serious stare.
“Did one of you disturb the Räkte?”
Shiro pointed to Keith, who frowned, but didn’t deny it. The official turned to him.
“The Räkte are very delicate creatures. Do not disturb them!”
Keith's mouth dropped open, but he didn't have anything to say, and neither did Shiro or Lance, or Pidge who had just slunk into the room. Lance blinked and glanced at the tree again. It was still, like any tree on Earth would have been, but there were no wires to the electric candles, and no string for the baubles. The Christmas trees were alive here. It was weird, but, Lance decided as he sat at the table, the good kind of weird. The kind of weird that made him grin, made him excited to find out more about what else might be different, too.
After dinner, a delicious affair, where seemingly familiar dishes turned out completely different, and alien delicacies tasted like his favorite Earth food, Lance was full, but not tired enough to go to sleep yet. It had been an early dinner, fitting with the early nightfall on Naskö, so there was still plenty of time to do something with the night. Hunk and Pidge came back to his room, and together, they looked through the shelves in Lance’s room. They chose a few alien board games, set them out on Lance’s bed, and Lance was all content with the way it was going. Game night. Perfect Christmas tradition.
“Do you think we should invite Keith, too? Shiro?” Hunk said to the instructions he was trying to decipher.
“Shiro is probably already asleep,” Pidge said.
“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe we can have another game night on, like, an afternoon. But…”
Lance thought about it. Keith’s room was next door. He probably wasn’t asleep yet. He would most likely say no and shut the door on Lance, and then Lance would have to paste a smile on his face and walk back over and play a few rounds with Hunk and Pidge, pretending everything was fine but with a heavy heart. But he might also say yes. Lance had chickened out of asking things like this too often, and he wouldn't now. It was Christmas. Whatever. He clapped his hands on his thighs and got up.
“Alright, I’m going to ask Keith.”
There weren't a lot of Christmases Keith could remember with fondness. For most of his life, he didn’t understand why people celebrated it with so much joy, why they looked forward to it, why it was their favorite time of the year. The time for family. The time for love. Keith heard the words, but as a child, family and love meant nothing joyful to him. It was loss, melancholy, staring at the Christmas tree someone from the orphanage had decorated way too cheerfully, and remembering Christmas at home, with his Dad, and the one time they had actually had a Christmas tree.
A gangly, brown one, not very pretty or lively at all, but for Keith back then, just turned five, it had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His Dad had procured a tattered box with Christmas ornaments, and had let little Keith run around the tree and place baubles where he wanted them, and he had shattered maybe more than he had put on branches, but he had giggled at it and his Dad had laughed and put away the shambles. And on Christmas Eve, they had sung songs together and ate twice as much as they usually did, and something in Keith had grown, brighter and fuller than it had been before.
Ten years had passed until his next true Christmas, and there had been almost as many years in which he hadn’t spent it with someone he considered family. Christmas wasn’t the same with Shiro and Adam as it had been with his Dad, and Keith wasn’t the same person anymore, either. There was stress. Whisperings behind hands. And he still helped decorate the tree, and he still dropped a bauble, but this time, no one laughed at it. But that was fine, because it wasn’t funny to Keith anymore, either. He stared at the broken remains on the floor - it had been a pretty bauble, dark blue with an embedded snowy landscape - and wondered if anyone would laugh if he compared them to his life. Shiro sighed and handed him a dustpan, and he didn’t say it out loud.
So, there wasn’t as much laughter and fun, and Keith was a little more grown and a little more broken, a little wearier: But there were good things to being older, too. Because now there were presents, and he could appreciate them. New gloves. Three books that Adam had caught him looking at in a bookshop. A pocketknife that was more a joke than anything useful, but he still smiled at it. And dinner was great, and he ate a lot, and afterwards he sat in his chair, full and happier than usual, even if not as happy as he had been then, and looked at Shiro and Adam, debating which of two equally cheesy Christmas movies to put on, and was content. If this was what his life was going to be - he was fine with it.
Christmas on Naskö felt too weird to ever become a fond Christmas memory, even if it was already memorable, and Keith had almost broken another bauble. After dinner, they retreated to their own rooms for the night, in preparation for a tour of the city the next day. Keith closed the door behind him with a sigh. The planet was a lot to take in, but at least he liked his room. It was comforting that everything on Naskö had a color scheme and a clear theme. It made sense. Things on Earth, a lot of the time, hadn’t made sense for Keith.
His room made a lot of sense: Maroon walls with faint gold accents, red furniture and a gold bedspread. It was smaller than some of the others, but cozy, with a large bed taking up most of the space, and a desk and chair in the corner. A door led to a bathroom, tiled in red, just big enough for a bathtub. Keith usually didn’t afford himself the luxury of comfort, not the luxury of sleeping or resting longer than he needed to, but here, maybe he would. Back still to the door, he allowed himself a yawn.
He had barely changed into his pajamas - also red and gold, what a surprise - when someone knocked on his door. He froze in the middle of pulling on the second fluffy sock that came with the outfit.
“Keith? You still awake?”
Oh. Keith pulled the sock on all the way and swung the door open to Lance, a little hesitant but smiling, also in his Christmas mansion pajamas. His were light blue with embroidered silvery snowflakes. Keith wondered if he also looked as comfortable in his pajamas, and if the burgundy complimented his skin color that well.
“What’s up?”
He tried to keep all accusation out of his voice. Yes, he had been looking forward to crashing in his large, soft bed, but Lance had the room next to him, and if he needed something, this was the obvious place to come.
“Oh, just wondering if you wanted to come over. I’m not really tired yet and there’s a set of board games in my room so-”
Lance's eyes shifted to the side as if there was something he wasn’t saying, and Keith was all awake again. His heart rate picked up. Board games maybe didn’t necessitate that, but Lance asking to play them with him late in the evening did. Keith wiped his hands on his pants - they weren’t sweaty, but just to make sure - and nodded.
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
He followed Lance to his room, and definitely didn’t smile at the melody he was humming and the spring in his step.
Keith had seen Lance’s room in passing earlier, long enough to make out the color scheme. But as Lance led Keith into the room, he concluded that it was beautiful, tasteful, and it did suit Lance, but it felt too cold for him. The door clicked shut behind them. Hunk looked up from the bed, where he was setting out a board.
“Oh, hey Keith! You came!”
Pidge, across from him, minutely correcting placements of figures, glanced up.
“Yeah, nice. We thought you’d already be asleep.”
“Well, I’m not.”
He sorted out a place for himself and sat at one end of the hexagonal game board, more forcefully than he probably should have, and disturbed the set-up again, which earned a low cry from Hunk and a sigh from Pidge. He didn’t know what he had expected - it was not as if Lance had explicitly invited only him, and it made sense that they weren’t going to play a board game with two people. But there was still disappointment simmering in him.
Lance sat across from Keith, legs crossed, and smirked at him, eyes twinkling. Keith narrowed his eyes back with a barely concealed smile. Reading Lance's expressions was easy, and this one said try and beat me loud and clear. Maybe this was going to be just what Keith had expected after all.
But there was no beating anyone or winning in the game they had chosen. At least, from what they understood from the instructions, and no one was very sure about the instructions. The translator didn’t work on them too well, as if they were intentionally written to be misunderstood and misconstrued. They made up their own game instead. With rules somewhere between Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit and the clock ticking ever closer to midnight, there were no regards for anything. Tears were shed - though they were mostly fake. And then Pidge cut her hand on one of the game pieces, and the drop of blood that landed in the middle of the board turned the cardboard slowly from red to green.
They stared.
“Was this… a blood sacrifice?” Lance murmured. Hunk clutched his arm.
Keith reached for the instructions while Pidge stared at the board, blinking as if her brain was overwhelmed with the possibilities.
“The true meaning of Christmas,” Keith said.
They stared at him now. He shook out the manual, and there, in the centerfold, "The True Meaning of Christmas" was beautifully rendered. Mayhem broke loose, and with all the wheezing and laughter and limbs flying around, Keith didn’t know how he ended up on the floor. But that was the end to the night. Pidge’s wound was dressed, Lance cleared his bed, and Keith meandered towards the door.
“Goodnight,” he said, just loud enough to not be a mumble.
The others echoed the sentiment, Lance's voice the loudest of them. It carried Keith's smile until his own door closed behind him again. The king-sized bed was twice as inviting as it had been a few hours ago, and Keith dove under the covers until he was well smothered in blankets and everything around him was so soft, he couldn’t tell which way was up. His limbs were relaxed and his eyelids heavy, but his heart was, too. It wasn’t that he disliked spending time with Hunk and Pidge, or Hunk, Pidge and Lance as a trio. Keith hadn’t had multiple friends or a friend group ever, and theirs might have been forged by necessity, by war, but it was still friendship.
But it stung that Lance never wanted to spend time with him alone. Probably it was something Lance didn’t notice, probably he already thought he was being nice enough by inviting Keith to hang out at all. And Keith knew Lance was a genuinely nice person, not someone to carry a grudge for no good reason or judge people, especially more than superficially, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Lance didn’t want to be friends with Keith. Not really. Not one-on-one, close friendship where they told each other things in secret and invited each other to their rooms and maybe spent the night in each other’s rooms or beds sometimes -
Keith grabbed the nearest of the ten pillows in his bed and smothered it over the back of his head. He groaned into the exceptionally fluffy mattress. Okay, so maybe he was thinking of something else than close friendship. Maybe he was thinking of something closer, wishing for it somewhere deep down, somewhere he could keep hidden most of the time, but not when he was alone and vulnerable to the hidden parts of himself. But Lance barely wanted to be friends with him, so thinking about or wishing for anything else wouldn’t lead anywhere.
The next morning, Keith put on another striped sweater and headed to the dining room for breakfast. Through a slightly ajar door, the voices of Pidge and Hunk animatedly discussing something drifted to him. Keith steered his steps this way and swallowed against the bitterness rising at the memory of last night. He wasn’t supposed to be bitter. He’d had fun.
Keith opened the door. In the daylight, the room looked twice as large, and the snow beyond the window reflected inside and glittered. Keith stopped right on the threshold and stared at the high ceiling and the table stacked with foods. Someone bumped into him from behind.
“Sorry, didn’t see you there-”
At least Keith hadn’t been the last to breakfast, if Lance was still coming up behind him and saying something stupid like he hadn’t been able to see him -
Keith moved out of the way quickly, into the room, to get some space between Lance and him. But moving was more difficult than he was used to, as if someone was clinging to his arm and holding him back, as if he was suddenly twice as heavy. He turned to glare at Lance, expecting him to have grabbed Keith by the sleeve and to now find him grinning impishly. But there was no hand on Keith’s arm, and all he found when he looked back were Lance’s wide eyes in his slack face, gaze moving to Keith’s arm. To both of their arms, side by side. Keith pulled his arm towards himself. Lance’s arm followed. Lance pulled back. Keith’s arm followed.
There was only one way to summarize the situation.
“What the fuck?”