Work Text:
Lance just wanted to eat his breakfast in peace, he knew he had a long day ahead of him, despite Shiro announcing that today would be a non training day. Coran had notified him last night as he was “Clocking out” that he had accumulated a bit of a list of chores that desperately needed to be completed before the next visit to a swap moon, which coincidentally would be tomorrow.
Of course this meant that along with the list of everyday chores Lance already had, he had these “special chores” on top of them. Meaning Lance would be on his feet all day. He still hadn’t finished the health files.
So yeah, he really just wanted to eat his breakfast before he had to go to work, instead the conversation at the table hindered such.
Everyone was excited to visit the swap moon, more supplies, possible trinkets from earth, and Hunk always made a grand dinner from things he had picked up from the space mall. It waa this that everyone was conversing over, describing their lists to their highest excitement.
“Lance?”
He looked up from his green food goo to lock eyes with Shiro, who returned the gaze with concern. Had he been spacing out again? It hadn’t been the first time, and definitely wouldn’t be the last. He was just so tired.
“You okay?” Shiro continued, reaching a hand out to clasp his hunched shoulder.
“Y-Yeah, Shiro, I’m fine, what’s up?”
“Allura asked you what you were looking for at the swap moon.” Pidge chimed in, pushing up her glasses as they began to fall from her nose.
In all honesty, Lance hadn’t given it much thought. He never really went to the swap moon with a hope of finding a specific thing, well except for the supplies Coran listed for the infirmary, which yes thanks to Lance looked more like an infirmary than the sad dark room of healing pods.
He gave it a bit of thought before shrugging his shoulders, “A new video game might be nice, I finished AC Syndicate twice already, so maybe they’ll have Unity or Odyssey.”
Keith scoffed, “Of course, what else would you waste your time on.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You literally just hole yourself up in your room all day and play videogames, maybe if you actually stopped being lazy you might be better at training.” He said crossing his arms as he leaned back in his seat.
“Keith, you know that’s uncalled for, what Lance does in his free time is his choice,” Shiro scolded, though without very much weight in his tone. It pissed Lance off sometimes how lax their leader was with Keith. Like yeah, he got it that they knew each other before all this, but at least try to hide your favoritism.
“At least I don’t waste it on training, and how do you know that I don’t do anything?” Lance retaliated, returning to his food goo.
He could feel both Shiro’s and Allura’s gaze on him, warning him to stop. But he woke up in a pissy mood today, and if he couldn’t enjoy a nice quiet breakfast, why should the rest of them? Okay, yeah he knew that sounded like a toddler, but really he was getting tired of people acting like they knew him better than he knew himself.
“Maybe because you don’t,” that earned pidge a scowl from more than just Lance, and he felt a little bad watching her shrink from the looks their leaders were sending her way, “What? It's true, Lance literally does nothing all day.”
“Just because I’m not coding every waking second or fixing the castle doesn’t mean that I don’t do anything.”
“And what do you do then? Put on puppet shows for the mice?”
Okay, Lance had had it. Seeing red, Lance slammed his hands on the table, standing up simultaneously, “How about you stop being a little bitch, and open your fucking eyes. You literally don’t know half of what I do everyday to keep this castle running.”
He’d be lying if he said that the look on the team’s faces didn’t entertain him, he knew that whilst he may be prone to starting arguments, he had never actually blown up on anyone. He hated doing it, because it always left whoever was on the receiving end in tears, and Lance hated making people cry. But this was different. Even Hunk, who had heard him tell off his siblings a few times stared at him with wide eyes.
Tension in the room was thick enough to break a knife, and Shiro cleared his throat attempting to ease it a bit.
“Perhaps you can show us, Lance.”
Lance turned to Shiro, his confusion painting his face as his leader proceeded to speak.
“How about we shadow you today? You can show us what you do in your normal day to day life.”
At that, everyone groaned loudly, while Lance sat back into his seat, crossing his arms in thought.
“Come one Shiro, we don’t want to watch him talk to Blue all day.” Pidge whined.
It seemed everyone had a say in shadowing Lance, and were not afraid to show it in their conversation. Lance let them battle it out for a little bit, taking time to enjoy his free entertainment until the bickering became way too much.
“Fine.”
That shut them up real quick, and it made Lance a little uncomfortable when all of their heads turned, their eyes all on him.
“You guys want to see what I do so bad, fine.” He got up from the table taking his bowl of half eaten food goo and his coffee mug, chugging the now chilled liquid on his way to the kitchen to drop the dishes off in the sink before heading towards the door. Turning around to face all of them, he looked at them with an exasperated sigh. “Well, you coming?” he asked, before everyone got up from their seats to follow him out of the room and down to the infirmary.
+
When he said he had a ton of work to do, what he really meant was he had a shit ton of work to do. Apparently a few castle systems needed to be recalibrated, the infirmary needed to be reorganized, the medical linens washed, the pods wiped down, the medical cabinet which really was a whole pharmacy in itself needed to be restocked and organized, more laundry, more cleaning, more everything. And that was on top of the files Lance wasn’t even halfway through.
As they walked into the infirmary, Lance walked straight to his desk that Coran and he had brought up from one of the diplomat rooms. He picked up the tablet that sat on the surface, turning it on to read through today’s checklist.
“Okay guys, so you’re gonna shadow me, you’re gonna work” he turned to shiro and keith, “You guys are on restock duty, basically just get the boxes from the supply closet,” he pointed behind him to the refrigerated room that held all of the medicines, “the labels are in altean, so just um...match the symbols i guess? It's like kindergarten. Hunk, Pidge, you’re on cleaning duty. Laundry mostly, the sheets need to be washed and so do the pod suits. They’re both white, but don’t let that fool you, wash them separately, trust me. Um Allura, there are a few systems, including the pods that need to be recalibrated so that’s your job, Coran can help you with that when he gets down here, so just sit tight. ”
“And what are you going to do?” Pidge asked suspiciously.
Lance walked around his desk and took a seat, booting up his computer, “I, Pigeon, have a ton of files I have to work on, and also will be organizing this mess.” he motioned to the room, which most certainly was a mess considering it was still in the process of being fully set up.
“Ohhhhh no, you think you can just send us on all the hard shit, and let you sit on your ass? Absolutely not.” Keith walked over to him, sitting on the desk, “Up, we can do the files, you do the rest.”
Lance almost laughed at that. Yeah, cleaning was the hard part, okay keith. He half expected this, which was one of the reasons why he gave himself the job. The others would soon find out the other reasons.
So putting his hands up in mock defeat, Lance stood up, took the tablet and headed out of the room to get started on his tasks. “Good luck guys.” he called before exiting the main room.
+
It took all of two minutes to realize their mistake. Allura had followed Lance out, in search of Coran so that she could get her job done, it seemed she was the only one satisfied with her task, well her and Hunk. In all honesty, the guy didn’t mind being on laundry duty, but seeing as that was now taken, he sat silently staring at the unreadable symbols on the page in front of him.
Boy did he want to strangle Keith so bad.
Hunk looked up at the red paladin, glaring daggers into him.
Keith shifted uncomfortably in his seat staring at the Altean on the paper and the Spanish on the screen. “So um, I may have made a mistake.”
Shiro scoffed, “Yeah, no shit, what could have possibly given you that idea Keith?”
Pidge typed away silently on her laptop, never even looking at her stack of files. “Pidge, are you even working?” Shiro asked, the girl didn’t even look up.
“I can’t read it.” She said simply, “Also, Keith is a dumb bitch.”
“Language.”
“Oh come on Shiro, you just said ‘shit’” Pidge whined.
“Yeah, because he’s an adult.” Keith grumbled, earning a view of Pidge sticking her tongue out at him.
“Maybe if you had kept your goddamn mouth shut-”
“That’s enough, you guys bickering is not going to help us get these files finished anytime soon.”
“Shiro, my dude, my man, oh great leader. I don’t know if you know this, but literally none of us can read Altean.” Hunk began.
“Except for Lance apparently” Hunk heard Keith mutter under his breath.
“Yeah, when the hell did he learn Altean?” Pidge’s typing had stopped as she looked up at Shiro who just shrugged.
“But really guys, none of us can read Altean, I can barely read spanish, and it's not like there's some Altean to English to Spanish dictionary just laying around.” Hunk continued, completely exasperated.
“Wait, Spanish????”
“Yes Keith, spanish, you know, the language Lance was translating these files into. Did you really not realize that it was spanish?”
“I-no.”
“Why was he translating into Spanish?” Pidge asked just as Coran walked into the room, seeming to be in search for something.
“Oh, because it's his native language, and a language that coincidentally doesn’t register on any translator.” Coran stated matter of factly. They watched as he grabbed whatever it was he was looking for before hastily retreating.
“...That’s actually genius.'' The astonishment in Pidge’s voice was not lost on anyone, and Shiro couldn’t help but feel some pride that Lance had actually come up with a foolproof system to keep important information unattainable to anyone not on board the ship. That is if he could get the rest of the paladins to learn spanish.
“What even are these files for anyways?”
+
It was a few hours before Lance had finished the last pod calibration. Realizing he had probably let the others suffer long enough, he headed to the main part of the infirmary.
He was definitely not expecting to walk into a full blown argument.
“Alright, that’s enough!” he yelled over the voices, instantly pausing them as the heads of his teammates turned to him. “You guys are supposed to be part of a team, I gave you two simple tasks and you turn it into a Parliament debate.”
If anyone were to ask if he had just used his mom voice, he’d say no. He was using his Latino Mom voice, which of course was much much worse. But honestly the event he had just walked into definitely called for it.
He pinched his nose in annoyance when everyone began speaking at once, trying to get their word in over the others. He couldn’t even hear himself think.
“Enough!” he spoke sternly. “Either you shut up, or you get out. But i don’t want to hear a single thing from anyone unless I ask you a question. Got it?”
He quietly thanked his niece, nephew and baby cousins for preparing him for this, otherwise, he probably would have lost his shit on these guys. Honestly what was with them. Why was he scolding them, when Shiro was right there being a part of it?
“Pidge, what is the problem?” He turned to the green paladin.
She looked at him with her big honey eyes as she took a minute before answering. “We were arguing because of the files. We can’t read them and nothing we do to try and translate them is working.”
Lance nodded his head, “That’s why they are the way they are, it's a security measure. Now what else is the problem?”
“Nothing really, we just couldn’t do the files.”
Lance looked around the room, first at the state it was in, and then at the paladins individually. He shook his head. “Okay so I expected you guys to not be able to transcribe the files, but did you really just sit there the whole time?”
“W-Well what were we supposed to do?” Keith asked hesitantly, his fingers playing with the hem of his jacket sleeves.
“You do realize I gave myself two jobs, right? The files, and cleaning the infirmary.” He motioned to the mess of the room. “You guys could have just moved on to the room itself.”
He shook his head again when no one answered. He probably should have just expected this to be honest. He moved towards the beds picking up the numerous tools and placing them in their correctly labeled bin, “You guys go eat, it's past lunch. I’ll finish up here.”
He looked back to them when no one made a move to leave, “What?”
“We, um, “ Shiro cleared his throat, “We wanted to apologize, Lance, for the way we acted earlier. It's clear that you do a lot for this castle and you deserve to be acknowledged for that work.”
“Yeah, sorry for saying all that stuff earlier, man. You’re right, I literally just train all day, not even my mission reports require this much work.” Keith piped up.
“I’m really sorry.” Pidge said walking over to Lance, her arms up for a hug, he reciprocated it without hesitation.
“Dude, you are literally awesome. I mean, by infirmary I thought you meant just the pods, but you literally turned this room into a medical center.” Lance smiled at Hunk’s comment.
“Thanks guys, honestly it's fine, I never really talk about it anyways so how could you guys have known? Ya know?”
“But we still shouldn’t have implied that whatever you were doing was less important than the rest of our work. That isn’t fair to you.”
Lance glanced over to Shiro, thankful the his leader was actually acknowledging him.
“Alright guys, that’s enough sappiness for today, c’mon, group hug.” Lance said, extending his arm not wrapped around Pidge to allow for everyone to join, They did, Keith being pulled in by Hunk. And everything was good again. Lance just wanted to eat his breakfast in peace, instead he got his friends to see him for who he truly was.
+
A few weeks later, Lance sat at his desk typing on his Altean computer, pausing briefly to take a sip of his coffee before diving back into his work. He hadn’t heard Keith come in until he was standing right in front of his desk.
“Hey man, what’s up?” Lance said, looking up from his computer.
“H-hey...when did you start wearing glasses? Aren’t snipers suppose to have, like, perfect eyesight or whatever?” He asked.
Lance laughed, taking the glasses off and handing them to Keith, whom he noticed took them with one hand and peered through them, looking even more confused.
“They’re just reading glasses, not prescription. My eyesight remains, dare I say immaculate,” Lance pretended not to hear Keith’s scoff at his comment. “But sitting in front of a screen all day gives me optic stress migraines so the glasses are to ease the strain.”
Keith nodded understandingly at that, handing the glasses back to Lance who sets them down instead of putting them back on.
“What’s up? I noticed you’re kind of cradling your hand, d’you hurt it?”
Keith looked down at his hand then back up at Lance, “Yeah, um, I sprained it a few weeks ago. Coran gave me this balm to put on it but I ran out a few days ago and it still hurts.”
Lance eyed his friend carefully before turning back to the computer to pull up his file.
“Says its a mild sprain, hmm, should have healed more than a week ago.” Lane stood up and grabbed the scanner that sat on a shelf behind him, “Hold out your hand, I’m going to rescan it.”
Keith does as he’s told, hopping up onto Lance’s desk and sitting completely still as Lance runs the scanner over his hand and on to his wrist. They wait for a few seconds before the full image pops up on Lance’s tablet to allow him to see the scan fully.
“Well, it’s definitely not a sprain.” He says, angling the screen so that he could show it to keith. “That right there is a hairline fracture.” he pointed out a little line that spans one of the bones on the screen.
“I don’t know what that means.”
Lance got up and walked over to one of the carts, grabbing a few things before walking back to the desk. He grabs Keith’s injured hand and gets to works spreading the medicated balm on it. “It means that you have been training with a broken hand. It's a fracture in one or your wrist bone, your Scaphoid to be precise. That’s why it still hurts.”
Lance sighs, turning ripping his hands on a towel before grabbing the medical tape, “Your lucky it's a small fracture, with your intense training I’m surprised you didn’t make it worse. No training for two weeks.” Keith groaned at that, about to argue until Lance put up his index finger, “You want it to heal, you’re going to follow my instructions. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Think you’d be able to wrap it yourself?” he asks.
Keith takes a second before shaking his head.
“Okay, I’m going to need you to come in every morning, so I can put this balm on it and wrap it for you. You’re going to want to alternate between hot and cold packs, the ice will reduce the swelling and the heat will help dilate the blood vessels to speed up healing.”
Lance finishes wrapping the injured hand and slowly places it on Keith’s lap. “Got it?”
“Yes, Doctor McClain.” Keith grumbles though he fails to hide the smile that indicates it's a joke, making Lance chuckle a bit.
Lance returns to his chair, turning around to grab something from the shelf behind him before setting it next to Keith.
“Do you really have a bowl of candy?”
“Oh absolutely, it's actually all for me, but since you were such a good little boy today, you can pick one” Lance gives Keith the most smug smirk he had ever seen. Grumbling, Keith took two just to piss Lance off before hopping down and making his way out of the room.
“Thanks sharpshooter.”
“Anytime samurai.”