Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Did you know about this?!?!?” Lance burst into the kitchen, slamming a contraption down on the counter where Hunk sliced a red and green striped “vegetable” that might have resembled a carrot if you squint hard enough. They’d had food goo for dinner eleven nights in a row; it was past time for something better. One more night of food goo just might see a justifiable homicide in the Castle of Lions. An Altean-cide was a distinct possibility, too. Coran got even goofier than normal when he needed real food but Allura brought a whole new meaning to the term 'hangry.' It wasn’t a great combination.

Lance glared at him as Hunk blinked at his friend for a second. No matter how long or how well he knew Lance, he never quite got used to the sudden mood swings. They had a way of blowing up out of nowhere like a freak thunderstorm and blowing over just as quickly, consistently short but never predictable.

The Yellow Paladin glanced at whatsis on the counter. It was the “space-to-Earth” conversion calendar he, Pidge, and Coran had worked up to get a rough idea how long they’d been gone. The display currently blinked December 17th.

“Know about what?” he asked, confused.

“The date! Hunk, it’s only a week until Noche Buena. How are we gonna pull that off so fast out here?” Lance flailed his arms in agitation as he paced wildly around the kitchen.

“Lance,” he said gently, “I don’t think Christmas is a priority out here. It probably won’t happen this year.”

“The hell you say!” the Blue Paladin protested. “I’ve never missed a Christmas in my life! I’m not about to start now, just because we’re way out here. When we moved to America, Mamá and Abuela said the holidays don’t just happen. Someone works hard to make them, and you can make them anywhere. It’s not about the location. It’s about the spirit, and the food, and being together. You can have Christmas anywh…”

Lance stopped mid-rant and got scarily quiet. He smirked in a way that screamed he’d just got an idea. An awful idea. The Blue Paladin got a wonderful, awful idea. He bounced on his toes with delight as he exclaimed, “I’m gonna make Voltron Family Space Christmas!”

~

It wound up being much easier said than done. Lance gained a whole new appreciation for the people in his family who made the holiday happen year after year. Not even a full day in and he understood why Mamá kept so much mulled cider and eggnog on hand over the holidays. He could have used a drink or five to get through all this. He thought he’d helped his mother enough to know what kind of work went into making Christmas, but he had no idea how much planning it involved. He never realized how many moving parts this holiday had. He’d strategized prison breaks that were less complicated!

He went through his list again. He had to figure out decorations (and just where the hell was he going to get any greenery this far out in space, let alone an actual Christmas tree?), the food (which would probably wind up being Hunk’s problem, but it went on the list anyway), entertainment (this was pretty easy, as his Earth family had traditions set in stone he fully intended to inflict on his space family whether they liked it or not), and the biggest problem of all.  

“But what are we going to do about presents?” he fretted for the hundredth time. “We can’t just give them presents without giving them a chance to reciprocate but telling them they need some for everyone ruins the surprise! I dunno how to handle this!”

“Lance, breathe.”

“Hunk, this is important! Without all the trimmings, this is just another Voltron celebration, like all the other parties on all the other planets we’ve been to. It won’t be Christmas.”

“You love those celebrations. You ask about a parade after every mission!”

“True, but that doesn’t make it Christmas. This is CHRISTMAS, Hunk. It needs to BE Christmas!”

Hunk worried his friend was getting too invested in this. He knew Lance was homesick, and he knew this was his way of easing it with a little bit of tradition, but he really was getting caught up in the minutia of his perfect Voltron Family Space Christmas.

The bigger boy sighed, knowing full well his friend wouldn’t even consider it, and offered, “we could always just let them in on it, you know. They might have fun helping out.”

“Absolutely not!” Lance objected immediately. “I want it to be a surprise. We never get good surprises around here, just crappy ones. I really want to make this a good surprise for once. Besides, I don’t think any of them even realize what day it is!”

“What day what is?” a sleepy voice wanted to know. Before her morning coffee (or what pretended to be coffee around here, anyway, and what passed as morning for the nocturnal gremlin), Pidge was all curiosity, no filter. To be fair, she was like that most of the rest of the time, too, but mornings were the worst.

“What day today is,” Hunk slipped in smoothly as Lance tried to think up a lie he would have told unsuccessfully anyway. Boy just could not lie with a straight face to people he liked and respected. He hid his fair share of insecurities, Hunk knew, and could bullshit enemies and authority figures all day long, even allies if need be, but outright lie to friends? Family? He couldn’t do it. Besides, Hunk told himself, this wasn’t even lying. They actually were discussing what day today was. That it was in relation to the upcoming holiday didn’t have anything to do with the question. And a certain number of secrets and sneakiness were to be expected around the holidays. Right?

“And that would be?” she asked, more interested in her drink than her question but compelled to ask anyway. Pidge questions were demanding like that. 

“December 17th.”

“Huh,” the Green Paladin snorted, “probably missed Hanukkah.”

“You’re Jewish?” Lance gasped. First, she’s a girl, now she’s a Jew. How did he not know these things?

“My mom is,” she answered nonchalantly, “Dad, Matt, and I never really cared that much. She coordinated the holidays and stuff. We mostly showed up for the food. You have not lived until you’ve had my grammy’s latkes.”

“And you don’t even know when your own holidays are?” Lance cried, scandalized.

“Well, it’s not the most important Jewish holiday, it's not the exact same days every year, and like I said, Mom took care of that stuff. We got the menorah out when she told us to, helped with the cooking and stuff when she asked, went to Temple when she took us, and that was about the extent of it. It’s not like there’s two months of advertising leading up to Hanukkah to remind everybody it’s coming.”

“Fair point,” Lance conceded.

“So, you’re losing your shit over Christmas, huh?” she asked.

Lance gasped. He hadn’t even really started planning, nevermind setting up, and the surprise was already ruined? No fair! He demanded, “how did you know that?”

Pidge didn’t grace that with a reply beyond her favorite don’t insult my intelligence look. Instead she asked, “I take it we’re planning a Voltron Christmas?”

“Lance thinks he is, but mostly he’s just panicking,” Hunk answered.

“I am not!”

“You totally are, hermano.”

“Hey! No panicking!” the smallest Paladin broke in, “because you’ve got me now, and I have ALWAYS wanted to throw a big-ass Christmas, with a tree and a Nativity and a Christmas village and Santa and presents and stockings and cookies and eggnog and Rudolph and Charlie Brown and mistletoe and Christmas carols and snowmen and…,”

“We get it! You like Christmas,” Lance interrupted. “Honestly, we could use the help. I don’t how my mom did this every year!”

“Well, for starters, knowing your mom like I do, she probably started planning for next Christmas on December 26th, so she had a lot longer to get ready. Plus, she’s been doing it for a while, so she has practice and knows what works. This is your first year running the show, hermano, and you’re doing it in a totally unfamiliar environment with no resources and not a lot of help. Cut yourself some slack,” Hunk pointed out.

The other boy ran his fingers through his hair as he said, “yeah, I guess you’re right. Still, if we’re gonna pull this off, we have to get a move on, and a big part of that is figuring out what to do about presents! We're nowhere near a space mall so it’s not like we can go shopping. They’re gonna have to be homemade. A week isn’t a long time to pull something like that together, so we really do need to get this one going pronto. And I have ZERO ideas how to get everybody on board without giving the whole thing away!”

“Why don’t we convince Shiro and Allura it’s a bonding exercise? They’d be all over that so hard, they’d probably decide it was their idea in the first place,” Pidge suggested.

Lance stared at her for a full count of ten. Then he leapt from his seat, swept her into a twirling hug, and planted a big wet kiss right on her nose. He cried happily, “this is why you’re the genius!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, wiping off his slobber, “just be thankful I stuck my nose in and don’t get sloppy about it. We have work to do. Let’s get this party started!”

~

Things went a lot smoother once the gremlin got involved. Apparently, Pidge’s mom would allow no deviation from her ancestral traditions, her dad didn’t really care about the holidays one way or the other, and Matt just liked the special once-a-year food no matter what name it came under, so Christmas was a no-go in the Holt household. When offered the chance to realize a life long advertising driven dream (which Pidge was perfectly aware was cultural manipulation but dammit, it looked like fun!), the Green Paladin jumped in headfirst and took off running. By the time Hunk shooed them out to really start dinner, she’d come up with a solid plan of attack.

“Ok, so after dinner, Hunk’s gonna start coming up with the menu. You talk to Shiro and Allura about our ‘bonding exercise’ while I…” she began.

“Why me?” Lance complained.

“Because you’re the one who gets bored after five seconds in most of our bonding exercises since you have the attention span of a hyperactive hummingbird,” she explained.

“Hey!”

“And you’re the big-hearted one who’s always coming up with this sort of thing, anyway, so they’ll buy it coming from you,” she ignored him. “They won’t buy it coming from me, and Hunk is busy with dinner. Unless you want food goo again?"

“Oh hell no!”

“Exactly. So you’re it,” she finished. He scowled at her.

“I do not always come up with this sort of thing,” he muttered in sulky protest.

She counted off on her fingers, “spa days. Movie nights. The pillow fights. Charades, the Altean chess competition, and endless card games with that one deck you dug up from God-knows-where. Knitting lessons. Multiple doomed attempts to get us into arts and crafts and/or team sports. That disastrous excuse for a dance party on the training deck, and the lessons that followed. Which I still cannot believe you talked Shiro into buying counts as training, by the way.”

“It does! Do you know how much strength and balance it takes to dance well?”

“We all heard the debate, Lance. I just can’t believe it worked. My point is, you have a track record with this family fun night stuff, so they will go along with it coming from you.”

“But I dunno how to suggest making presents without a reason!”

“You don’t need a reason. Bonding exercise. Hyperactive hummingbird. There’s your reason. Just figure out how to phrase it and you’ll be fine. Use your charm,” she smirked.

“I hate you,” he whined.

“No you don’t. You go figure out how you’re gonna talk our leaders into having us make heartfelt gifts for each other as a bonding exercise and why it has to be next week specifically. I have some research to do. I’ll see you at dinner. Remember: charm!” with that parting shot, she swept off to the depths of her curiosity.

“Research,” he grumped to himself. He’d go think in one of the observatories. Stargazing always gave him good ideas.

~

"Hey Shiro, got a minute?” Lance called after dinner that evening. The Black Paladin and Allura were headed to the bridge for some tactical planning. They paused.

“Sure,” Shiro replied, “what’s on your mind?”

The younger man ran his fingers nervously through his hair. He still found it intimidating to talk to his hero one-on-one like normal people. “So listen,” he blurted out before he could chicken out, “I know we’re overdue for a bonding exercise and everyone’s kinda sick of those my biggest fear or my favorite whatever talk sessions like we’ve been doing lately, so I kinda had an idea I wanted to run by you.”

“I’m listening,” their leader encouraged. Truth to tell, he was sick of those talk sessions, too, but hadn’t had any better ideas in ages. If Lance could get him off that hook, more power to the kid.

“Yeah, so, back on Earth and stuff, my family, y’know? We would give each other these little thinking of you presents, like, I saw this and it reminded me of you so I picked it up or I know you like whatever so I made you some, that sort of thing,” he ran his fingers through his hair about three more times just in that short speech before going on, “anyway, it was a really nice way to show how well we knew each other, y’know, and I kinda thought maybe we could do something like that? Like, take a week to think something up with whatever’s available around the Castle and make something little for each other, then exchange them and explain why we thought the present went with the person. Does that make any sense?” he finished in a breathless rush.

Shiro paused for a beat before saying, “I don’t know, Lance, it’s a good idea in theory but it might be a bit…”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea!” Allura interrupted, positively squealing in delight. “Giving small tokens of appreciation to the people you’re close to is an ancient Altean tradition. I had no idea humans did such things, too, but now that I know, we simply must give it a try! There’s an Altean holiday coming up in a movement; we can aim for then. I already know EXACTLY what I wish to give to each of you, so I hope you can all be prepared in so short a time!”

And that settled that. The princess went so far as to make a general announcement over the intercom, which Lance thought was a bit overkill but hey, if it got this thing going, he wouldn’t argue. Check one item off the list and move on. Now he just needed to pull off seventy million other things AND think up something to give everyone. Why was he putting himself through this again?

“Because it’s Christmas no matter where you are, kid, and you know Abuela will haunt you if you don’t at least make the effort. If any ghost could track you down all the way out here for a good old fashioned Christmas haunting, it’s Abuela! So kwitcherbitchin and just get it done, McClain!” he scolded himself. Good lord, this holiday already had him talk to himself and he’d only been at it one day!

~

They met bright and early the next morning (and since when did Pidge do bright, early, or mornings?) to go over the list and map out their next steps. They would have to sneak their activities in around their regular Voltron duties and make it look like they weren’t up to anything in order to maintain the surprise, so they had to plan carefully.

“Y’know, Lance, this would be a lot easier if we’d just let the others in on it and make the prep part of the fun,” Hunk said for the thousandth time.

“Absolutely not!” Lance shot back for the thousand-and-first. “I want this to be a surprise! Besides, Allura and Shiro are too busy, Keith is too grumpy, and Coran too clueless to be much help anyway. We’ll set it all up for them and just give them a nice holiday without them having to worry about it. We got this, Hunk. It’s fine. Pidge, how’s the list?”

“Well, you successfully suckered the bosses into thinking that us giving each other little presents was their idea, so that’s one thing done. We have the afternoon off today so we’ll go on the hunt for decorations after lunch. There are dozens of storerooms in this castle. We’re bound to find something we can make work,” she replied.

“What about the food?” Hunk interjected. “I am not serving food goo for Christmas dinner.”

“And the tree? I can do without a lot, but I have to have some kind of Christmas tree,” Lance chimed in.

“We need to find a planet,” Pidge said. “A green planet with edible plants that won’t taste like ass or make us wish for death. Do we know if anyone’s on the bridge?”

“Pidge, Hunk, and Lance: to the training room. You’re late,” Keith’s voice scolded over the intercom.

“SHIT!” they all cried before dashing out. Not a promising start to keeping this off the radar. They’d have to be sneakier.

~

Three hours, two lectures, and one well-earned shower later, they met up in Hunk’s room with a map of the accessible storerooms, a pile of pilfered boxes and bags, a hover trolley, and three lists: food, decorations, and instruments.

“Instruments?” Pidge asked.

“I don’t have a holiday playlist downloaded on my phone, do you?” she shook her head at Lance's query. “Exactly. It was all on the cloud, which we can’t get to out here. So we’re going to have to make our own music, and that means instruments. I have Mary,”

“Which you stole,” Pidge muttered.

“Which I adopted, so that’s a start. And we know Coran has at least that one flute we hear all the time, so I figure there has to be more around here somewhere. Keep an eye out for easy percussion instruments: bells, drums, triangles, stuff like that. They’re super festive and any idiot can play them. Even Keith.”

“Lance,” Hunk warned.

“I kid, I kid. Anyway, moving on. We should probably come up with some sort of decoration scheme so,” the thinner boy continued.

Pidge interrupted, “scheme, shmeme. Red, green, silver, gold, throw in some blue and white for me and the Alteans, lots of ribbons, lots of bows, bunch of shiny things, maybe we’ll find some toys we can use, done. I’m worried about the lights. I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to rig up fairy lights with Altean tech in less than a week. Maybe in a month, I could figure it out, but a week?”

“Eh, we’ll find something, I’m sure. It’s a magic space castle, there’s bound to be magic space lights we can use. Wait, what's that about the Alteans?” Lance said.

“Remember that research I had to do yesterday?” she asked.

“I remember you sticking me with talking the space parents into letting us give presents without letting them know why,” he grumbled.

“Which you managed brilliantly, so stop complaining. Anyway, I was looking for some kind of Altean midwinter holiday festival we could incorporate, because it’s nice to show them our traditions, but it would be even nicer to find a way to honor some of theirs. They’re not exactly going to get the planetwide celebration they were used to.”

They paused for a moment of silence. It was a real tragedy, what happened to Altea. None of them could truly wrap their heads around how it would feel to be the last living souls of a destroyed planet. Though the Alteans seldom talked about it and never showed it, there remained a shadow behind Allura’s eyes, a droop to Coran’s moustache, that hinted at how hard the loss had hit them.

“Awww, Pidge, that’s the sweetest thing I ever heard,” Hunk cried, sweeping the small Paladin up in a huge hug.

“Put me down! Don’t make a big deal out of it, ok? I just know how it feels to be left out of the holiday and I don’t want them to go through it if they don’t have to, all right, so drop it! Anyway, I need to read a bit more but I did find that the big colors for their holiday are blue and white, like Hanukkah, so we’re gonna work those into the decorations. Which is what I was trying to tell you before you two saps went all gooey and sentimental on me. Don’t think I don’t see you sniffling over there, Lance McClain! Pull yourself together so we can get this scavenger hunt on the road. As the mountain to Mohammed, those storerooms won’t come to us.”

~

They lost Hunk early on. He’d tried four times to redirect his friends to issue of the food before giving up and just informing them he would do inventory on his own. Honestly, he preferred it that way anyway. Balancing this many different holiday traditions into one feast was challenging enough without having to explain his reasoning every step of the way. He’d rope them in as sous chefs when the time came, because everybody knew better than to argue with Hunk in the kitchen, but the planning stages would go a lot faster if he flew solo. He clutched the list of traditional Altean holiday dishes Pidge gave him and headed off to cold storage, muttering about vegetables and seasonings and things that taste like chicken.

~

“Hey, Pidge, check it out!” the Blue Paladin called out several storerooms later. Overfull boxes and stuffed bags piled nearly to his head teetered precariously on the hover trolley. They’d found ribbons and bows in every color of the rainbow. They’d found four boxes of iridescent crystal spheres that looked like frozen bubbles to go on the tree, once they had a tree. One room boasted an entire wall of chains in silver and gold that would wrap around that tree in place of garland. Pidge stumbled into a nursery or playroom that had all the teensy toys her little heart desired. They’d just come from a room full of figurines where Lance had spent a good half hour putting together his shiny new Space Nativity. It had been a productive trip.

“What?” the smaller Paladin snarled. Productive didn’t mean finished. They were distressingly short on musical instruments, which Lance would absolutely not shut up about, and still hadn’t found a suitable substitute for fairy lights. Pidge wasn’t convinced Christmas counted without fairy lights. She didn’t really know for sure, of course, but it had been one the things she’d really been looking forward to since jumping in on this cockamamie idea. And she knew there had to be some in this Castle somewhere, because she’d read that symbolically bringing the stars down from the sky to encourage the light to follow them back into the world was a big part of the Altean holiday. At least, according to the few sources she’d found, which to be fair, were a lot of children’s fairy tales and a single translation of a translation of a personal account told years after the fact, so maybe not for a peer reviewed journal but they were all she had, so she went with them. And that meant fairy lights, dammit, so where the hell were they??

“Look! Jingle bells!” Lance cried happily, choosing to overlook the snippiness. His mom got like that during the holidays sometimes, too, and the only thing to do was pretend you hadn’t heard and try to help out a little more.

“Y’know, every planet we’ve been to has some sort of high pitched spherical bell like that, did you notice? It’s weird. I wonder what the commonality is that would lead to such incredibly close parallel development on such wildly different worlds over so vast a distance? They’re nearly identical, everywhere. I mean, yeah, they’re used for different purposes on different planets but they’re sti..”

“PIDGE!” Lance snapped.

“What?” she jumped from her reverie. “You don’t have to yell.”

“I called you three times. Focus. Brain back on task. Decorations now, scientific theories later. There’s a whole box of these bells over there. We can put ‘em on everything. It’ll be great!”

“It’ll drive Keith nuts.”

“Like I said, it’ll be great! But jingle bells mean Christmas and I just found a box of ‘em, so they’re going up. Any luck with the lights?”

“No,” she admitted.

“So we’ll keep looking. You said lights are a big part of Altean Christmas?”

“It’s not Altean Christmas, but yeah, little star lights feature heavily in everything I’ve read so far.”

“So they probably needed a lot for a castle this big, which means we’ll find a stash eventually. We just have to keep at it.”

“You’re right. Let’s keep going. We’re going to have to break for supper sooner or later and I’d rather not do this again tomorrow. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to give you people,” she turned back to the task at hand.

~

Three more storerooms, no lights, and Pidge was about ready to go full gremlin on somebody’s ass. She wasn’t sure who, maybe Coran, maybe whoever decided to store their holiday decorations in an alternate dimension or some damn thing, but definitely somebody. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor and pouted at the hover trolley. Lance had found his instruments, why couldn’t she find her lights? It wasn’t fair!

“Hey Pidge? You gotta come see this,” she heard Lance call softly. He’d insisted on one last room before calling it quits.

The reverence in his voice piqued her curiosity. That wasn’t a typical Lance tone. Goofy, braggy, occasionally sincere, sure. But reverent? Not so much. More like the exact opposite. She got up and went over to him. This, she had to see.

It was a room full of stars.

“Wow,” Pidge breathed. Reverence was exactly the right tone. Hundreds of thousands of sparkling crystals of all shapes and sizes hung in the air, spilled out of containers, and clung to the walls of the entire room. They glowed with an internal light in every color imaginable. It was breathtaking.

“I think we found our lights, huh, Pidgeon?”

“How are they staying up?” she marveled. There were no strings, no wires, no hooks or magnets or tiny antigrav generators or anything she could see to support them. They just…hung there. By themselves.

“Magic,” Lance decided. “We don’t have time for scientific curiosity right now. Let’s just grab a ton of these and get this stuff hidden. They’re gonna get suspicious if we don’t show up for dinner. I don’t want to ruin the surprise!”

“How are we supposed to use them if we don’t know how they work?”

“We use the Lions and we don’t know how they work.”

“That’s different. They’re sentient, so they can help. These aren’t.”

Lance was already piling containers of crystals on the hover trolley. He said, “I dunno. Maybe they are. But we have to get moving, gremlin. We’ll figure it out after supper. You’re a genius. I have faith in you. C’mon.”

~

A couple of hours later they landed back in Hunk’s room, inspecting the haul. There was barely any space to maneuver, they’d found so much. They’d have to commandeer one of the unused bedrooms to hide all this stuff for the rest of the week.

“This is awesome, you guys! All we need now is the tree and some greenery and we’ll have the best Voltron Family Space Christmas ever!” Lance exclaimed.

“It’s the only Voltron Family Space Christmas,” Pidge pointed out.

Lance stuck his tongue out at her, “spoilsport. I’m just saying, we made great progress today. Decorations are half done!”

“Well, the food situation isn’t so wonderful,” Hunk cut in mournfully. “We’re down to food goo and what’s left of the frozen meat. Even without the holiday, we’d need a supply run.”

“That’s good, though. It gives us a real excuse to find a planet to get the rest of the stuff we need. I really don’t want to spoil the surprise,” Lance said.

“I just hope we can find a good planet. Our luck’s been spotty at best with that,” Pidge said.

The Blue Paladin snorted at the Green, “oh, have some faith, short one. It’ll work out. It’s Christmas!”

~

Hunk brought up the food situation at the next morning’s meeting. He had his menu plan, a list of what they had (not much), a list of what he’d need (basically everything), and a list of acceptable substitutes and work-arounds he’d come up with, just in case. Pidge wasn’t wrong in her assessment of their luck with good planets. He was going to serve a fantastic holiday feast come hell or high water, so it was time to get this ball rolling. He wanted as much time to prepare as he could get.

“There might be a suitable planet not far from here. It’s fertile, has plenty of fresh water and a large variety of animal species but no intelligent life to speak of,” Coran offered after a few doboshes of the others going around in circles.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Shiro asked.

“Well, the gravity is significantly higher than we’re accustomed to. We can only stay for a few vargas at a time and it will be incredibly uncomfortable,” that was Coran for would hurt like hell, “and nobody ever died from eating food goo, so I didn’t think it worth the trouble.”

“I will die if I have to go one more week eating nothing but food goo,” Hunk declared flatly. Loud groans of agreement filled the room.

“You sure you’re up for this? High grav environments are no joke,” Shiro cautioned.

“Hey, we’ll just be a little heavier, right? No big deal. Just think of it as weight training. Hey, maybe we can skip training that day, too?” Lance asked hopefully.

Their leader groaned and scowled but agreed. The meeting broke up. Coran and Allura headed to the bridge to set their course. Keith went to the training room, of course. Shiro had no idea what happened to the Garrison kids. He himself joined the Alteans on the bridge to plan this excursion. He had to admit, the idea of not eating food goo for a while held more than a little appeal. He wondered what edibles this place might have.

~

Once they landed, Shiro didn’t even have time to open his mouth and review the plan before Lance announced he, Hunk, and Pidge would head one way to look for vegetables, while Shiro and Keith should go hunting in the other.

“Keith has the eye for meat and Hunk and I both have experience with edible plants, so it just makes sense, right? Right! See ya later,” Lance waved merrily as he took off with the others.

“Stay together! Check in every half hour! And keep your coms on!” Shiro called after them. These kids, he swore. Parenthood seemed less and less appealing by the day. He turned to Keith and said, “I guess we’re going hunting.”

~

An hour and a half later, the Blue Paladin teetered on the edge of a panic attack. He’d lost Hunk again, yeah, but that was not only to be expected in general on food trips, but specifically planned for in this situation. The big guy had to do the work of three finding real food while they played around with greenery and flowers, not to mention digging up whatever he was after for the holiday dinner, so losing track of him was part of the plan. They’d meet up about fifteen minutes before they were due back at the Lions, walk back together like they’d never been more than ten feet apart, and the brass would never know otherwise.

Losing track of Pidge, on the other hand, was definitely NOT on the agenda. But lost her he had and finding her was not going well. He’d been searching and calling for at least half an hour. He was just about to admit defeat and call Shiro when he heard her voice.

He looked around but didn’t see a gremlin. She called again, “over here.”

He still didn’t see her. Where the hell was this kid?

“Lance! Over. Here!” she yelled, an edge to her tone.

Stupid Green Paladin hiding in a green forest. Eventually, he spotted her hand waving from behind the branches of one of those alien fruit trees Hunk kept insisting were pears that did not look like pears at all. He grumbled, “what are you doing in there?”

“I’m a part Pidge in a pear tree!” the gremlin cackled.

Lance groaned and facepalmed, “I hate you!”

“No you don’t. C’mon, lets dig this up and bring it back. We can put lights and ornaments and stuff on it. It’ll be great. Plus, I can pull that joke on Shiro. You know he’ll love it,” she replied playfully. The Black Paladin’s endless repertoire of dad jokes and puns had a large hand in earning him his Space Dad moniker.

“And Keith’ll hate it, which I must admit is an appealing thought, but I’m not sure the tree can live in our lighter gravity, and I don’t want to kill a food source for no reason. Plus, it’s a fruit tree. We need a pine tree, or something like it,” he pointed out.

The younger Paladin pouted, “I guess you’re right. We’ll keep looking. Still shoulda let me make that joke for Shiro, though.”

“How about we record it, and you make it part of his present? Then it’s something he can keep, and not just a one-time thing. We can take some of the branches to decorate, too, so long as it doesn’t hurt the tree too much,” he offered.

She gaped at him for a bit before squealing and launching herself at him in a tackle-hug. “And they say I’m the smart one! Lance, that’s brilliant!”

He blushed, “nah, it’s just the kind of thing my mom would have suggested in this situation. You should thank her when we get back to Earth.”

“Oh, I plan to but not for that. I’m gonna thank her for raising you, because I wouldn’t have you to pick on if she hadn’t done such a good job. So there!” she stuck her tongue out.

He ruffled her hair and laughed, “c’mon. Let’s go get this greenery before the brass gets suspicious. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Lance, if you say that one more time, I swear I will hurt you,” she growled.

“Well, I don’t!” he protested. “Besides, you don’t wanna end up on Santa’s Naughty List, do you? I guarantee beating me up will land you there.”

“Jew, remember? I’m not on any of Santa’s lists. Besides, I’m pretty sure the reindeer can’t fly in space. We’re gonna have to take a raincheck on Santa this year, I think.”

“Fair point,” he conceded. “That’s not what Christmas is really about, anyway. Part of it, yeah, but not the main part.”

“Not down for the commercialism, huh?”

“Oh, I am totally down for the commercialism! I have a three-page list every year. Give me a good giftocalypse on Christmas morning and I’m a happy Tailor. And giving without expectation of getting like Santa does is a big part of the meaning of Christmas, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of the holiday. There’s so much more to it than that.”

“Oh-ho, we have sentimental one on our hands, do we?” she kidded.

“You have no idea,” he replied, not about to elaborate. “C’mon. This stuff isn’t gonna pick itself. Let’s go.”

~

They ran a little bit late finishing up, but not so much that Shiro got upset, especially since he was running late too. And they’d found lots of really good plants for decorations, so that was the upside. On the downside, they ran over because they hadn’t found a suitable tree yet. They were still hunting when Shiro gave his third and last “final ten-minute warning” to get back to the Lions. Five minutes later, Pidge was pouting and Lance near tears as they turned back. Looked like they weren’t getting their Christmas tree after all. He wondered if it was too late to dig up one of those pear tree deals?

My Paladin, whispered Blue, sensing his distress, do not despair. My sister has something for you.

Pidge cracked up laughing just as Blue finished. Lance demanded, “what’s funny?”

“Nothing,” she giggled, “you’ll see. We gotta get a move on. Let’s go!”

She didn’t run. She couldn’t run. She weighed about a third more than usual, so to speak, so just walking got exhausting fast. But she walked steadily and as quickly as she could manage. She laughed again when she reached the clearing where they’d landed. Most of the Lions sat in their usual resting poses, back on their haunches with front paws on the ground. Red was nowhere to be seen. Green sat on her haunches like the others, but not on all fours. She held her left paw up, dangling the most gorgeous long needled evergreen Lance had ever seen.

“…?...” Lance tried to ask what was going on, but nothing came out.

“I think Green picked up what I wanted through our Paladin bond. When she realized how upset I was that we hadn’t found it, she went and got one herself! That’s my brilliant girl!”

“Well, we’d better get this stored before the others get back. I don’t want them to see,” Lance instructed once he got his voice back.

Green delicately set the tree down and opened up. Pidge and Lance struggled a bit getting it up the ramp, but they managed in the end. Just in time, too, as over the horizon flew Red, coming in fast. Hunk showed up just as Keith stormed out of his Lion, ranting about who-knows-what as Shiro tried to calm him down. The Garrison trio weren’t paying attention. They had a holiday to throw.

~

The rest of the week passed in a flurry of preparation and subterfuge. Turns out, keeping secrets when there’s only seven people in an enclosed area was really hard. It might have been a big Castle, but they all tended to live in the same small section of it. This should have made things easier with places to hide that no one ever went into, but huge parts of the Castle were sealed off, no heat, no light, no gravity, nothing, to conserve energy. So a certain level of creativity became necessary, which got harder and harder to manage as the week went by.

Still, they pulled it off. Lance and Pidge almost came to blows figuring out how the crystal-star-light-thingies worked until Hunk threatened to put them in separate corners. They nearly got caught several times, their explanations growing increasingly absurd with each near miss. At one point, Hunk remarked on the unusual lack of Galra activity until others shouted him down with cries of, “don’t jinx it!”

It was a busy, stressful week that it seemed would never end until finally the day came. At last, it was Christmas Eve!

~

The morning went surprisingly smoothly, which should have been their first hint. They’d already talked the adults into giving them the day off to prepare for the “team bonding exercise” later that evening, so time seemed on their side. They got the food prep done, finished up the baking, and got the decorations into the lounge they’d confiscated. They set up tables for the buffet, the tree trimmings, and all along the wall Pidge had claimed for her Christmas village. They even got the tree up. Not trimmed, of course, but up, nonetheless. Lance decided to risk a tiny bit of satisfaction at all they’d pulled off. Big mistake.

“Paladins, to your Lions! A Galra warship has been spotted in this area. You must form Voltron!” Allura’s voice rang out over the intercom.

“WHAT?!?!?!” Lance bellowed, immediately losing his shit, “oh hell no! No way are those bastards going to ruin my Christmas! I won’t have it!”

He tore his apron off, threw it down and stormed out, swearing in Spanish and English. Hunk and Pidged chased him shouting, “where are you going?”

“You heard the Princess,” he snarled over his shoulder, not slowing down at all, “I’m going to Blue and I’m going to shoot every single last one of those assholes right out of the sky. Then I’m coming back to finish setting up for Noche Buena. And then we’re all gonna have Christmas and we’re not gonna think about those dickheads at all!”

He stalked off to his hanger without another word. The other Paladins didn’t try to catch up.

~

Blue had taken out half a dozen fighters by the time the others joined the battle. It turned out to be a fairly small warship, more of a cruiser than a battleship. These lone ships were usually some sort of second wave scout, sent to find out how much of the fleet would be needed to subdue a newly discovered planet. Surprisingly common, they were dangerous enough, but not the worst Voltron had ever faced. Lance fought like a man possessed, swooping through the squadron, blasting with both tail and mouth lasers, weaving in and out to cause them to shoot or crash into each other.

“Where did you learn to fly like that?” Keith demanded over the com. Blue clogged the ion cannon with her ice ray, then blasted it with both guns before activating her jaw blade to get in close and cut a swath down the length of the barrel. Explosions like fireworks trailed in her wake.

“Hey, I got plans tonight, they’re more important than this petty bullshit, and I’m not about to let these worthless muthafuckas ruin them!”

“Lance! Language!” Shiro reprimanded.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s blow this bitch and go home. I have better things to do,” the Cuban boy retorted.

Shiro sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Honestly, sometimes he had no idea how to handle this kid. He opened his mouth to politely tear Lance a new one before Keith could do so less politely when he heard the chime indicating a private message. It was Hunk.

“Um, hey guys? You might wanna let this one go. He really does have more important things on his mind,” the big guy pleaded.

“What could possibly be more important than fighting Galra?” Keith shouted in astonishment. Ok, so he was on this conversation too. Shiro had not known that. Didn’t change much.

“You’ll find out, I promise,” Hunk replied, “and it’ll be worth it. Just…so long as he’s not actively getting himself or us killed, and he’s not,” the warship lights had just gone completely out thanks to an apparently new level of sonic pulse from Blue, “let this one slide. You’ll really feel like assholes later if you don’t.”

That got Shiro’s attention. Hunk never swore beyond the occasional quiznak. In fact, he was the one person in the Castle, Allura and Coran included (he might not understand the Altean words, but he’d been military; he knew a curse when he heard one) that he never had to get on about their language. When the Yellow Paladin broke out the blue tongue, it was serious.

Shiro took out a couple of fighters before responding reluctantly, “ok, Hunk, if it’s that important, I’ll trust you. Keith, Hunk, provide backup as needed but otherwise, stay out Lance’s way. He does seem to know what he’s doing. Pidge?”

“BUSY!” the Green Paladin screamed back. She was in the middle of a complicated roll that skimmed the cruiser and got the four fighters on her tail to slam straight into it as she pulled sharply up. They couldn’t outmaneuver her nimble Lion. The crash caused an explosion that set off a chain reaction that took out half the ship. The fighters had crashed right into a vital conduit channeling an incredibly volatile gas much too close to the surface. In move right out of Star Wars, the young genius exploited a small design flaw to cause big destruction.

“Yeah! Go Pidge!” the team cheered.

“Are we done with these assholes yet? The clock’s a-tickin’,” Lance demanded as the cheering died down.

“Language!” Shiro scolded again.

“What is it with you today?” Keith grumped. This was going in his mental why the hell am I into this guy again? folder. 

“Keith,” Hunk warned gently through the private channel. The Red Paladin grumbled under his breath but said no more. At least, not loud enough to be clearly heard. The other half of the warship exploded right on cue, taking nearly the entire rest of the fighter squadron with it. The resulting mop up only took a few minutes.

Lance and Blue were already back at the Castle by the time Shiro called the battle. They’d done well today, without even needing to form Voltron, so he let it go. Besides, now he was curious what these “better plans” could possibly be. If he gave Lance his head and stayed out of the way, he’d find out. So he planned to do just that.

~

Lance didn’t show up for debriefing, which Shiro was a lot less inclined to let slide until Hunk and Pidge shot identically desperate please let it go looks at him. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration again but said nothing. The Yellow and Green Paladins fidgeted and shot worried looks at the door all through the meeting, so he wrapped it up as quickly as possible. Clearly, they were in on whatever Lance was up to and eager to get back to it. So he cut it short and let them go early. He was letting a lot go today, maybe too much. Whatever these kids had up their sleeve had better be worth it.

~

He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the Garrison kids for about four hours (vargas?) when he stopped by the kitchen to get an ETA on dinner and maybe a quick snack if it was going to be much longer. He was greeted by a locked door and a thoroughly annoyed Coran apparently trying to blow it open with his glower.

“What’s going on?” Shiro asked.

“They locked me out!” Coran’s moustache twitched in indignation.

“They?” the younger man was lost.

“Hunk and Lance and Pidge! I went to start warming up food goo for dinner,” the advisor ignored Shiro’s eyeroll, “and they’d locked me out! Naturally, I knocked and asked to be let in, but Number Five opened the door just a crack, claimed they were busy, shut the door in my face, and locked it again! So rude!”

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose again. That was three times in less than half a day by his count. He was just about done with these kids’ nonsense. He told Coran, “I’ll take care of it.”

“I should hope so! No one likes cold food goo,” with that, Coran stomped off down the corridor.

He refrained from informing Coran’s retreating back that nobody really liked food goo much at all. This was probably not the time. He sighed again (he’d given up counting how often he indulged that habit ages ago) and rapped his knuckles on the kitchen door.

It slid open just enough to reveal the small face and big glasses of the youngest Paladin snarling, “Coran, I told you we’re busy! We have supper under control, stop fuss…oh, hey, Shiro.”

“Hey Pidge. Care to let me in?” he asked carefully.

She threw a quick look over her shoulder, clearly seeking guidance. She didn’t like the reply, but gulped, nodded, and turned back to him to say, “yeah, I’d like to, but I really can’t.”

“Not good enough,” he warned in response. These kids had been locking random doors, shooing people out of rooms without explanation, giggling together in conversations that stopped as soon as anyone else walked in, and just generally acting like they had something to hide for a week. He was done being put off, and fully intended to get to the bottom of this. Now.

Lance shoved her out of the way to stand in the door himself, blocking Shiro’s view and effectively preventing him from barging right on in. “What she means to say,” he inserted himself smoothly between his friend and his leader’s burgeoning wrath, “is that I know we’ve been acting kinda weird and shady for the past week or so,”

“Kinda?” he grumbled.

“But it’s almost over, and trust me, it will be worth it,” the younger man continued over him before pleading, “you do trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course I trust you!” Shiro protested. How could this kid think he didn’t trust him? They wouldn’t be able to form Voltron if he didn’t trust his Paladins implicitly.

“Then let it go just a little bit longer, OK? I promise, you’ll know all about what we’ve been up to by the end of the night, and it really will be worth it. We’ve set up some snacks in the training room if you’re hungry. Dinner’s gonna be a while yet,” Lance begged.

“Is that why Keith was complaining about the training room being locked?”

“Probably,” the Blue Paladin admitted, “but it’s open now, and there’s food, so if you could keep Allura from trying to kill us while she waits for dinner, that would be a huge help. Do a guy a solid?”

The soul had not yet been born who could resist Lance McClain’s puppy dog eyes when he really laid it on thick. Crueler men than Shiro had tried and failed. He conceded defeat by agreeing, “fine, but I swear, Lance, if this isn’t worth it, you’ll spend the next week doing the nastiest jobs around the castle Coran can find!”

“Fair enough!” he agreed roguishly, “we’ll let you know when everything’s ready. Oh, and get your bonding presents because that’s tonight. And stay out of the main lounge! I mean, it’s locked anyway, but now you know that, just leave it alone until one of us says otherwise, ok?”

Another sigh. One more pinch. Add in a head shake. “You’re killing me, Lance.”

“But you love me anyway.”

Shiro did not grace that with a reply, saying instead, “I’ll see what I can do about keeping the others out of your hair. Don’t make me regret this.”

“You won’t,” he promised. He shot finger guns and grinned, “you’re the best Space Dad ever!”

“Why do I feel like I just signed my own death warrant?” the older Paladin mused as younger ducked back into the kitchen and the door slid shut behind him, concealing whatever horrors may or may not lie beyond. He headed to the training room. Might as well check out these snacks. He needed fortification before telling the princess dinner would be late. That was not a chore for an empty stomach.

~

About a varga and a half and two not-quite royal tantrums later, not-quite because princesses did not HAVE tantrums (as she’d ruthlessly informed Lance the one and only time the subject came up) the door slid open to reveal the Paladin in question, wearing a shiny blue shirt, black pants, and a bright smile, topped off with a…was that a holly wreath? Here? How? Why? What the…?

“What is that on your head?” Keith snarked.

“And a Happy New Year to you, too,” Lance shot back. He stepped aside and gestured grandly, “if you fine folks would kindly head to the main lounge, it’s time to find out exactly what shenanigans we’ve been up to for the past week. Don’t forget to bring your presents. That’s tonight. Let’s go!”

~

For once in his life, Lance was quiet. Not completely quiet, of course, this was Lance after all and he and completely quiet were not well acquainted, but not jabbering on about nothing at least. As Keith followed the younger man to the lounge, he could hear him humming random tunes he really felt he should know but couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It was infuriating. Sometimes, it seemed like everything that boy did was infuriating. Here he was, doing exactly what Keith like best---being as quiet as possible, which was a rare and precious thing---and he still managed to be infuriating. How the hell did he do that?

Lance’s back offered no insight. Of course.

Shiro hoped he hid his apprehension well. At least, with Lance leading the way, he wouldn’t notice him fretting. Now that he would finally find out what stunts these kids had been pulling right under his nose for the last week, he couldn’t help but think of all the things that could go wrong. Lance and Pidge both had senses of humor that could easily be described as childish (or twisted, that fit too) and this wouldn’t be the first time something they though hilarious landed with a hideous thud to everyone else. Hunk would try to dial them back, he knew, but Hunk’s big heart could only hold the reins so tightly before the others were off and running anyway. So he offered up a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening that this would not become a repeat of…well, several incidents, actually, which is why he was so nervous. This was a pattern, not a one-time thing and he hoped he wouldn’t have to spend the next week soothing ruffled feathers all around. That shit was exhausting.

Coran practically skipped along with excitement. He enjoyed learning about new cultures, so he appreciated Number Three’s efforts to introduce him to human customs. They were endlessly entertaining, and often surprisingly Altean in sentiment and flavor. He sometimes marveled at how much humans and Alteans had in common, though he had to confess, he didn’t understand the other Paladins’ occasional antipathy towards his favorite human. Lance reminded him very much of himself at that age, and he’d been well-liked on Altea his entire life. Even now, here, antics that earned him a smile or a laugh from the others often drew frustrated scowls when Lance tried them. It truly made not one lick of sense. Perhaps humans and Alteans were not so alike after all?

Ah well, he thought, leave that yalmor hunt for another day. Time to learn some Earth customs, and perhaps show them a thing or two about Altea, as well!

Allura trailed behind, wrapped up in her own giddy anticipation. Tonight was a special night on Altea, and she had something equally special up her sleeve to honor it. If she did this right, her Paladins might at last truly understand their honored place as Defenders of the Universe. She clutched her bag of bonding gifts tightly and smiled. If this went well, it would truly be a Turning Point.

~

Lance paused dramatically at the main entrance to the lounge, because of course he did. “So I know Hunk, Pidge and I have been getting on you guys’ last nerve all week, especially today, and I know we’ve been promising and promising that it’s worth it, really, and I know you guys haven’t been entirely convinced of that, so on behalf of us all, I want to thank you for your patience with this. It’s time to make good on that promise.”

He took a deep breath before going on, “I don’t know how much attention you two pay to the Earth calendar,” he looked from Shiro to Keith and back, “and I don’t expect you guys to know Earth dates at all,” that was to Allura and Coran, “but tonight is December 24th back home, which is a very special night in a lot of Earth cultures, including mine, and that’s what we’ve been up to this week. So without further ado, allow me to present to you the first ever Voltron Family Space Christmas! Ta-Da!”

He waved the lounge doors open with a flourish, then stepped aside to usher the others in with shit-eating grin. The gasps of astonished delight he heard as he followed them in lived up to his every expectation. This was brilliant, and they were just getting started. God, he loved Christmas!

“I take it this was your ‘better things to do’?” Shiro asked quietly.

“Well, yeah,” he explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “I mean, we fight Galra every day. Hell, we even fought them today! But Christmas only comes once a year, and this? Voltron Family Space Christmas? Might only happen this once. So yeah, it’s a lot more important.”

He ran his fingers through his hair before confessing sheepishly, “it’s why I had to take that cruiser down before we could form Voltron earlier, too. I wanted this to be a surprise, a nice surprise for a change, and I knew if we formed Voltron, you’d pick it up through the Paladin bond.”

“This is definitely a surprise, Lance. Well done,” the eldest Paladin praised. Lance turned to take in the room and hopefully hide his blush.

Pidge had really undone herself, he had to admit, now he had the chance to appreciate the full effect. Helping to set up under someone else’s direction was very different from seeing the whole thing at once. And this? Was stunning. Absolutely stunning.

The Green Paladin beamed beside the huge tree her Lion had picked out. It dominated the center of the far platform, decked in sparkling red ribbons, silver and gold chains, and about thirty million of those glowing colored crystals they’d found twinkling through the branches. A pile of baubles and bells and bows waited on the small table beside it, ready to trim the tree. The little silver figurines Lance had commandeered snuggled safely at its base. The largest and brightest of the crystals topped the whole thing, functioning as a very effective Christmas star.

They’d rigged up a mock fireplace on the right side of the room. Seven hastily-made stockings hung from a mantle boasting a garland of tiny red and white flowers, a huge “holly” and “ivy” wreath above, a merrily crackling holographic fire below, and more of those glowing crystals scattered throughout. A pair of shiny, fur-trimmed black boots dangling above the fire completed the effect. It got a grin from Shiro and a snort from Keith that would have been a laugh out of anyone else.

More garlands with more crystals lined the perimeter of the room, sporting a wreath at each swag. Bouquets of large blue and gold flowers with fragrant silverish greenery that smelled almost, but not quite, of pine and eucalyptus, all tied with a fluffy white bow, stood in tall vases in the corners of the room. Blue and white paper snowflakes dangled from the ceiling. What could only be a stylized Christmas village ran the length of the wall holding the door they came through.

To the left of the massive tree, Hunk stood guard over long buffet tables. They groaned with food and flowers and greenery and ribbons and the omnipresent glowing crystals. Delectable aromas wafted from the steaming dishes, sending moans of hunger through the whole group. A pair of potted trees, heavy with purple fruit, bedecked in red bows and yet more crystals, flanked each end.

“Pidge, you didn’t!” Lance gasped.

“I totally did,” she smirked.

“But the gravity…,” he began.

“Taken care of. Hunk helped me build a couple of mini gravity generator, just strong enough to add that li’l bit of push they need to thrive. We, my friend, have pear trees,” she gloated. He facepalmed. She pulled out the part-Pidge joke from earlier, much to Shiro’s delight and Keith’s disgust.

“I don’t mean to interrupt this humorous exchange, but some of us haven’t eaten much today and if I have to stand here much longer, smelling that delicious food and not eating it, there will be dire consequences,” Allura announced.

They parted like the Red Sea, leaving the princess an unimpeded path to the food. She swept up to the end Hunk indicated, where he handed her a plate. He gestured grandly to the feast, “fill up. I’ll explain the significance of each dish as you work your way down. You might find a surprise or two.”

Nobody had to be told twice. It wasn’t exactly a mad dash to the tables, but close enough. Hunk’s smile outshone the stars as his family helped themselves to his food. He explained as they moved down the line, “we wanted to honor everybody’s traditions, but some of you, we don’t know your traditions and others, we couldn’t figure out how to it pull off. So we decided,”

“YOU decided,” Lance and Pidge clarified in chorus.

He gave them the evil eye before going on, “I decided the best way to do that was through the food. So we all did a little digging,”

“Is that why you were interrogating me on my favorite comfort foods the other day?” Keith demanded indignantly.

“That’s exactly why, yeah. Now, if I may continue?” he dared the others to interrupt again. No one took him up on it.

“We did a little digging and came up with something for everyone. Well, a close approximation of it, anyway. Exact ingredients are a little out of reach right now, but I think I pulled it off. So, starting from the top, for Pidge, we have Space Latkes, which aren’t really a Christmas thing but still appropriate for the season. Sorry they’re not like your grammy’s, gremlin,”

“They’ll do,” she mumbled around a mouthful of the dish in question. “She’d’ve loved the pink, anyway. Works for me.”

“Are any of you people going to let me complete a thought?” the big man grumped.

“Probably not,” Coran replied, “but do go on, my boy. I recognize a couple of these dishes and I am eager to hear your explanation.”

“As am I,” Allura agreed. Hunk nodded.

“Moving along, we have garlic knots and Space Yucca Con Mojo for Lance, and let me tell you, finding a good garlic substitute out here is NOT easy!”

“Worth it,” the Cuban boy said.

Hunk just glared at him. Before he could continue, Shiro asked, “is that fried chicken?”

“Well, kind of. You remember that little dragon lizard puppy looking thing you said probably tasted like chicken?”

“You didn’t!”

“Yeah, I did. Hey, they’re tasty, and really easy to cook! And they’re everywhere on that planet, so it’s not like I’m endangering a species or anything. I bet they get eaten by everything, all the time. Guaranteed those little guys are at bottom of the food chain, or really close to it. We got a freezer full of ‘em last time we were back that way.”

“We?” their leader wanted to know. He assumed Lance and/or Pidge right up until Keith began to squirm. He stared at his heart-brother, “seriously?”

“Hey, I need meat, ok? I can only handle so much food goo before I go a little nuts,” the younger man protested.

“A little?” Lance said as an aside.

“Shut up, Lance. Anyway, like Hunk said, they kind of have ‘eat me’ written all over them, so…yeah…,” he trailed off in confusion as half the group burst into giggles. “What?”

“Nothing,” Hunk glared the others into submission. “Going back to the food,”

“It’s delicious,” Allura praised. She was too hungry to wait for explanations.

“Going back to the food,” he repeated sternly, “we come to semi-traditional Space Mashed Potatoes for Keith. Which I am aware are green, but they act, cook, and taste like potatoes, so they’re potatoes, just like the pink ones in the latkes. Sorry if it’s a little boring but it’s the closest I could get to a straight answer out of him.”

“I didn’t understand why you wanted to know!”

“No worries,” he reassured, “moving on, we found a ton of those coconutlike whatsis on that last planet, where we got all the greenery, along with a bunch of fresh fish, so I got to make you Space Ika Vakalolo.”

“It’s coconut style fish,” Lance supplied helpfully to a roomful of confused expressions, “it’s really, really good. You definitely gotta try some.”

“Which brings us to the Alteans,” he turned the talk over to Pidge.

“Coming up with something for all us humans was pretty easy. Christmas is something of a world-wide phenomenon on Earth. Even those of us who don’t necessarily celebrate it are aware of it, and frequently have a similar holiday around the same time, like me with Hanukkah. So folding it all into one big Voltron mess of a holiday wasn’t the biggest of challenges. But there’s not exactly a shit-ton of information on Altean festival customs out there,”

“Pidge, language!” came from Shiro.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, most of that information’s been lost to time and corrupted files here in the Castle, and what little that wasn’t, we couldn’t read anyway, so for a while, we were stumped. Then we found a translatable account of Turning Point,” she beamed.

“Turning Point?” Shiro obediently asked once it became clear she was waiting for the question.

“It’s the Altean Festival of Endings and Beginnings,” Allura explained softly. “It falls on the darkest night of the year, when the light makes ready to return the next day. It’s a time to gather with loved ones, eat special foods, exchange small gifts, reflect on the paths that brought us to where we are, and make decisions on where our paths will turn next.”

“Exactly. So we shamelessly ripped off a bunch of what we found and folded it into the rest of this mess. That and Hanukkah are why there’s so much blue and white in with the standard Christmas colors,” the youngest Paladin finished.

“Since it’s a winter holiday, a lot of the traditional food is dried or preserved, which we happened to find in cold storage when we were hunting down decorations. I thought after ten thousand years, it had to be pretty inedible, but apparently Altean food preservatives are as advanced as the rest of their technology, so a lot of it was still usable. Thus, I present to you juniberry jam on warm klasha biscuits and a chutney made from an assortment of dried Altean fruits I couldn’t possibly pronounce over what I sincerely hope is Altean sticky rice. Looks like sticky rice, anyway. Bon appétit!” Hunk wrapped up his presentation.

They heard a soft sniffle. Allura was crying openly. She whispered, “oh Hunk, Pidge. This is so thoughtful. Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, less crying, more eating,” Pidge retorted. Allura was not the only one with a hangry streak around here. “Besides, it was really all Lance’s idea, anyway. If he hadn’t lost his shit over Christmas,”

“Language!”

“I wouldn’t have thought to look up Altean equivalents, and we wouldn’t have any of this. He’s the one you should really thank,” she finished.

“Thank you, Lance. It’s lovely,” she told the blushing Paladin.

“Nah, it’s nothing. I just couldn’t go without Christmas, is all. Never missed one in my life, don’t wanna start now,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

“Didn’t I just say, ‘less crying, more eating’?” Pidge demanded. “Eat up, people. Hunk didn’t spend all that time in the kitchen for nothing!”

~

Dinner passed pleasantly. Conversation mostly centered around what they were eating, whose tradition it came from or favorite it was, and why. By the end, the buffet table looked like it had been picked over by angry harpies. There wasn’t a lot left. Hunk loved it.

“Normally, we would have done this before dinner, but since we’d already kept you waiting and that’s bad for the female population of the castle, we switched things up,” Lance segued into their next activity. He ignored feminine glares as he stood and sauntered over to the tree.

“Lance, where did you get a Christmas tree in space?” Keith had to ask. It had been bugging him all evening. He’d guessed the rest of the greenery, the holly and ivy lookalikes and whatnot, came from that last planet. They’d have been easy enough to slip in among the real food, but the tree stumped him. He had no idea when they’d had the time and privacy to dig up something that large, nevermind transporting it back to the Castle.

“Actually, Green found it,” her Paladin answered to stares all around. “What? She’s Guardian of the Forest. That’s gotta be worth something.”

“However you found it, it’s lovely, but how does it factor into the evening?” Allura wondered.

“Allow me to explain, fair princess,” Lance bowed before launching into a complicated retelling of the history of the Christmas tree. He got maybe halfway through before Pidge interrupted.

“What he means to say is that, in many cultures that celebrate Christmas, it’s traditional to bring an evergreen tree into the house and decorate it with lights and candy and small toys and sparkly things. The reasons don’t really matter. It’s just really pretty, and fun to set up.”

“Which is what we’re doing now,” Lance took back his spotlight. “We got the bones set up for you with the lights and ribbons and garland and stuff, but now it’s time for us as a family to take those ornaments,” he pointed to the table piled high next to the tree, “and put them on that tree. After which, we will exchange presents.”

“You really have this all planned out,” Shiro was mildly impressed.

“I’m pretty much just throwing you a McClain family Christmas. This is all stuff I’ve been doing my entire life.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Lance. You really put a lot of thought and effort into making this happen. You should be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you.”

Lance turned as red as the ribbons on the tree. As far as he was concerned, Christmas had just peaked. Everything from here on out was gravy.

“Guys, you’re doing it again,” came a gremlin voice.

“Doing what?” Lance asked.

“Talking when you should be doing stuff. This tree ain’t gonna decorate itself!”

“Ok, ok! Bossy!” he whined playfully. Pidge threw an ornament at his head. He ducked. It barely missed. “Hey!”

“Children! Play nice!” Shiro scolded, not entirely seriously.

"Yes, Space Dad,” they dutifully chorused.

“Just trim the tree,” he sighed. He did not pinch the bridge of his nose this time.

~

“Now that is what I call a Christmas tree!” Pidge declared with satisfaction as everyone stood back to admire their handiwork.

“It did come out nice, didn’t it?” Lance’s voice was wistful but content. It wasn’t like Christmas at home, but it was still Christmas.

“I still don’t understand the custom, but does create a beautiful effect,” Allura observed.

“I like it,” Keith said simply. He’d found the spot for that last ornament everyone else was certain wouldn’t fit. It was a little red toy of some alien animal that resembled a hippo. He’d claimed it the second he laid eyes on it. It was cute.

“What’s next?” Coran asked. He really enjoyed these human customs and was eager to see where they went.

The Garrison trio caught each other’s eyes, grinned madly, and cheered in unison, “PRESENTS!!!”

“Wait, wait, wait, hold your horses. I have to get the desserts so we can have goodies AND gifts. Who’s helping?” Hunk remembered.

“I will. I need to get mine anyway. I left them in my room,” Keith volunteered. They left.

Pidge grabbed Shiro and Coran to show them her Christmas village. She’d wanted to do one of those since she was eight, so now that she finally had the chance, she went a little nuts. Plus, the various toy houses and figurines and vehicles and other bits and bobs she’d scavenged throughout the Castle didn’t exactly make for a traditionally cohesive village, so some creativity was called for. In the end, it wound up looking like someone tossed Victorian London, Art Deco New York, and Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century in a blender with a bunch of tinsel, some gingerbread, and a slightly ridiculous amount of peppermint then threw the resulting mess all over Isengard as imagined by Peter Jackson at the end of the second movie and tied it up with holly and a big red bow. An impressive waterfall leading into a massive skating pond (fluidic physics be damned, it’s Christmas) dominated one end of the table. A solitary house labelled “Grandma’s” stood guard over a path through woods leading to a holiday cityscape. Tiny shoppers crowded the little streets, gradually thinning out to another winding path that led straight to the North Pole, complete with Santa’s Workshop. Pidge was insanely proud of it.

While the Green Paladin chattered away, explaining her intentions and inspirations (turned out she really did steal that waterfall from the end of The Two Towers; she had a thing for classic fantasy, whaddaya want?), Allura inspected the Christmas tree. She recognized nearly everything they’d used to decorate. Here were the dancer dolls her favorite cousin passed down to her once she outgrew them. There were the iridescent crystal bubbles that were hidden all through the Castle grounds during the Juniberry Harvest Festival. The idea was to find as many as you could in a limited time. The person with the most got a prize. She still used the writing set she’d gotten the only time she’d won. She might not be able to draw, but her calligraphy was impeccable.

The princess circled the tree, smiling pensively as she touched particularly sentimental items. Wait, is that…? she thought as she noticed the red hippo Keith hung earlier, So that’s where you went! I missed you, old friend.

She was very much in danger of losing herself to the past when she spied Lance’s makeshift Nativity, quietly nestled at the foot of the tree. She knelt in front of it, picked up one of the stylized silver figurines, and asked softly, “what’s this?”

Lance nearly didn’t hear the gentle question from where he sprawled all over one of the couches, soaking up the ambience and feeling just a tiny bit smug that he’d made all this happen. With help of course, but as Pidge had said, the help wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had the idea in the first place. He. He got up, went over to the princess, and sat cross-legged on the floor next to her. He muttered nervously, “do you like it?”

“What is it?” she asked again, dodging the question.

Lance pretended not to notice. Instead he answered sincerely, “it’s what Christmas is all about.”

“What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, remembered his childhood, and spoke,

And there were in the same country, shepherds,
Abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And Lo! The angel of the Lord came upon them
And the Glory of the Lord fell round about them
And they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, “Fear not,
For behold! I bring you tidings of great joy
Which shall be to all people.

He drew on a solid dozen years of catechism and Charlie Brown Christmases to remember that. From there, he went on to tell the princess the Nativity story in detail. His face glowed as he talked. There was more to this kid from Cuba than merely Loverboy Lance.

Allura regarded him silently once he finished. Just as he was about to lose his shit entirely, she said, “you know, I was ready to be horribly offended at this. I’m sure you didn’t realize, but these figures hold special significance to me. They’ve been in my family for generations. They’re precious.”

She paused. He gulped. She continued, “but that story you just told me? Of hope and joy and miracles? It’s fitting. Thank you.”

He blushed like a holly berry when she kissed him on the cheek before rising to go see what the others were doing. Forget when his hero praised his hard work earlier, NOW Christmas had peaked.

“Allura?” he called as she walked away. When she turned her head, he asked, “what are they? Your figurines?”

She stared at him for a moment before replying, “they’re our gods.”

By the time Lance wrapped his head around that bombshell, Hunk and Keith had returned. They each pushed before them a three-tier hover cart, groaning with goodies. They settled the carts near the remains of the buffet table.

“Is that a Christmas cake?” Shiro asked.

“Why yes, it is. And peanut butter blossoms for Pidge and Keith to fight over. I couldn’t figure out Rice Krispie treats, though. Sorry, Lance,” Hunk explained.

“No worries,” his best friend replied, “there’s enough cookies here to choke a horse. I can make do with those.”

“You’re so gracious.”

“I try.”

“Ok, the treats are here, can we please do presents now?” Pidge whined. Sometimes it was easy to forget how young she was.

Shiro chuckled, “yes, we can do presents now. Lance, how do you want to work this?”

The younger man choked down astonishment at his leader turning the decision over to him of all people. Instead, he replied, “we’ll go one at a time, starting with me. I know you’re all gonna have something amazing and I don’t want to try to follow it. After me, we can either go by enthusiasm or rock-paper-scissors.”

“Sounds good. Whatcha got?” the Black Paladin agreed.

Lance passed around small cloth bundles tied with blue bows. Each one revealed an exquisite shell, an ocean tumbled stone, or a bit of what might’ve have been sea glass back on Earth. “I’ve been collecting little bits from every ocean we’ve been to out here. I’ve got quite a stash, actually. These are the ones that reminded me of you.”

Hunk got a thin round stone, worn flat and smooth. It had circular occlusions scattered around the face, giving the impression of pepperoni pizza. Pidge also got a stone, but hers was more rectangular, with veins of another mineral creating the effect of a circuit board. Shiro was the last to receive a stone. His was mostly black with a puff of white towards the top of one side. It kind of looked like his hair.

He gave Allura and Coran shells. Hers looked a lot like the scallop in that painting of that one goddess who wore nothing but her hair. He'd picked it out earlier in the week with every intention of making a joke, but now the time came, he found he couldn’t. He blamed that moment in front of the Nativity. How was he supposed to flirt with Baby Jesus watching?

Coran’s was more-or-less a sand dollar. It had the same markings, anyway, though it was a brighter orange than any Earth shell. The advisor nearly cried when Lance described how he chose it because it reminded him of the five Paladins with Allura at the center, all surrounded and protected and kept together by Coran in the background.

Keith stared down at the piece of sea glass in his hand. It was bright red, softly frosted, and shaped like the sword his bayard became. He looked up at Lance and asked, “where did you find this?”

“Remember that planet with the sentient seagulls that stole your lunch and shouted insults at your mullet?”

“It’s not a mullet! But yeah.”

“Best beaches in the universe for sea glass. One of the gulls dropped that right on my head. Hurt, too. Little bastard is probably still drinking for free on that story.”

“Lance, language!”

“I only said ‘bastard!’ Anyway, that’s where I got it. It’s your color, it looks exactly like your sword, and I thought you’d get a kick out of the story. Merry Christmas!” he grinned.

“Merry Christmas, Lance,” Keith replied quietly.

“My turn!” Coran leapt up. He indulged in a little cavort as he passed out colored bottles of some fizzy liquid. Each Paladin’s bottle matched their Lion. Allura got pink. He kept an orange one for himself. Little touches like that mattered to him. They raised things from ‘good’ to ‘great.’ That attention to detail helped him be a better advisor and friend.

“What’s this?” Pidge inquired nervously. Sometimes Coran’s enthusiasm got the better of him and he didn’t think things through. She’d wound up in a pod a couple of times because of it. Well, that and her general inability to say no when her curiosity was up. But still, he could be as bad as Lance like that. His ideas warranted caution.

“It’s human friendly nunvil!” Coran boasted. “Apparently, human and Altean taste receptors work very differently, so what’s nectar of the gods to us tastes like...how did you put it, Number Three?”

“Hot dog water and feet,” Lance supplied.

“Hot dog water and feet,” the advisor echoed. “But those pear things you brought back reacted beautifully when steeped in nunvil and created something everyone will like!”

“How can you be so sure of that?” Keith asked dubiously. He’d had nunvil.

Hunk spoke up, “he had me try it. I didn’t know what he was up to at the time, but I don’t have it in me to deny a fellow chef a taste test. It’s good.”

“Oh, well if Hunk likes it, that’s good enough for me!” Pidge decided. She uncorked her bottle and raised a toast, “salute!”

“Pidge, you’re too…,” Shiro tried to object.

“Too late,” she smirked, wiping her lips with a satisfied sigh. She’d downed a third of her bottle. “It is good! You should try yours.”

He really was trying to break the pinch the bridge of your nose when frustrated habit, but moments like this did not make it easy. He was only 25, for crying out loud! How did he end up dad to all these teenagers? He wasn’t old enough to actually be any of their dads! Still, it was what it was and honestly, he couldn’t really say he’d give it up if he had the chance. These kids needed him. He liked being needed.

“Ok guys, that’s enough,” Space Dad rounded up the bottles after a bit, mid-sip in a couple of cases, to a rousing chorus of complaints, “you can have them back at the end of the night for another toast, but we’re not getting so wasted that we can’t react in an emergency. Christmas or not, we still have to be cautious.”

“He’s right,” Allura chimed in. “As relaxing it is to let go like this, the fact remains that we are fighting a war. We cannot let our guard down too far lest Zarkon take advantage of momentary weakness.”

“Way to drag down Christmas,” Lance muttered. He didn’t think she heard him until the look she shot him said otherwise.

“That said,” she went on, “it does not mean we can’t celebrate to a certain extent. Tonight is special for many reasons, not the least of which is the work our friends put in to make it special. We have an obligation to honor that effort, and it is my privilege to do so. Besides,” she dropped the stern princess diplomat persona and grinned wickedly, “I have gifts for you all, and you’re not about to get out of receiving them.”

“Does that mean you’re next, Allura?” Keith asked.

“Oh, no, I shall go last. One of you go next. Hunk? Pidge?” she deflected.

“I’ll go,” Shiro piped up. “Mine aren’t as pretty as Lance’s and don’t contribute to the delinquency of minors, but I think you’ll appreciate them.”

The kids cracked up as they flipped through the small booklets their leader handed them. They were full of coupons for getting out of unpleasant situations.

“AWESOME! A full month of no pod cleaning! Thanks, Shiro,” Lance crowed. He was not a fan of that chore.

“’Skip five bonding exercises’,” Keith read. “Am I that obvious?”

“YES!” the whole family agreed. The rest of the coupons were similar. Pidge got three weeks, not consecutively, of being allowed to stay up as long as she liked without being nagged. Hunk got a month’s worth of naps in hour increments. Coran got five coupons for two quintants each of free rein in the kitchen. Allura got to choose four training sessions, again not consecutively, without having to hear any griping about it. Nobody used her training programs except Keith when he was in a particularly foul mood. They were the stuff of nightmares.

The Yellow and Green Paladins had to throw rock-paper-scissors to decide. In the end, Hunk gave everyone the recipe to their favorite “space food,” or at least whatever they asked him to make the most, and an open appointment to teach them how to make it themselves. Pidge put together a holographic slide show of individual shots, selfies with her, inside jokes, poses with their Lions (or bridge stations, in the Alteans’ cases), and a group photo of the whole family. That left Keith and Allura.

“Keith?” Allura called after several doboshes of him not moving. She wasn’t really asking a question.

He jumped, looking just a little guilty, or maybe embarrassed. He pulled out a folder and handed out individual sheets. He mumbled, “sorry these aren’t framed or anything. I couldn’t find any, and I wasn’t sure if you’d want to put them out anyway, but I don’t have anything better, so yeah. Merry Christmas.”

Silence fell. “Keith,” Shiro breathed, “these are stunning.”

He’d sketched little slice-of-life scenes of each person. Pidge hunched over a tangle of wires and boards, her tongue sticking out just a little in concentration. Hunk stirred a giant bowl of some creation, laughing at an unheard joke. Shiro gazed out at the stars, lost in quiet contemplation. Allura smiled down at the mice, her eyes bright with glee. Coran stroked his moustache, clearly about to impart some vital bit of wisdom on his young charges. Lance draped all over a couch in the lounge, the picture of relaxed confidence.

“See?” Lance demanded. “This is why I wanted to go first. There’s no way I could have followed this!”

“When did you draw these? I don’t remember seeing you with a sketchbook.” Pidge asked.

“I draw in my room at night. I did these from memory,” he answered.

“You did these from memory?” Lance challenged. Keith nodded. Lance grumped, “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Coran jumped in before Keith could take the bait. “You have your own gifts, Number Three. Don’t neglect them because you’re busy envying another’s.”

The younger man nodded. Coran turned his attention to Allura, saying, “I believe that leaves you, Princess.”

She stood, drawing herself up into Regal Princess Mode. “In Altean tradition, this night is called Turning Point, when we look to the past to take lessons into the future. As you know, you are not the first Paladins of Voltron. In my wanderings about the Castle, I have found small items each belonging to a Paladin before you. In the spirit of Turning Point, may these gifts of the past light your way to the future.”

She smiled at Pidge, “I’ll begin with our youngest and most curious Paladin. I gift you this pouch. I’ve been told it has slightly-bigger-on-the-inside properties, technology once common to the people of the Dalterion Belt but now sadly lost to time. May it hold wonders that drive your discoveries for years to come.”

She glided over to Hunk, “to our gentlest Paladin, I give this piece of petrified wood from planet Rygnirath, carved with runes to steady nerves, enhance stability, and calm digestion. Though you do not lack for courage, may this talisman ease your journey so that you do not have to rely so much on courage alone.”

Next, she turned to Lance. She stared at him long enough for him to fidget before calling his name, “our sense of humor. Holder of our memories and traditions. Our brightly laughing clown with unexpected depths. You remind us why we fight. For you, I have a piece of coral from planet Nalquod. It holds focusing qualities and is said to enhance charm.”

“Not that I need it,” he joked. Too much sincerity made his eyeballs itch.

“It also brings good luck, and that, you do need. I would see you in a healing pod much less often,” she scolded. He had the grace to blush.

“For Keith,” she moved on, “I have glass from the heart of Altea’s largest volcano. Under the right circumstances, it is akin to a semi-precious stone, beautiful, shiny and smooth. In other situations, it is brittle and hard, and breaks to edges sharp enough to cut flesh. Whatever its state, it remains exactly what it is. May its strength, forged in pressure and fire, remind you to stay true to who you are,” she said quietly. Keith nodded gravely.

“And finally, our Black Paladin. Shiro, since nothing remains of the original Black Paladin to pass on to you, I give you the last piece of the comet used to create Voltron. Its properties have never been fully explored, so use it with caution,” she said.

“Thank you, Princess. I’ll try to be worthy of the honor,” he gave a respectful nod.

“You don’t have to try,” Keith insisted. Shiro smiled but said nothing.

~

Once presents were done and everyone settled down to munch on cookies and cake and other holiday treats, Lance got out his guitar. Well, he called it a guitar. It was really some seven stringed alien monstrosity that couldn’t quite make up its mind if it was a guitar, a banjo, or a lute. It managed to be an unholy hybrid of almost, but not quite, all three. But it sounded good, and he was a decent enough musician to be able to work with that extra string. So he’d “adopted” her (he and Pidge still had the “she’s adopted!” “stolen!” “adopted!” “stolen!” Looney Tunes argument over that) out of storage, named her Mary, and played every night. It settled his nerves more than anyone but Hunk probably knew.

He strummed a loud chord to get everyone’s attention. “So we’ve come to the music portion of tonight’s festivities, but since our combined accessible holiday playlist consists of three versions of Carol of the Bells and that weird comedian guy’s Hanukkah song from like two million years ago,” Hunk could be heard muttering about the rock, orchestral, and vocal versions being so different you need all three and Trans-Siberian Orchestra didn’t count anyway since that wasn’t its title, while Pidge shook her clasped hands above her head like a newly belted wrestling champ, “we gotta make do in other ways. Thankfully for you, the McClains have always played together on Noche Buena, so I happen to know a song or two. Dozen. We’re gonna have an old-fashioned holiday sing-along, and I don’t want to hear any complaining. It’s Christmas.”

While Pidge and Hunk passed out the percussion instruments they’d discovered earlier, he started off with a lively Spanish melody. He played a few bars before saying over the music, “ok, so this song has a grand total of four lines, in two verses, and the easiest melody known to man. I’ll run you through it a couple of times so you get the words, but I wanna hear everybody singing by the end. Or else.”

“This is the first verse,” he continued before singing in a light, pleasant tenor. This was far and away one of his absolute favorite Christmas songs. The night wasn’t complete without it. He thought it was the perfect tune to get everyone involved.

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero Año y Felicidad

“You repeat that twice, then move on to the second verse,” he explained.

I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
From the bottom of my heart

“You sing this verse twice, then go back to the first. Repeat the pattern until you’re sick of the song. I think the official version only runs through it twice, but we’ve been known to keep this thing going for half an hour before somebody finally wraps it up,” he finished.

“Please don’t make me listen to half an hour of Feliz Navidad,” Pidge begged, “I love Christmas and it’s fun to finally get to celebrate it, but seriously!”

Lance laughed as he played, “don’t worry, I won’t. I don’t think my fingers could take it anyway. We had like eight people picking up the melody at different times on different instruments when we did it.”

“Whew!”

“Anyway, we’re coming around again, so when I start, everyone get ready to jump in once you’re comfortable,” he turned his focus to the music and sang.

Hunk and Pidge jumped in right away. Hunk had been to more than one McClain Family Christmas Sing-Along, and Pidge had been sneaking Christmas music under her mother’s nose for years, so they both knew the tune. Coran sang after the first run through, but Allura hesitated until the third time around. Once she joined in, she sang enthusiastically in her vibrant crystal voice. Neither Shiro nor Keith participated.

Lance kept playing as the singing died down several repetitions later. “Y’know,” he observed idly, “achy fingers aside, I can keep this going all night if that’s what it takes to get you guys in on this. I mean, I expected the Mullet to go all emo and not sing, but Shiro, you’re usually all over these bonding things. C’mon, Space Dad. Sing with us!”

‘Yeah!” Hunk cried. “Sing with us! It’s more fun when everybody joins in.”

“Nobody cares if you can’t sing, either,” Pidge reassured.

“He can sing,” Keith spoke up. All heads swiveled his way.

“Say what?” Lance demanded.

“He can sing,” he repeated. “He’s really good, too. He could have gone pro if he wanted to. His mom tried to talk him into it often enough.”

Everyone turned to stare at their leader for a moment. Lance finally burst out, “are you kidding me?”

Shiro’s bright red face said it all. He ran his human hand through his hair and muttered something no one quite caught.

“What was that?” Keith asked innocently.

“I hate you,” Shiro grumped.

“No you don’t, and that’s not what you said. C’mon. Out with it.”

“I said, ‘I didn’t want to steal the spotlight.’ Happy now?” the older man admitted.

“Nope, not even a little,” Lance inserted himself into the conversation. “You really think you can steal my spotlight? This, I have to hear!”

“Lance,” Shiro began, trying to be all leaderly and giving warnings and such. It wasn’t as easy as usual. He blamed the nunvil. Stuff really was good.

“Shiro,” Lance mocked. Ok, so that didn’t work.

He sighed, “you’re not going to let this go until I sing, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

“Fine,” he caved. He sent Lance a text. “You know that one?”

The younger man read his message. “I know it,” he said slowly, “but it’s not exactly a Christmas song, is it?”

“They play it all the time at Christmas! You never hear it the rest of the year but come December, you can’t get away from it. It’s a Christmas song,” Shiro protested.

“You’re sure this is the song you want to sing? I can’t interest you in Here Comes Santa Clause or Silent Night?”

“Play the song, Lance.”

He shrugged. It took him a bit to find the melody. He knew this song, yeah, but he didn’t play it a lot. Too depressing. But if that’s what it took to get the man participating, then that’s what it took. He played, and Shiro sang.

I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played
And it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

There was nothing depressing about the Black Paladin’s take on this tune. When he sang Hallelujah, it wasn’t sad. It wasn’t bitter or lonely or hopeless or lost. It was stubborn defiance. It was radical acceptance. It was cynical acknowledgement of the universe exactly as it was, and endless hope that it should and could and would be better if he had any say in the matter. It was the fierce determination to have that say in the matter, whether or not anyone listened. It was valuing others when painful experience told him not to, welcoming their help, trusting again and again without any real reason to beyond trust itself, but being absolutely able to go it alone if necessary. It was willingness to do whatever it took to protect his loved ones and get the job done, no matter how ugly or messy or cruel. It was taking on that darkness so the kids didn’t have to. It was having no choice and choosing anyway.

It was Shiro.

“Holy shit,” Pidge breathed when he finished.

“Language,” he replied with a soft smile.

“That was wonderful, my boy,” Coran praised.

“It was truly stunning, Shiro,” Allura agreed. The others nodded.

“Now that our Fearless Leader has depressed us all with his totally not a Christmas song,” Lance broke in, unable to let this much solemnity stand for long, “Hunk, it’s on you to cheer us all up. You gotta do the thing,”

“Lance!” the big man protested, “I don’t know if I remember it. And I can’t do the thing in front of just anybody. It’s for family.”

“We’re family! C’mon, Hunk, you remember it. You know you do. Do the thing. Pleeeease? It’s Christmas!” Lance fluttered his eyelashes in shameless puppy dog eyes.

“La-aance,” Hunk whined.

“Hu-uunk,” he whined back, “don’t make me quiver my chin at you. You know I can, you know I will, and you know you can’t resist it. Just do the thing. Please?”

“I hate you,” Hunk grumbled.

“No you don’t. C’mon, do the thing. For me? For your best buddy in the whole wide world? For your Lancey-Lance on Space Christmas? Please?”

 “Fine! But I’m not doing the song!”

“Aw, c’mon, man, it’s not complete without the song! You gotta do the song! Please? Pretty please?”

“You’re killing me, Lance. Ok. I’ll do the thing, complete with song, because it’s Christmas and I guess Christmas isn’t really Christmas without it. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic!” Lance bounced on his toes like a little kid. He plopped on the couch next to Keith and threw his arms wide across the back, grinning in clear expectation of something wonderful.

The Yellow Paladin straightened up, clasped his hands in front of him in classic recitation pose, took a deep breath, and began.

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot.
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did NOT!

Hunk never moved from his recitation pose once, but he PERFORMED that timeless tale. He sold every bit of it: the Grinchiness, the wholesome holiday joy of the Whos, the innocent questions from little Cindy Lou Who, the whole thing.

“Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit, he rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it,” here the big guy paused dramatically. Lance took up his guitar. They burst into an enthusiastic rendition of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.

Keith hummed along but otherwise didn't participate. Pidge threw in what lyrics she could remember here and there but mostly just enjoyed the boys. Shiro listened. He’d had enough of the spotlight.

“Why are they singing about a mean one on what you told me is a joyous holiday of fellowship and goodwill?” Allura asked her Black Paladin. Oh boy. How to explain this?

“Wait for the end of the story. It will make sense,” he finally punted. Could have been worse, he supposed. Could have been A Christmas Carol.  Or Krampus. Yikes, there was a thought, explaining the Christmas demon to the Alteans! No, thank you.

The boys wrapped up their song. Hunk dove back into the story. He brought the Grinch’s change of heart to life. He didn’t trip over a pantooka or wuzzle or any of the rest. Everyone was smiling by time he got to the end.

Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer
Cheer to all Whos far and near
Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp
Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we
Welcome Christmas, while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand

Hunk took a little bow as the room exploded into applause. Allura whispered to Shiro, “I understand now.”

“Where’d you learn that?” Keith asked.

“Well, it’s my mom’s favorite, and she can get a little obsessive sometimes, so I probably watched it nine times a year, every year, growing up. Then they did a competition for a Christmas recitation at school one year, and I chose that. I already mostly knew it to begin with, but a month of constant practice pounded it deep into the ol’ brain,” he explained.

“Ok,” Pidge clapped her hands for attention. “Lance started us off, we’ve had Shiro and Hunk go, I’ve got something planned for later and the Alteans are off the hook due to unfamiliarity with our holiday and the fact that their equivalent is strictly instrumental, which we already listened to it all through dinner and presents. That makes it your turn, Keith. Whatcha got?”

He shook his head and grinned ruefully, “I’ll sit this one out.”

“You don’t have to sing, y’know,” she countered.

“Yes, he does!” Lance shouted from next to him on the couch. Keith winced.

“Hush, you,” she shushed, turning back to her target, “you really don’t have to sing, but you do have to get in on this somehow. It’s Christmas. We’re bonding. So whatcha got?”

“Pidge,” he tried squirming out again. She was having none of it.  

“C’mon, you gotta know some Christmas music. You grew up in America, same as me. It’s impossible not to. Cough it up,” Pidge insisted.

“I thought you were Italian?” Hunk asked.

“We moved when I was three. Keith?”

He hesitated. She pouted. He dodged, “we-ell, I do know a few things, but I’d need a keyboard and we don’t have one.”

Her eyes lit up. She squealed in glee and dashed out without a word. The others glanced at each other, no clue what was going through her unique mind.

A tiny bit later, she scampered back in, a long, thin boxlike something clutched under her arm. She dropped it in front of an astonished Keith, pointed to what turned out to be some manner of keyboard and commanded, “Christmas song! Now!”

The Red Paladin could see there was no getting out of it, so he inspected the keyboard, testing it hesitantly. He smiled a little. He could work with this. He started a rolling jazzy rhythm on the left keys for a couple of bars before adding in the familiar bouncy melody on the right.

“Snoopy!” Pidge cried in delighted recognition.

“Actually, it’s called Linus and Lucy, but yeah, it’s Snoopy,” Keith replied distractedly. He focused on the music. The fun part was coming up. He couldn’t help but rock out when he got to that first solo. The rest of the team fell silent and listened. Keith was good. Really good.

“How’d you do that?” Lance demanded as the final note died.

“Only good foster mother I ever had loved three things beyond all reason: Christmas, Snoopy, and playing piano. She taught me.”

Lance’s face dropped. He’d totally forgotten about Keith’s painful childhood. Yeah, they sometimes joked about his ‘tragic backstory’ but seriously, no kid should go through that. And he hadn’t merely disregarded the possibility that the holidays held only bad memories for his teammate. In his excitement and frantic planning, he’d forgotten entirely. The Blue Paladin was appalled at himself, apologizing immediately, “hey man, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think all this might bring up bad stuff for you.”

“Nah, it’s ok. Those were good times. That Christmas was the best of all,” he smiled, misty-eyed at the memory he’d never really shared before, “her big present to me was adoption papers.”

They all gasped, knowing full well that had never gone through. After an uncomfortable silence, Shiro finally asked, “what happened?”

“She died,” he replied quietly, “One New Year’s Eve drunk driver later, and back into the system I go. But that Christmas? Closest I got to being truly happy after my pop died and before you found me. She adored the holidays. She’d’ve loved this.”

“Well, we’ll just have to keep having the best Voltron Christmas ever to honor her then, won’t we?” Hunk declared. Everyone nodded. Keith did not tear up. No, really, he absolutely did not tear up even a little. He didn’t do emotional expression, so he couldn’t tear up. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.

“And on that note, enough blue Christmas. My turn to pick the music. Lance?” Pidge changed the subject.

“We’re doing this now? After that? Seriously?” he boggled.

“Can you think of better way to break the melancholy?” she pointed out.

“Fine,” he grumbled before launching into a rocking rendition of the old Kinks tune Father Christmas. Of course the gremlin picked that song. She was that kind of gremlin. To be fair, she did sing the hell out of it, which really wasn’t much of a surprise given how good Pidge was at pretty much everything she tried. The shock came when Keith picked up the tune and played along. Lance commented once it ended, “I didn’t know you know that song.”

“Every kid in foster care knows that song. It’s the unofficial anthem of the system,” he explained.

“Dammit, Keith, this is supposed to break the melancholy, not make it worse! Stop bringing down Christmas,” Lance complained.

“Hey, tragic backstories don’t stop for the holidays. Sorry,” he joked. Lance rolled his eyes.

“You wanna get back at him?” Shiro piped up. That human friendly nunvil he’d been sipping steadily (“adult privileges,” he’d told Pidge when she complained) really agreed with him. It loosened him up a bit, at any rate. Brought out a mischievous side he usually wasn’t comfortable showing those under his command. But tonight was special, so fuck it. As long as he didn’t get too out of control, a little letting loose wouldn’t kill him.

“Hell yeah!”

“Language,” the older man scolded, totally disregarding what he’d been thinking five seconds earlier. He hadn’t said it out loud, so it didn’t count. So there. He got up, walked over there, and whispered in Lance’s ear, texting forgotten.

The Blue Paladin burst out laughing, “yeah, I know it. It’s my niece’s favorite. Remind me not to get on your bad side, man. You have a mean streak.”

“Is that going to stop you?” Shiro asked innocently. Keith began to suspect shenanigans. He knew to fear that tone from that man.

“Of course not,” Lance replied, starting a new song on his guitar. He didn’t sing this time, though. Shiro did, loud and bold like he was auditioning for the Met.

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do

Hunk and Pidge broke into hysterics. Allura and Coran glanced at each other, utterly baffled. Keith literally facepalmed. He buried his head in his hands and muttered, “I hate you both.”

“No you don’t,” Pidge answered for them, since the men were busy with the music.

“No I don’t,” he admitted, “but I do deeply regret letting these clowns know my favorite animal.”

“You could always start making cat jokes at Shiro’s expense,” Pidge offered. Shark jokes were harder to pull off, so she left that one alone.

“Oh, I do. I might have to start doing it around everyone else now, too,” he replied.

“No offence, Keith,” Hunk cut in, “but you’re a lot more catlike than Shiro. If anything, you’re the cat and he’s the hippopotamus.”

“I heard that!” Shiro shouted before sliding smoothly back into the song.

“Serves you right! You’re not supposed to pick on me at Christmas,” the Red Paladin grumbled.

Shiro was their leader. Their senior officer. He was older than everyone but Coran (ten thousand years asleep didn’t count in his book) so it was up to him to set an example. Thus, there is no way he ever possibly flipped off his kid brother while not slurring his way through an annoying novelty song he only picked because he knew it would get on Keith’s nerves. That could never happen.

Lance also did not flip Keith off solely because his hero did it and the nunvil made him a bit open to suggestion. So there was no reason for Keith to get so snippy when the song ended.

“You done murdering that tune yet?”

“I was singing!”

“Shiro was singing. You were screwing around. Can you even sing? Really sing?” Keith accused.

“Can I really sing?” Lance gasped, honestly offended. Had this guy not been listening? He hadn’t been giving it his all, no, but he hadn’t been screwing around, either. He growled, “bitch, I was in choir from day I was born right up until we left Earth. I could sing before I could talk. Of course I can really sing.”

“Prove it.”

“Oh you want to hear me sing, do you? Really sing?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Fine!” Lance shot him a text, “Can you play that?”

Keith glanced at his phone and frowned, “I can play it. You sure you can sing it?”

“Shut up and play, Mullet!”

Keith rolled his eyes but obeyed. The Blue Paladin closed his eyes through the intro, focusing like he was about to make the most difficult shot of his life. He took a deep breath, properly from his diaphragm, and began.

O Holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.

The room fell silent but for the music. Jaws dropped in awe. They knew he had a good voice, they’d just been listening to it, but they never expected their lovable sharpshooting goofball to produce sounds like this. His song soared above them all, filling every inch of the room with wonder and joy, his expression serenely focused inward on something only he could see. Lance clearly wasn’t singing to them. In fact, he wasn’t singing at all so much using his voice to worship at the altar of a newborn miracle and spread his joy at this good news to all who could hear. It was glorious.

“Told you I can sing,” he gloated after letting the final note slowly fade away. He took in his stunned teammates. Keith looked like he’d just bit into a lemon and was annoyed to find it delicious. Shiro had the expression of someone suddenly aware he had to rethink a few of his assumptions, while Pidge’s mouth hung down in open astonishment. Hunk, who’d heard him sing in church before, beamed like he was the only one in on the funniest joke ever. Which, to be fair, he kinda was.

The strangest reactions came from the Alteans. Coran, like Hunk, beamed away, but he had more of a ‘proudest uncle’ vibe than an ‘in on the joke’ one. Allura, on the other hand, made no effort to hide the tears sliding freely down her cheeks. She clasped her hands excitedly in front of her and wore an oddly delighted grin. Alteans, man. Or maybe it was a princess thing. Or just a girl thing. Lance had no idea, they were all equally incomprehensible to him. He was just glad he had such a strong effect on the reserved young royal. He flashed her a shy smile that turned into a true beam when she smiled back.

“I had no idea you could do that!” Pidge broke the silence.

“Raised Catholic,” the Cuban boy shrugged by way of explanation, “I did mention being in choir my entire life. I really could sing before I could talk. Ask my mom when we get back to Earth; she’ll tell you. She loves that story.”

“I’m gonna have a lot to say to your mom when we get back,” Pidge teased.

“She’ll probably have a lot to say to you,” he shot back.

“Ok, that’s enough. Pidge, stop teasing Lance. Lance, stop using your mom as a weapon to torment Pidge. It’s Christmas. Play nice,” Space Dad ordered.

“We are!” they protested simultaneously.

“Sure you are,” Keith butted in. He began a bright melody on his keyboard (Pidge had given it to him right after Linus and Lucy, claiming she’d just grabbed it to screw around, but since he could really play it, he should have it, and Keith didn’t tear up at that, either) before focusing on Lance and challenging, “you know this one?”

“Of course I know that one. Everyone knows that one,” he retorted, joining in on It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. He smirked, “you gonna sing it this time?”

“I thought I’d leave that to you. You’re the one with the golden voice.”

“And don’t you forget it!”

Clearly, Keith and Lance couldn’t let their flirting rivalry go for a second, not even for Christmas. But since it looked to be manifesting as a battle of the one-man Christmas bands, Shiro was inclined to let it slide. He’d step in if things got too heated but for now, let them have their fun.

They wrapped the song up with a flourish. Lance launched immediately into Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Keith rolled his eyes so hard at the obvious intro that Pidge wondered if he could see his own brain for a second there. She sang harmony with Lance anyway. This was one of her favorites. So cynical, she loved it.

Keith upped the game with a haunting rendition of Silver and Gold. Lance’s voice stole that song like it had been written specifically for him. The Red Paladin didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed. Probably a little of both.

“Can you keep up with this?” Lance challenged on his turn. His fingers flew up and down the neck of the guitar as he tore a positively metal riff out of that acoustic alien abomination.

OUT OF ALL THE REINDEER
YOU KNOW YOU’RE THE MASTER MIND
RUN, RUN, RUDOLPH
RANDOLPH AIN’T TOO FAR BEHIND

Lance channeling his inner rock god finally broke Keith. Pounding away on the keyboard, he grabbed that song and ran with it in a voice that belied his earlier reluctance. Now the Blue Paladin didn’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed or both.

From there, they went through song after song, working their way from the traditional offerings of magic frosty snowmen and silent nights to more recent requests to please come home and step into Christmas. By the time they got to the novelty songs, Shiro had given up trying to get them to calm down. Besides, listening to them compete their way through Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer was hilarious. Wrong on many different levels, but hilarious.

It wound down once they started finding songs the other didn’t know. Lance got Keith with Christmas in Killarney and Mele Kalikimaka. Keith returned the favor with The Night Santa Went Crazy and Christmas at Ground Zero, which had Shiro fretting over where did that kid get these tunes? Clearly, he needed to have words with his little brother about the inappropriateness of gallows humor on a family holiday. Eventually, though, older man ended the game by stumping them both with his acapella version of a deeply obscure ballad from the 1980s about lost love and old regrets called Same Old Lang Syne that nobody remembered but him. On second thought, given his penchant for depressing Christmas music, maybe the gallows humor lecture could wait.

“Ok, kids, time to start wrapping it up,” Space Dad began once he caught his breath.

“No, no, not yet! I have one more. It’s really good. It’s an old one, but it’s perfect, and I know you know it,” Lance said. He began to sing, strumming along.

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

He sang by himself for bit before Hunk added his baritone to Lance’s tenor. Keith played counterpoint on the keyboard. Pidge punctuated the rhythm with her jingle bells.

Shiro hesitantly joined in. He’d sung more this evening than he had in years. He was still a little worried about overshadowing the founder of the feast, so to speak, but this night was made for music, so he flung caution to the wind one last time and sang.

A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear

A vain hope, maybe, but a worthy one. They might be in a ten thousand year old war against purple Space Nazis, but it was Christmas, and the angel said to fear not. Lance swept into the second verse, singing boldly with his teammates. No, his family.

And so this is Christmas
(War is over)

Pidge’s voice soared above the men, high and clear. Her singing voice had a sweetness her speaking voice lacked. It hinted at softness and vulnerability hidden under layer after layer of sarcasm and quick thinking. It also had the patented Pidge edge of steel that subtly growled bring this up out loud and I will end you, but that threat was for another day.

Keith joined her in a strong falsetto utterly unlike his earlier singing. Nobody would have believed that sound came from that man had they not heard it with their own two ears.

For weak and for strong
(If you want it)

Shiro and Pidge glanced at each other. Lance nearly fumbled his chords at the bizarrely intimate, but utterly nonsexual, look exchanged between the oldest and youngest Paladins. He caught himself just before he ruined the song.

The road is so long
And so Happy Christmas

They sang on. Lance saw Coran wrap his arms around the Princess, smiling softly. He wasn’t certain but he thought he heard the adviser humming along with the tune.

All of Voltron, all five Paladins, blended into one melody, one holiday, one family, and one song.

War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now

The music faded away. Allura abruptly pointed out the window and cried, “look!”

There, a star brightly shone. 

It wasn’t just any star. It was a huge, radiant beauty, swirling with color and much brighter than any other currently visible in the endless night. It might’ve been brighter than any they’d seen on their crazy travels so far. It was certainly bigger and more beautiful.

“The Kristaros Conjunction,” Coran explained. “I hadn’t realized we were due for one. They happen about every couple of thousand decaphoebes or so. You can easily see it from at least eight galaxies, including yours. And mine. Many cultures, including Altea, considered the Conjunction a herald of great changes.”

“Like the birth of a Savior?” Lance muttered. He was uncomfortable talking about his faith here, even earlier today, but the moment seemed to call for it. Tomorrow, he’d go back to being Loverboy Lance, shameless flirt and irreverent goofball. Tonight, he was the good Catholic boy his Mamá raised.

“Like the coming together of Voltron,” Allura replied.

“Like the coming together of our family,” Keith murmured, serious and subdued. Family, real family, was a rare and precious thing to him, and deserved a star to honor it.

“A toast!” Shiro cried, passing out the half-empty bottles of nunvil. He waited while they gathered round. “To family!”

“To Voltron!” Pidge added.

“To us!” Hunk chimed in.

“To Christmas!” Lance shouted happily, dancing around to hug everyone, even Keith, who not only didn’t object, but hugged back. Christmas miracles abound.

They lingered a bit longer, chatting and sharing stories of holidays past. At one point, Keith and Pidge got into a deep debate of the morality and intended lessons of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. She argued it was conform or get bullied and outcast and only accepted back once you’ve proven yourself useful while Keith came down on the side of stay true to yourself and your unique gifts will show you’re valuable in your own right, which was the exact opposite of how Lance would have expected such an argument to play out. Just goes to show, you learn new things every day.

“You two do realize you’re arguing the morality of a cartoon, right?” Shiro eventually pointed out as the discussion grew heated.

“It’s stop motion, and the stories we tell each other matter. They set and communicate cultural standards in a way anyone can understand. It’s important to know what they’re really trying to say before bad messages become accepted dogma!” Pidge objected.

“The stories we tell kids matter most of all,” Keith backed her up. “I can think of more than one story I heard as a kid that got me through some dark times, and maybe a couple that weren’t so healthy that had an impact, too.”

“Much as I hate to agree with the Mullet, he’s right,” the Blue Paladin broke in, “I had a really bad summer a couple of years ago. Mostly what that kept me going was that my favorite show ended on a cliffhanger the spring before and I just had to see how it turned out. Gave me a reason to hang on long enough for someone to notice how bad I was and get me help. Don’t underestimate stupid motivations. They can be really strong.”

“Any motivation that kept you with us isn’t stupid,” Hunk whispered. He knew his friend struggled with his self-image sometimes, but he had no idea it had ever gotten so bad. He made a mental note to keep a closer eye on him to make sure that never happened again. He had no idea what he’d do out here without Lance. The thought didn’t bear thinking.

“Didn’t I say ‘enough blue Christmas’ like, a varga ago? We canNOT end this evening on such a depressing note!” Pidge complained, “Santa won’t come!”

“Santa?” Allura wondered.

Later, Shiro mouthed as Lance protested, “I thought you were the one pointed out the reindeer can’t breathe in space!”

“And that we’ll have to take a raincheck from Santa this year, yeah, and I stand by that. Doesn’t mean we don’t still have to actually get the raincheck somehow. Santa’s magic, and messages are easy, even this far out in space, but we won’t get anything if we’re on the Naughty List for being depressing at Christmas!” she argued passionately.

“Naughty List?” the princess was thoroughly confused.

Later, Shiro mouthed again as Hunk spoke up, “I know how to end the evening, make Santa happy, AND thank the guy who put in all the work to make this happen, all in one fell swoop. Lance, do the thing!”

“What?” he replied, not following. Nunvil still got to him.

“The thing. The Christmas thing you do every year,” Hunk explained.

“Feliz Navidad? We did that already.”

“Not that! The Thing. You know! You made me do my thing, now you gotta do your thing. It’s only fair.”

“Hunk, I love you, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The Yellow Paladin sighed. Sometimes, his friend could be so dense! He repeated, “The. Thing. The Christmas thing. The one you do for Silvio every year.”

Light dawned, “oh, you mean THAT thing!”

Hunk bobbed his head happily. The others glanced at each other. They’d given up trying to follow the shorthand between these two ages ago, but it always meant something interesting was coming. Good interesting or bad interesting varied, but whatever they’d come up with was always interesting.

“Ok,” Lance continued, “that is a good way to end the night. You’re on!”

Lance’s recitation pose wasn’t as refined as Hunk’s, but solid nonetheless. He’d clearly done this before. He took a deep breath and began,

Twas the night before Christmas
When all through the house

Pidge interrupted with a loud, “YES!” which earned her a glare from Lance as he went on,

Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse

Chuchule looked blearily up from the cuddle puddle of mice at the end of the buffet table, saw no treats were forthcoming, and went right back to sleep with a huff. Another glare from Lance silenced the princess’s incipient giggle. Interruptions finished, the Cuban boy treated them to an enthusiastic recitation of A Visit from St. Nicholas.

Soft smiles and small yawns flowed through his audience as Lance described that magical visit from Jolly Old St. Nick. He abandoned the recitation pose early on to gesture grandly along with the poem, bringing it to life with his movements as well as his words. He threw open the sash. He mounted to the sky. He pranced and pawed and bounded. He shook when he laughed, bearing a strong resemblance to Hunk. He filled stockings. He turned with a jerk. He laid a finger on the side of his nose and gave a nod. He sprang to an imaginary sleigh, smiling fit to break his face. Finally, he called out,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight----
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

“So this is Christmas,” Coran mused when the poem ended, “I like it.”

“Me too, Coran,” Lance beamed, pleased with the outcome of all his hard work, “me too.”

The End

Merry Christmas

Chapter Text

Since a lot of songs and shows are referenced in So This Is Christmas, including but not limited to the title itself, and because I wanted an excuse to post another chapter even though the story’s done, I decided to put together the playlist for this fic. If it got name-checked, it’s in here.

In order of appearance, the So This Is Christmas playlist. Enjoy!

The 12 Days of Christmas Straight, No Chaser version, because it’s funny and I only need the first line to be accurate

A Charlie Brown Christmas 1965 cartoon, just the “What Christmas Is All About” bit

Carol of the Bells rock version by Gary Hoey

Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Carol of the Bells vocal version conducted by John Williams

Hanukka Song by Adam Sandler

Feliz Navidad by José Feliciano

Here Comes Santa Claus by Gene Autry

Silent Night sung by the Carpenters

Hallelujah sung by Pentatonix

Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Playlist; 1966 movie directed by Chuck Jones and narrated by Boris Karloff

You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch sung by Thurl Ravenscroft

Linus and Lucy by the Vince Guaraldi Trio - piano tutorial version, which would be the one Keith plays

Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley, very obliquely mentioned by Pidge but goddammit, I AM going to take the excuse to put Elvis on here!

Father Christmas by the Kinks

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas by Gayla Peevey

O Holy Night Josh Groban version, because were you really expecting anything else?

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Perry Como

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry, just the song

Silver and Gold by Burl Ives

Run Run Rudolph by Chuck Berry

Frosty the Snowman sung by Jimmy Durante

Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles

Step Into Christmas by Elton John

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer by Elmo & Patsy

Christmas in Killarney by Bing Crosby

Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby

The Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al Yankovic

Christmas at Ground Zero by Weird Al Yankovic

Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 1964 Rankin/Bass stop motion movie

A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C Moore, read by goddamn ROBIN FUCKING WILLIAMS and the pictures are from the EXACT SAME BOOK my Pop-Pop used to read to my brother and me as kids, way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Finding a good version of this poem was a huge pain in my ass but boy, was it worth it!

And that's the list of the songs and movies referenced in the story proper. I hope some of you found something you like in it. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!