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Chapter Text

Chapter 1

            “King Louis XIV of France had four official mistresses and, if a mistress wasn’t available, would just grab the nearest willing girl.”

            “I get it.”

            “He had a thing for his brother’s wife once. The only reason he didn’t sleep with her was because his mom said he couldn’t.”

            “I said: I get it.”

            “He pretended to be interested in her lady-in-waiting instead, but his mom caught on and told him off again.”

            “Oh my god.”

            “So he decided to cut his losses and just sleep with the lady-in-waiting instead.”

            “And this just keeps going.”

            “Basically, yeah.” Keith closes the book and stares at his brother, “Shiro, do you know why I’m telling you this?”

            “Because you want me to suffer?” Shiro says; words muffled from where he has buried his face in his hands.

            “No, because it’s very important that you realize the gravity of the situation you are in.”

            Shiro gives an inarticulate groan.

            “Most royal men, especially kings, have a long and sordid sexual history and die either mad or syphilitic,” he pauses, pretends to consider, “Or mad and syphilitic.”

            “There is way too much syphilis in this conversation right now.”

           “We cannot allow this to happen to you.”            

            “I actually hate you right now.”

            “So,” Keith announces, “I have taken it upon myself to educate you on the past three hundred years of royal European scandal as a cautionary tale as you begin your search for a wife. Oh, and steer clear of first cousins. Inbreeding’s a bitch.”

            Shiro peers out from between his fingers at his younger (half) brother. “Why are you like this?”

            Keith gives him a cheeky grin, “Because I’m not the product of a thousand years of kissing cousins.”

            Shiro glares at him, “You probably – ”

            “ – Shouldn’t say that in front of the court, or your dad – ”

            “Our dad.”

            “Royal adoption does not make him my father, it just makes state dinners really fucking weird.”

            Shiro sighs and gives him that ‘I love you and I want you to be happy, why are you so difficult’ look. “He cares about you.”

            Keith shrugs easily, “As much as a king can care about his ex-wife’s kid, yeah, I guess,” he rolls his eyes, “Relax, Shiro. I’m not going to embarrass you at dinner.”

            “You never embarrass me,” Shiro says loyally, clapping him on the shoulder, “You just…”

            “Make several hundred years’ worth of tradition very, very uncomfortable, I know.”

            They reach the stables and Keith watches as Shiro leads his gorgeous black stallion out into the sun. The horse’s name is Shadow, not – as most people assume – for his dark coat, but because Shiro had allowed a then-fifteen-year-old Keith to name the animal for him and teenage Keith had been on this second re-reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at the time. He’d liked the main character’s name enough to bestow it on his brother’s horse. Shiro’s stepmother hadn’t much liked the fact that Shiro had allowed Keith to participate in the naming process – the horse had been Shiro’s twenty-first birthday gift, a very royal gift. The fact that Keith, bastard American that he was, had been allowed anywhere near it was a bit of an insult.

            But Shiro, big-hearted, kind Shiro, had graciously ignored her protests and wholeheartedly embraced both the horse and its name.

            Keith takes secret pleasure in the fact that four years later Shadow a.) hates Shiros’s stepmother and b.) loves both him and Shiro equally.

            Shadow exhibits this fact by trotting up to Keith and butting his head against his chest, demanding attention like a miffed cat. Used to the horse’s impertinence, Keith moves with the shove and doesn’t allow Shadow to knock him over, instead bringing his hands up to scratch behind the horse’s ears. “Hey there, miss me?”

            “You know he did,” Shiro says wryly, beginning to run a comb over his mount’s flanks, “I think he likes you better than me.”

            “That’s because I bribe him,” Keith says, mostly to Shadow, voice sliding up and down the scale like it would if he were talking to a puppy or maybe a baby if infants didn’t low-key freak him out. (“You need to get over it,” Shiro would say, “I’m going to have to have royal heirs someday. And you’ll be a royal uncle.” And Keith would scrunch his face up and go “No, nope, not talking about it” like an actual child).

            “You brought him treats, didn’t you?” Shiro says flatly.

            Keith gives him a Chesire-cat grin.

            Shiro groans, “You spoil my horse.”

            “Yeah I do, it’s why he loves me,” Keith pulls a bag of apple slices out of his pocket, “You want an apple?” he asks Shadow, “Want an apple?”

            Shiro rolls his eyes as his brother feeds apple slices to his horse. “Spoiled. You have spoiled my horse.”

            “Yep,” Keith eats the last apple slice himself and scratches between Shadow’s ears again, “It’s what I do.”

            They don’t talk about the fact that Keith’s horse – who had never really been his horse, who had just been part of the royal stables but who Keith had basically raised from a tiny foal, who had loved Keith unconditionally, who would only come when Keith called and would only let him ride her – had been sold Keith’s first semester away at university. And how when he’d demanded to know what happened to Rosie, Shiro’s stepmother had simply blinked and said, “Well, Bella Rosa” (because of course the horse’s real name was something stupid and pretentious and royal) “was a purebred. A breeder in England offered top dollar for her. I suppose she’s over there now.”

            They didn’t talk about how heartbroken Keith was to lose her. And how his birthday gifts were always somewhat perfunctory and never something as grand as a horse.

            Shiro hadn’t known what they were planning for Rosie until it was already too late. He’d tried to track her down and buy her back but couldn’t find her. So he’d just promised to let Keith have as much time with Shadow as possible while he was still in Voltra for the summer.

            Shadow is nosing at Keith’s face, ruffling his hair while the younger prince laughs. Shiro keeps running the comb over Shadow’s sides in long sure strokes and reflects on his brother. University seems to have done him some good. He looks less pale and wan than he had – he’s put on some muscle and lost some of the dark circles under his eyes. His hair needs cutting and his nails are chewed but his smile is bigger and brighter. Being at home, surrounded by the court and the press day in and day out had been smothering him, Shiro reflects. Keith just isn’t suited for a life in the limelight.

            “I think I get why so many of those British kings went crazy,” Keith had said once after escaping a state dinner and subsequent cocktail party.

            “Why?” Shiro had asked. He’d found his brother on the roof, watching the stars.

            “It’s smothering, isn’t it? The constant attention? You just want to run away and you can’t do it so you go nuts. It’s a defense mechanism.”

            Shiro hadn’t had anything to say in response so he’d just thrown an arm around his little brother’s shoulders and hugged him tight.

            “So?” Keith says, Shadow’s head comfortably resting over/on his shoulder, “What’s the plan for tonight?”

            Shiro chuckles, “I didn’t think there was one.”

            Keith rolls his eyes, “You always have a plan.”

            That is true to a point – when they were children, when Keith was seven years old, newly adopted into the royal court and the subject of constant gossip and scrutiny, twelve year old Shiro had always come up with a ‘battle plan’ before every state function, laying out everything for Keith beforehand so there would be no surprises. Later, as they grew older and Keith was less frightened by the attention and more low-key resentful of it, the ‘battle plans’ turned into elaborate inside jokes and coded phrases so they’d be able to rescue each other if ever cornered by an undesirable relative/aristocrat/politician/member of the press. For a few rebellious years the ‘battle plans’ had involved practical jokes which Keith somehow took all the blame for, despite Shiro engineering each one to point the finger at himself. Keith hadn’t minded taking credit for the chaos every time, but Shiro couldn’t stomach the guilt after too long and put an end to it.  

            Shiro sighs, “Not tonight, kiddo. I’m following the script this time.”

            Keith sticks his tongue out, “Boring.”

            Shiro shrugs, “This is about my future. I want to make a good impression.”

            “It’s a meat-market is what it is,” Keith huffs, “And you’re the meat.”

            “It is not a meat market.”

            “They’re trying to marry you off, aren’t they?” Keith scratches Shadow’s nose.

            Shiro hums, “Sort of. This is a state dinner, it’s traditional for the representatives of our closest allies to visit and, you know, do the statesman thing over plates of very expensive food.”

            “Did you know that they used to serve roasted peacocks at court dinners in Tudor England with the tail-feathers reattached?”

            Shiro give his brother a look, “You’re doing that thing again.”  

            “What thing?” Keith asks with an innocent smile.

            “That thing where you make me not want to eat royal food.”

            Keith beams, “Did you know the Italians had a recipe in the sixteenth century for live-songbird pie?”

            “What?”

            “A pie with birds baked in it so when it was cut open they would sing.”

            Shiro stares at him, “You’re making that up.”

            Keith shakes his head, “Am not. The recipe no longer exists but it did once.”

            Shiro makes a face, “Thank god. I don’t want my food to be alive or making noise at me. I want it to just sit on the plate and allow itself to be eaten without comment.”

            Keith shrugs, “You never know. Maybe they’ll try to revive some old traditions ~”

            “No, it’s all going to be plain old caviar and custard,” Shiro says determinedly, “And if you me any weird facts about custard I am dunking you in the water trough, Keith Kogane.”

            Keith laughs, “Fine, I won’t tell you.”

            Shiro groans. He’s going to be wondering what Keith’s custard facts are for the rest of the night.

…

            “You know what I like about being a royal cousin?” Lance says, apropos of nothing as he wanders into Allura’s room to watch her pack. Technically she has servants for this, but there’s nothing quite like doing it herself. She likes to know precisely where everything is when she opens her suitcase.

            “What, Lance?” she asks, amused, as her cousin flops onto her bed and folds his arms behind his head.

            “I get to follow you around all over Europe and eat fancy food and sleep in comfy beds and glare at all the losers who want to marry you. It’s like my dream job.”

            “Ruining my marriage prospects?” she asks archly.

            “Nah, making sure these inbred wusses know you’re amazing and special and not to mess with Altea.”

            Allura huffs a laugh, “I think Altea’s military and I can manage that all on our own, Lance.”

            “Well, yeah,” he says, “But I like to think I help with, like, your image. You have a groupie; I’m your groupie. It enhances your prestige.”

            “To have a groupie?” she asks skeptically.

            “Yeah, totally.”

            She laughs. Whatever else he does, her cousin can certainly make her laugh, “Whatever you say, love.”

            Lance beams at her and lets her return to packing, pulling out his phone and tapping away. She wonders what he’s doing. Knowing Lance it’s a fifty/fifty toss-up between reorganizing her email inbox by degree of importance and playing Candy Crush. Lance, though her cousin on her mother’s side, has been her personal assistant/secretary/PR manager since he was twelve years old and started fielding her phone calls and reorganizing her planner. (He also engineered her social media presence. He manages her Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts, double-checking all her posts before she makes them, and has the password to all her email accounts. Frankly, if he wanted to stage a coup he is remarkably well-connected.)

            Luckily for Princess Allura, Lance, is in his own words “too lazy to be king” (a blatant falsehood. Despite her many attempts to find out how many hours a week he works, Allura is still uncertain how much time he actually devotes to making her look good in the public eye). Lance’s family, while of royal blood, are far enough out of the line of succession that it would take nothing short of a World War to kill enough royalty to put Lance on the throne, and he, against all odds, seems perfectly happy with that. Altea is a smallish Mediterranean island country colonized by so many different empires over its thousand-year history that pretty much a cultural melting pot. The current royal family is descended from a Templar Knight who, growing sick of the Crusades, and seeing the growing hostility towards his order by the powers that be in continental Europe, simply decided to take his share of middle eastern treasure, including his beautiful foreign wife, and never return to the brotherhood in Prussia. Altea, which, after being fought over for decades, had eventually been entirely forgotten by both powers, welcomed the knight, his men, and his money, out of a lack of better options. From this somewhat inglorious progenitor grew remarkably stable, functional royal household. Modern Altea, though somewhat the worse for wear after World Wars I and II, is a wealthy and well-regarded nation famous for its cuisine, culture, variety of religious institutions, and its lack of international incidents. It is also one of the ‘Top Ten European Countries Americans Have Never Heard of’ according to a Buzzfeed list. There was a follow-up list of ‘Fifteen Royals You Haven’t Been Paying Attention to and Why You Should Follow Them Now’ that featured Allura and her years of charity work abroad.

            Allura suspects Lance had something to do with that list but can’t prove anything. Nonetheless she has a framed copy of the article on her office wall.

            Lance yawns and Allura shoots him a look. He waves her off, “I’m fine; I was just up late last night.”

            She sighs, “Lance, you don’t need to work yourself to death for me. I’m perfectly capable of managing myself.”

            “Eh, I’ll sleep on the plane,” Lance yawns again, “I had to make profiles of all the eligible bachelors you’ll be meeting at dinner tomorrow.”

            Allura chuckles, “I’ve probably met some of them before.”

            “Yeah, but you never know. It’s always good to have a guide.”

            Allura sighs and comes around the bed to ruffle his hair, “Oh Lance, my own personal Tinder.”

            “Excuse you, I am way better than that crappy app,” he huffs.

            “Of course you are.”

            “Don’t humor me.” He’s blinking drowsily now and Allura switches from ruffling his hair to stroking it, soothing, like her mom used to when she was a little girl refusing to take her nap. He yawns and his eyes slip closed. She takes advantage of the moment to pull his phone out of his slackening fingers.

            “Get some rest, love,” Allura kisses him on the forehead like she used to when he was a little kid following her around the palace.

            He frowns, forehead temporarily scrunching up. He looks so much younger than twenty. “’M just resting my eyes…”

            “Sure you are,” she agrees, setting his phone on the bedside table as her cousin dozes off curled up on her bedspread.

            She shakes her head fondly and goes back to packing for their trip to Voltra. She’ll look at Lance’s list later.

…

            “Explain ties to me, Shiro,” Keith says as they get ready for dinner.

            Shiro raises an eyebrow at him. “What?”

            Keith shrugs as he struggles to knot his bow tie. “Why do they exist? What do they symbolize? Why do people find them sexy? What is inherently better about a tie over a scarf? They’re both strips of fabric you put around your neck. Why do people give me weird looks when I point out that ties and hangman’s nooses are remarkably similar in construction and application?”

            Shiro gives him a flat look, “You know the answer to that last one.”

            Keith makes a face, “Yeah, I know.”

            “You’re just cranky.”

            “I know.”

            “And you are going to mess up that tie, hold still.” Shiro motions Keith over and fixes his bowtie for him while he fidgets like a child.

            Keith sighs gustily, rocking back and forth on his toes.

            “Have you been drinking?” Shiro asks.

            Keith frowns at him irritably, “No.”

            “Just asking.”

            They both don’t mention that time when Keith showed up to a state dinner drunk when he was sixteen. He’d gotten into a fistfight with the Prime Minsiter’s son, broken an ice sculpture and fallen into a fountain. Or been pushed. Shiro is pretty sure he was pushed. Keith appears astonishingly clear-headed when he’s wasted. He’s maybe a bit chattier than usual, but his vocabulary actually gets more complex under the influence and he tends to fixate on weird historical facts and get really emotional about colonialism, which, to be fair, he does sober. Staggering around toppling into water features isn’t a common occurrence.

            Frankly, knowing what Shiro knows about the Prime Minster’s son, they probably would have gotten into a fistfight regardless of Keith’s blood alcohol content. The boy had behaved atrociously to Keith and they all knew it. But the incident had still been an embarrassment to the royal family. One none of them had forgotten, even almost three years later.

            “Are you okay?” Shiro asks, resting his hands on his brother’s shoulders and resisting the urge to fuss with his hair like a mom about to send her baby off to his first day of kindergarten.

            Keith huffs, “I’m fine. I’ve done this a million times.”

            “It’s just, it’s your first day back – ”

            “ – and suddenly we’re doing a state dinner no one but you warned me about?” Keith’s mouth twists wryly, “Dude, you know your stepmom hates my guts, right?”

            “She doesn’t hate you,” Shiro says, despite knowing that’s at least half false, “Just…”

            “Mom,” Keith acknowledges.

            “Mom,” Shiro admits. “Well,” he claps Keith on the shoulders and releases him, “Ready for the meat market?”

            “Hey, it’s not so bad for me. I’m not the meat.”

            “Rude.”

            “I’m like the random bystander. I’m the kid who wanted kettle corn and got dragged to the stinky fish stall instead. I am a poor innocent child caught up – ”

            “Okay, time to go before you get weird.”

            “Oh, I’m already weird.”

            Shiro chuckles, “Just, limit the dinner conversation to maybe, oh, no mentions of historical diseases.”

            “See, that’s what you say, but all I hear is ‘talk about gout and the black plague the entire meal, Keith’.”

            “Just shut up and walk.”

…

            Allura is putting on her earrings and half-listening to Lance as he quizzes her on the various dinner guests.

            “Are you even listening?” he finally snaps, exasperated.

            “Not, not really,” she chuckles, “Leave some of these people’s biographies a mystery, Lance. I want to have something to talk about with them.”

            “Okay, but the royal family, you at least know them, right?”

            She smiles indulgently and spins around on her dressing-table stool to face Lance, who looks completely absurd sitting on a hot pink pouf in the middle of her gilded dressing room, probably hopelessly wrinkling his suit.

            “King Shirogane, Queen Estelle.”

            “That’s a start,” Lance grumbles and Allura laughs.

            “Let me finish,” she flicks her powder puff at him, “Heir Apparent – Prince Takashi Shirogane, Shiro to his friends and ‘Prince Shiro’ to the tabloids.”

            “And what’s so important about him?”

            “Other than him being heir to a whole country?”

            Lance rolls his eyes, “It’s a small country. Focus on the issues here.”

            Allura sighs, and recites, “Prince Shiro’s mother was an art student the current king met while studying abroad. As his elder brother had already married a suitably royal lady, the then-Queen allowed His Majesty to wed the unsuitable American woman,” Allura grimaces, “So elitist. Anyway, they were very happy in America until the king’s elder brother and sister-in-law died unexpectedly in an auto accident. The King became Heir Apparent, then king and the constant pressure, scrutiny and unpleasantness of being the royal embarrassment was too much for his wife. Their marriage dissolved and she returned to America. It’s really rather sad.”

            “Yeah,” Lance grimaces in sympathy, “They were really horrible to her about the whole thing.”

            Allura sighs, “What’s left? Oh, yes, Queen Estelle has two children, Prince Andrew and Princess Anika. They’re eleven and ten, yes?”

            Lance nods.

            “And other than that there’s…oh damn, I know there’s one more.”

            “Prince Keith,” Lance prompts.

            “Oh yes! How could I forget? Poor thing; probably gets forgotten a lot. He’s Prince Shiro’s half-brother. From his mother’s second relationship. When the king heard she’d died, he adopted her son. Oh that was years ago, wasn’t it?”

            Lance snorts, “Yeah, twelve, and a few months later, oh look, the Queen’s pregnant. Trying to make a point much?”

            Allura wrinkles her nose, “Bloody stupid posturing is what it is.”  

            Lance nods. Everyone knows Queen Estelle wasn’t happy about Prince Keith’s adoption. The royal community is a fairly small one with lots of gossip and a long memory. Everyone says Estelle had Prince Andrew and Princess Anika after the adoption to stake her claim on the King and show off her position in the royal family. It was stupid. After all, the woman she felt so threatened by was dead, but Estelle was a blue blood and that could bring out the pettiness in anyone.

            “So,” Allura snaps her bronzer closed, “Do I pass muster?”

            “Well you’re not going to forget our hosts’ names,” Lance grins. He looks a little nervous. Despite his open, cheerful personality he tends to get a little wound up about social events like this. Allura reaches over to pat his hand.

            “We’ll be just fine.”

            “Well I am already, so…” Lance winks at her.

            “What?”

            “Fine, I’m already fine. Like fine,” Lance gives her an emphatic eyebrow wiggle to prove his point and she laughs.

            “Terrible, just terrible.”

            “Hey, that is world-class humor right there,” Lance huffs and she shakes her head.

            “Come along, let’s go brave the lion’s den,” she says, rising to her feet and taking her cousin’s elbow when he offers it to her.

            “Oh goody,” Lance mutters under his breath and she pinches him.

…

            Shiro shouldn’t have worried; Keith doesn’t get the opportunity to regale anyone with horrifying historical trivia. His stepmother, long may she reign in hell, has stuck him at the very end of the royal table, with the people who either barely qualify for the status or are obviously there to fill empty places. He’s squished between General Iverson, retired (one-eyed, intimidating and utterly silent except to bark orders at the nearby diners to pass the salt) and a skinny guy with a ludicrous orange mustache who talks enough for three people. Keith would try to keep up – the guy’s talking about biological diversity in extreme climates and enthusing about the versatility of the platypus, it sounds pretty interesting – but the man with the orange mustache is turned away from him, gushing at the elderly dowager-something-or-other on his other side and Keith is only catching every third word.

            Keith is reduced to poking listlessly at his food and coming up with mnemonic devices to remember everyone’s titles. And mentally composing his first postcard to his best friend.

            Dear Pidge,

It’s been twenty-four hours and I already want to drown myself in a vat of gravy, but only if the vat is big enough to take out everyone else around me too.

Oh, and did you know, King Augustus II of Poland sired approximately 365 bastards during his lifetime? On his deathbed he said his life was one long account of sin and he was kind of right. Towards the end of his life his courtiers worried he was going to accidentally have an affair with his own daughter he’d had so many illegitimate children.

(I found a great book in the library, I’ve been annoying Shiro with it all day)

Dead inside already,

Keith

Maybe that was too grim. Then again, Pidge would probably think it was funny. And Keith wasn’t really all that dead inside. For example, he’d been perfectly happy a few hours ago when it was just him and Shiro and Shadow.

Yeah, that’s right; focus the negativity where it belongs. Look at Keith and his healthy coping mechanisms.

Whoever made the menu has apparently forgotten (or doesn’t care about) Keith’s lifelong hatred of cheese. (It’s just so squishy? Like, why? Cheese’s appeal has never been clear to Keith. He’s not lactose intolerant; he just hates it. Paradoxically, he loves fake cheese – nacho cheese from a can, spray cheese from a tube, Cheetos, yes please, but real cheese? What the fuck even is that stuff?) Everything seems to have some sort of cheese component. Caprese salad followed by some weird goat cheese soufflé and there may have been a cream soup somewhere in there? Keith’s not sure what it was cream of. Mushroom? Onion? Spinach? Cream of cream? Keith doesn’t know but he takes two bites, makes a face, realizes he probably shouldn’t have grimaced quite that emphatically, takes another bite to compensate and nearly gags.

He sets the cream of something soup aside after that.

Now they’re on to the main course and Keith is trying to peel the pastry crust off his Beef Wellington without being too obvious about it. Shiro thinks he’s weird, but Keith just doesn’t like to eat things wrapped in other things. Pidge has actually watched in morbid fascination as Keith has deconstructed a hot pocket before her disbelieving eyes. (He met Pidge at Orientation at university; they were both hiding from their overly peppy orientation team leaders and the never-ending rounds of ice-breaker games. They happened to pick the same tree and had been inseparable for the rest of the semester. Pidge’s parents work for the UN, she manages to understand the royalty thing without being royalty. It’s like a miracle.) Keith removes the crust from corn dogs and eats it separately; he breaks sandwiches into their component parts. He doesn’t like food wrapped in other food.

(Shiro says Keith’s been this way since childhood, that he was a horribly picky eater when he first arrived at the palace, refused to eat anything other than green jello. He wouldn’t throw a tantrum, would just sit and stare at non-jello food until whoever gave it to him gave up and took it away. Frankly, Keith’s current level of neurosis is an improvement.)

Wellington successfully denuded, Keith start trying to scrape the pâté off the tenderloin.

“I’m sorry,” a voice says across from him, “but what the hell are you doing?”

Keith glares at the interruption, “Trying to scrape off the pâté.”

“Yeah, I got that, but why?”

‘Because pâté is something you feed to cats, not people,’ Keith thinks but doesn’t say because sometimes he has a filter. “Because I don’t want to eat it.” He doesn’t.

“Well, yeah, no one wants to eat pâté,” the guy rolls his eyes. He’s cute in a random-stranger-interrupting-Keith’s-dinner-dissection sort of way. Tanned skin, dark eyes, messy cinnamon-colored hair that has fifty/fifty chance of being a deliberate styling choice or accidental. Keith is kind of hoping its accidental. Yeah, the guy’s annoying, but knowing he spent over an hour trying to get his hair to look like he’s been through a wind tunnel would make him more annoying. “But I’ve never actually seen a guy reject the pâté.”

“Pâté is cat-food,” Keith says flatly, oops, looks like he said it anyway, “I am not a cat.”

“Obviously,” the guy nods, and Keith is pretty sure he’s being sized up. He isn’t sure how he feels about it.

“Are you done commenting on my dining habits?” Keith asks coolly.

“Sure, I was just, y’know, curious. Not every day you see someone deconstruct a beef wellington at the dinner table.”

Keith is offended. He’s not sure why. There was nothing specifically offensive in that statement, but it still rubs him the wrong way. “Well excuse me for eating. I’ll be sure to do it out of public sight next time. Wouldn’t want to unsettle anyone,” he says coldly.

“It’s just weird, okay?” the guy waves his hands and Keith’s not sure if he’s trying to pick a fight or not but Keith kind of wants to pick a fight because he’s bored and cranky and hungry and Shiro wouldn’t let him sneak protein bars or paperback novels into dinner.

            “Sure, totally. A guy eating dinner is super weird,” Keith says; tone flat, “What will rock your world next? Someone drinking water? Subsistence. Wow. So strange.”

            “Am I missing something? When did this become an argument?”

            “Can I get back to my food now?”

            “I mean, if you want to go, dude, I will go, but I really don’t know what we’re fighting about.”

            Keith growls. “Just shut up and let me eat, okay?”

            “But you haven’t eaten anything? You’re just peeling off the layers and picking fights with me?”

            “I would eat if I had the time between answering your asinine questions!”

            “Asinine?!”

            Keith scoffs, “Bet you don’t know what that means.”

            “It has the word ‘ass’ in it so I’m assuming it’s an insult!”

            “Oh my god! Pick up a dictionary!”

            “Now you’re insulting me!”

            “You insulted me first!”      

            They’re yelling at each other now and Keith is trying to think past the sick rush he gets from the confrontation, the push-pull of it. Yeah, he can’t yell at his stepmother but he can yell at this annoyingly attractive asshole and it’s almost better.

            Then someone coughs and they realize everyone is staring at them. Keith can read their faces, can practically read their minds. ‘Oh, it’s That One making a scene again.’ All the fight goes out of him in big rush and he relaxes back into his chair and shoves the beef wellington away. Across from him, his opponent has turned bright red and is sinking back into his own chair, looking down at his hands.

            No one says anything but the message has been received.

            Well, Iverson looks over at Keith, gives him a cursory once-over and asks; “Can I eat that?” of his untouched wellington, but that’s about it for the actual conversing.

            Keith nods and Iverson scoots the plate over to him and digs in with gusto.

            “Never liked pâté much,” is the general’s only comment.

            Keith just nods. Seems legit.

…

            Lance isn’t sure what he wants more – for the floor to open up and swallow him whole or for the beautiful jerk across the table to hold still and let him punch him in the face. He’s pretty sure he recognizes him. His face is familiar at least. God, Lance is exhausted. Normally he’s really good with faces, but after staring at a zillion pictures of the various people he’d be meeting in preparation for the Voltra visit he’s kind of struggling.

            Whatever, he’s stranded here at the end of the table with the rest of the royal leftovers (yeah, Lance is kind of pissed about this, actually. He is a lord, thank you. His mom is a Duchess. His cousin is a princess. This is kind of demeaning.). The guy with the weird food habits can’t be that important, right?

            Fuck, Lance’s head is swimming. He didn’t really sleep on the plane, just faked it for Allura while listening to messages on her answering machine and making mental note of what’s high-priority enough to notify her immediately and brainstorming possible official responses to some of the others.

            He’s exhausted and it’s driving him nuts that he can’t place cute annoying guy’s face with a name. Not to mention, he’s slowly dying of embarrassment and hoping he didn’t fuck things up for Allura too badly.

            God, he just wants a nap. And for the weirdly combative guy to eat his food. Lance didn’t mean to scare him off his dinner. Or make him feel bad about it. He’d apologize but the murder-eyes the guy’s shooting at the table kind of dissuades him.

            Well, hopefully they won’t see each other again and it won’t be a big deal.

…

            Shiro finds him, of course. It’s not like Keith was hiding or anything. He’s sitting in his favorite of the royal kitchens (it’s the smallest and the least crowded), on the counter, his back to the fridge, eating green jello. Which is, honestly, what he does after nearly every state dinner.

            “So,” Shiro says, folding his arms and leaning against the fridge, “You talked to someone at dinner.”

            Keith snorts, “That’s one way of putting it.”

            “I’m sorry about the seating arrangement,” Shiro winces, “And the menu.”

            Keith shrugs, the gesture jerky, almost birdlike. “I’m a picky eater.”

            “Yeah,” his brother sighs, “But she didn’t have to do that.”

            Keith shakes his head, “It probably wasn’t deliberate; she doesn’t pay enough attention to me to know all the foods I hate.”

            Shiro grimaces and looks like he’s about to say something else, to apologize for his stepmother’s behavior again, but Keith catches his eye and shake his head slightly. Please don’t. Let me believe it was an accident. Let me pretend she doesn’t hate me that much.

            Shiro sighs instead and reaches out to ruffle Keith’s hair. “Your hair’s gotten long.”

            Keith nods, “It’s what happens when you don’t cut it. It grows. Hair is magic like that.”

            “Quit being a brat,” Shiro says, but there’s no bite to it. He hops onto the counter at Keith’s feet, his own feet hanging towards the ground, his dress shoes drumming gently against the cabinets as he swings his legs slightly. Shiro is still in his suit, although he’s lost the jacket and rolled the sleeves up. Keith escaped before Shiro did and changed out pretty much immediately. He’s wearing ratty sweatpants with his university’s name written down the leg in red block print and one of his Hamilton t-shirts from when Shiro met him in New York for Thanksgiving break and they saw the show on Broadway.

            “So,” Shiro rolls his head over to look at him, “You talked to someone at dinner.”

            Keith huffs and takes another bite of green jello (there is something immensely comforting about jello). “I argued with someone.”

            “It wasn’t that bad.”

            “It was embarrassing.”        

            “Not to me.”

            Keith rolls his eyes at him, “Shiro, I hate to break it to you, but you’re basically my proud soccer mom. The ‘loving me unconditionally’ thing has definitely done something to your brain.”

            Shiro rolls his eyes – it looks odd on his face now. After the plane crash, after they’d brought him home (Keith had brought him home, Keith’s research, Keith’s topographical maps and wind-force calculations and endless string of calls to rescue agency after rescue agency – it was Keith that had found him on that mountain, barely surviving in the shadow of the shell of his little personal plane). After Shiro came home with the scar on his face and shadows in his eyes he’d seemed so grown-up and distant. It fills Keith’s chest with warmth to see Shiro like this, acting like a big kid again.

            (Pidge’s brother had been with the crew that found Shiro – they hadn’t realized the connection until after they’d been friends for weeks, after Keith had explained the ‘kind of a prince of a small European country’ thing. Keith’s pretty sure Shiro and Matt keep in touch. Letters or something. It makes Keith weirdly glad, to know that his brother has someone out there who’s seen him at his worst; who knows he’s more than a prince. It can be hard to have friends in this family.)

            “I’m just glad you’re interacting with people. Yeah, it could have gone better, but it’s a silly spat. A bad first impression. You can always make it up later. The delegations are going to be here for weeks, you know.”

            Keith sighs, “Yeah, I know.”

            “I’m sorry, kiddo,” Shiro says, and he means it, Keith knows he means it, “I had hoped your first week back from university would be more relaxing. Time for just us to hang out, like old times.”

            Keith shakes his head, even though that was what he’d been hoping for too. “It’s fine. It’s the way it always is.”

            “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”

            “Yeah.”

            They’re silent for a moment. Then Shiro grins crookedly, “So the guy you were arguing with – was he cute?”

            “Oh my god, Shiro, can you be any more of a suburban housewife?”

            “Hey, don’t knock housewives. Respect everyone’s life choices,” Shiro says gently because Shiro is an actual inspirational cartoon character. He arches an eyebrow, “I just know you.”

            Shiro does know him, the bastard. Keith finishes his jello and hides his face behind his folded arms. “Yes, dammit,” he mumbles, “Okay?”

            “Aww, little brother has a crush!”

            “I do not!” Keith snaps, “He was a jackass!”

            “So cute!” Shiro continues to tease.

            “A very attractive jerk! That’s it! I’m pissed off, not dead!”

            Shiro just continues to cackle, because he sucks.

            “I’m getting more jello,” Keith grumbles, “And I’m not sharing because you suck.”

            There. That told him.

…

            “You made a friend at dinner!” Allura cheers, “I’m so happy for you, Lance!”

            “I did not make a friend! I made an enemy! With weird food habits!” Lance flings himself onto the sofa in the parlor area that connects his room and Allura’s suite. He’s pretty sure his room used to be a ladies’ maid’s quarters. He tries not to be offended by this.

            “I don’t know, Lance,” Allura says smugly, “You tend to make friends by getting in fights.”

            “I do not!” Lance says indignantly, sitting up awkwardly, “I am a charming and lovable soul!”

            “Hmm,” she says, smiling to herself as she takes off her earrings, “I just remember when you were little and you tried to push Hunk in that mud puddle and – ”

            “I wasn’t trying to push him into the mud! All the kids were playing tag and I ran into him!”

            “- and you just bounced off of him,” Allura’s still chuckling, “Boing! And then you were in the mud and crying.”

            “I was four and it hurt!”

            “And Hunk was asking you if you were okay and you were just thrashing about yelling ‘fight me like a man!’ It was the cutest thing. You were inseparable ever since.”

            Hunk is Lance’s best friend in the universe. His parents are nobility, not related to the royal family, but an old enough house that Lance and Hunk can jokingly call each other ‘cousin’ and there’s a hint of truth to it. He’s currently doing culinary school during the day and night classes in astrophysics and engineering at night, perpetually exhausted and happy as a clam. Lance should text him before he goes to sleep, tell him about that guy and the beef wellington.

            “I’ve matured since then, Allura,” Lance says haughtily, “I don’t make friends via mud puddle now.”

            She just gives him a Mona Lisa smile.

            “And anyway, I’m probably never gonna see the guy again.”

            She shrugs, “I couldn’t see who it was, so maybe not. Oh,” she snaps her fingers, “Set your alarm, we’ve got a tennis match scheduled with the Crown Prince and his brother at ten tomorrow morning.”

            “You mean you want to play tennis with Prince hottie and need a teammate,” Lance says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

            “Prince Shiro and I share a mutual interest in the sport. And he said he could convince Prince Keith fill out his team if I fancied a match tomorrow.”

            “Fine,” Lance sighs, “I’ll be there.”

            “Thank you,” Allura smiles sweetly and kisses his forehead, “Get some sleep, love.” And then she’s disappearing into her room (suite, it’s a suite) and Lance is wondering if he’s got enough energy to make it to his actual bed or if he just wants to pass out on this here couch. He’s halfway to sleep, still without an actual decision, when a sudden realization hits him like a bolt of lighting to the chest.

            Shit.

            He remembers where he knew the beef wellington dissector’s face from.

            Double shit.

            He has to play tennis with his newest sworn enemy tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

            Shiro wakes up secure in the knowledge of two things. One, in a few short hours he’s going to play tennis with quite possibly the loveliest person he’s ever met (and she’s a princess too!) and that he’s about five seconds away from throwing his brother out the window. But, you know, lovingly.

            Keith, unaware of Shiro’s fratricidal thoughts, or perhaps simply unbothered by them, continues to jump on Shiro’s bed. “Guess what?”

            “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop that?” Shiro replies pleasantly.

            “Nope.”

            “Oh, I’m pretty sure homicide will happen if you don’t stop bouncing.”

            “Pigeons used to be used as medicine.”

            Shiro buries his face in his pillow and waits for death. He’s going to regret this, “What, Keith?”

            True to form, paying attention to the little brat does nothing to abate the incessant jumping. It just encourages more acrobatic feats. Shiro’s pretty sure Keith is now jumping over his prone form and possibly doing flips while he’s at it because Keith has no sense of self-preservation.

            “The ‘Pigeon Cure’ was very popular from the mid 1600s through the late 1800s.”

            “I’m going to regret asking about this.”

            “In cases where the patient was near-death and all other remedies were exhausted, physicians would place freshly killed pigeons on the patient’s feet.”

            “What?” Shiro asks, incredulous – he’d wonder if he were dreaming, except this is Keith.

            “Pigeons were an omen of death. By killing the pigeon and placing it’s still-warm corpse on the feet of the afflicted, physicians sought to ward away death, to allow the patient to absorb the animus, or life-force of the pigeon.”

            “What the actual fuck, Keith?”

            Keith hums absently; he’s stopped jumping quite as vigorously, settling down into soft little hops on the mattress. “Pigeons were very common ingredients in medications and folk-cures in the early modern period.”

            “Well now I don’t want breakfast.”

            “Why? It’s not like we’re eating pigeons. Although – ”

            “Finish that sentence on pain of pain,” Shiro growls, but his brother just laughs. The mattress makes a soft springy sound as Keith plops down at the foot of the bed. Shiro peers out from his pillow refuge to behold Keith, still dressed in the sweatpants and Hamilton t-shirt from the night before, his hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail, short tufts and tendrils sticking up all around his head like a fluffy halo.

            Shiro would bet good money the kid barely slept last night.

            “When did you go to bed?”

            Keith shrugs, “Whenever.”

            “That is the opposite of an answer.”

            “Want more pigeon facts?”

            Shiro groans and drags himself into a mostly upright position, leaning against the headboard and eyeing his brother. “What is the deal with you and pigeons this morning?”

            Keith shrugs again, picking at the knee of his sweatpants; “It’s Pidge’s birthday soon.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            Keith looks away and huffs, “I’m making her a card full of freaky pigeon facts.”

            Shiro reaches over and solemnly places a hand of his shoulder, “Keith, I am so happy you have found a friend who is as astonishingly weird as you.”

            His brother scoffs and shrugs his hand away but Shiro’s not done.

            “No, really, this is perfect –” he tries to keep up the faux-serious tone but the faces Keith’s making are too funny, “You can share all your weird facts with her instead of me! Someone else can learn about gout and syphilis. This is a great opportunity!”

            “Quit being a jerk,” Keith tries to snap but he’s laughing too hard to take very seriously, “And the syphilis facts are for your own good.”

            “No, you just like talking about weird historical diseases.”

            “I’m pretty sure syphilis is still a thing.”

            “I’m pretty sure I’ve used up my quota for amounts of times venereal disease can be mentioned in my presence for the next twenty-four hours.”

            “What?” Keith squawks, “There’s a quota now?” He looks positively wounded. It has Shiro cackling all the way down to breakfast.

…

            Lance’s beauty sleep is disturbed by possibly the worst ukulele playing his poor ears have ever been subjected too.   He almost goes back to sleep, horrifying abuse of stringed instruments aside, but whoever is torturing that poor ukulele has started humming loudly and intentionally off-pitch and he knows exactly who that voice belongs to.

            And now she’s singing. “Wake up, wake up, you lazy human being, wake up, wake up, or I’ll keep playing this damn thing.”

            “Allura,” Lance groans, “Stooooop.”

            “Hmm, la la la la, Lance.   La la la la, not a fucking chance.”

            “Alluuuuuraaaaa,” he whines, flailing an arm in her general direction.

            Her ukulele abuse just intensifies. He didn’t realize something that small could make a sound like that. “Laaaaance, wake the fuck up…I don’t have a rhyme for that…ummm…cup…uh…this looks a lot easier on tv…lucky me….”

            Lance sits upright and rips the eyemask off his face, “For the love of all that is holy Allura, what?”

            She beams at him and finally, thank god, stops playing the freaking ukulele. “Oh good, you’re awake.”

            Lance levels his best ‘are you kidding me?’ look her way. “I am now.”

            She sets the ukulele aside, standing gracefully. “We’re meeting the princes for tennis at ten am.”

            “Allura. Beautiful, majestic, regal, annoying as hell Allura. IT’S SEVEN THIRTY.”

            She crooks at smile at him. “And I know your morning skincare routine takes at least half an hour.”

            He folds his arms, completely aware of how ridiculous this must look, “It does not take thirty minutes.”

            “No, once it was forty. And you still need to shower, dress, decide you hate all the clothes you own, eat breakfast, forget something in our suite, and be five minutes late despite all my best efforts.”

            He opens his mouth to protest but she’s got him there. “Okay…you’re not…wrong.”

            She smiles, bright and cute and way too peppy for eight thirty in the morning. “Of course not. I’m a princess.”

            And then she leaves, like that line made any sense. Lance scoffs in her general direction but can’t come up with anything concrete to refute her with, so settles for sticking his tongue out at the offending ukulele.

            It’s going to be an interesting morning.

…

            “Do you know how to play tennis?” Shiro asks Keith over breakfast.

            Keith blinks at him over his dog-eared copy of How to Fight Presidents. “Yes?”

            “I would feel a lot more comfortable with that answer if it didn’t sound like a question.”

            Keith shrugs. “We’ll see.”

            “How have you lived here for twelve years and never learned to play tennis?”

            “Someone should speak to the management,” Keith replies dryly.

            “But really, you do know how to play tennis, right?”

            Keith sighs, “Perhaps, dear brother, these are the things you should consider before volunteering me as your number two in a tennis match against your crush?”

            That keeps Shiro sputtering long enough for Keith to get through the chapter on John Quincy Adams.

            “Hey Shiro, did you know John Quincy Adams had two pet alligators?”

            Shiro just lays his head down on the breakfast table in defeat.

            “How come we don’t have a pet alligator? We have a moat. JQ kept his in an unused White House bathroom. We could do better than that. Shiro? Shiro?”

            Shiro throws a piece of toast at his face.

            (Keith does know how to play tennis – his mom taught him. She used to string up a swath of fabric across her studio like a net and swat balloons full of paint at it with tennis rackets. They’d burst against the canvas, bright, twisting explosions of color. …There is a chance Keith learned how to play tennis wrong.)

…

            “So tennis is easy, right?”

            “Lance.”

            “I mean, you just have to hit the ball with the racket and wear funny clothes, right?”

            “Lance.”

            “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, geez, don’t need to look so worried ‘Lura.”

            She sighs, shoulders slumping. Her tennis outfit is cute – white shirt/skirt combo with pink and blue accents and black piping. Lance is currently helping her wrestle her magnificent (and aggressively fluffy) platinum tresses into a high ponytail. Normally she’d do it herself but halfway through his morning skincare routine Lance glanced over to see her face-down at her dressing table grumbling about how her hair was being ‘bloody impossible’. It’s okay; he likes playing with Allura’s hair. It’s soft and fluffy and has just as much personality as she does.

            “I just don’t want you to embarrass yourself. You have an…unfortunate tendency to claim you know how to do things without actually knowing how to do them.”

            “Oh yea of little faith…” Lance says teasingly, “It’s gonna be great.”

            Tennis is easy, right? You just hit the ball with the racket. There can’t be more rules….

            Can there?

…

            Keith hadn’t realized that tennis came with a uniform. Keith stands corrected. He’s not going to wear the uniform because polo shirts and anything resembling a polo shirt have never featured in his wardrobe. He does have some shorts, but they’re not…tennis-y. They’re just…shorts…

            Keith is very skeptical of this whole endeavor. He tells Shiro as much as his brother rifles through Keith’s closet trying to find clothes that come even close to following the apparently strict tenets of tennis-wear.

            “Is everything you own some form of t-shirt?” Shiro asks, exasperated.

            “Well I also have jeans and some leather jackets,” Keith observes from where he sits, cross-legged on the bed.

            “What do you wear to the gym?”

            “Pants? A shirt? I really don’t put this much thought into this.”

            “Full-length pants?”

            “Well I heard ankles were scandalous and I wouldn’t want to be branded a Scarlet Woman,” Keith says dryly before rolling his eyes, “Yes, Shiro, I wear full-length pants, or fencing gear to the gym.”

            Shiro makes the My Little Brother Isn’t Being Helpful face. “Don’t you have any kind of work-out short? Something leftover from high school gym, maybe?”

            “For the last time, no. You’re lucky I just sold my old uniforms to a consignment shop. I considered holding a Viking funeral for them in the moat.”

            “Keith.”

            “I didn’t!”

            “But you thought about it!”

            “I think about setting a lot of things on fire, that doesn’t mean I follow through on the impulse!” Keith pauses, blinks, “That came out wrong.”

            Shiro buries his face in his hands. By the time he looks up he seems to have made and executive decision. “Okay. So you at least have gym-worthy shirts.”

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re too short to wear my clothes.”

            “Rude.”

            “But true.”

            “Shut up.” Shiro is at least six inches taller than Keith and has quite possibly twenty more pounds of muscle than he does. Keith’s only comfort is that his small size lends him greater agility and allows him to sneak up on his brother an occasionally jump-tackle him.

            Shiro sighs, “Just grab your only non-denim pair of shorts and get changed. This will have to do.”

            “You do realize that we’re not going to the Olympics, right? It doesn’t actually matter if I’m properly dressed out?” Look at Keith; growing as a person, he didn’t even flinch when he said ‘Olympics’!

            Shiro gives him a look that probably started as brotherly annoyance but was swiftly tempered with brotherly sympathy at the mention of the O-word. “We’re going to be playing a physically demanding game outside in full sun. Denim is heavy and constricting, and t-shirt cotton doesn’t breathe well. I don’t want you to get heat-stroke.”

            “Insert snarky comment about much black clothing I wear here,” Keith mutters, but it’s good-natured, “Whatever, I’ll wear the clothes. Now get out. You have to put your dumb tennis uniform on.”

            “It’s not a uniform,” Shiro huffs, but he moves towards the door, only pausing once he gets there, “You know, Keith, the Olympics…”

            Keith rolls his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, missed opportunity. It’s fine.”

            Shiro winces and Keith sighs. He didn’t mean to make it worse.

            “Seriously, Shiro, don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t have happened either way.”

            Shiro still looks pensive but he nods and lets it go. “Okay, I’ll meet you at the staircase.”

            “Okay.”
            Keith closes the door behind him, taking the moment to suck in a deep lungful of air; holding onto it for a few seconds before releasing. Dammit, did he have to bring up the Olympics? That was…that was what it was. Yeah, Keith could have gone when he was eighteen. He could have at least tried. He probably would have made it. He was objectively the best fencer in the country, trained by one of the best in Europe. But princes didn’t compete in athletic competitions. Not since the days of tournaments and jousting. At least princes of Voltra didn’t. The law had originally been crafted to prevent so many royal heirs from getting maimed or killed competing in tournaments and other blood sports but had been upheld and expanded up on in the 20^th century to prevent royalty from coasting on their status and blocking the real athletes from their deserved laurels.

            Of course, it was Estelle who’d brought up the old law. Ever-so-delicately at one of the rare royal luncheons when it was just ‘the family,’ and Keith, freshly showered and humming with a kind of electricity only the sword could give him, had been chattering at Shiro and had said, stupidly, so, so stupidly “And Thace thinks I could try for the Olympics”.

            And of course Estelle had an answer for that, as she had an answer for everything.

            “Keith, dear, don’t you know? You’re a prince. Princes can’t do that sort of thing. It would be horribly unfair to all the other contestants.”

            “It’s not a game show, it’s a sport.”

            “I know that, dear.”

            “Just I don’t think you call them ‘contestants’.”

            “Whatever it is you call them, you can’t be one of them. It’s against the law, you know.”

            And she’d been right but it had still stung the way she’d said it. And the way she’d chided Shiro when Shiro tried to stand up for him. And the way her kids had followed her lead and laughed her tinkly little laugh when she changed the subject.

            Keith is suddenly and violently glad he hasn’t seen the queen since he arrived. And hell, he’s even a little grateful to Shiro and his brother’s dumb crush and this weird tennis game. Anything that will keep Keith out of the palace and out of Estelle’s way is fine by him.

            He snatches the clothes Shiro picked off the back of a chair and gets changed.

…

            “’Lura!”

            “What?”

            “Did you repack my suitcase?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, I don’t remember packing these clothes!”

            Allura sticks her head in his room, “You were very sleep-deprived, I’m sure you just forgot.”

            “No, I’m sure you added stuff!” He huffs at her, folding his arms across his chest.

            She shrugs, “Well, at least you have gym clothes to wear for tennis this morning.”

            “But they’re not my gym clothes.”

            She stares at him flatly; “I found them in your closet.”

            “That doesn’t mean I want to claim them as my own! There are many things that I still have that preteen Lance bought that I now consider fashion travesties! There are things that two-months-ago Lance bought that should never be worn by a human being!”

            “So…you’re saying you have no taste?”

            “I’m saying fashion is continuously evolving and that in hindsight I should not be allowed on the internet with a credit card after 2am.”

            She gives him a Look, “Just be glad I repacked your suitcase for you.”

            “So you DID do it! Traitoress!”

            “I’m pretty sure ‘traitor’ is a gender-neutral term, Lance.”

            “Betrayer! Um…wait, let me pull up the thesaurus app on my phone…”

            She walks away laughing while Lance is trying to remember the palace’s wifi password.

…

            “Did you know women used to play tennis in full-length dresses?”

            “Did you seriously Google tennis factoids in the five minutes since I last saw you?”

            Keith raises an eyebrow at Shiro, “Yes?”

            Shiro just sighs and wordlessly passes him a racket. Keith promptly pokes him with it because Keith is not to be trusted with any weapon-shaped object in hand.

            Shiro smacks his racket away and they slap-fight with them all the way to the tennis court.

…

            Okay, so tennis is way more complex than Lance was prepared for. Also, fuck everything; his newest sworn enemy is really hot. He’s also eyeballing him really suspiciously like he’s just waiting for Lance to utterly and completely fail at something. And considering how Lance clearly needs to do more than read half a Billie Jean King biography to understand tennis, it’s only a matter of time before he fulfills Prince Keith’s unspoken expectations.

            It’s really annoying, is what it is.

            Allura and Prince Shiro seem to really be hitting it off, though, bantering back and forth as they warm up, complimenting each other’s tennis outfits, making jokes, the elder prince poking gentle fun at his brother (who raises one skeptical eyebrow and coughs up a whole monosyllable every time Shiro tries to pull him into conversation) while Allura pokes less-than-gentle fun at Lance. Admittedly, it’s nothing too mean; this is Allura, Buzzfeed-certified Nice Person. But Lance really isn’t in the mood to feature in her humorous anecdotes right now. Not with Prince Keith standing off to the side, arms crossed, face blank and detached except for a small, critical furrow between his brows.

            Their one conversation goes like this (it happens as Shiro and Allura are stretching and warming up and low-key flirting).

            “So what’d the fence ever do to you?”

            “What?”

            “You keep glaring at the fence.”

            “No I’m not.”

            “You are literally burning a hole in that fence with your eyes, dude. What the hell are you even thinking about?”

            Keith stares at him like he’s an idiot. After a long, extremely awkward pause, he finally says “Pigeons,” in a tone of voice that doesn’t leave any room for further conversation.

            Lance is an idiot, so he keeps poking at this guy. Partially for the sick pleasure of watching him get more and more irritated and partially because pigeons? What the actual hell. “Soooo. Pigeons. Invisible fence-pigeons you’ve made up just to glare at. That seems…normal.”

            “What? No. They’re not made up.”

            “You’re literally staring at nothing, or a fence, whatever, and I ask you about it and you say ‘pigeons’.”

            “No, pigeons are real.”         

            “I’m not saying pigeons aren’t real, I’m saying the ones you’re staring at aren’t!”

            “I’m not staring at invisible pigeons!” Keith is staring at him now like Lance is the one acting crazy here.

            “THEN WHERE THE HELL ARE THE PIGEONS, SMART GUY?”

            “HYPOTHETICAL, THEY ARE HYPO-FUCKING-THETICAL PIGEONS, YOU MORON!” Keith then says something is what might be Latin so Lance insults him in Greek because that seems legit. (Lance does not know a whole lot of Greek – mostly food words and curses because his favorite palace chef back home is Greek and he used to do his homework in the kitchen where he and Hunk could watch her work and listen to her mutter in her native tongue.)

            Allura and Shiro separate them after that. Lance is still irritated, though. Keith got the last word in their weird multi-lingual insult-fest.

            Jerk.

            And then the actual tennis-playing begins and Lance swiftly realizes he has no idea what he’s doing. His only comfort is that a.) Allura and Shiro seem to really know what they’re doing and they keep each other and the ball occupied pretty well so Lance can just sort of lurk behind Allura and hope no one ever hits anything his way, and b.) Keith is apparently either completely un-invested in this game or he doesn’t know what’s going on either. Yeah, Lance sees that lurking thing you’re doing there, Prince Keith. Not so subtle there, sir.

            But of course nothing good lasts so a tennis ball goes flying at Lance’s face and he flails and slaps at it with his racket until it is no longer on a crash course for his nose (he likes his nose, it’s a good nose, there is no need to break his excellent and very handsome nose). He opens his eyes again just in time to see it fly towards Keith’s face and Keith, with the death glare to beat all death glares, hits it like a baseball, swinging from the shoulder, and sends it flying over the fence.

            They have to stop the game to retrieve the ball. Lance can see Keith go and get it, can see the little self-satisfied nod at how far the ball went before hitting the ground.

            Smug bastard.

            He brings the ball back, apparently very pleased with himself (a microscopic smile, Lance didn’t realize the guy was capable of it).

            That’s it.

            The next time the ball nearly breaks Lance’s precious nose it’s his turn to hit it over the fence. Keith watches the ball go, not even bothering to try and knock it out of the air. He does look back at Lance and tip his head to the side slightly like he’s saying ‘eh, not bad’. Like a smug bastard.

            It’s on after that. Sort of. As ‘on’ as it can be when the competition is literally who can be the best at being the worst. And the other people playing the game are actually playing the game and they get it into their beautiful heads that you and the other person passive-aggressively hitting balls outside of the enclosure like a toddler throwing Cheerios off their high chair are doing it on purpose (which you are). Shiro and Allura step up their game after that, trying their damnedest to actively keep the ball away from Keith and Lance. But it’s too late for an intervention. Keith and Lance are actually into this now. They’re running around just as much as Shiro and Allura, plus they’ve whole-heartedly embraced the fact that their mutual tennis knowledge could fill a thimble (one of the ones with actual holes in it, so it leaks and allows all their supposed knowledge drain away – and this metaphor has gotten out of control). So Keith and Lance have no problem running all over the court, not staying in their area, ducking in and out of out of bounds areas. Anything to try and knock that damn tennis ball further outside the court.

            Lance halfway realizes that there’s really no definite way to determine which of them gets the ball farther – there is no actual way to win this demented game-within-the-game they’ve created but that really doesn’t bother him. In the moment ‘winning’ is all about shaking that smug, ultra-confident half-smirk off Keith’s stupid face.

            Stupid-hot face, his brain unhelpfully supplies. He promptly tells his brain to shut the fuck up and play.

            Allura is shooting him dirty looks and Shiro is looking perplexed in a Captain-America-is-concerned sort of way. But there’s a perfect, crystallized moment where Keith’s running over to knock the ball out of the court again, and his hair is sliding out of the goofy little ponytail he shoved it into and Lance catches the barest sliver of his face and his eyes are bright and the smirk is gone and in it’s place is the most devastatingly beautiful smile Lance has ever seen.

            Of course that’s the moment where Keith fails to actually hit the ball out of the court for once. It hits Lance in the face instead.  

…

            Keith doesn’t know anything about tennis (frankly, between his mom and the twisted fairytale nature of his life at the palace he has been given some very unrealistic expectations for how the real world works). But he’s actually…having fun? Okay, so the cute jerk (yes, he’s cute, shut up Shiro) from dinner is still an asshole and quite possibly an idiot (ha, he was totally right about inbreeding, Shiro should listen to him more – and Shiro needs to stop being the Voice of Reason in his head, he’s pretty sure that’s not healthy). Keith really isn’t sure what was even happening for most of that pre-game conversation but it was enough to piss him off and leave him with an uncomfortable, anxious feeling eating away at the bottom of his stomach saying you made an idiot of yourself in front of a stranger again (his inner Critical Voice sounds a lot like Stella’s delicate, cultured tone, the voice she uses only when she’s talking to him).

            But this thing they’re doing, this weird, who-sucks-more competition? Is fun. Shiro’s looking at him like he’s crazy in that fond, ‘I’m concerned and you’re deranged’ way, and the Princess keeps shooting incredulous glances at her…however they’re related. But Keith’s biting back a laugh now, he’s running back and forth and this is good. He feels lighter than he has since he got on the plane home. He feels…like when he and Pidge were bored and found old badminton gear in their dorm’s basement and spent thirty minutes hitting birdies into trees and then three hours trying to get them out.

            “Did you know badminton used to be called ‘battledore and shuttlecock’, Pidge?”

“Sounds like a shitty romance novel.”

“Or a crime-fighting duo.”

“Or a pair of trashy time travelers.”

“Or a pair of time-traveling crime-fighting on-again-off-again – ”

            “Oh my god, the genre is the first fucking book.”

            Of course a few minutes after he starts to actually enjoy this whole tennis thing, he breaks someone’s nose so…Keith has the worst luck on the planet.

            He mentally composes a postcard:

            Dear Pidge,

            I broke someone’s nose today. Because I can’t have nice things or something. Did you know there used to be laws in England regulating how much money you had to make in order to wear certain fabrics? They were called sumptuary laws and you could get fined for breaking them. So rich people used to suck even more than they do now. And I say this as someone currently surrounded by rich people.

            Regretting my life choices,

            Keith

            Meanwhile, there’s blood coming from the guy’s nose and everyone is very concerned and Keith knows he needs to apologize, but has no idea how to do it.

…

            Okay, taking a tennis ball to the face hurts. Lance doesn’t fall over completely, but he does stumble back a few steps, hands coming up automatically to cradle his nose. He’s swearing in multiple languages and there are tears leaking out of his eyes because he’s a crier. Zero pain tolerance, his big sisters had to hold his hand whenever he got a flu shot as a kid and even now he bribes a younger cousin to do the hand-holding thing on the sly. Yes, he has to bribe children to comfort him when confronted by an itty-bitty needle. Lance is mostly okay with this.

            (Hunk knows, Hunk brings him baked goods whenever he knows Lance has to get shots, and he has to get a lot because Allura travels all over for her work and hey, there are new and terrible germs all over. Hunk is a good friend.)

            Allura’s at his side, one hand on his shoulder, another fluttering around his face, trying to pull his hands away and see, “Oh, are you alright, love? Oh hell, you’re bleeding, let me see…”

            And then there’s Prince Shiro and he’s talking, babbling really, and Lance is a little disoriented so it takes a moment to register what he’s saying. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry for hitting you, total accident, oh my god, I’m so sorry for hitting you.”

            Wait, what? Shiro didn’t hit him. It was…Keith, right? Keith’s standing there, roughly adjacent to Shiro, and his mouth is open, like he was going to say something but Shiro cut him off. There’s a weird moment of eye contact, some kind of contest of wills that Shiro seems to win, because while he’s the first to look away, but it’s with a kind of confidence while Keith glares helplessly at his back.

            “Are you okay?” Keith’s torn his attention from his brother and is looking at him and his eyes, fuck, his eyes are expressive, Lance doesn’t think he’s ever seen them before, not head-on like this. Not at dinner and not during their weird spat about pigeons. Prince Keith’s eyes are a tangled mess of guilt and fury and Lance is pretty sure only the guilt is directed at him. He hopes.

            “Uh, kinda gushing blood here, man.”

            “Your pupils look fine, though.”

            “Huh?”

            “Uh, your pupils? They’d be different sizes if, you know, you were concussed.”

            “Oh, cool. My ears are kind of ringing though. And everything’s blurry. Is that normal?” Why is he trusting this guy’s medical advice?

            Keith snorts, a slight smile twitching the corner of his mouth, “Your vision’s blurry because you’re crying, dumbass.”

            “Oh. Yeah.”

            “Keith,” Prince Shiro interrupts them, “Why don’t you take Lance inside and help him get cleaned up, okay? Allura and I will take care of things out here.”

            Allura opens her mouth to protest and there’s a weird brother-psychic link staring moment but Lance interjects before they can start arguing about who does want. “Sounds great, I want some Kleenex and a lot of painkillers. Like, all the painkillers.”

            Keith snorts, “Children’s Tylenol it is then.”

            “You suck.”

            “Hmm, only sometimes.”

            What. Is Keith flirting with him? And now the prince has gone white as a sheet, a flush trying to creep up his neck so that was probably unintentional, whatever that was.

            “Yeah, okay, let’s go,” Lance says with only half-false enthusiasm because, well, his face hurts like a bitch and he feels bad for Keith. But only a little. Despite Shiro’s weird apology Lance is still preeeetty sure Keith hit him with the tennis ball. Lance grabs the younger prince anyway, and starts marching toward the palace, one hand still delicately cradling his nose. The blood has slowed slightly from full-on gush to a trickle with big dreams so that’s a good sign.

            They walk back to the palace, Allura and Shiro’s voices fading into the distance as Allura demands an explanation.

            “You know…” Lance drawls when the silence gets uncomfortable, “If this were a romance novel you’d take off your shirt and offer it to me to stop the bleeding. And I’d swoon from blood loss and your overwhelming hotness. And you’d carry me back to the palace, cradled in your arms.”

            Keith stares at him like he’s high, “What?”

            “I’m just pointing out the tropes fate has given us.”

            “Why are you the girl in this scenario?”

            This may be the only civil conversation they’ve ever engaged in. Lance doesn’t know why he cares about this, but it feels important. “Hey, way to be hetero-normative.”

            “We’re talking about romance tropes and stereotypes, those are all hetero-normative.”

            “True,” Lance hums, “And I’m the girl in this cliché because the only time the girl breaks the guy’s nose is when she’s Klutzy But Endearing or she’s pissed because he’s An Asshole But So Hot. And neither of those apply to the breaker of my face.”

            Keith chuckles, “I can hear the capitalization.”

            “Just calling it like I see it. My buddy Hunk watches a lot of the Hallmark channel when he cooks. Says it’s soothing always knowing how the movie’s going to end. Like Nicholas Sparks without the inevitable death of a beloved secondary character. We make cookies and mock. It’s fun.”

            Keith laughs, actually laughs and it’s kind of a tiny miracle. Lance’s heart may flutter a little bit. So sue him. “But what if you’re an Asshole But So Hot?”

            “Aww, you think I’m hot.”

            Keith snorts, “Sure, we can go with that.”

            “Mean. Then again, you did hit me in the face, so.”

            Keith pauses for maybe half a second and shakes his head, “Shiro’s an idiot.”

            “I mean, no judgment, but why the hell did your brother try to take credit for breaking my face? Seems kind of dumb.”

            Keith sighs and all the good cheer from mere seconds ago slides off his face. Lance wants to tell it to come back, but it’s too late. “Shiro didn’t want me to get in trouble. It’s fine. You’re not going to war because I hit you with a tennis ball, right?”

            “Accidentally.”

            “What?”

            “It was an accident, yeah?”

            “Yeah.”

            “And you’re sorry? You’re not, like, internally cackling because you finally got me or something? This isn’t part of some convoluted plot to undermine Altea?”

            Keith shakes his head, there’s the ghost of a smile around his lips but it disappears before it can really take shape. “No.”

            “Then we’re good. I mean, my face really hurts and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to burn these clothes and tip your groundskeepers really, really well for all this blood I’m getting everywhere, but we’re cool.”

            Keith nods, but somehow doesn’t look relieved. His shoulders are bunched up a little and his arms are folded.

            “Hey,” Lance bumps his shoulder, “We’re fine. I mean, I’m still really confused re: pigeons and your food habits frankly disturb me, also you’re a competitive asshole, but I’m not going to cause an international incident over a bruised face.”

            Keith sighs, “It’s not really that.”

            “Yeah?”

            Keith’s lips are pressed together and he looks like he’s regretting saying that. “It’s just…” and it’s like the words are being dragged out of him by force, “the queen is going to give me hell for this, and Shiro’s trying to take the blame like he always does because she likes him better because she has to because he’s the heir.”

            Lance’s insides go cold, “She’s not going to…?”

            Keith rolls his eyes, “She’s not going to lock me in the dungeon and get the iron maiden, calm the fuck down. She’s just going to be more of a passive-aggressive bitch than usual for the next couple of days once she hears about this. That’s all.”

            “Keith, that’s – ”

            “Not healthy, not normal,” he shrugs, “It’s what it is.”

            “That’s some fairytale evil stepmother shit.”

            That’s enough to pry a smile out of Keith. “Yeah.”

            “So Shiro hit me with a tennis ball. Total accident.”

            “What?”

            “Shiro hit me with a tennis ball. He’s such a kultz for a crown prince.”

            Keith stares at him for a long moment. “Okay.”

            Lance nods. “Okay.”

…

            Keith’s not sure what to feel about this.

…

            “Um, Keith, this is a gym. There is nothing remotely medical here.” They’re standing in the doorway to a big open space not unlike a school gym except totally different because that’s real wooden paneling on the floor and Lance is pretty sure everything would smell like money and history if he weren’t bleeding.

            “Wrong,” is Keith’s only response before he’s turning away and shouting “HEY, THACE, I NEED HELP.”

            And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, there’s an older man who could be anywhere from thirty to sixty, in the best shape of his life, a whole foot taller than Lance, sporting a neatly trimmed goatee and thick, grey-streaked hair, right at Keith’s elbow.

            “Try not to bleed on the floor,” he says dryly and Lance dry-swallows and promptly chokes on some of the blood trickling down the back of his throat. Scary Fit Man (who must be Thace) raises a dry eyebrow, “So you’ve made a friend, Your Highness.”

            Keith makes a face, “He got hit with a tennis ball.”

            Thace snorts and turns away, gesturing towards a little office off the gym, the outline of the door cleverly disguised as more wall paneling. “Come along. I’ll patch you up.”

            “I can clean the floor,” Lance offers.

            Thace snorts, “Kind of you to offer.”

            “I know how to clean a floor.”

            “Good for you. Not enough royalty knows how to clean up after themselves.”

            “The French aristocracy built secret passages into their walls because they didn’t want to see their servants,” Keith observes vaguely.

            “They did indeed. They quite literally did not see the revolution coming,” Thace says, mouth curving slightly, tone infused with dry humor, “Sit,” he gestures to a chair, “Let me see the damage.”

            Lance pulls his hand away tentatively, a little wary of this guy and his secret office and general…ambiguous Jedi-master-ness.  

            Something about his hesitance seems to amuse the guy, who hands him a box of tissues and sets about poking and prodding the injured area.

            “You couldn’t bring me to a real doctor?” Lance asks Keith; who’s sort of lurking around in the background, scrutinizing the photos on the wall.

            “I am a real doctor,” Thace says.

            “He is a real doctor,” Keith parrots back, “Although I would have taken him to Ulaz if he was around.”

            “He’s at the United Nations for some sort of World Health Summit.”

            “I know, my friend Pidge met him, she keeps Snapchatting selfies.”

            “Ulaz must be ecstatic.” Is everything Thace says this dry? Is his automatic mode ‘mild sarcasm’ or is this just his personality? Is there subtext here? There must be, because Keith seems more at ease here than he has anywhere else Lance has seen him.

            “Apparently she cornered him to talk about his paper on the use of robotics in surgical settings and they talked for two hours.”

            “He always did like the youth.”

            “Hypocrite.”

            “I am not.”

            “You like me.”

            “You aren’t the youth, you’re my idiot apprentice. Your stepsiblings are insufferable.”

            Keith laughs, a dry little chuckle. Lance is hearing all kinds of laughs from Keith today, all of them different; it’s like a rainbow of sound. “I was seven when you met me. I’m sure I wasn’t any better.”

            “Of course you were, I picked you to be my apprentice,” Thace says loftily, then, to Lance, “Your nose isn’t broken, just badly bruised. No concussion, either.” He reaches over to the mini fridge by his desk and pulls out an ice pack, “Ice and Tylenol. You will have some rather intimidating black eyes but that is all.”

            Lance takes the ice pack, nodding. “Thanks.”

            “It is nothing compared to what this one has done to himself;” he gestures toward Keith who, instead of being affronted like Lance expects, just shrugs.

            “Thanks, Thace.”

            “It is nothing. Remember, training tomorrow morning. No more of this tennis nonsense.”

            Keith glowers, “I can play tennis if I want.”

            “You cannot play a game you do not know.”

            Keith rolls his eyes, “You say that so philosophically and yet you’re just a grumpy old man.”

            Thace snorts, “Leave me be, Idiot Apprentice.”

            “Sure thing, Old Man. Come on, Lance, let’s go find Princess Allura before she breaks Shiro.”

            He grabs the arm Lance isn’t using to hold an ice pack to his face and pulls him along after him. “Thanks, um, Dr. Thace!” Lance yells behind him, flailing to catch the bottle of off-brand Tylenol the man tosses his way.

            “Stay out of trouble,” is Thace’s only response, “And clean yourselves up, you look like something out of a horror film.”

            The door falls shut behind them and Keith leads Lance off to another door; that opens to reveal a very posh, very empty locker room.

            “So…that was…weird…” Lance says, setting his ice pack aside to wash the blood from his arms and hands.

            Keith snorts, “That’s just Thace. He acts like that, but he’s actually a total dork,” Keith pauses, like he’s not sure how to go on, “He’s Marmoran.”

            Lance blinks, “Shit.”

            “Yeah,” Keith sighs, running water over his own hands, somehow he got Lance’s blood on him. It swirls down the drain; dark red eddies and curls of color. “Ulaz too, they were here as foreign exchange students when the coup happened. Back when Shiro’s grandmother was queen. They got stuck here because their passports stopped being valid. It took so long to sort everything out in Marmora that by the time they could legally return they’d graduated university, built whole lives here. The queen had granted them indefinite visas; she basically took them in. Shiro’s grandmother was like that. Everyone says he’s a lot like her. Ulaz does relief work now; he’s got more doctorates than any normal person should. Thace joined the military after college – ” Keith snorts, “When I was a little kid I was convinced he used to be a spy. After his military time was up he went to medical school, became a master fencer, a whole bunch of stuff. When I first got moved here –” and wasn’t that interesting, how Keith said ‘got moved here’ not ‘moved here’, “I don’t know why, I just started following him around. Bugged the shit out of him, really. I’d been watching Star Wars with Shiro and decided I was Thace’s apprentice or something. That’s where the ‘idiot apprentice’ thing is from. Anyway, he was my first friend here other than Shiro.”

            And Lance can see it, can imagine a little tiny Keith following Thace around, asking questions and begging for attention and trying to mimic that dry humor, that elegance. Lance can see little Keith pretending Thace was his dad. Because that’s what you do when you fuck up, you take the problem to your parents and ask for help fixing it. When you hit some guy with a tennis ball and you don’t know what to do you take the poor bastard to the one person who always seems to know what to do.

            Lance is weirdly reminded of that musical Hunk’s obsessed with – Hamilton something or other, and that one song where George Washington is trying to rein Hamilton in during the revolution and keeps calling him ‘son’ and Hamilton says ‘I’m not your son’ over and over again.

            Keith is drying his hands now and frowning at Lance’s shirt, “Your shirt’s ruined.”

            Okay, weird, post-bloody-nose heart to heart over, then. “Yeah,” Lance grimaces, “I need to head back to my suite and change…except…and don’t take this the wrong way…but where the fuck are we?”

            Keith snorts, “Lost?”

            “Hey, I don’t live here.”

            Keith shakes his head, “And you didn’t memorize the palace groundplan before coming here? Diplomatic fail.”

            Lance stares at him, “Did you…? Did you make a joke?”

            And Keith’s back to frowning, “Shut up.”

            “Eloquent.”

            “Shut up or I’m not showing you how to use the secret passages to get back to your room.”

            “SECRET PASSAGES?!”

            Keith smirks a little, “Well, yeah.”

            Lance has got to tell Hunk about this. Fuck yeah, secret passages.

…

            Keith’s favorite thing about the secret passages is that no one knows about them but him, Shiro, and, weirdly enough, the king (Shirogane rarely uses them, but Keith has seen him from the distance a time to two, he always gives Keith a distant nod whenever he spots him, it’s one of the few times Keith feels close to his adoptive father). A servant or two must know about them as well – they never seem quite cobwebby enough for an architectural feature forgotten by all. But the palace staff are all tight-lipped about it and refuse to comment when Keith asks.

            They do wink at him sometimes, when it’s obvious he’s just slunk out from one of the hidden doorways.

            He knows all their names. They keep the fridge stocked with green jello for him 24/7. The palace staff are the best, even if they treat the secret passages like fight club.

            Keith’s second favorite thing about the secret passages is that sound carries very well from the outside because of the vent system. This is also his least favorite thing some days, depending on what he overhears. He’s not expecting much this time. It’s almost noon; the palace is still slightly sleepy and slow.

            But then he hears some familiar names, in the queen’s voice. He stops dead, reaching behind him to put a hand on Lance’s chest to keep him from crashing into Keith’s back.

            “Well we can’t have our Prince Shiro marrying the heir of another country, that’s just far too complex legally. What would happen to sovereignty?” she laughs, her high little bell-like laugh. Keith can’t hear the other half of the conversation, whoever it is must be standing at a bad angle. “But if Altea is so very eager for an alliance...what about Keith and that cousin of the princess’s? Oh, what’s his name…”

            Keith’s blood just went cold. He hears Lance go stock still beside him.

            What. The. Fuck.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

            “You didn’t hit Lance with the tennis ball,” is the first thing Allura says once the boys are out of earshot, “What on earth is going on here?”

            Shiro looks down at his feet. Shit, he knew that wouldn’t work. Why did he say anything? But then he remembers the chill in Estelle’s eyes every time he mentions Keith at their regularly-scheduled ‘family dinners’.

            “Keith is doing well at school.”

            “Darling, how did the meeting with that odd little Bavarian man go?”

            “Estelle, I was talking.”

            “Estelle, Takashi was speaking.”

            “Oh but just about that other one and we don’t really need to discuss him, do we? After all he’s not here.”

            “Neither is the representative from Bavaria.”

            “Well yes, but his activities are actually relevant, aren’t they?”

            Shiro had been so glad when Keith was accepted to university in America. Maybe with an ocean in between them his little brother had a chance. He remembers spring break, when he’d flown over to surprise Keith with Broadway tickets – how whole he’d seemed. How bright. He’d only ever had that kind of light in his eyes after a morning of fencing with Thace. Shiro had always assumed it had been the exercise that made Keith grin like that, but maybe it was the utter freedom of being somewhere she wouldn’t follow.

            Shiro shakes his head, returning himself to the here and now. Allura is staring at him, her hands on her hips, head tilted to the side, lips pressed together in a serious line. She’s so beautiful.

            “What do you mean?” When in doubt, play dumb.

            “Don’t play stupid, Prince Shiro, you’re very bad at it.”

            There went that plan. Shiro sighs. “Please, just…accept it. I hit Lance with the tennis ball. It was an accident. I’m very sorry it happened.”

            She throws her hands up in the air with a huff, “Shiro, I cannot understand you! What does it matter if you hit Lance or Keith did? It was an accident and you’ve both been perfectly decent about it! God knows I’ve wanted to hit that boy with a tennis ball a time or two and he’s my cousin!”

            Shiro exhales through his nose, the scar tissue pulling strangely with the flow of air, “Allura.” He doesn’t know how to say this. He doesn’t know how to address the royal disaster their family is. He’s never had to before. Everyone in the palace knows, even the staff. Especially the staff. “My stepmother…the queen…does not like my brother.” Wow, good going, Shiro, start with a MASSIVE UNDERSTATMENT. Maybe he can work his way up to a half-truth if he really tries. “The subject of my mother has always been very…difficult for Estelle. There’s a lot of history there. Anyway, my father adopting Keith after our mother died was…an unprecedented move. Estelle did not approve but my father overruled her. She resented it. She resents my mother for existing, and she would resent me for taking precedence over her own children, except I’m the heir and Keith is a more convenient punching bag.”

            “She doesn’t…” there’s a look of dawning horror on Allura’s face and something is twisting in Shiro’s chest.

            “To my knowledge she has never physically hurt my brother. But words can cut, Allura. And you know how nobility is. You’re either in or out and Estelle has never considered Keith ‘one of us’.”

            The look on Allura’s face is tragic. Shiro almost feels guilty for telling her. He doesn’t want her sympathy sadness. She reaches over and rests gentle fingers on his wrist. “Alright.”

            “What?”

            “You hit Lance with the tennis ball.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes.” And she gives him a tiny, sad smile, “It was very funny.”

            “Was it?” his voice is soft, tired. He’s asking a question but it doesn’t match the words he’s saying.

            “Very.”

            “Okay then.”

            “Okay.”

            They go back to picking up the tennis equipment in silence.

            “You know,” Allura says reflectively, “I can’t quite tell if the boys were trying to hit the balls over the fence or if they’re just very terrible at this.”

            It puts a crack in the tension and Shiro finds himself laughing and laughing and laughing. Laughing more than the joke deserves, really, but once he starts he can’t stop and he’s catching Allura’s eye and she’s giving a little giggle and they’re both cackling; hysterical, out of control and unable to stop for trying. It’s a little mournful and a little wild and a little fun. It feels like being drunk on champagne all alone in the middle of the night. Full of possibility but surrounded by dead ends.

…

            Keith’s pretty sure he’s not breathing but somehow he’s running anyway? So he must be breathing, then. He just can’t feel it past the knot in his chest. He’s dimly aware of Lance behind him, struggling to keep up through the twists and turns of the passage. He’s not thinking about where they’re going, not really, but his feet lead him where he needs to be anyway. They’re clever like that.

            The door creaks softly. Keith thinks absently that he should oil the hinges now that he’s back for the summer. He’s the only person who comes here; it falls on him to keep it in good condition.

            They stagger into the room, soft puffs of dust erupting under their feet. Keith immediately begins to pace, restless as a caged tiger. The canvas drop cloths and easels and various artistic flotsam and jetsam around him stand in silent witness to his disquiet. Watery light creeps in from the high windows, the bubbles and imperfections in the antique glass throwing warp and weft into the summer sunshine.  

            “What the fuck is she thinking?” he snarls into the emptiness, words bouncing and echoing off the stone walls, dancing up toward the ceiling.

            “Um. Where are we?” Lance asks uncertainly.

            “What is this, the seventeenth century?” Keith snaps, “Who even does arranged marriages anymore?”

            “I mean, I’m upset about that whole…thing too, but seriously, where the fuck are we?”

            “That goddamn bitch.”

            “KEITH.”

            “WHAT.”

            “WHERE ARE WE?”

            Keith blinks. He’d almost forgotten about Lance. Shit, why did he bring him here? This isn’t the kind of place you bring other people. As far as he knows the only other people who even come here are he and maybe Shiro. Perhaps Shirogane, if he’s the sentimental sort. Keith doesn’t know him well enough to say yes or no with any certainty.

            “This…” Keith shrugs, suddenly awkward, unsure if he wants a stranger’s eyes on this mausoleum of a place, “this was my mom’s studio when she lived here. She was an artist. Estelle doesn’t know about it.”

            “How?”

            Keith smiles, a little crooked, and it feels bitter and wrong on his face. “She didn’t memorize the palace’s groundplan when she first visited either. It’s part of the old castle. After mom left, Shirogane closed it up and hasn’t opened it since. You can only really get to it by secret passage.”

            “Oh.” They stare at each other for a long moment. “So…this arranged marriage bullshit.”

            Keith growls under his breath and goes back to pacing. “I can’t believe her. What’s her fucking endgame here? This is idiotic.”

            “Well yeah, that’s pretty obvious, but…like, it can’t actually happen?” Lance laughs awkwardly. His arms are crossed defensively over his chest, his shoulders hunched, awkward. “I mean...it’s dumb, right?”

            “Yeah. But this is my evil stepmother we’re talking about.”

            “But she can’t actually force us to get married! I mean, we’re basically children! There has to be a law about that.”

            Keith shrugs. “When you’re royalty laws aren’t really a thing the same way they are for normal people.” He should know, he reminds himself bitterly.

            “That’s…that’s…” Lance looks pale, like he might pass out as the enormity of Estelle’s machinations hits him. “Really fucked-up.”

            “Yeah.” There’s not much else to be said.

            Lance drops heavily onto a stool, arms falling out of their stubborn folded posture, shoulders slumping even further. “What are we going to do?”

            “I don’t know.”

            Keith doesn’t.

…

            Shiro doesn’t get concerned until he doesn’t see Keith at lunch. It’s another state function, but a casual one, the royal version of a picnic on the lawn. So of course there’s croquet and tiny sandwiches. Shiro sometimes wonders if Estelle watches BBC period dramas when she’s planning her events.

            Shiro wouldn’t have missed Keith at all if it weren’t for Mirelle. He hadn’t seen his brother when he returned to his rooms to change after the game, but that wasn’t unexpected – Keith’s rooms were on the other side of the palace from his. His little brother’s dedicated mapping of the royal residence’s secret passages is responsible for this morning’s wakeup call. And, as per usual, Estelle’s seating chart had Keith far away from the ‘family’ table. He’d just assumed his brother had skulked off to take his tiny sandwiches apart in piece (the only sandwich Keith would bother with was peanut butter and jelly and only if he was in a very accommodating mood).

            But then Mirelle had stopped by the table with a pitcher of lemonade, presumably to refill their glasses. When she’d leaned over she’d muttered in his ear, “Your brother’s not here. You might want to find him later.”

            He’d looked up, hoping for a deeper explanation, but she’d given a microscopic shake of her head and moved on to the diner immediately to his right.

            Mirelle had been part of the palace staff since before Shiro could remember. She’d been hired to be his mother’s lady-in-waiting but his mom, not comfortable having servants, had treated her more like a friend than anything else. They’d sent each other letters back and forth even after the divorce. They were best friends until the day Diana Kogane died. (Shiro barely remembers his mother, just the scent of paint and lavender shampoo and an overwhelming sensation of being warm and safe and loved.) When Keith came to the palace she was the only person he even came close to ‘knowing’. He’d latched onto her and Thace of all people. His attachment to the staff hadn’t done much to endear him to class-conscious Estelle but that was a lost cause from day one. If Estelle could harden her heart to adorable, gap-toothed seven-year-old Keith she was never going to love him.

            Shiro hated thinking that.

            He glanced over at his stepmother, who was chattering away at Allura, the princess looking progressively more uncomfortable (unlike the night before, she was now seated across the table from Shiro, out of comfortable or polite conversational distance). Estelle looked picture-perfect as usual, her hair swept into a deceptively simple updo, a pale pink confection of a hat perched on the artificial curls. The king’s seat beside her was empty, Shirogane circulated amongst the guests, shaking hands and making polite conversation far away from his wife. Her children picked at their sandwiches demurely, looking more like living dolls than actual people. It baffled Shiro how he could share the same percentage of DNA with Andrew and Anika as he did Keith and yet have so little in common. Yes, there was the age gap but there was something else there too. Something greater pushing them apart.

            Maybe he was just thinking too much.

            He did that sometimes. Grew introspective, drew away at inopportune times. It had started after the mountain, after the plane crash. He’d just go silent in the middle of a conversation, staring off into the distance as whoever he was speaking to’s words just…faded out, drowned out by the howl of wind and the sinister shush-shush-shush of swirling snow.

            He’d spent a lot of time with Keith after the mountain. His brother just wouldn’t leave him alone.

            “And Lafayette named his first son Georges Washington…”

            “Keith, fuck off.”

            “He was a real big fan of America.”

            “Keith, get lost.”

            “Did you know they arrested Madame Tussaund during the French Revolution?”

            “Keith. Leave.”

            “I mean, they arrested pretty much everyone during the French Revolution so it’s not all that surprising…did you know you could sell your teeth and hair to the wax museum for easy money?”

            “Keith…why are you here?”

            “I’m not leaving you alone.”

            “Keith, I’m fine.”

            “No, you’re not.”

            “Yes. I am.”

            “You have screaming nightmares, Shiro. Anastasia told me.”

            “It’s none of your business.”

            “It is my business if your nurse says you keep having flashbacks and you won’t take your goddamned meds!”

            “I’m FINE.”

            “NO YOU’RE NOT.”

            “…Why, Keith? Why didn’t you just…leave it? Leave me there. It’s not like the kingdom wouldn’t have survived without me. Andrew can have the throne; they don’t need me. Andrew can be the heir; Anika can be the spare. Maybe that’ll make Estelle happy enough she leaves you alone.”

            “Ever think I might want my brother around, jackass? Ever think I might actually care about you?”

            “You don’t need me, Keith.”

            “No, but I want you around. That’s better than needing you, isn’t it? Wanting you around?”

            “…yeah. Yeah, it is.”

            “Now shut up so I can tell you about the history of the guillotine.”

            “Joy. Maybe you’ll bore me to sleep.”

            “That’s the idea.”

            Keith kept him sane. He’s pretty sure his brother has some twisted idea that he owes Shiro for something, but the truth is Shiro owes him, owes him so much.

            Now where the hell is he? Despite he rampant hatred of most food, Keith wasn’t really the type to skip meals. Confined to his seat for the remainder of the event, Shiro nibbles on his tiny sandwiches and stews. Where is that kid?

…

            Allura glances around as the lunch crowd disperses to various loosely scheduled afternoon activities. How odd. She doesn’t spot Lance anywhere.

            Across the table Shiro’s brow wears a pensive line as he scans the tables, presumably looking for his own missing kin. Their eyes meet as his head rotates around and they exchange equally fretful looks. Lance couldn’t possibly have actually broken his nose on that tennis ball? Or fractured a cheekbone, could he? That seems so…extreme. There was no way…was there? She presses her lips together and walks Shiro’s side. “I don’t see Lance, you don’t think…”

            “What? That his face…? No, definitely not.” But the prince still looks pensive. “I don’t see Keith.”

            “Maybe they bonded?”

            Shiro snorts softly, “Unlikely. Keith’s not really a people person.”

            Allura hums thoughtfully. “Lance is a darling, but not particularly endearing at first meeting. He’s rather…awkward. It’s part of his charm, I swear.”

            Shiro chuckles tensely, “I can see that.” He glances around again, “I’m going to talk to someone, see if I can at least track down Keith. She might be able to help with the Lance problem.”

            Allura follows his line of sight over to a small woman with curling coppery hair, who is speaking to a tall, severe looking man with thick, grey-streaked dark hair and an oddly debonair goatee.

            “Thace, Mirelle,” Shiro begins – he must know these people, “Have you seen Keith?”

            “My idiot apprentice stopped by my office with a profusely bleeding friend,” man man, (Thace, maybe?) says dryly, “Not how I would have preferred our reunion to have gone, but rather in-character, I must say.”

            Who is this guy?

            “I haven’t seen Keith all day,” the woman, presumably Mirelle, says seriously, “But I have something to tell you, your highness.”

            Allura wonders if it’s a sing of the queen’s influence that Keith isn’t a ‘highness’ or if it’s just a symptom of his relationship with these people.

            “Ah, that ‘profusely bleeding’ friend?” she asks, “Any chance it was my cousin? Lance, a little shorter than me,” Allura holds up her hand at approximately Lance-height, “brown hair, slightly paler than me?”

            “The skinny talkative one?” Maybe-Thace sounds amused, “Yes. He will have some very impressive black eyes but other than that is perfectly fine.”

            Allura lets out a sigh of relief, but it’s only a temporary reprieve as she realizes that if Lance isn’t receiving medical attention he’s still missing. She isn’t sure if she should be worried or irritated with him for skipping out on an important function.

            “Yes, yes, that’s not important,” Probably-Mirelle says impatiently, “Your stepmother is plotting something and it’ll get ugly quick if you don’t head it off, your highness.” Her eyes flash furiously as she speaks and her little fists clench at her sides.

            “Oh god, what’s Estelle doing?” Shiro groans.

            “Perhaps this is a conversation for inside,” Thace observes, “Shall we adjourn to my office?”

            “Yes, and you’d better call up Ulaz,” Mirelle says darkly.

            “Won’t you be in trouble for leaving?” Allura asks.

            Mirelle snorts, “I wasn’t even supposed to work this luncheon. Her Majesty just doesn’t pay attention to who’s pouring her drinks.”

            And with that she’s whirling away and they’re left to follow in her wake; Thace already fiddling with a phone; presumably calling up the mysterious Ulaz. Allura’s head is spinning. She doesn’t know what to make of this and she’s suddenly wishing she had Lance at her side.

…

            Keith has finally stopped pacing, thank god. Lance isn’t sure he could have watched that much longer without getting dizzy. Or dizzier. He’s feeling a little light-headed. They’re both sitting against a wall now, the windows stretching up to the sky behind their heads. Keith’s hands are twitching and Lance half expects him to snap and throw the phone cradled in his palms across the room for no reason other than he feels helpless and furious.

            Lance thinks back to that morning, that brilliant millisecond-smile on Keith’s face right before the tennis ball hit Lance.

            Well that’s gone now.

            “Did you know Bloody Mary was technically married to King Phillip of Spain?”

            “What?”

            Keith’s staring straight ahead. “Queen Mary – daughter of King Henry the Eighth, famous for killing a bunch of Protestants. Technically married to Phillip of Spain. He didn’t visit much, didn’t really like her, but she was supposedly in love with him or something. After she died he tried to convince her sister Elizabeth the first to marry him but she said fuck no and he didn’t take that well.”

            “Really.”

            “Spanish Armanda-level ‘not well’.”

            “Well whaddya know.”

            Keith shakes his head, “Of course that’s a way oversimplified version of events and there are definitely other factors there but…yeah.”

            “Okay then.”

            “Royal relationships are fucked up.”

            Lance shrugs. “Allura’s parents were pretty happy. I think. Before her mom died.”

            “Huh. She and I can start a really depressing club.”

            Lance blinks, “Wait, was that another joke?” He can’t really tell if Keith’s trying for dark humor or not.

            Keith gives him a blank stare. “I do make them sometimes.”

            “You’re kind of weird, you know that?”

            Keith nods, “I’m very aware.”

            Lance nods back, awkward and suddenly aware of how close they are, “I mean, I’m weird too, but like normal-weird.”

            Keith stares at him really intensely. “What does that even mean?”

            “Like, way too invested in social media and really vulnerable to infomercials after midnight weird.”

            “And you think that’s normal?”

            “No, but like, a normal type of weird.”

            Keith stares at him like he’s from another planet.

            Lance shrugs, tries to act casual, fails magnificently. “I bought a Bedazzler at like four am once.”

            Keith blinks, “What did you do with it?”

            “Bedazzled the shit out of everything I owned, mostly.”

            Keith pauses, processing, then nods. “Seems legit.”

            A brief pause as they both stare at the wall. A series of canvases ranging in size from average-hardback-book to giant-fucking-mini-mural lean against the wall, all covered with tarps. Lance wonders what’s on them, if anything, if Keith’s mom left any unfinished. He wonders if Keith’s ever contributed to the pile.

            Mentally, he composes a postcard to Hunk.

            To Hunk, human cinnamon roll and legit light of my life, my very best bro in all the land,

            I am an idiot. ACTUALLY, NO, THIS ONE’S NOT MY FAULT. Apparently Prince Keith of Voltra’s stepmother is actually evil, he’s actually low-key real life Cinderella except already in the palace, and said evil step-bitch wants to get rid of him…by marrying him off to me. Which is realllllllly dumb. For lots of reasons.

            Hope everything’s good with you,

            Lance

            He shakes his head and cuts off the daydream. He probably shouldn’t send news like that via postcard. Hell, he doesn’t know what the etiquette here is. Maybe a postcard is the right way to go about things.

            “What are you thinking about?” Keith’s voice cuts in before Lance can follow that mental rabbit trail any further.

            “How to explain what’s going on to my best friend. I’m thinking really tacky tourist postcard. Dazzle him with glitter and cliché photos and hope he doesn’t notice the part about your evil stepmother trying to get rid of you via arranged marriage.”

            Keith nods like this makes sense somehow. “Me too.”

            Lance twists his head around to stare at him, “Really?” He’s half expecting Keith to snort and go ‘uh, no way?’ because really, what are the odds?

            Keith instead tips his head to the side contemplatively. His hair drifts over his eyes in a way that is neither attractive nor distracting, shut up internal monologue, Lance. “I was thinking popup picture book. Yeah, it would take more effort but ultimately I figure Pidge would appreciate the gesture.”

            “Are you serious right now?”

            “Yes?” Keith certainly looks serious, “I mean, not really, I can’t draw people for shit, but I was thinking about it…you know, hypothetically.”

            Lance chokes on a laugh and then he’s all-out giggling and it’s really unattractive, okay? Lance is very aware that he does not have a cute laugh, but Keith’s eyes are crinkling at the corners like he’s smiling and then he’s laughing too and they’re laughing together like hyenas and there might be some stress-tears mixed in and they’re leaning on each other and snickering and cackling and it’s not good but it’s something.

…

            “What’s going on?” Ulaz looks tired and like he’s maybe hiding in a broom closet, “I’m in the middle of a conference.”

            “Yes, this is more important,” Thace informs him brusquely.

            “We’re discussing global health crises.”

            “Yes, well, we’re discussing Keith’s future.”

            “Hi Ulaz!” Prince Shiro leans around Thace’s shoulder to wave at the man on the screen. Ulaz waves tiredly back.

            “Hello your highness. What was that about my child?”

            Thace sniffs, “He is more my child than yours.”

            “You routinely fight him. I nurture his intellect.”

            “Can you two squabble over who’s mom and who’s dad later?” Shiro interjects, “I kind of want to know what’s going on with my brother.”

            “Yes, and why am I here?” Allura adds.

            “If you would all stop talking, I could explain,” Mirelle points out testily. They all shut up. “Thank you,” she sighs and suddenly looks as tired as Ulaz, “I overheard the queen speaking with someone from Altea’s foreign delegation. Someone important. And they were very interested in an alliance. Someone mentioned how much time your highnesses have been spending together.”

            “I’ve been here twenty-four hours!” Allura protests.

            “Gossip has a tendency to travel, your highness,” Ulaz says gently as Thace and Mirelle nod.

            “Yes,” she agrees, “And her majesty was very adamant that as heirs to your own thrones a relationship is impossible.”

            Shiro sighs but it sounds like a growl, “Her majesty needs to stay out of other people’s lives.”

            “It gets worse,” Mirelle says grimly, “She’s still pushing for an arranged marriage, but she wants it to be Keith and her highness’s cousin,” Mirelle pauses, searching for a name.

            “Lance,” Allura says softly.

            Dead silence falls, only to be interrupted by Ulaz’s measured tone, “I have to admit, that is simultaneously the single most progressive yet anachronistic thing that bitch has ever done.”

…

            Keith’s phone shocks them out of their laughter fit by ringing (It’s Pidge’s assigned ringtone, the opening bars of Cake’s ‘Short Skirt, Long Jacket’. Keith has so few contacts that they’ve all got their own ringtones, Ulaz’s is the Bill Nye the Science Guy theme song). They both stare at it, unblinking for several long moments before Keith shakes himself out of his stupor and answers the damn thing.

            “Pidge?”

            “WHAT THE FUCK, SPACE CADET.”

            “Hello dear friend, how dost thou fair this fine day?”

            “I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR SHAKESPEAREAN BULLSHIT, KEITH.”

            “I see you did not take your regularly scheduled chill pill this morning.”

            He can hear her drag in a breath, collecting herself on the other end of the line, “So. Our mutual friend Ulaz – ”

            “He was my friend first – ”

            “Wrong, he was the Martha to your George Washing-dad.”

            “What?” Sometimes Keith can’t follow Pidge’s leaps of logic because she’s a genius and a prodigy and builds robots in the sketchy basement of their dorm for fun. Other times it’s just because she’s mildly insane.

            “Thace is your George Washington, i.e. your George Washing-dad, i.e. you over-identify with Hamilton, you nerd. I’m okay with this because it makes me Hercules Mulligan or Lafayette, both of which are pretty cool dudes.”

            Lance, who apparently can hear all of this because iPhones’ speakers are unexpectedly powerful, snickers on his other side. Keith elbows him in the chest. Lance sticks his tongue out at him. It’s very juvenile.

            “Yeah, but how is Ulaz Martha - ? You know what, never mind. What did Ulaz tell you?”

            “That your fucking evil stepmother is trying to marry you off.”

            “Well that is…accurate to the best of our knowledge. Wait, how did Ulaz find out?”

            “Mirelle overheard a thing and told Thace, who told Ulaz.”

            A pause as Keith considers this, “I worry about how information spreads in this place…”

            “So is it true?”

            “Yeah, it’s true,” Lance yells over Keith’s shoulder, into the phone, despite Keith’s best efforts to push him away, “Hi, person I’ve never met but has a super cool assigned ringtone!”

            “Hey, what is it? Keith won’t tell me and he’s too quick for me to steal his phone!”

            “Short Skirt, Long Jacket!”

            “Fuck yeah!”

            “Aaaaand now I’m changing it to Mitch Benn’s Ikea Song,” Keith says, still trying to shove Lance away, he’s like a puppy. “I really want my phone to scream IKEAAAAAA every time you call.”

            “Hey, I’m down with that,” she says. He can imagine her shrugging. “Anyway, who’s the new guy? Don’t tell me you’ve been making other friends without me.”

            “Never,” Keith says flatly, “No one else could stand us. No, that’s Lance. My stepmom wants me to marry him.”

            “At least she supports marriage equality.”

            “And medieval arranged marriages.”

            “It’s admittedly a weird combo.”

            “Anyway, nothing’s definite,” Keith explains, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, “We kind of overheard her talking to one of the higher-ups from the Altean delegation and I freaked out and now we’re hiding from the world in my mom’s old studio.”

            “Congrats, Keith, it sounds like you’re finally learning how to deal with your problems like an adult,” Pidge says sarcastically.

            “Hey, I didn’t challenge her to a duel, so there’s that.”

            “Very true.”

            Lance is staring at him. “You challenged someone to a duel?” then, to Pidge, “He challenged someone to a duel? Also, hi, I’m Lance, I have no idea who you are.”

            “I’m Pidge, literally the greatest person you will ever meet.”

            “Um, you can fight my best friend Hunk for that title.”

            “Awesome, arm wrestling at dawn. Keith can be my second. Anyway, I’m Keith’s best friend. For the record, my bff is a prince and I have still not gotten my lousy t-shirt.”

            “Way to spoil your birthday surprise,” Keith says dryly.

            “Whatever, Cinderella. And yeah, he totally challenged someone to a duel. Fencing foils on the quad. They were on academic probation for a month but it was worth it to see Keith kick this smug jerk’s ass.”

            Lance whistles. Keith tries not to feel all warm inside at the thought that someone’s impressed with him.

            “Why did you call, Pidge? Just to yell about how much Estelle sucks?”

            “No, I’m giving you notice.”

            Keith’s not sure what he’s feeling. It might be dread. “Notice of what?”

            “Ulaz and I are flying to Voltra. Oh and Matt’s coming too. We’re gonna make this bitch regret meddling.”

            Keith buries his face in his hands. “You really don’t have to do that.”

            “Too late.”

            “That’s what I thought.”

           “You have really cool friends,” Lance observes into the conversational lull that produces.

            Keith punches him in the shoulder. But lightly. He still feels bad about the black eye.

…

            “I’m going to call my father,” Allura sighs, “This is absurd.”

            “I’m going to find my brother,” Shiro says, rubbing at his temples tiredly.

            “Ulaz has informed Keith’s small friend Pidge of her majesty’s intentions. They are acquiring plane tickets,” Thace reports, not looking up from his text messages.

            “I’m going to make some jello,” Mirelle announces, “Once you’ve collected your strays, meet me in the small kitchen. I’ll have snacks.”

            “Make sure it’s green jello,” Shiro says absently, “I don’t know if Keith’s going to be willing to eat anything else with the way this day’s going.”

            Mirelle huffs, “Of course, I know our boy.”

            “Ulaz, you do not need to fly first class, you delicate flower. We survived a war, you can rough it in coach,” Thace snaps under his breath, jabbing his fingers into his phone’s touch screen irritably.

            “And break?” Allura suggests, “Like in sports?”

            Shiro nods, already feeling weary, “Go team.”

…

            “But my father – ”

            “Your father is unavailable, you highness.”

            “This is really very urgent.”

            “Are we at war, your highness?”

            “No.”

            “Are we under threat of invasion?”

            “No.”

            “Any terrorist activity I should know about?”

            “No, but - !”

            “Then it’s really not that urgent, is it Princess Allura? You may try your father again tomorrow, but I cannot guarantee he’ll be available. He’s very busy.”  

            Allura opens her mouth to protest but the line has gone dead.

…

            They had to leave the studio at some point and when Keith got a text from Shiro asking them to join him and the rest of ‘the team’ whatever that was, in the small kitchen Keith took that as a directive to finally lead Lance back to Allura’s suite. Lance stands in his room and tries not to miss Keith’s presence. Things felt a lot more manageable in this topsy-turvy country with the prince by his side.

            So Lance gives up and calls Hunk. Who, being the best friend in the whole entire universe, pick up on the first ring.

            “Lance! Everything okay?”

            “Hey buddy. Uh, so not really… I mean, it could be nothing, but we kind of overheard something…”

…

            Keith changes into jeans and a t-shirt, taking a moment to glance at his mother’s picture where it sits, a polaroid snapshot shoved under the rim of his mirror. She’s grinning, bright as the sun, one arm wrapped around his chest, the other holding up the camera, taking them both in at once. He’s five and missing his front tooth, leaning back against her, sitting in the circle of her folded legs. They’re both splattered with purple paint and in the faded, overexposed shot it almost looks like that’s their real skin color, like the paleness of their arms and legs is peeling back to reveal rich purple and indigo underneath.

            “Purple used to be the color of royalty,” she’d told him once, “Because of all the paints and all the dyes in the whole wide world it was the hardest to make. It’s funny, we value things because we think they’re worth a lot of money, but really they’re only worth as much effort’s put into them. Someone put a lot of time and energy into making something purple so that thing is valuable, when it should have been the person who made it purple in the first place.”

            Keith’s not sure if he really remembers the words, or just the idea of the words. Maybe the purple story is just something he thought up one day and decided it’d be nice if it was his mom telling him. He doesn’t know. But he thinks about the inherent value of purple-ness sometimes.

            “I don’t know what to do, Mom,” he tells her picture, her eyes look gold, her dark hair a blue-black mess. Purple and gold. Riches and royalty. “I’m…I don’t know what to do.”

            She doesn’t answer him. He’s not sure he would have wanted her to anyway. He turns away from the mirror, from the old photo, and walks out the door. He hopes Shiro has some green jello in the kitchen. He’s hungry.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

            Keith is sitting on the counter, a glass serving-dish in his lap, eating a sheet of green jello. He’s made good progress, already about a third of the way through.

            Thace raises an eyebrow at his meal, “That is hardly nutritious.”

            “Fuck off,” Keith mutters around the serving spoon stuck in his mouth.

            Thace whaps him on the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper, “No, bad apprentice.”

            “You had better not be bullying my child,” Ulaz’s tinny voice says from where he’s on speakerphone.

            “Aren’t you on your plane yet?” Thace huffs at him, “Or are you still being prissy about flying coach?”

            “My, aren’t you in a mood.”

            Across the across the kitchen, Allura enters, her phone clutched in her hand, “I still can’t get in contact with my father.”

            Lance is on her heels, one phone at his ear, another in his hand, “No, Hunk, sorry, I don’t have any more details. Fucking fuck – sorry, not you, I’m checking Allura’s email, some tabloid wants to interview her about her ‘romantic rendezvous’ this morning with Prince Shiro. How do they get this information so quickly? And why do they always crop me out of photos? It’s enough to hurt a guy’s feelings.”

            “Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick,” Mirelle chastises Keith, who’s creeping up on halfway through his sheet of jello.

            “I’m hungry.”

            “Then eat something that’s not made of sugar and air,” Thace mutters at him.

            “Did I ask for your opinion?”

            Mirelle huffs, “As delightful as it is to watch the two of you be prickly together, we have other matters to attend to.”

            “My father is in meetings all day,” Shiro announces from the other kitchen door, “They won’t let me into the royal presence without an audience,” he says, and while Shiro is too well-mannered to actually sneer at anything, it’s close.

            “Want some jello?” Keith offers.

            Shiro shakes his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “No, but thank you.”

            “Is that Shiro?” phone-Ulaz asks.

            “No, it’s the clone we created in your absence,” Thace says dryly, “We needed someone to fill the void.”

            “You think you’re funny, but I would be honored if you made a Shiro to replace me.”

            “I can never tell if he’s combating your terrible sense of humor by being extra weird or if the two of you are legitimately unhinged,” Keith says, tapping his jello-spoon contemplatively against his chin.

            “It’s a bit of both.”

            Thace just shrugs.

            “Hello, Ulaz,” Shiro cuts in, “I hear you’re flying over with Matt and Pidge.”

            “Yes, we are at the airport currently. Your American friend says hi. The small angry one says she’s going to kick some ass, name-taking optional.”

            “Hi Pidge!” Keith calls across the kitchen.

            “Your small angry friend says hello.”

            “Tell her pigeons were considered an omen of death in the early modern period!”

            “She is pleased. She literally said ‘this pleases me’. You have disturbing friends.”

            Keith grins and starts back in on the jello.

            “If you throw all that up again in an hour I will not be held responsible,” Mirelle huffs at him. Keith just rolls his eyes and takes an extra-large bite of jello.

            “Alright, shall we convene our war council?” Allura asks.

            “Just a second, ‘Lura. Have to send a scathing email to another tabloid…” Lance says without looking up from his second phone, the first having disappeared to a pocket somewhere.

            “That can wait, Lance.”

            He shoots her a look, “Let me do my job. It’s all I have. And they cropped me out of their ‘scandalous’ photo. I’m offended on principle.”

            “You have a vested interest in being in other people’s scandalous photos?” Keith asks from the counter.

            Lance rolls his eyes, “No, just the ‘scandalous’ ones. You know, the ones with audible air-quotes.”

            Keith blinks, confused.

            “He means mundane snapshots that have been manipulated – cropped, air-brushed, what-have-you, to make them seem like more than they are. There’ve been numerous cases – ” Allura and Lance swap wry looks, “Where perfectly innocent photos of Lance and myself out with a group of people have been cropped to only include myself and some other person so tabloids could suggest I had a…I don’t know…secret paramour or something. It’s all rather ridiculous. And apparently my cousin takes it as a personal affront that he’s never had a ‘scandal’ of his own but keeps getting deleted to make room for mine.”

            “It’s like I’m not important enough to make up lies about!” Lance huffs, “It’s just rude!”

            Keith shakes his head and takes another bite of jello. “I’m really glad no one gives a fuck about me.”

            “Keith,” Shiro says gently, “You know that’s not true.”

            Keith raises an eyebrow, “Not what I meant, but nice to know you care.”

            Shiro gives him a ‘you poor baby, let me hug you’ look and Keith shakes his head, returning once again to his jello. Jello is simple, jello understands him.

            “Please tell me you didn’t just eat a whole pan of jello in one sitting?” Lance asks, suddenly at Keith’s side, eyeing the jello pan.

            “No, I’m not done with it yet.”

            Lance stares at him in mute horror. “You’re going to make yourself so fucking sick.”

            “Thank you!” Mirelle throws her hands in the air at the sink.

            “Hey, you made the next batch,” Keith points out to her, grinning a slightly green-stained grin.

            Mirelle just shakes her head, muttering under her breath in French.

            “Okay, I call this meeting to order,” Allura says authoritatively, slamming her palm onto the table. “What do we know?”

            “Precious little,” Thace drawls.

            “Damn, our plane is boarding. We’ll join you tomorrow morning, then,” Ulaz’s voice tells them before the line goes dead.

            “Useless,” Thace mutters at the device, but his tone is, well, the Thace version of fond.

            Shiro sighs, “As I mentioned, I’m blocked from my father for the rest of the day.”

            “And mine is unavailable at this time,” Allura says with the frustrated air of someone quoting an unpleasant conversation.

            “What about her royal bitchiness?” Lance asks, jerking in surprise when everyone stares at him, “What? I can’t say what everyone is thinking?”

            Now it’s Allura’s turn to sigh, “Lance, some decorum.”

            “No, I’m good with it,” Keith polishes off the last of the jello, “Is there more jello?”

            Mirelle takes the pan away from him with a look. “My sources say she’s really pushing the legal angle.”

            “What legal angle?” Shiro’s head pops up.

            Mirelle’s lips press together, “You know how good she is at finding laws that suit her purposes.”

            Keith snorts and Thace growls.

            “Exactly,” Mirelle shakes her head, setting the jello dish in the sink and running water over it, “According to one interpretation of the law, until children of the royal house turn 21, the age of inheritance, they are technically still subject to the whims of the reigning monarch.”

            “Technically everyone is subject to the whims of the reigning monarch,” Shiro points out, “How is this different?”

            “This is different in that, despite being a legal adult, the reigning monarch still has authority over them as their parent or guardian,” she sighs, “It’s the ultimate loophole.”

            “Shit,” Keith breathes, “Of course.”

            “What?” Allura and Lance both look at him, confused.

            Keith throws up his hands, “I am a moron. The Common Sense Laws.”

            “The what?” The Alteans say in unison.

            “This series of laws on the royal family created, ironically, to prevent some of the more common royal problems. Like the ban on royal participation in international competitive sports. That was to keep heirs to the throne from dying in tournaments and later to keep royals from using their positions to cheat. The legal majority laws were to try to put a leash on the royal kids who’d come of age and then promptly spend the royal coffers dry the minute they got their hands on their money. If they’re legally an adult they can take on responsibility in the royal house but have no real spending authority.”

            “Like a learner’s permit for driving,” Lance clarifies, “But for being an legal adult.”

            “It makes sense in theory and barely has to be used in practice,” Keith explained, “…except now….when it might ruin our lives.”

            “So let me get this straight,” Allura says, “In your country Keith is both an adult and not an adult and somehow this means that he can marry my cousin but not refuse to marry my cousin? There are some serious consent issues implied there!”

            “Actually, age of consent is sixteen,” Shiro clarifies.

            Allura throws up her hands, “This is a madhouse. Were your lawmakers drunk your entire history as a nation?”

            “The legal adulthood laws only apply to royalty,” Keith clarifies.

            “Your life sucks, dude,” Lance says bluntly.

            “I must agree with the princess, does a Parliament seat automatically come with a crippling dose of alcohol and stupidity?” Thace snaps.

            Shiro rubs his temples like he can feel a headache coming on and he doesn’t like it. “If she’s using the law there has to be a loophole that will actually help us.”

            “Has anyone tried talking to this woman?” Allura asks, “At the very least she isn’t stupid. She might listen to some very forcefully applied reason.” The rationality of that sentence is automatically undermined by the way the princess cracks her knuckles as she speaks.

            “Not it,” Keith says.

            “No one is asking you to deal with Estelle, Keith,” Shiro says reassuringly, “Although I may have to talk to her if this turns out to be as serious as we think it is.”

            “Isn’t there a chance we’re overreacting?” Lance asks, “Maybe it was idle speculation? Maybe we misunderstood? Maybe she was just, you know, shooting the shit with someone talking about crazy what-ifs? Like, you know, what if I married off my stepson to some random Altean noble, wouldn’t that be funny? Hahaha, it’ll never happen?”

            “Any legal impediment to them marrying you off?” Keith asks.

            “No, Altea doesn’t have any deranged age-of-majority laws. You turn eighteen you can get as married as you want.”

            “So if worst comes to worst Lance can just say ‘I don’t’,” Allura sighs.

            Keith grimaces, “I’ll set the palace on fire before that becomes an option.”

            “No arson,” Shiro says firmly as Lance squawks, “Arson? Really? Am I that unappealing?”

            Keith shakes his head, “No, not that you’re not… you’re not…unappealing…you’re very…just preemptive arson seems like a better option than letting it get to the altar before we stop it.”

            “No arson of any kind,” Shiro stresses.

            “What I am hearing is that we know nothing, are cut off from our kings and rather hemmed in by legal technicalities,” Thace says, “Not a good tactical position.”

            “No, it’s not,” Mirelle agrees, “There’s not much we can do until Estelle makes a public move other than research obscure Voltran laws and try not to fight amongst ourselves.” She says that last with a pointed look at Keith and Lance.

            They stare at each other silently for a long, heavy moment. …Which is suddenly interrupted by Lance’s phone pinging.

            “Dammit, now another magazine has the picture. Seriously? Why are these people so interested? It’s Shiro and Allura playing tennis. It’s basically ping-pong without the table!”

            That’s enough to shake a chuckle out of the room but they’re all still uneasy.

…

            The state dinner that night is tense, with Keith stranded at the foot of the royal table and Thace exiled to the other side of the room. Lance is at Keith’s elbow though, watching with a kind of sick fascination as the Voltran prince sorts his salad into its component parts.

            The king isn’t at dinner, having to attend to some time-sensitive diplomatic business. This places Shiro at Estelle’s shoulder by order of precedence. They’re stiff beside each other. Shiro has never known what to say to this woman. She seems more machine than flesh in settings like this. The chandelier light reflects sharp little blades of brightness every time she turns her head, refracting piercingly off of her jewels. Her face doesn’t so much glow as shine slightly. Like porcelain or steel. Her smile, framed in bright red lipstick, seemed painted on and almost painful. She’s like a windup doll – she goes through the motions perfectly and looks lovely doing it but there’s very little human about the performance.

            Oddly, the only time she seems real, like an actual person with feelings is when she and Keith are at each other’s throats. It’s a little sick, their relationship, Shiro thinks.

            “Estelle,” he says in an undertone once the salads are whisked away – Keith, Shiro notes, has only had enough time to eat half of his. What are you up to?”

            “Whatever do you mean?” she asks, her voice a carefully modulated scale of gentle, tripping notes. He wonders if she practices it to get it just right.

            “What are you trying to pull with Keith and Alteans?”

            “I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, Prince Shiro.”

            “Too bad. I don’t see how it isn’t my concern.”

            She laughs, a preprogrammed gesture, anything to mask what they’re actually saying to each other. “You should be proud, your mother’s spawn will be given a wonderful opportunity to serve his adoptive country and see new places. Travel. It’s heartwarming, really.”

            “Nothing is heartwarming when prefaced with the word ‘spawn’. Somehow it makes the whole business ugly when you start in on name-calling,” Shiro says evenly, his own fake smile never slipping.

            “Hardly name-calling. More…naming. Correctly identifying a noun with the appropriate label.”

            “How exactly are you going to pull this off, Estelle? This isn’t the middle ages.”

            “Hmm, no. If it was, your mother never would have entered the picture and we wouldn’t be here, would we?” she laughs, another perfectly measured expulsion of sound, “You’d be my son and this ugly little business would never have come to be. The one you call your brother, well he’d be on the other side of the world living in whatever sad little hole the avant-garde call inspirational these days,” she gives him a mean little smile, just as practiced, but microscopically more real, “Viva bohemia.”

            Shiro grits his teeth, “My mother was brilliant.”

            “Your mother is irrelevant. As is that one,” she casts her eyes down the table at Keith, who has given up on liking anything with ‘bisque’ in the name and has just pushed his bowl over to Lance, who has given the prince his bread roll in exchange. “He’s lucky I’ve found a use for him, really.”

            “Estelle,” Shiro is dangerously close to letting his mask slip. The mountain winds whistle morbid death-songs inside him. He feels very cold and helpless.

            “Oh, what was he going to do here for the rest of his life? He’s not built for it; anyone can see that. I don’t understand why you’re fighting this, Takashi.”

            At her casual use of his first name Shiro clenches his fists until the joints creak and swears he won’t flip the table over.

            “He seems to the like the Altean boy well enough, it could be much worse,” she smiles, perfectly poised and ever-so-self-satisfied. “This way everyone wins.”

            But not at much as you do, you bitch, Shiro thinks, not as much as you do.

…

            “You were talking to Estelle,” Keith says after dinner. It’s not a question.

            “Yes,” Shiro says, shoulders slumping.

            “What did she say?” Keith looks very small and young, Shiro thinks. He’s wearing comfortable clothes, sweatpants rolled up to the knee and a t-shirt that’s a little too big for him in the shoulders. Shiro’s pretty sure it’s one of his hand-me-downs.

            Shiro laughs, bitter, “That she’s practically doing you a favor, of course. Her usual manipulative bullshit.   Don’t worry about it.”

            Keith’s lips press together and he nods tightly before turning to walk away.

            “Keith.”

            His brother stops.

            “We’ll work this out. I promise.”

            A moment of silence where Keith just stays in place, considering. “Did you know they banned strikes in London during World War I? The years before war broke out were known as ‘The Great Unrest’; working-class people were demanding unions and pensions and a living wage left and right. See, the government had passed some minor reforms and all those poor people who had never even thought to dream of such things as pensions and health insurance saw a select few being granted these things and they realized that these were things they could have. There were good things that they could want. And unions doubled in size practically overnight, people were agitating, people were furious, a great wave of change shook the British world – and then there was a war…and the nation came first…and strikes were banned and England was taught to hate the Germans because they were the enemy, weren’t they? But once the war was done and the ban on strikes was lifted, do you know what happened?”

            “What?” Shiro asks, oddly captivated by Keith’s steady metronome voice dealing out facts like beats in a song, like drumrolls in an army march.

            “The poor never forgot that they could have good things. They stood up and demanded what should have been theirs. London saw one of the most massive strikes in its history.”

            Shiro has no words.

            Keith nods, looking up and back at him with a small, tired smile on his face, “Goodnight, Shiro.”

            “Goodnight, Keith.”

…

            Lance is scrolling through Allura’s Facebook feed, trying to decide if there’s anything there he should ask her for a reaction for – he’s already hashed out her standard daily ‘away from Altea’ post and they’ve been dropping fluff-tweets throughout the day. Really, he’s just looking for something to do. He feels too rattled to sleep, like someone grabbed his insides and shook them up a bit before dropping them back in place.

            At her dressing table Allura is brushing out her hair in long, even strokes, a pensive little line pinching her brows.

            “You shouldn’t frown, you’ll give yourself wrinkles,” he offers from where he’s sprawled on her couch, but it’s half-hearted advice.

            She flicks a glance at him in the mirror, “I’ll frown as much as I please. I don’t have to be beautiful to be a good leader.”

            “Your poor skin, though,” he pouts at her, “Do you want half my packet of face-mask goop? There’s always too much in these travel packs anyway. It’ll just go to waste.”

            “Oh, love, you spoil me,” she chuckles, setting down her brush and turning to face him. “What would I do without you?”

            “Put a lot more drunken feminist rants on tumblr and fight a lot more world leaders on twitter, probably.”

            She laughs, “Oh, it’s not just world leaders. I’m willing and able to fight all ignorant assholes.”

            “I’m just saying we live in a very strange world when I’m your voice of reason. I’m…oh, what did that one guy call me…the self-important American guy…”

            “All Americans are self-important.”

            “Hey, no profiling. Rude. Anyway, that one dude; what did he call me? A ‘spastic clown with the IQ of a wet pool noodle’? I don’t know why the ‘wet’ part of ‘wet pool noodle’ was important? It just kind of made the whole insult seem kind of inappropriate.”

            Allura gives him a small smile, “But we got him in the end.”

            Lance grins, “Well yeah, I covered his car in glitter and turned him into a meme. You don’t mess with the gods of social media. They will have their vengeance.”

            Allura chuckles, “His reaction was rather entertaining.”

            “Uh, excuse you, very entertaining. Those memes still crop up on my dash every now and then. It’s like I’m a god and pop culture is paying me tribute…”

            Allura shoves him lightly, “You are ridiculous.”

            “Ridiculously awesome – ” Lance pauses, mid-self-congratulatory sentence, “Wait…Allura…that’s an idea.”

            “What’s an idea?”

            “The idea I have. It’s an idea!”

            She raises both eyebrows as if to say, ‘yes, yes, get on with it’.

            He grabs her upper arms and shakes, “Social media.”

            “Lance, love, I think your idea needs more words.”

            “No, this is brilliant.”

            “I’m so very glad you’re having this moment, but could you please use more words in your thoughts?”

            “Allura, we all agree this arranged marriage bullshit is dumb, right? Guess who else will agree with us? All your followers. The minute this bitch goes public we start a counterattack she won’t see coming.”

            A bright smile suffuses Allura’s face, “That is brilliant.”

            “Oh, I know.”

            She smacks him on the arm, “You’re insufferable.”

…

            Lance can’t wait to tell Keith his brilliant plan. He actually gets up early (the horror) with the express purpose of sharing this excellent news. But Keith isn’t at breakfast and no one seems to know where he is. Unaccountably disappointed, Lance turns to retreat back to the Altean suite when he almost runs into Mirelle on his way out of the dining hall.

            “Mirelle!”

            “Good morning,” she raises an eyebrow at his attempts to course-correct.

            “Good? This morning is radiant, just like your lovely self,” he gives her a cheesy grin that eases into a real smile when she laughs.

            “You’re funny.”

            “I try, I try. Hey, have you seen Keith?”

            She shakes her head, “No, but you might want to try the gymnasium. Thace has been on him about training.”

            “Oh, okay.” Training for what? Lance doesn’t ask, just kind of bobs his head gratefully before darting off in search of the wayward prince.

…

            “You’re out of practice,” Thace says conversationally against the sharp clatter of foils.

            “Not much competition at school,” Keith replies, batting away his mentor’s blade with a flick of the wrist, “I tried teaching Pidge but she got bored.”

            “To fence properly requires an great deal of patience,” Thace retreats, then counterattacks elegantly, “And a great tolerance for the tedious.”

            Keith presses his brief advantage and darts forward, “Not to mention the lunges.”

            “Hmm, indeed,” Thace parries neatly, “Your brother never could appreciate fencing.”

            “Which one?” Keith asks dryly.

            Thace gives him a droll look, “Did someone wake up bitter?”

            “No,” Keith says sullenly, then winces at the sting of Thace landing a hit.

            “Of course you did, your guard is sloppy.”

            “Then why did you ask?” Keith demands, leaping forward with a flurry of sharp, aggressive strikes, “If you already knew the answer, why bother?”

            “I like to make conversation. I’m a very sociable person,” Thace says flatly, slapping Keith’s blade aside and going on the attack.

            “Ha. Funny,” Keith defends against the barrage of strikes, “I assume you were talking about Shiro?”

            “Of course, you know I don’t have any patience for the younger ones.”

            “You might change your mind when they get older,” Keith suggests, ignoring how the thought of having to share his mentor with Andrew and Anika of all people makes his gut twist.  

            “I doubt it,” Thace says flatly, snapping his foil to the side to catch Keith’s, “They lack your and Shiro’s…verve.”

            “That sounds really creepy.”

            “You’re easily disturbed.”

            “And you’re really weird.”

            “I accept this,” Thace feints, but Keith doesn’t fall for it, instead taking the opportunity to score a hit of his own.

            “You’re telegraphing your moves, old man.”

            “Perhaps I’m going easy on you.”

            Keith snorts and presses his advantage, only to be rebuffed easily, Thace apparently taking his taunt as a challenge.

…

            Lance pauses in the entryway to the gymnasium and just…watches. It’s captivating, watching Keith and Thace move. They’re not wearing protective gear, which Lance hears is a big no in fencing (at least he’d always been yelled at when he didn’t put his on right in high school gym class). But they’re moving so quickly he can’t imagine they need it. They fence like a conversation, like an exchange of words, each strike a pressing of a point, each feint a suggestion melting away into nothingness, each parry a response. They’re talking too, although Lance can’t hear the words over the clash of steel on steel, their voices too low, their bodies too far away.

            It’s…beautiful, really.

            He can’t stop watching Keith, the way he moves, the speed, the decisive power. Lance always thought that for sword fighting, fencing was pretty boring, just a couple people shuffling along an imaginary line. But that wasn’t this fencing.

            It doesn’t hurt (or help, Lance is seriously distracted here) that Keith himself is objectively gorgeous. Lance has heard all the clichés ‘force of nature’, ‘like fire’, ‘lighting-fast’, and for the most part they’re pretty dumb.

            But then there’s Keith over there, flickering muscle and tendon and bone and steel, backlit by morning sun leaking in through the gym’s high windows.

            It’s…it’s absolutely stunning.

            Lance can’t bring himself to interrupt and frankly he can’t remember what he came here to say anyway, so he slips away, unnoticed, the image of Keith outlined in gold, red shirt clinging, turning him into a living flame, seared into his retinas.

            Lance has the oddest feeling that he didn’t just see Prince Keith of Voltra he saw…something else. Someone else. Just…Keith.

            He feels like an intruder.

            He wants to see Keith like that again.

            Just Keith.

…

            Keith feels more settled after the bout with Thace. Fighting clears his head, gives him the kind of clarity and razor focus he has such a hard time finding in real life. Nothing can touch him when he has a sword in hand.

            They finish just in time to get cleaned up to go meet Pidge, Matt, and Ulaz at the airport. Somehow it turns into a group excursion, Shiro and, surprisingly, Lance tagging along. Allura is forced to remain at the palace out of diplomatic obligation, Mirelle out of contractual obligation, and Thace does not deign to come, waiting for Ulaz to come to him. (They do this every time one of them goes abroad, pretending not to be bothered with the other’s return, it’s part of the bizarre chess match that is their relationship, if one can call it that – there are betting pools going twenty years back on the subject of Thace and Ulaz’s ambiguous association, at this point Keith privately thinks they’re refusing to confirm or deny anything because the whole thing amuses them too much).

            Shiro insists on driving, ostensibly because he doesn’t want to make anyone take time out of their day to ferry around unannounced guests, but actually because he loves driving and does it himself as much and at as high speeds as possible.

            Keith would be content to ride in silence, but Lance fills the air with chatter and it…is surprisingly not intolerable. It’s kind of nice, actually. Keith plugs in enough to know what’s being discussed but lets Shiro take the brunt of the conversation, still quietly riding the high leftover from the match. God, he missed fencing at school. There’s a purely recreational club on campus, but Keith trounced them all within a week and was promptly bored with the experience. He returned every few weeks to coach them along a bit, but none of them ever came anywhere near beating him or even properly challenging him. It’s not arrogance if it’s true and said without cruel or boastful intent, he reminds himself, as Shiro trained him to do whenever he felt uncomfortable complimenting himself.

            He feels a little ridiculous doing it or thinking it, but whatever.

            They arrive at the airport with a minimum of fuss and bother and then they’re out of the car and on the curb (Shiro staying safely inside the vehicle where there were tinted windows to protect him from curious citizenry) and Pidge was suddenly there, right in front of Keith, and flinging herself at him in a messy tackle-hug. (It’s more hug than tackle, Pidge doesn’t really weigh enough to knock him over).

            And then there’s Ulaz, shouldering his way through the crowd. He towers over the crowd, tall and spare and slightly stoop-shouldered from years of academia, despite remaining quite fit for his age. Sunlight bounces off his shaved head and his bronze skin is slightly flushed with the exertion of hauling both his suitcases. Matt trails behind him, his hair a clump of brownish-blond dandelion fluff just like his sister, who has basically latched onto Keith like a koala and is refusing to let go.

            “I leave you alone for two days and you’ve gotten yourself into a disaster,” she complains, “You are a trainwreck of a human being, Keith Kogane.”

            “Nice to see you too, Pidge. Hi Matt,” he nods in Pidge’s companions’ direction, “Ulaz. Sorry for…the situation.”

            “Never apologize for others’ stupidity,” Ulaz advises, then pauses, thoughtful, “Unless you are complicit in the stupidity. Then I suppose it is also your stupidity.”

            “Hey, where’s Shiro?” Matt asks, a giant yawn cracking the sentence in half, “Sorry, long flight.”

            “In the car, hiding like a diva.”

            “If I ask him for his autograph, will his head explode?” Pidge asks, “Legitimate question here.”

            “Uh? Maybe not? Probably not? Why do you need my brother’s autograph?”

            “To sell replicas of his signature on random stuff for lots of money on Ebay,” Pidge says, unrepentant.

            “Oh my god, that totally works,” Lance interjects, “We did that with a bunch of random stuff and Allura’s signature a few years ago and sold it for a bunch of money. Now we do a charity online autograph auction every year.”

            Pidge laughs, “Cool. Except all my illicit gains are going straight to me. College tuition is killing my soul.”

            Keith hums sympathetically. Technically the crown is paying his tuition, although he’s sure Estelle tried to fight that on some level or other. Hey, a slightly hysterical voice in his head suggests, if you end up stuck marrying Lance maybe the Altean crown will pay for the rest of your college tuition. Keith promptly tells that voice to shut the fuck up.

            “I like you,” Lance apparently decides, “I’m Lance.”

            “Hi, Lance, I’m Pidge,” she sticks her hand out and shakes his while still refusing to relinquish the hold she has on Keith with her remaining limbs. “So I hear the evil stepmother wants to marry you off to my best friend. Raw deal, dude. He’s kind of defective.”

            “I will drop you,” Keith growls at her.

            She pats his head patronizingly.

            “No bullying Keith,” Ulaz chastises laconically from where he and Matt are loading their luggage into the trunk.

            “So,” Pidge drops down, both feet planted firmly on the sidewalk now, and crosses her arms, “I think the real question we’re avoiding here is have you expanded your iTunes library to music not by the X Ambassadors or from the Hamilton soundtrack since I last saw you? Because I expect some tunes on this drive back to your ridiculous palace-house.”

            “I have music that isn’t by the X Ambassadors,” Keith huffs indignantly.

            “Yeah, it’s from the Hamilton soundtrack,” she shoots a look at Lance, “Never put his iPod on shuffle; that was the most emotional whiplash I have ever sustained, ever.”

            Keith glowers at her.

            “Oh, and there’s the emo playlist, but I figured you wouldn’t want everyone to know about that.”

            “Why are we friends?” Keith groans.

            “Because I only judge you lightly for having every single Paramore album and knowing all the lyrics to ‘Teenagers’ and ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’.”

            “Just get in the car,” Keith sighs.

…

            The drive back is lively, Lance even more talkative than before. It’s like he becomes…brighter somehow when surrounded by people to entertain and to listen to. His hands flicker through the air with each point he makes, illustrating his words, framing his stories with his long, brown fingers. It’s sort of hypnotic. Keith can’t really interject, he doesn’t have anything to say, anything that comes to mind is dull or awkward or another fact about history no one ever wanted to know (did you know food adulteration was a serious problem in Victorian England – they used to add sawdust to regular flour and chalk to white flour to make it look like there was more in the bag than there actually was…and this is why Keith can’t do small talk). So he just watches Lance’s hands dance and his eyes shine and his voice slide up and down the verbal scale.

It’s captivating.

            Keith might have a problem.

            His phone buzzes and he pulls it out only to see a text from Pidge. He shoots her a frown but she just raises her eyebrows emphatically.

To: Princess Keith

Wtf you doin’

?

To: The Pigeon Cure

????

To: Princess Keith

You know that T.Swift song?

‘Blank Space’

I can hear that

Playing subtly in the background

As you gaze longingly at

The guy your stepmother from hell

Wants you to marry

To: The Pigeon Cure

????????

To: Princess Keith

“It’s gonna be forever

Or it’s gonna go down in flames” ?

That’s you

Right now

To: The Pigeon Cure

I’m fine

It’s fine

It’s under control

And fine

To: Princess Keith

Please tell me you don’t actually

Have a crush on your kinda-fiancée?

Because I really don’t want to see

Heartbroken Keith

I want you to be happy

you’re making it very difficult for yourself

To: The Pigeon Cure

I know what I’m doing

To: Princess Keith

Do you????
I’M VERY CONCERNED

DO YOU KNOW

HOW MUCH STRAIN

ALL THESE FEELINGS

ARE PUTTING ON MY TINY BODY?

To: The Pigeon Cure

I like how we don’t do real feelings-talks

We just kind of yell at each other

To: Princess Keith

What are best friends for?

To: The Pigeon Cure
I’m glad you’re here

To: Princess Keith

What, you thought I was kidding?

I’m always here when you need me

To fight stuff

I’m good at fighting stuff

Feelings are difficult

To: The Pigeon Cure

You’re better than you think.

.

.

.

AND I DON’T HAVE A CRUSH ON LANCE

To: Princess Keith

Ok

Enjoy your totally-platonic ogling then

To: The Pigeon Cure

Ugh

Touching moment OVER

…

            They arrive at the palace with a minimum of fanfare. Meaning absolutely no fanfare, despite fanfare actually being a literal possibility here. They unload the car, Ulaz passing his suitcases off to a footman and drifting away saying “I suppose I should track down Thace,” with a vague wave to the rest of the party.

            They’re standing around, staring at each other and Shiro is in the middle of saying “So…do you want the tour?” when Allura comes running out.

            “You missed brunch,” is the first thing she says.

            Shiro shrugs, “I told my father we’d be missing brunch. It’s hardly unprecedented.” Well, he didn’t so much ‘tell’ the king as leave a note on his door because apparently managing an audience with his royal business is impossible these days.

            Allura pins them all with a look, “You told your father?”

            Shiro holds up his hands in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture, “Common courtesy.”

            Allura mutters a very un-lady-like word. “So she knew. She did this on purpose then.”

            “What? Who did what on purpose?” Keith demands, but the color is draining from his face as he says it. He’s not stupid, he can guess what’s happening and he doesn’t like it one bit.

            “Your stepmother was kind enough to publically announce your engagement at brunch,” Allura says acidly, “Congratulations, boys, you’re officially betrothed.”