Work Text:
Put Me Back on the Map
- Shiro’s Book Launch
“Are you excited?” Keith asks, swirling wine lazily in his glass as moves over to stand by Shiro at the window.
His brother startles, blinking away from the view (it’s not much, just the backyard of the little house Shiro bought in-town, it’s empty now but the grass is green and healthy and, according to Lance ‘full of potential’ – whatever that means). “I’m sorry, what?”
“The book, are you excited?” Keith asks again. They’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder, both facing the window, not looking at each other but present. It’s enough.
“I don’t know,” Shiro returns his gaze to the backyard, “I should be, right? But…I don’t know.”
The susurrating murmur of their friends’ voices behind them rises and falls like an ocean tide, comfortable and consistent. Everyone’s here in a combination book launch/housewarming party. There’s wine and food and indefinable warmth to the evening. It’s nice. After much hemming and hawing they finally decided to invite Shiro’s father simply because not inviting him seemed unfair. He’s mingling fairly competently – if competent mingling means allowing Allura to tour him and a distinctly uncomfortable Stella around the room and introduce them to Keith and Shiro’s increasingly tipsy and ridiculous social circle.
Pidge is currently trying to tell them some sort of funny story but Lance keeps interrupting and Hunk keeps correcting both of their blatant exaggerations so it’s not getting very far. Shirogane at the very least seems amused and Stella is trying to laugh when appropriate.
Coran has entirely monopolized both Shiro’s agent and editor and has both of them gasping with shock and laughter as he spins elaborate tales of his many near-death experiences in strange lands under even stranger circumstances. Allura’s father is chatting amiably with Lance’s Mama and Mr. and Mrs. Holt, each getting more animated the more the conversation progresses. Meanwhile Meg laughingly struggles to rein in Sofia and Andrea (both home from college for the summer) and Matt’s antics.
It’s good, what they have here.
Keith remembers being fifteen and hating everything and everyone. He remembers a time when the thought of a whole roomful of people who liked him, who he liked in return would have seemed about as likely as a full-scale alien invasion. And now, as an adult, he thinks, really thinks about what it must have been like for Shiro, to be Shiro as a teenager and…Keith doesn’t know how he did it. He doesn’t know how Shiro is whom he is, how he managed for so long.
How he accepted Keith as his brother. How he could love him, how he could love their mom when it would have been so easy to just say no. To just cut them off and be a ‘normal’ kid. To have entirely that ‘normal’ life Keith always envied. Because Shiro chose to live halfway between their worlds, not fully a part of either. For some unfathomable reason, Shiro chose the path of greatest resistance.
There’s a reason Keith thinks he could never be Shiro and it’s this – Keith chooses the most difficult path because he’s a contrary bastard who hates being told that he can’t. Shiro chooses the most difficult path because often it’s just the right thing to do.
“The book comes out tomorrow,” Shiro says and he’s staring into the yard again, but his eyes are somewhere else entirely.
“Yeah,” Keith agrees. Shiro has been saying this off and on all day; often with that strange wide-eyed expression like he’s just now realizing what exactly he’s done.
“I…” he trails off, waits a moment, breathes, and starts again, “I don’t know…did I do the right thing?”
Keith furrows his brow and resists the urge to say ‘of course’ because that’s both flippant and unhelpful. “Why do you ask that?”
“Just…should I have written the book at all? I mean…it’s all going out there now. Everything.”
Keith shrugs, “Why is that a problem?”
“I don’t know…I just keep thinking about what people will think when they read it. What they’ll think about us.”
“No you don’t,” Keith says without thinking.
Shiro stares at him.
“You’re not worried about what people will think about us. You’re worried about what they’ll think of Mom. And what your dad will think about your thoughts on Mom.”
Shiro opens his mouth, must realize he doesn’t have anything to say, and closes it again.
“You’re scared people will say that she was a bad mother. Well fuck ‘em. That’s not the point of the book,” Keith takes another sip of wine, “It’s not you whining about your childhood, it’s about telling a story. Your story. And real stories about real people are fucking messy and no one’s perfect so if people are going to judge, they’ll judge. Let them. Mom would just laugh at them anyway.”
Shiro shakes his head, “I always forget how you get when you drink wine.”
“What do you mean?”
“You swear more and get really antagonistic.”
“I do not!”
“And confrontational.”
“Shut up.”
Shiro chuckles, “And this is why we all prefer Vodka Keith. Vodka Keith is cuddly and sweet like a baby koala. Wine Keith is mean and scary-looking like a baby wombat.”
Keith just stares, “What the fuck?”
“Google it. Baby wombats. Scary.”
“Why do I bother with you?” Keith mutters, taking an irritable sip.
Shiro reaches over and ruffles his hair, “Thanks, kiddo.”
“You’re welcome, jerk.”
…
- Lance and Keith’s Second Wedding Reception
Lance is pretty sure his Mama has been avoiding him. Or at the very least avoiding being alone with him. Every time a conversation group disperses, leaving only the two of them, she’s the first to walk away. Every time a room thins out until it’s just the two of them close enough to converse, she distances herself. It leaves a hollow feeling in Lance’s chest – a sick, ringing empty place.
Mama has always been the parent who ‘got’ him. She was the one who told him what he didn’t want to hear when he needed to hear it. She was the one who’d start sentences with “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did…” and “Oh, you’re so much like me, mijo” always with that wry, crooked smile on her face. She was loud and bright and energetic. She was Mama.
And she was probably really pissed at him for getting married without telling her.
Finally, Mom drags him away from his sister Jamie and his brand-new nephew David with a curt, “Talk to your Mama, she’s sulking in the kitchen.”
Lance scans the room for help and gets only an eyeroll from Carly and a pointed eyebrow-raise from Keith. The rest of his family ignores his plight – even Bruce, the bastard. Val has trained her husband too thoroughly.
Keith hasn’t been trained. He’s just a jerk. If he were train-able he’d be helping Lance right now like a good husband.
Hmm. Husband. It’s still fun to think.
Mom cruelly abandons him in the kitchen and closes the door behind her emphatically. The door is never closed. This time Mom means business.
Lance sighs and looks to his other mother. Mama is sitting on the kitchen counter, eating chips out of the bag. Beside her is a snack food platter that she presumably left the party to arrange. Evidence would indicate she gave up on the project halfway through and just started in on the potato chips.
“Hey, Mama,” Lance says awkwardly, “Feel like sharing?”
She looks at him and snorts, “Get over here, mijo.”
He smiles uncertainly at her and hops up on the counter. He makes grabby-hands for the chips and she moves the bag over so he can grab some chips. He does and makes a face. “Baked potato chips? Sacrilege.”
“You mom is concerned about our health.”
Lance gives the both of them a once-over, “Yeah, because we both have such a huge weight problem,” he says dryly. He and his mama are built alike – tall, slender, and lean.
She snorts, “You know what your bisabuela would say if she saw us?”
“No, what?”
“I could snap you like a chicken!” Mama imitates her own grandmother’s voice, “You’re both too skinny! Eat! Eat! When I was your age there was no McDonald’s! We ate real food!”
Lance stares at her. “My bisabuela blamed fast food for skinniness? That seems counter-intuitive.”
Mama snorts, “You bisabuela blamed McDonald’s for everything. Global warming, communism; it’s all fast food’s fault. Apparently we wouldn’t have these problems if we ate real food.”
“I feel like Global Warming is a little bigger than fast food…”
“But you didn’t argue with bisabuela. She knew everything. And somehow, no matter how many facts you had, she was always right.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Lance’s bisabuela died when he was a little kid. He kind of remembers her funeral – but nothing about her. He wished he did, though. Sometimes he can see the shape of her in his Mama, in some of her gestures, in her voice when she’s telling old folk stories in Spanish to her own grandchildren. But nothing concrete.
“You know,” Mama begins, taking a chip and crunching it, “When I was fifteen years old I ran away from home.”
Lance chokes, “What?”
His Mama shrugs, “I had a big fight with your grandparents; it got out of hand. I don’t even remember what it was about today. I just remember deciding I was going to run away and I was going to do it that very night,” she makes a dramatic, self-deprecating gesture, “Teenagers are very impulsive. And so I ran away. I didn’t get very far. About a mile in I realized I wasn’t all that mad. Another mile I was hungry. Another and I was lonely. You and I are social creatures, Lance. We aren’t meant to be alone. And I ended up turning around and walking to your bisabuela’s house. I knew where she kept her spare key, see, and I knew that I could get in and eat some of the food in her kitchen and maybe sleep on her couch and make my parents feel very guilty for driving poor little teenaged me all the way over to her grandmother’s.” she shakes her head at herself, “And you know what happened?”
“What?” Lance is captivated. He’s never heard this story before, had no idea this happened. It feels strange hearing it now, like he’s stumbled into an unexpected pothole on the road somewhere.
“Around midnight your bisabuela comes home – it’s raining outside, monsoon season. And she’s carrying a wet umbrella and muttering to herself and she sees me asleep on the couch in the dark and thinks someone’s squatting in her house.”
“She hit you with the umbrella.”
“I wake up to my abuelita screaming about robbers in the night and hitting me with a soggy umbrella!”
Lance lets out a surprised bark of laughter, “What happened next?”
“I started yelling right back at her and trying to block the damn umbrella!” Mama’s eyes are bright with the memory of it, “Finally she turns on the light, sees me on the couch and just starts swearing under her breath – all at herself. Finally, she looks at me and says ‘I’ve been out all night looking for you – your parents are giving themselves gray hairs over you and here you’ve been this whole time!’ She sounded so shocked and I was still so disoriented we just stared at each other for a moment and then we just began laughing hysterically. I’m still not sure what was so funny.”
Lance grins at the memory. He can almost see it. His mother; teenaged and gawky, her hair a rumpled mess, still groggy and sleep-fuddled, and his great-grandmother with her dripping umbrella.
Mama smiles to herself, “And I just…I felt simultaneously very loved and very ashamed. Because all these people were out looking for me and I’d only been gone an afternoon.”
“I feel like there’s a moral to this story,” Lance says warily.
Mama shakes her head, “I just wish you had told me. I never…I never wanted you, any of you, any of my children to ever feel like I did that afternoon. I had hoped you’d know how much we love you without needing someone to beat you over the head with a water-logged umbrella to prove it.”
“It wasn’t about that, Mama,” Lance says miserably, “It really wasn’t. Just…I don’t know. I love the family. I don’t know how I’d live without you guys – I seriously don’t know how Keith and Shiro did it, being all alone like that. But…I didn’t want our wedding to be a big deal. Val’s wedding was such a circus and I didn’t want that. We just wanted something casual and fun. It wasn’t about excluding anyone or keeping secrets, I swear.”
Mama sighs and cards a hand through his hair, “I know. I know. But it’s hard to really know that, you understand? There is a part of me that is just so pissed at you,” she pinches his cheek hard, then runs her hand over it, “But I understand. I really do.”
“Thanks, Mama. Are we…are we cool?”
She snorts, “Yeah, we’re ‘cool’. Whatever that means.” She pinches his face again before throwing an arm around his shoulders and hugging him against her side. She kisses the top of his head and he rests his cheek on her shoulder like he used to as a kid. “Are you happy, mijo?”
“So happy, Mama. You have no idea.”
“Hmm,” she hums, and he remembers she’s been married to his Mom for over thirty years, “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
They stay like that for a while.
…
- Bestseller Party
Somewhere Pidge has started up a chant, “Rea-ding, rea-ding, rea-ding!” after Matt yelled “Hey, Shiro, read us some of your book!” And Shiro has awkwardly eased in front of the small mob of their friends and family; book in hand.
“Seriously, guys?” he’s saying, “You all have copies. Signed copies. Copies signed by me with personalized messages in them.”
“Mine just says ‘stay out of trouble’!” Matt either gripes or brags – it’s hard to tell.
“Yeah, but we want to hear some of the book from you,” Pidge says, as if it should be obvious.
“I think they really want to hear some of it in your voice,” Allura admits. She looks amused and very proud. “After all, it is a New York Times bestseller now.”
Shiro flushes bright pink. “Well…”
“I CAN KEEP CHANTING!” Pidge yells and Shiro sighs.
“Fine, fine. I’ll read the first chapter.”
“Whoo!” Pidge and Matt cheer, response completely out of proportion completely on purpose.
Shiro laughs and trades a look with Allura. It’s soft.
He clears his throat and begins to read; “When I was six years old my mother ran away to find aliens. Dad said she left to go find herself but I knew she was really looking for the aliens…”
At the back of the crowd, Lance snakes an arm around Keith’s waist from behind, passing him a fresh drink with his free hand. Keith hums in recognition and thanks, letting Lance kiss his cheek before settling his chin on Keith’ shoulder. Lance is a line of warmth down his back and Keith leans into it, sipping his vodka and club soda.
“You put a cherry in it,” Keith says, surprised, peering at the drink critically.
“Yep,” Lance says, “Makes it colorful.”
Keith shakes his head but takes another sip.
“Are you seriously okay with your brother’s book title?” Lance asks, sounding halfway amused and halfway to defending Keith’s honor.
Keith snorts, “I helped come up with his book title. He was going to call it something boring and obvious like ‘Looking for Aliens’ or ‘My Life in a Desert Wasteland’.”
“But ‘The Adventures of Spaceman and the Alien Boy’?” Lance says skeptically.
Keith hums, “Yep.”
“I thought you hated that nickname. And didn’t one of Shiro’s ex-girlfriends from hell call him ‘Spaceman’?”
Keith shrugs, “It’s about reclaiming labels, I guess. And being able to laugh at ourselves. We’ve had a really weird life.”
“No kidding, babe.” Lance presses a light kiss just below his jaw. Not the kind of kiss that leads anywhere, just light affection. A ‘hello, I’m here, I love you’ sort of move.
Keith turns his head so he can catch his husband with a real kiss. “You know I love you, right?”
Lance looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Of course.”
Keith nods decisively, “Just checking.”
Lance wraps his other arm around Keith’s waist and squeezes, “Something on your mind?”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“I know you haven’t read the book all the way through yet…just…my mom was as good a mom as she could be, okay? She tried. And I…wasn’t a very good person for a while. I was really angry and really lonely and I got in a lot of fights for a lot of reasons. I just…I’m not…I’m better now, but I’m not…there’s a lot I still don’t do right when it comes to…other people. I just want you to know, I guess. That I love you even if I’m bad at it.”
Lance squeezes him even tighter, momentarily burying his face in Keith’s shoulder. “Oh, babe. I know you love me. And you’re good at it, I promise. No one does everything right, ever. Not possible. But what we have works and it makes me for one, very, very happy. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now that we’ve got that settled, shut up and listen to your brother’s dramatic narration of your wacky childhood hijinks and shenanigans. And remember I love you.”
“I can do that.”