[C][AU][Future AU] Messages

Lucas hummed, his eyes drifting to the TV. A phone advert that looked so... primitive.

Altean and Galra technology has ruined him.

"Aren't you tired of fighting all the time though? We won, Zarkon's gone and the Galra Empire is no more, let's just be happy with that. We deserve a quiet life, right?"

"I'm happy with what we achieved. Don't think I'm not."

He took a sip of whiskey, then swished the liquid still in the bottle.

"But there's always more I can do. More ways I can help people. I don't want to stop helping." Fleck wanted to help and give to anyone he could, anyone that needed that help.

He felt so lost without the ability to help so many people.

Lucas closed his eyes and tilted his head back with a groan. He just wanted to be selfish and start an illegal mushroom farm or whatever.

Besides most of the fights seem to be done with politics now before they were dropped down back to Earth. Politics was never his strong suit. He'd much rather use his fists.

He nudged Fleck with his elbow, before nabbing the bottle.

"Stop being such a good person. You're blinding me right now."

"Sorry, a requirement for both Black and Yellow paladins. We're sickeningly good to 99% of the people we meet."

He grinned and waved his hand in a very flouncy sort of gesture as he bowed his head in a lazy version of a full dramatic bow.

"You're just unlucky that I've been both."

Lucas bleched.

"The worst kind of combo. How are we friends?"

Despite his joking, he has seen the side of him that only 1% were privy to. He was glad to be part of the 99% of people.

"I've saved your life a thousand times in the past eleven decaphebes. Without the near-death situations, there was no way we would have been friends."

He snagged the bottle back form Lucas.

"If none of this had ever happened, you'd hate me. I would have just been Emilia's brother. The guy that walked in and out of the garrison when he wanted to. I probably wouldn't even know you."

"Rude. For all you know I could have been your superior officer and the tides would have turned, bitch."

He snatched the bottle right back from Fleck.

"Although, thinking on it, I probably would have been kicked out and ended up dosing at my sister's place before getting an unfulfilling minimum wage job."

"How could you be my SO? I never enlisted. And if I hadn't become a paladin, I would have never thought of enlisting. I was a gentle artist before I started beating up Galra for shits and giggles."

He pointed at Lucas with the neck of the bottle then swigged it again.

There was only about a quarter of the bottle left now.

"You were a really angry shit. You'd been there for a year when we met, right? Almost, at least. How many disciplinaries had you already had for behaviour?"

"Shit. I forget."

It was so easy to forget.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"God, I can't even remember. It was always over stupid shit, ya know? I was probably on my last warning or something before Blue kidnapped us. Human-napped us, or whatever."

There were a few seconds hat passed before he stopped up and the blood rushed to his head.

"We should go back there."

"All your fights are over stupid shit. Remember when you almost punched Anna out over a plate of food goo, back when we were in the thick of the war, and Giacinto and I didn't have the time to cook? You didn't even like food goo. You still fought with her like a rabid animal over it."

Fleck laughed long and hard over the memory, glad to be remembering good things about his time aboard the ship.

The laugh died down, though, at the suggestion.

"Do you think we should?"

"Quiznak, I would still throw a punch at her over it now. It was my food goo. Mine."

He moved around the kitchen to grab a pack of cheap cider he had stored in the fridge.

"Yeah. Throw some rocks at the lion carving or something like being nostalgic or some shit. I could have been a worthless piece of shit and Voltron took that from me."

Okay, the whiskey had definitely hit him now, he realised.

"Fuck, Lucas. That was nine decaphebes ago." He didn't realise that he'd switched to Altean halfway through his sentence. "Get over it, Red."

He did that more when he was relaxed, truly relaxed. Once he had taught Italian to Dick, the two of them flowed between all three languages they knew even sometimes in the same sentence.

"Yeah, how dare the Lions turn you into someone as amazing as you are now?"

Lucas frowned at Fleck, squinting.

"You're doing that thing again. Some of couldn't be bothered to go without translators."

Altean he could understand, in parts. It was easier for him to read and sometimes listen to it then speak it. It was unnecessarily flouncy.

"But yeah, I know. Awful."

He pulled out his phone - a human phone - and messaged an uber.

"I'm supposed to be a bane on society, not save it."

"Ah, shit. Sorry, sorry. Sometimes I just-" He waved his hands in front of his face. "I did it again."

His shoulders slumped. "Chrys gets angry when I speak Altean, or Galra. Says I need to leave it all behind to heal. I can't."

He'd be speaking Altean, and possibly small amounts of Galra, until he died.

"Well, sometimes giant alien robot lion spaceships make you do things you don't want to do, don't they?"

Lucas shook his head.

"You're making your brother out like a bit of a bastard. How can we just forget ten deca-phoebs of our life?"

He flopped down on the couch, head in Fleck's lap. He groaned.

"Shit, now I'm contradicting myself. You're getting in my head, Black."

"He's not. He just- Wants me to move on and leave it all behind and be the brother I was before I left."

Which he couldn't do.

When Lucas laid his head in his lap, his fingers weaved through his dark hair, playing with the strands idly.

"I'm your annoying leader. I'm supposed to get into your head."

Lucas closed his eyes and hummed.

They, as a team, had become rather touchy-feely with each other. Some of the aliens were more touchy than the others, but over time it was normal just to flop on someone and demand attention.

Maybe it had something to do being bonded to a partly sentient alien ship that too the form of an oversized cat.

"Well get the fuck out of it. Hey, remember that planet that could only communicate by thoughts? Our completely and utterly uncensored thoughts?"

Fleck snorted loudly.

"Yes! Man, Dick was mortified. He couldn't look at anyone for weeks." Fleck's thoughts were never very restrained, and he found out very quickly that he couldn't restrain them even if he wanted to.

"Things between you and Amr were pretty interesting after that, too, if I remember right."

Lucas' snort turned into a short burst of laughter.

"God, when can you all let that drop? It was so awkward. I don't even know why I had a crush on that tree of a man, he is an annoying fuck. Kept trying to have a serious talk with me to let me down gently, yadda yadda."

He was an annoying fuck who had saved far too many times and who he considers one of his closest friends.

"Still, worth it to find out all the shit on you all." His face split into a grin and he waggled his eyebrows. "Probably one of the best bonding exercises."

He rolled his eyes at the use of that phrase.

"Because you found out exactly how kinky everyone was, and you found it hilarious." The ship was full of kinksters to the Nth degree.

"I think my favourite bonding experience was playing Monsters and Manas. Giacinto was determined to make it work."

He shook his head, nails scratching gently over Lucas' scalp.

"Man, it was a mess though. The amount of times we rolled for stupid checks and she had to bluff the entire plot..."

"Oh yeah, Amr - someone that could probably build his own computer for fun and work out stupidly complicated Altean technology - couldn't get that what you decide to do didn't mean shit if you couldn't get a high roll."

A happy smile came on his face, a mixture of drunkness, nostalgia and having fingers run through his hair.

"And Dick, the shit, was all lawful until we realised he tried to bribe Giacinto between games, the cheating bastard."

He thought the game stupid when they first started playing, but he got far too invested in the characters they made and the story they would tell. It was good downtime beyond training.

"None of you ever found out that it was me bribing her. We chefs are tight. I was in on everything."

He always found it hilarious that the 'cheating' was always pinned on Dick, or the always crafty Anna. He'd never been accused, or even looked at twice, even if his character had had serious advantages during the games.

It had been great.

"Now you know my secret, though. What am I gonna do with you?"

Lucas shot up and looked at Fleck accusingly, his whole world tipped upside down.

"Fleck, the black paladin, ex-yellow paladin, the person that is nice to like ninety-nine percent of the population; what the fuck?"

He never questioned Fleck characters, just assuming he had incredible luck. It all made sense now.

"Chefs are tight, Red. A fact of the world."

He grinned, eyes sparkling with mirth. "She offered it to me, actually. Wanted to get a few Earth recipes out of me. Who was I to refuse an eager chef wanting to learn something new?"

"What the fuck. What the actual fuck."

God, if they ever leave Earth, he was going to spill his little secret to the rest of team Voltron - or whatever fancy name they called themselves now.

"We're both red paladins. If she offered a deal to anyone, it should have been me."