Work Text:
"Your existence is not impossible, but it's also not very likely"
- Welcome to Night Vale
Keith always knew his hometown was different than other people’s hometowns. For example, he knew, for a fact, that most people did not worry about their refrigerators gaining sentience and turning all their milk purple and casting all their cottage cheese into the void to protest the environmental impact of cattle farming. Despite, or perhaps because, no Night Vale citizen was foolish enough to approach a cow unprotected, much less attempt to farm multiple cows in the same geographic and metaphysical location.
Keith knew this primarily because his Tío Carlos insisted he go out of town for school when Night Vale Elementary School’s fifth and sixth grade classes formed a people’s militia and stormed the Ralph’s.
Uncle Cecil had endorsed the idea, as he thought it “Might be beneficial for Keith to learn about other cultures, unless, of course, those cultures are from Desert Bluffs. In that case, he should remain as narrow-minded and set in his ways as possible.”
Keith wasn’t sure if this comment was fueled by lingering resentment from the time StrexCorp took over the town, or ordinary inter-community rivalry. The two could be very hard to distinguish between when one’s closest neighboring town was run by an evil capitalist empire.
So Keith knew Night Vale was, for lack of another term, special. So he wasn’t particularly concerned about it when Voltron arrived on earth (go figure, of course he’d be enlisted to fight in The Blood Space War, he just hoped Uncle Cecil continued those donation drives back home, they could really use some crowd-sourced funding these days). Yes, most of the planet was either conquered or actively under siege, but he’s pretty sure Night Vale is fine. Night Vale is always fine. If all else failed, Keith’s super-secret backup plan was just to unleash Station Management on the Galra. Maybe hurl some librarians at Sendak to keep him occupied. Tamika Flynn could take care of any stragglers.
Yes, it was a bit cruel to the alien invaders, but you shouldn’t just turn up and take over a planet that’s already been claimed by a vague yet menacing government organization, not to mention primordial beings and eldritch abominations from beyond the veil of existence. It’s just rude. Keith’s mother (Krolia, his mother’s name is Krolia, he hadn’t known her name for so many years, he’s so excited, he wants to tell Uncle Cecil, he wants to hear his mother’s name in his uncle’s sonorous voice, he can practically feel in his bones the way Uncle Cecil’s tones would roll over the consonants and hit the ‘K’ just right. Nothing ever felt real growing up until Uncle Cecil said it. Keith had screamed and cried in his father’s shack just outside city limits and refused to believe no matter how many of Old Woman Josie’s angels told him his father was dead until Uncle Cecil arrived, pale and shaking in the gathering night, to wrap him in his tattooed arms and say, “To the families of Texas Jack Kogane, we are very sorry, he will be missed.”) Keith’s mother and the Blue lion had been polite enough to not try conquering the world they were borrowing space on.
But Keith digresses.
So he’s not terribly concerned about his family. He knows the rest of Team Voltron probably thinks he doesn’t have any family on earth, and that’s the source of his persistent calm in the face of dangers large and small (but mostly large, there’s lots of large danger around these days). It’s not. Keith’s just sure that, no matter what, Night Vale, and Uncle Cecil and Tío Carlos are just fine. As Tío Carlos says: “A scientist is always fine.”
If they could survive Street Cleaning Day, and StrexCorp, and the constant presence of the empty blackness of infinity, they could survive a little thing like the Galra.
There’s an intimidating amount of cleanup after the final battle and after they all get out of the hospital. Shiro is quiet, too quiet, a grave and solemn and all-encompassing kind of thing, and Keith doesn’t know how to reach through the grief that hangs around his mentor and friend to reach the broken heart of the man inside. Lance is followed by a swarm of chattering children; the combined nieces/nephews/younger siblings/various related hangers-on of both their families following at his heels like he’s some kind of pied piper. Keith’s never seen Hunk and Pidge so happy, wrapped in the arms of their respective families. Romelle, Coran, and Allura are having the time of their lives investigating ‘Earth Culture’ as they put it.
Everyone moans and groans about how much work is involved in putting society back together after alien invaders casually trampled all over it. Keith, who is used to doing this after every city holiday and municipally-mandated Chaotic Event, doesn’t complain at all. Which just makes Lance roll his eyes and mutter under his breath in Spanish Keith has to pretend to misunderstand.
Ah, yes. The Spanish. Keith knows many languages – Modified Sumerian from Uncle Cecil, a little bit of Japanese from Shiro’s grandmother, some Galra from The Blade, a dash of Portuguese from Adam’s Brazilian relatives, and finally…Spanish, from Tío Carlos. Unfortunately, Lance doesn’t know that Keith knows…what Keith knows. And by the time Keith worked out Lance didn’t know Keith could understand him…well…they were several weeks into Voltron by that point and it would look like Keith had been hidingit from him or something equally absurd. Which, for the record, he hadn’t.But with how confrontational Lance had been those first few weeks…Keith didn’t want to risk it. And now he didn’t know how to gently let Lance know without completely obliterating all the progress they’d made in terms of trust and friendship over the past year (or three years? Keith knew time was all relative and temporal existence absurd, but this was pushing the envelope, really).
Either way, here they were, Keith pretending not to know what Lance was grumbling about a few yards away as they helped with city-wide cleanup and restoration projects in the wake of the Battle for Earth.
They’re all carrying communicators issued by the Garrison. Keith had suggested they all wear their Voltron helmets but had been roundly shot down by Allura, Pidge, Lance, and even Hunk, who all made the very valid point that wearing a sealed helmet designed to keep a squishy body warm and living in the endless frigid void of space might be a tad uncomfortable with the desert sun beating down on them. Keith, who remembered Mandatory Gas Mask Appreciation Week back home ten years ago (which, per City Council’s repeated press statements, had NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH any kind of uncontained chemical spill originating in City Hall), didn’t think a high-tech space helmet was that bad in comparison. But he was soundly overruled.
He didn’t really like the idea that the Garrison could possibly track them through these new communicators. Unlike the Sheriff’s Secret Police, he didn’t trust these authorities any further than he could throw them. All of them. Collectively. According to his mother his Galra strength is finally coming in and he actually could hurl Commander Iverson across a football field, so to make the simile actually work he’d have to be tossing around the entire command staff.
As if it could sense him thinking about it, the communicator buzzes imperiously. Keith scowls down at it warily. He doesn’t thinktechnology can gain malicious sentience in this part of Earth, but one never knows.
“KEITH, ANSWER YOUR COMMUNICATOR,” Pidge hollers at him from across the rubble-strewn road.
Much like walkie-talkies, the communicators all buzz when someone is trying to use them, flashing the name of whoever is being called across the screen in bright orange letters. As long as Keith ignores the device everyone’s is going to buzz until he picks up.
With mild trepidation, Keith clicks ‘answer’. Shiro’s face appears on the screen, orange-hued and slightly distorted because apparently the Garrison lives to put orange accents where they don’t belong.
“Keith, glad I could get ahold of you.”
“Yeah, what’s up?” Keith asks, other hand unconsciously drifting over to rest on his Marmora Blade’s hilt.
“There’s some folks here asking for you…they’re pretty adamant about seeing you.”
Lance, who, last Keith checked, had been investigating more wreckage, is suddenly extremely present right behind him, practically hooking his sharp chin over Keith’s shoulder to look at the tiny Shiro in his hand. “Do you need Voltron?” Lance asks.
His breath is very warm right next to Keith’s ear. Keith does not allow himself to react because Keith is a goddamn professional and Lance is giving him goosebumps just by being near him and he hates(loves) it.
Shiro looks pensive and mildly confused, “No…no, I don’t think so…”
“Uh, Shiro sounds uncertain,” Hunk, at Keith’s other shoulder, a solid and reassuring distraction from Lance’s everything,comments, “I don’t like it when Shiro sounds uncertain. When Shiro sounds uncertain things tend to explode.”
“To be fair, that happens when Keith sounds angry, too,” Pidge adds on from Hunk’s other side.
“And when Lance ‘borrows’ my straighter without asking,” Allura remarks archly.
“Hey, these luscious locks don’t happen by themselves. They need careful tending,” Lance protests.
“Is your hair even long enough for a straightener to be relevant?” Keith asks, honestly curious.
Lance, of course, squawks in protest and opens his mouth for what is sure to be an increasingly-high-pitched rebuttal, when Shiro cuts in. “KEITH, these people are waiting for you. Hunk, I don’t think they’re dangerous. It’s kind of a family thing.”
Keith feels the blood drain from his face.
“Kind of a family thing?” Pidge asks, “I thought Keith’s mom was, uh…” she realizes she may have cross a line and tries to back-track gracefully, “Um. Kind of…all of it?”
Keith shakes his head, suddenly numb from the face down. Night Vale couldn’t be…at risk? He’d always thought…he’d always thought Night Vale was, if not safe, then Galra-invasion-free. But if someone’s turned up claiming a family tie to Keith it’s probably an urgent message from Night Vale. Maybe even a request for aid.
Keith nods, eyes sharpening, free hand clenched on his Marmora blade. “I’ll be there. Kogane, out,” and switches off the communicator, turning to his team, “Come on, guys, we need to deal with this.”
Whatever ‘this’ is.
…
Keith was not expecting to walk through the Garrison gates and straight into flying tackle-hug from a very pale, very purple-accented person, but that’s exactly what happens.
“KEITH!!!! YOU’VE RETURNED FROM THE BLOOD SPACE WAR MOSTLY INTACT, PRAISE THE SPHERES!”
And suddenly Keith has his arms full of Uncle Cecil, who is clinging to him like he might vanish back into space at any second.
“The spheres?” Pidge asks somewhere behind him.
“Blood…space…war…?” Hunk questions the world as a whole.
“Um. What’s happening?” Lance contributes, sounding a little put-out to not be in on whatever chaos is befalling their leader.
“Uncle Cecil, you’re…YOU’RE HERE!” Keith finds himself stuttering as he gives into Cecil’s boa constrictor grip.
“Of course, dear Keith,” Cecil detaches himself to straighten his glasses, the purple-tinted lenses absorbing rather than reflecting the blinding desert sun the way glass from Night Vale tends to do, “We had to return the valiant warriors who crashed into our gymnasium during the annual Bloodstone Fun Fair! And, of course, ensure the rest of the world was still standing.” Cecil beams, like he’s very proud of himself for remembering to be concerned about the rest of the planet. He’s dressed conservatively by Cecil-standards today, wearing a purple, black, and grey argyle sweater-vest and matching sweatpants with a silver lamé button-down shirt, red cowboy boots, and black cat ears. Cecil’s snow-white hair and skin should be burning to a crisp in the sun. But, as he has repeatedly assured a concerned Tío Carlos, his albinism came with a special permit from City Hall giving him lifetime sun-immunity and therefore he doesn’t need to worry about burns or skin cancer.
His colorful tattoos have apparently decided to take a page from The Glow Cloud’s (all hail) playbook today and are masses of swirling rainbow hues chasing each other across Cecils’ forearms, clavicle, and face. His purple-pink eyes glow with pure, unadulterated joy and Keith feels something tight in his chest that’s been there since he heard the Kerberos mission had failed.
“I didn’t realize you could leave Night Vale,” Keith blurts.
“Of course, I traveled extensively in my college days!” Cecil assures him.
Keith’s brows fold together, “But, that was…a different time.”
Cecil waves away his objection, “Temporal reality is the kind of nonsense Steve Carlsberg endorses. Don’t let it mess with you mind. That’s what shadowy government agencies are for!”
Keith chuckles, “Thanks, Uncle Cecil.” He surprises himself by opening his arms and actually going in for his own hug, tucking his head beneath Cecil’s chin. He has to stoop slightly to do it; he’s gained several inches since his last stay on Earth.
Cecil makes a small, surprised sound. Both Carlos and Keith tend to verge on mildly touch-averse, one of them initiating affection is guaranteed to make Cecil melt in seconds. Which he does, as predicted, wrapping his arms tightly around Keith’s time and combat-broadened shoulders and squeezing him with all the strength in his lanky frame.
“We love you very much, dear Keith,” Cecil tells him, voice soft like rolling thunderheads. “We missed you terribly.” As Keith pulls away his tone brightens and volume climbs once again away from the shadowy realm of soft and tender feeling, “Station Management threw a major fit when you went off to space. We were cleaning orange ooze off the walls for days.Darling Carlos made everything more difficult by insisting everyone wear HazMat suits of all things! As if he’d never seen walls leak mysterious bioluminescent slime before! Silly man.” Cecil beams and sighs extravagantly, “I love him so.”
“Is he here?” Keith asks, craning his neck to see over Cecil’s shoulder. He thinks Cecil must have adjusted his height slightly to accommodate Keith’s new height in their hug, because he has to crane his neck more to see around his uncle than he had to before.
“Of course!” Cecil trills, “But the Garrison officials wouldn’t let anyone else exit the vehicle. Apparently they don’t like mid-sized SUVs. Or trespassers.”
Keith thinks it’s probably the trespassers the authorities had an issue with, more than the mid-sized SUV. Although all bets are off if Cecil’s car has bitten someone. Again.
Shiro is standing a few yards off with a cluster of flustered people in uniforms. Keith waves to Shiro, “Everything’s fine, it’s just my uncles and some…friends? Who did you say showed up in the gym?”
“A whole battalion of fighter craft and their very agitated pilots. They were blasted through the temporal rift during their confrontation with the Wretched Invader Scum,” Uncle Cecil’s voice twists into one of his many Radio Host Tones on those last words.
“How did you deal with Galra?” Keith asks, honestly curious.
His uncle waves his hand airily, “A good deal of the foot soldiers were absorbed by the Whispering Forest, several were taken by Desert Bluffs, serves them RIGHT, and never seen again, the remaining stragglers automatically won the lottery and were given to the wolves…who rejected them soundly. The hooded figures took care of the rest. All very simple. We didn’t have to really rally the troops until later, and Tamika Flynn and Dana’s militias had everything very well in hand, of course. On to more interesting matters, did I tell you we have MORE KITTENS at the station??? And a puppy. Sometimes cats have puppies, I guess. He gets along just fine with his feline siblings, though, never fear!”
A battalion of fighter craft… could it… could it be….?
“Was one of the pilots named Adam?” Keith interrupts his uncle’s monologue recounting the kittens (and puppy’s) most recent antics.
Cecil blinks, considering, “Why, yes, yes I think so.”
Keith’s eyes go huge; he jerks his head up, gaze locking with Shiro’s. Shiro stares back at him, puzzled by supportive, just like always. Losing Adam, never getting to say goodbye, to apologize for leaving like that, in a haze of jet fuel and misplaced glory, has been tearing him to pieces for months.
“Let me talk to them,” Keith tells his uncle, and trots over to the Garrison officials, who are all gazing at Cecil’s fanged SUV with wary trepidation. Cowards. Haven’t they ever seen a theft-proof vehicle? If Shiro’s car had been able to bite him, Keith would never have gotten way with stealing it that one time.
“Shiro, that’s my Uncle Cecil, you remember how I said I grew up in Night Vale…and it’s not, uh, necessarily normal?”
Shiro nods, wary, “Where are you going with this?”
“Well, temporal rifts randomly opening up in the middle of community events is kind of, uh, normal, for them.”
“…Okay…”
“And those temporal rifts tend to…spit out people, creatures, and indefinable things.”
“…Okay…”
“And I think they might have something the Garrison might want back…”
“So you’re saying we should let them open the…um…fanged car?”
“Mid-sized SUV,” Keith corrects as the engine growls behind him, “It’s sensitive.”
“Mid-sized SUV. You want us to open it.”
“I want you to let them open it. It’s theft proof and doesn’t like strangers.”
Shiro looks profoundly tired. “Okay. Sure.”
Behind him a man with a uniform, a moustache, a clipboard and no other defining features, protests.
“I control a giant pseudo-sentient spaceship and kind of saved the universe, I get to call the shots on the car,” Shiro snaps in one of his rare, but always delightful snarky episodes.
The mustachioed man falls silent and hides behind his clipboard.
“Uncle Cecil, everyone’s good to disembark!” Keith calls to his uncle, who gives him a thumbs-up, then a series of vague hand signals stolen from baseball and the Boy Scouts.
Keith shoots him back a brief response and nods.
Cecil opens the SUV and out files first Carlos, who is wearing his formal lavender paisley lab coat, and then a string of vaguely familiar people all wearing either extremely bedraggled Garrison-issue flight uniforms or the eclectic and occasionally bioluminescent grab-bag that is Night Vale fashion.
The last to exit, squinting against the sun, wearing a rather dashing eyepatch over zigzagging lighting bolts of scar tissue, is unmistakably Adam Wilde.
Keith can hear the moment all the air leaves Shiro’s lungs, can hear the creak of his knees as he sags in place, one heavy hand coming to land on Keith’s shoulder as he loses his balance with his breath.
“Adam,” is more a gasp than anything else. A man coming up for air after being dragged away by a riptide. Precious oxygen being inhaled seconds after almost-drowning.
Adam’s head turns Shiro’s way instantly. Something flickers in his face, a million emotions twisting across his features all at once as tears fill his one good eye.
“Hi Adam,” Keith feels incredibly lame waving like this, but his hand is up, giving an awkward little shake in the air and he can’t stop it. It’s already done. He’s already been his awkward self.
Adam’s face twists and he gives a strange, choked little laugh, “Hey, uh, hey, Keith. Your, uh, your uncles have been really awesome.”
“I know, they’re like that,” Keith says for lack of anything better to say.
That seems to break some of the tension around the rest of the pilots, who all burst out of their spooked little clump to wonder at finally being back.
“EARTH,” one cries, flinging their body on the ground and embracing it, “GRAVITY THAT WORKS RELIABLY!”
Which… Keith shoots a glance at Carlos, who shrugs, “Gravity didn’t work in Night Vale for a bit. It was only, like, a day.”
“You’ve really chilled out,” Keith says, surprised.
Carlos heaves an exhausted sigh, sagging a little in place next to Cecil, who pats his shoulder consolingly.
“It was the most stressful fucking thing. You know how hard I had to work to seem calm in front of – ” Carlos gestures at the gesticulating, chattering pilots, “- all of them?”
“Night Vale’s most beloved outsider,” Cecil says fondly.
Carlos absently takes Cecil’s hand and kisses the knuckles, which makes all of Cecil’s tattoos immediately turn various shades of pink and erupt into a million fluttering, winged cartoon hearts. Hearts with eyes, opening and closing eyes, like all of them are winking in sync. It makes Keith dizzy to look at too long, honestly.
“Hi, Tío Carlos,” Keith grins, not really sure if a hug is appropriate here or if he should just default to the awkward wave he used on Adam.
It seems to have worked in terms of breaking the tension. Shiro has released Keith’s shoulder and staggered toward his ex-maybe-or-maybe-not fiancé, who meets him in the middle. They’re tentatively running shaking fingers, both flesh and robotic, over each other’s shoulders, faces, features, staring into each others’ eyes like they’re asking over and over again ‘Are you here? Are you real? Are you really here?’
The clump of pilots has converged with the clump of official uniform types who are all trying to talk over each other all at once.
Cecil has apparently decided that Carlos and Keith should stop eyeing each other like wary cats and just hug it out already, because he sweeps forward shouting “FAMILY HUG” and throws his arms around both of them, crushing them together in a mess of limbs and love.
“We missed you,” Carlos tells Keith in his serious, warm voice, “We missed you so much.”
“And we raised a lot of money for the war efforts while you were gone!” Cecil chirps, “The City Council even donated a collection of highly valuable invisible moonstones. Which, unfortunately, due to only being visible in the light of the full moon, have been misplaced in the high school auditorium, which, as we all know, has been transplanted to an underground bunker beneath the high school due to the unfortunate events of last year’s pep rally.”
Cecil has slipping unconsciously into his Radio Voice, which makes both Carlos and Keith laugh. Keith has a sudden strange feeling like he’s split in two, one half of him is in his early twenties, a veteran and a war-leader, the other half an eight year old orphan, taken in by his brilliant, funny, wise and strange uncle after the greatest tragedy of his short life.
Keith slumps in their arms, relaxing in a way he hasn’t allowed himself around anyone for so long, resting his forehead on their shoulders and just letting himself go limp in the warm cocoon of their love.
Of course, nothing lasts forever, because Iverson turns up and ruins it all. ‘Just like Iverson,’ Keith thinks, his internal monologue briefly taking on the same tone Cecil uses to refer to Steve Carlsberg.
“WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING HELL IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, SHIROGANE?” Iverson booms over the noise of the crowd.
Everything doesn’t so much stop as slow down, conversations petering off as everyone sort of swivels to look at him.
“THANK YOU, THAT’S WHAT I WANTED TO KNOW!” Lance shouts over the sudden silence.
“Not now, McClain,” Iverson dismisses Lance and his huff of “Rude,” with a sweeping hand gesture. “Shirogane…Wilde? Ahem. REPORT!”
“Uh, Adam’s alive, sir?” Shiro stutters, taken aback, but still trying to sort of kind of stand at attention. The effort is admirable, but he’s still got his pinky hooked around Adam’s as they both turn and face their maybe-kind-of commanding officer so it’s not nearly as formal as it could have been.
“Hi, sir, I’m alive,” Adam waves cheekily with the hand not holding Shiro’s.
“I CAN SEE THAT,” Iverson is apparently so uncomfortable he’s gotten stuck on his parade-ground-bellow setting, “WHAT DOES KOGANE HAVE TO DO WITH IT?”
“Okay, it’s not always Keith’s fault,” Lance loyally protests in a gesture that maybe, kind of, fills Keith’s chest with fizzy bubbles even though now is not the time.
“In this case, it’s a temporal-spatial anomaly’s fault!” Cecil chirps.
“AND WHO ARE YOU?”
“Cecil Gershwin Palmer, Voice of Night Vale,” Cecil cheerily introduces himself.
When Iverson’s glare pans over to Carlos, the scientist cautiously raises a hand, “Uh, Carlos. Scientist.”
“That’s your last name?” one of the uniformed folks from earlier asks.
Carlos shrugs, “It’s an identifier more than anything else. Technically I took Cecil’s last name, I think.”
“Technically, it took you,” Cecil clarifies in a statement that actually clarifies absolutely nothing.
Carlos just shrugs.
Iverson looks like he’s developing a facial tic, “SO ALL OF YOU ARE JUST… ALIVE???”
Adam’s squadron kind of nod and shrug and mumble “Yeah” and “Sure” and “All hail the mighty Glow Cloud.”
Iverson has definitely developed a facial tic, and possibly a screaming migraine. “ALL OF YOU, INSIDE, DEBRIEF, NOW.”
All the assembled pilots and uniformed personages glance at each other, shrug, and drift towards the door Iverson indicates with the hand not currently pinching the bridge of his nose in exhaustion, leaving behind Iverson, who glowers at Adam and Shiro and jerks his head in the direction of the door before leaving himself. Adam and Shiro follow on his heels, still holding hands and trading shy glances like middle schoolers just figuring out how to date.
This leaves Keith, his uncles, and the rest of Team Voltron who seem to be struggling to figure out how to scrape their jaws off the ground.
“I thought you didn’t have any family on Earth,” Hunk says in his gentlest voice.
Keith shakes his head, “I never said that. I just said I didn’t have parents. Everyone assumed.”
“You, uh, never seemed all that worried about anyone on Earth,” Allura says diplomatically, “We may have, ah, just assumed, yes.”
Keith gives them a wry smile, “Night Vale…Night Vale takes care of itself.”
“After the StrexCorp debacle, not to mention,” a tragic glance at Carlos, “The Old Oak Doors Incident,” we can weather a little alien invasion no problem,” Cecil says, completely blasé, “We were more worried about dear Keith.” He pushes back Keith’s hair and drops a casual kiss on Keith’s forehead, “Fighting a blood space war is never easy!” he tugs gently on Keith’s bangs, “Your hair has gotten so long and unruly! You’re taking after your uncle Carlos!”
“Um, Uncle Cecil, Tío Carlos and I aren’t…actually…blood related?”
“That doesn’t mean your hair can’t learn by imitation!” Cecil declares, “Well, we’d better get in there, we have a lot of explaining to do and that bellowing man doesn’t seem like he’ll take well to explanations.”
He sashay’s off, Carlos trailing in his wake after another hurried hug for Keith. They blink at each other for a moment like they’d somehow surprised each other by being so outwardly affectionate in less than an hour. Finally Carlos ruffles Keith’s hair and runs after Cecil, who has somehow crossed far more distance than should be physically possible at a leisurely walk.
Keith tears his gaze away from his uncles to eye Team Voltron. “So, uh… that’s my family!” he says with false brightness.
Pidge’s eyes are huge behind her glasses, “Night Vale sounds scientifically fascinating,” she breathes.
“IT IS!” yells Carlos from the doorway before disappearing inside the Garrison.
Lance is still gaping at Keith, “This explains so much yet so little at the same time,” he finally says.
Keith shrugs, awkward again.
“And,” Lance declares, slugging Keith on the shoulder, “What the fuck, we could have been talking shit in Spanish all this time???”
“Huh?” Keith glances from his arm, up to Lance, and back down at his arm again.
“You were kind of speaking Spanglish with your uncle a few minutes ago,” Hunk points out, “Not a lot, you could just know a few words or things, but…yeah…”
Keith blinks, “Huh. Didn’t notice.”
Lance throws up his hands in despair, “First he hides that he’s an alien, now he’s hiding the fact that we could have been bonding over how stupid English grammar is all this time!”
Keith smiles a tiny, tentative smile as his friends all start talking over each other all over again. ‘Just like usual, of course,’ he thinks to himself as he follows them into the Garrison where the mother of all meetings is waiting to make itself a headache.
It’s good to have everyone together. Just for now. He hopes Uncle Cecil brought him some of Big Rico’s pizza. He has a lot of mandatory slices to eat before he’ll be allowed inside city limits again.