Irresponsibility Hurts

Irresponsibility Hurts

Voltron

Keith is shot in the desert in the time he was living by himself.

Also posted on AO3.

Keith stared at the device in his hands, trying to make sense of the readings it was gathering from his surroundings. Something was really off the charts, but he had no idea what. His sensors could not pinpoint the particulars of whatever it was and his computer could not make heads nor tails of it either. It was almost time to turn in for the day and he had gotten no closer to figuring out what he was seeing, which was nothing new as it had been happening for weeks at that point. With a frown, he shut the device off and logged his coordinates in his GPS so he could return the next day and continue further. As it was, he would not be getting home until a while after dark and sleep had become a luxury by that point.

He turned and began retracing his steps, moving through the vegetation confidently as he had done so frequently for the past couple of months. This was comforting, reminding him of his first years when he still had his father and they would go on long walks around their cabin. Before he could dive down that rabbit hole, something seared along his ribs and a gunshot echoed through the dusk.

“Fuck!” he cursed, loudly enough that it carried for a fair distance. His hand clasped over his ribs, teeth bared in a snarl as he heard some scrambling and cursing. Damn amateur hunters that had no idea what they were doing and inflicted it on those around them. Of course, they would not even try to help whoever was injured. They would be brought up on charges if they did that and the police were called. This way they could not be identified. And, if a body was found, it would be quite difficult to link back to them. In a lot of ways, that ranked them lower than dirt at that point in his eyes.

It took hours to get back to his shack and, by then, he was exhausted, in pain, and fading fast. Everything hurt, any movement jarring the wound. The shakes had, thankfully, subsided pretty quickly so he had been able to drive the majority of the way, but it had taken so much longer because he could not pull his normal stunts. Plus, he had needed to take the time to tear his shirt into strips and wind them around his chest to help stop the bleeding. By then, he was shivering from the chill and stumbling due to exhaustion.

Falling down on the couch pulled painfully against the t-shirt strips and he could feel the wound reopen and warmth spreading down his side again. The fabric was soaked through and he would probably need to soak in the tub to loosen the strips enough to take off. Some parts had surely clotted better than others or were not jarred quite as bad. The question was whether he had the energy to run the bath and then take care of himself. He would have to just hope he could make it through. There was nobody he could call and it had to be done.

He groaned as he pushed himself upright and toed off his boots, using the arm of the couch to help keep himself upright. The jeans he unbuttoned and pushed down until they fell down to pool around his feet, which he stepped out of and then toed his socks off - a frustrating process that took longer than he wished. At least the cabin was small, so he grabbed a bottle of whiskey on his way to the bathroom and settled into the tub before he turned the water on. The longest part of the process was, thankfully, the filling of the tub and, soon enough, he was letting the tinted water drain. There was a small pile of fabric on the floor and he carefully dried off before sitting on the edge of the tub and finally putting a true bandage on the wound and could tell that something in there was broken to some degree. That was going to put a damper on his explorations.

Head Pain

Voltron

Keith & Shiro

Keith deals with a headache

Also posted on AO3.

A bit of pressure began above his eye socket, distracting him at the worst times as he tried to get through the extra training Allura had insisted on for all of them. It resulted in a few close calls and, between her shouted criticisms and Lance’s surprised noises, the pain was stretching from where it began, coming around to his temple and spreading from there. He heaved a relieved sigh when the level finally ended and the princess decided that was enough for the day. Perhaps he would get the time to sleep his headache away.

With his bayard deactivated, he pressed down where the ache began and dragged his fingers along the path it had taken. He slipped out of the training deck unnoticed and quickly made his way to his room for a quick shower and a, hopefully, long nap. He left the lights off as he stripped and stepped under the spray. The heat helped relax his muscles and he closed his eyes to more fully appreciate the experience. Rarely did he get this close to silence on the castle. Between the paladins and the castle itself, it was almost impossible.

He dried off quickly before finally falling on his bed and curling up with his pillow while sprawled on his stomach. Hopefully, the sleep would help and the pitch black already was to a degree. His peace was not to last, however, as the other paladins came down the hallway, Lance loudly declaring that he had performed well. Pidge was just egging him on as they spouted statistics about the level and the number of enemies each of them had defeated.

At least they dispersed quickly enough and he slowly slipped closer to sleep before a knock came at his door, Shiro entering just after. His spirits dipped as another interruption kept him from trying to get rid of his headache. Even worse, he raised the lights.

“Oh,” Shiro stated as he came to a quick stop just inside the room. “I can come back later if you wanted to nap. I was just wanting to go over your performance in the training since it wasn’t up to your normal level.”

“I’ll find you later, Shiro,” he mumbled, voice coming out muffled due to the pillow he had tried to bury his face in.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Just trying to nap through a headache before it gets worse.”

“Okay. Sleep well. I’ll see you later.”

He grumbled an unintelligible response and sighed in relief when the lights went out again. Maybe he could get to sleep now. He rather doubted it would be possible, but he could hope.

Hours later, he woke, feeling much better than he had earlier even if not like he was back to one hundred percent. The nicer thing was the fact that someone, most likely Shiro, had left a few of the hydration packs next to his bed along with one of the fruits they had recently picked up from somewhere. That was much appreciated as he still did not want to leave his room and brave the rest of the castle before he felt as if he were back to normal. In fact, after he got up the motivation to down a couple of the hydration packs, he was going to go back to his nap for a little while longer.

Trading Tops

Voltron

Keith/Lotor

Keith wearing Lotor’s sweater purposefully. Lotor accidentally putting Keith’s shirt on.

Also posted on AO3

Lotor had to say that returning home to the sight he was greeted with was actually something he had never expected to see. His lover was usually found shirtless, firmly in the portion of the population that ran on the warmer end of the spectrum. Every once in a long while he was able to convince the smaller man to cuddle with him under a blanket outside of the bedroom. For him to be curled up on the couch with a hot cup of tea that he could see the steam rising from and huddled in a piece of clothing that definitely did not fit, something had to be wrong.

A black head of hair shifted slightly, but did not raise to show the grinning face that was normally the favorite part of his day. When he had shut the door and left his things in a small pile by the door, he padded over to find that the smaller male was napping, an oddity for the usually active person he was. It was more likely to come home to him fighting imaginary opponents. In fact, that was a regular occurence and he would not have it any other way. His friends had taken one look at his lover doing that and just sighed, knowing that it was a goodly portion of why he had been attracted in the first place. On top of that, he was obviously competent as well. But, returning to the present, his brow furrowed in concern.

With a slight shake to his lover’s shoulder, he carefully kept out of easy reach to avoid the normal fist that was thrown when the smaller one was startled. The sleepy blink he got from him was adorable and he had to smile at the trust shown.

“It’s already after five?” he asked, voice still rough with sleep. Lotor felt a little bad about waking him up with how deep it had to have been for him to be the way he was.

“It is,” he agreed. “Are you feeling well?”

Keith turned, eyes blinking further open and a bit more clarity returning to them as he tried to figure out exactly what his lover was referring to. “Yeah? Not sick or anything. Why?”

“I have never seen you nap or,” he paused for a moment to run his hand over the material of what he had finally identified as one of his own sweaters. “-wear anything that traps in heat.”

He hummed lightly as he stretched and rested a covered hand on Lotor’s forearm where he was still tracing the neckline of the sweater where it rested again Keith’s neck. “My last test was stressful. Since it’s done, I wanted a nap and you weren’t here to keep me warm,” he explained with a shrug. “Second best option it was.”

He smoothed some of the stray hairs behind Keith’s ear as he smiled softly. “I had thought that something was wrong as this is nothing like my normal welcome home. Outside of the worry, however, I do enjoy this.”

Keith grinned shyly as he stood and moved toward the kitchen to look through the cabinets since it was his turn to cook dinner. His larger lover watched him, interest sparking in his gaze as he took in the sight of the smaller man in such a large piece of clothing. This particular sweater was slightly big even on Lotor, so it hung off of one shoulder, seemingly halfway down his bicep, and fell almost to his knees. He had to suppress a groan at the view. Maybe he would have to see if he could get Keith to do this more frequently.

The next morning was hectic and Lotor was scrambling to get out of the apartment in time for his first morning class. In fact, he barely even noticed that the t-shirt he grabbed was tighter than normal and was not a color he would normally wear in his rush to get out the door. Keith had been much smarter about his schedule than he had, apparently, though this was the first time that this particular thing had happened to make it difficult for him to get out of bed.

What made it obvious to him that something had changed was how many looks he was garnering from those in the classroom. When he finally looked down to see if something was on his clothing, he finally realized what was different. What he had thought was his shirt from the day before, a pale blue t-shirt, was actually one of Keith’s shirts that he lounged around the house in, a black t-shirt with the logo of one of his favorite bands. When coupled with the fact that he had taken his lover’s bike and was, because of that fact, also wearing his own boots and leather jacket when he normally wore a sweater and tennis shoes instead, his style looked to have changed overnight.

With a light chuckle, he decided that he had to share this with Keith and pulled out his phone to send a selfie. The reply he got was both a series of laughing emojis and blushing ones. The former were explained by the reactions he caught in the background of the picture, the latter by his own looks. Until he had taken the picture, he had forgotten that he had allowed Keith to braid it back out of his face as well. He now had to be thankful for that as it had kept his hair from becoming a tangled mess from his ride in.

Maybe we should do this more often. Your sweaters are comfy and I like people knowing they can’t have you.

Write and Wrong

When I was in sixth grade, my best friend said the most destructive comment ever to pass from anyone’s lips, around three bites of a hamburger. The comment was as sharp as a knife, delivered cleanly between my fourth and fifth ribs and pierced my heart mercilessly. The lunch table–consisting of me, my best friend, and three of our other friends– paused to consider her words before shrugging, nodding, and moving on. Every one of them were completely oblivious to the way each syllable had carved out my heart and left me dying on the table right next to the subpar middle school cafeteria lunches.

“Well, that’s just fanfiction,” my best friend had said, “It’s not like that’s real writing.”

I could not believe that she had said that, nor that all of my friends had agreed with her. They all knew that I filled up notebook after notebook with writings, ideas, thoughts about my next story idea. They all knew that I was absolutely obsessed with Percy Jackson. For the first time, it occurred to me that they had not put two and two together to figure out that I wrote fanfiction in my free time. But then, according to them, writing fanfiction was not real writing, so therefore I wasn’t really writing anything in my free time.

How could that be? I spent hours of my time researching for my stories, typed miles with sore fingertips, and stared at a screen until my eyes burned from strain. I had entire novels planned in my head that I was willing to share if anyone just asked. Thesaurus.com was always open on a separate tab. I called myself a writer–an aspiring author– but if I wrote fanfiction did that make me less of a writer?

Six years later, my creative writing teacher sat me down and told me, yes, it did. She told me that fanfiction was not creative, that I was stealing other people’s work creations, that writing fanfiction was not going to get me anywhere in my life. She would not accept any work from me if it was fanfiction. It was a shameful act, she told me, to pretend to write and she didn’t have time to waste reading pretend writing. All at once, I felt like I was back at the lunch table wondering why all my friends did not seem to realize what they said had physically hurt me.

Fanfiction was creative: there were hundreds of stories out there and none of them were exactly the same! There were stories with cafes, stories with assassins, stories with group chats, college rooms, wizards, and fairies. Fanfiction was a mixing pot of ideas, a continued story for characters people didn’t want to lose, a way to project issues people were facing. I wasn’t stealing either: no one had ever once accused me of being a man in my late forties writing a story about his characters trapped in a video game, and even if they did, I had disclaimers all over the first chapters. I fell in love with writing through fanfiction, I had found my best friends through posting my fanfiction, I had honed my skills through fanfiction. I had over two thousand followers waiting for my next chapter. Sure, fanfiction had not gotten me any awards, but it most definitely had not road blocked me on the way to success.

How could something that I had laughed and cried over, dreamed and planned, researched and practiced– how could something that had brought me all the way to this creative writing class ever be considered “pretend writing”? How could a woman who was supposed to help me with my writing skills tell me the source of my love writing was shameful?

Fanfiction writing was not a waste of my time. It was not fake writing, or pretend writing, or whatever title they gave it that year. Fanfiction had bandaged the knife wound where my friends had so carelessly stabbed me, had soothed my ego when my creative writing teacher returned my work with zeroes, and had let me escape to a familiar place when the real world felt like it was crumbling around me. Fanfiction had carried me this far in my life. I refused to let anyone tell me my writing was not real writing.

A month ago, my screenwriting professor sat me down and said that he noticed I had some sort of writing experience. He asked me what it was, and I stared him right in the eye when I told him that I wrote fanfiction in my free time.

And he smiled when he told me that was a good way to start my writing career.

the best analogy for bisexuals i've ever heard

werewolf: i’m a werewolf person: ok so when you’re in human form you’re a human, and when you’re in wolf form you’re a wolf though. werewolf: no. i’m a werewolf. human form = werewolf. wolf form = werewolf. always a werewolf. no matter the circumstance or appearance, I AM ALWAYS A WEREWOLF

I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.

They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.