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Keith sighs, stumbles into the kitchen. Chances are he’ll barf up whatever he decides to eat, but he also missed breakfast and his morning snack, so he needs to at least try to make up those calories. As he rummages around, trying to find something that he actually feels like eating, he just starts feeling queasy again. He seems to have developed an aversion to all his favorite foods. Yay.
“A little late for dinner, isn’t it?”
Keith jumps, turns to see Alfor watching him rifle through his special Galra-friendly refrigerator. He stares, watches the man drain the last of whatever’s in his cup.
“A little late for a drink isn’t it?”
“Coran isn’t here to tell me no.” Alfor stumbles over to the liquor bar, mixes himself another drink. “I’d offer you one, but I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
“Probably not,” Keith agrees.
Keith pulls a container of something from the fridge, sniffs it, starts eating it cold. It’s food, it doesn’t seem like it’ll make him feel sick, and judging by the number of calories written on the container, it’s just what he needs to meet his goal for the quintant.
“Lance says you haven’t been feeling well. You haven’t been to breakfast in a couple quintants.”
“...” Keith stares over his leftovers. “Yes. And?”
“You’re what? Eight movements along?”
Keith takes a deep breath, grateful that he’s got his emotions under control at the moment. “Yes. Give or take a few quintants.”
Alfor nods, pensive.
“You remember what I told you a while back right? That I’d fuck you up if you ever tried to sell my kits to someone?”
“Oh, yes. Vividly.” Alfor sips his drink. “You could have waited, you know. Many Alteans wait even a centaphoeb or two.”
“Maybe. But back home… Waiting would have appeared like some failure on my part. I’ve not been in battle. I’ve made no documented kills or had any military victories. My appointment as a lord was more to appease your people than anything else. We don’t even have that rank.”
“You used to. Did you know that?”
Keith frowns, shakes his head, forces down another bite of cold stew.
“All that you have now are military ranks, but you used to have a class system very similar to ours, based on other, non-militant merits and achievements. Like leadership, invention, that sort of thing. From what little I’ve managed to scrape together, the Galra weren’t always so militant.”
“I know,” Keith whispers. “I know we weren’t always this, but no one remembers what we used to be…” His voice is almost frantic as he says, “We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to.”
“No one can go back. Even now, the Alteans are still discovering things we lost during the Forgetting.” Alfor sighs, sips his drink. “We can’t go back , but we can move forward. Given appropriate leadership, the Galra can learn to value other qualities. We just have to wait until that day arrives.” Alfor smiles.
Keith nods, pokes his food with his spoon. He really needs to finish it.
“That might taste better if you heat it up.”
“Maybe.”
Alfor takes the bowl, dumps its contents into a small pot on a stove.
“Why are you being nice to me?” Keith asks, eyes suspicious.
“Can’t I just be nice?”
“No.”
“Fine. I’m being nice because you have made my son happy. And whatever else you are, I owe you a great deal for that.”
“Yeah, well… He makes me happy too. It’s mutual happiness.”
“I’m relieved it worked out that way. A monarch has little, if any joy in their life. I’ve found that family is perhaps the only one. To serve as king is thankless more often than not.”
“Some kings don’t deserve thanks,” Keith snipes. “Our peoples suffer for the whims of their leaders. And you’ve always been a part of that.”
Keith knows that’s not quite fair, that Alfor was indoctrinated just as much as his own people. But people grow, and any man worth his salt would ask questions.
“True.” The king sips from his cup, leaning a bit more heavily on the counter. “I’ve killed a lot of people, you know. Some of them even deserved it.”
“...I’ve killed people too. Chances are my kits will kill people as well. It’s foolish to think otherwise.”
“You think so?” Alfor pours the now-hot stew back into the bowl, hands it back to Keith.
“They may inherit a legacy of violence, just as Lance and I have. I think…” Keith sets his bowl in a sink. “We have a long way to go before we can actually say we’ve achieved peace. War doesn’t end with paperwork. In the hearts of many of my people, we are still at war. And the same goes for yours.”
Keith sighs. “Some of us feel cheated. They lost so much, sacrificed everything, suffered their entire lives, became objects used for breeding soldiers, forgot who they were- for any promise of victory to end with a kit being thrown at their enemy as a consolation prize, and a strange princess to take her place beside their Champion Elect. That isn’t peace, Alfor. It’s violence waiting to happen.”
“I know. I have already made plans for you and Lance to escape in the events of attack.” Alfor downs his drink, pours another. For a moment, the only sound is Keith's spoon scraping against his bowl. “I know you think us capricious and untrustworthy, and that you worry that one day, Lance’s gaze will wander, and his affections will follow, but you really needn’t.”
Keith watches the king stare into his glass.
“My son… He loves with his whole heart. I’ve no idea where he got that from… Ancients know he didn’t get it from me. And that I don’t deserve it.” Another sip. “Allura, my sweet girl, she was always more like me in the end. More like her mother, too.
“But my boy... My Lance... He was always so very gentle.” A wistful, regretful smile. “I didn’t know something that good could come from something like me. On his tenth birth quintant, I gifted him a sword, and promised him that he would bloody the blade before he turned twenty. I remember… fear in his eyes. He said he did not want it.”
Hollow silence, nothing but the hum of the coldboxes.
“I distanced myself. I did not want to ruin the best thing I ever made.”
“But you damaged him.”
“Yes. I did.”
“You neglected him.”
“...Yes.”
“You let him think you did not want him.”
Alfor stares at the floor. “Yes.”
"Or love him."
The king says nothing.
“How will you rectify that?” Keith asks, cocking his head. He well and truly despises this man, but he loves his mate with all his heart. He can’t regain his father, but maybe Lance can.
“I don’t know.” Alfor’s eyes are hollow when he smiles. “I’m not sure than I can. In the same way Lance would be hard pressed to lose your respect, I would be hard pressed to gain his. I think, perhaps, we may grow closer, but always feel like strangers.”
“I think you’re right.” Keith stares at the aging king. He can smell quintessence hovering around his body, made unstable by drink. It puts him even more ill at ease, that despondent smile on the king’s face proving unnerving.
“Maybe it’s for the best. You have already proven a far more capable guide that I could ever hope to be… My time is at an end, Keith. Everything that I am is obsolete. I cannot adapt. Instead, I shall watch, and bear witness to either our crumbling or our resurrection.”
Alfor sets his glass in the sink. “His birth quintant is tomorrow, did you know? Not a big affair: nineteen is hardly important, and he wants the castle kept quiet. And then, in a movement, it will be your anniversary, which he refuses to celebrate. I wonder that he only thinks of what has been done to you, and not what was done to him.”
Keith stands, ready to be finished with this. “He does only think of me, at least in this. But I think of him, and how he became an object for you so easily, and I am bitter for him.”
Leaving the king to his miserable stalling before going to bed alone, Keith wanders the halls, restless. He’s not sure what, exactly the fuck, is up with Alfor, but it probably has something to do with the increasing number of problems they’ve uncovered with Daibazaal. And the fact that Coran left the planet a few vargas ago.
He stops in on Pidge.
“How’s it going?” he asks, surveying the mess of a workroom. Pidge has taken full advantage of Lance’s permissive attitude toward their research. There are boxes and piles of parts strewn all over, bins full of tools, microscopes, a forge, and various other random objects scattered about, along with a glass tank full of garbage and brightly-colored space caterpillars. One is on the young kit’s shoulder.
“About as well as peeling Alfor off the Altean throne. You?”
“Get a spatula and scrape him off.” Keith steps into the room. “Been better. Nauseous most of the time, and sometimes I just fall over exhausted. Also all of my favorite foods taste like dirt. And sometimes I throw tantrums for no fucking reason.”
“Those are… normal pregnancy things, hate to break it to you.” Pidge smirks as Keith sits right next to them at their bench. “Still clingy?”
“Mhm.” Keith rests his cheek on the young Olkari’s shoulder. “Pidge?”
“Hm?”
“How are kits made on your planet?”
“We have a mating season, at which time we all go into a deep burrow under ground to lay eggs and release milt. Then, when the eggs hatch, we raise all our pups together.”
“So… You don’t know who your parents are? Or- or if you have littermates?”
“No, but-” Pidge’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. “It’s like all the pups born with me are my littermates and all the adult Olkari are my parents. When one of us dies, we feel their loss, but never feel alone. I like that.”
“Hm. It sounds nice.”
“I know you’re lying, but thank you.” Pidge smiles. “I don’t care much for your attachment to your own offspring or your need for a single mate, either.”
“It has its downsides,” Keith murmurs. “If Lance dies… It’s not something I’ll ever truly recover from.”
“There are a lot of Galra who feel that pain already, huh?” Pidge’s amber eyes turn away from their crystals to meet his.
“Yeah, there are.” Keith sighs. “So what are you working on?”
“Well, I’m trying to figure these crystals out. I know that, unlike wood, coral, bone, ceramic, metal, and other materials, these Balmeran crystals are biocompatible with Alteans, at least in theory. I also know that alchemists like Alfor and Allura can take quintessence from these crystals and give it back. I know that Balmeran crystals are how Alteans power their ships and other electronics, including datapads.
“What I don’t know is how to get these crystals to be compatible with Altean biology for prosthetics and such. Every bit of Altean goop that I try to bind to the crystals fights them as if they were a bacterium or virus, ultimately resulting in the sample’s necrosis at every point of contact.
“The technology to bind them together is… plausible, but still beyond my reach.”
“Seems we’re all doing less than great,” Keith murmurs, just before he’s overtaken with an enormous yawn. “Ugh. I spent all morning asleep.” Keith yawns again.
Pidge giggles, coaxing the sleepy Prince to his feet. “C’mon, preggers. I’ll take you back to your room.”
“Did- Did you just use that as a slur?” Keith mumbles as the Olkari pup takes his hand.
“I meant it as a teasing insult.” Pidge pats his arm in mock consolation. “I can just hand you off to Lance when we get there, right? I don’t have to babysit you or anything?”
“No. It’s for the best, anyway. I need to bully him into getting some sleep.”
“Just whine about how he hasn’t cuddled you enough. That should work.”
Keith chuckles. “Yeah. Usually does.”
“Seriously, though. You and Lance are going to be amazing parents. Second only to Shiro and Adam.”
“Mnh. They don’t want kits.”
“What?” Pidge seems genuinely shocked. “Why not?!”
“Shiro’s seen too much death and Adam has some self esteem issues that seriously need addressing.”
“True… I bet they’ll change their minds when they see your cute little monstrosity.”
“I don’t know,” Keith murmurs, working to keep the conversation moving so he doesn’t fall asleep on the way back to his quarters. “I think they might like just having each other. Shiro… He’s been an object, property since he was little. And Adam… He’s made himself an object. Being just them might be what would make them happiest.”
“And your brood to remind them of why they made that choice.”
Fuck you, my kits will be awesome.”
“Yeah. But… kits , y’know?”
Keith giggles, stopping outside his quarters. “Fair enough. Goodnight, Pidge. I hope you figure out your crystals.”
“‘Night, Keith. Have fun throwing up!” The young Olkari scurries off, leaving Keith to join his mate.
He’s sitting at their small table, one Lance had installed for when they chose to eat in privacy. Or when Keith ate at odd hours but wanted to avoid Alfor.
“Hey, beloved. I thought you were just getting some food?”
“Ended up having a very weird, depressing conversation with Alfor, and then I went to visit Pidge. Then I got sleepy again, so I had to come back.” Keith yawns, rubs his eyes. “Nauseous all morning, sleepy all day, and then this thing happens where I’ll just be minding my own business and then suddenly I’m about to pee myself... basically this sucks.”
“Aw, beloved. I’m sure it gets better.”
“It actually doesn’t.” Keith drags his own chair around, drops down right next to his mate, leaning on his shoulder. “It just gets different kinds of miserable… I don’t know why I still want this, honestly. I’m already sick of it.”
“You want this because I can’t do it for you,” Lance murmurs, signing a document with a stylish flourish. “Guess what I just signed.”
“An order that fetuses need to be nicer to their bearers?”
“Not quite. A decree that arranged marriages are prohibited unless the individuals involved are consenting adults, as per their own species’ laws. The engaged party will need to sign documentation consenting to the marriage at least five phoebs prior to the event, and again one movement before. Any and all evidence or claims of coercion are subject to investigation by the Crown, be it prior to or after the marriage. Proof of Coercion will result in annulment of the marriage, and possible legal consequences including but not limited to hefty fines paid to the victim or victims, possible jail time, and guaranteed community service. Community service will be assigned based on the specific circumstances, the goal of which will be for the convicted to make amends for the harm they have caused to the Altean community by way of their actions.”
“I like it,” Keith murmurs, rubbing his cheek into Lance’s nightshirt.
“It’s definitely a start.” Lance frowns, grinds his teeth together. “I remember, not long after you got here, you said that if I was really sorry about what happened to you, I would make sure it never happened to our children.”
“Lance…”
“I swore to you that I would. I intend to keep that oath.”
“My good man…” Keith smiles, trying to snuggle closer. “Cuddle me?”
“Yeah, it’s about that time, huh.” Lance pushes his datapad away. “I should sleep, and so should you.”
“Mhm, just a tick. Thace has some antinausea meds he wants me to try so I can eat.” Keith tips one of the new pills out of the bottle. “Side effects include… nausea . What the fuck…”
Lance hands him a glass of water, and he takes his pill. He waits a few seconds to see if his body rejects it immediately, or if it’s going to think about it first. When he doesn’t vomit, he leans against his very willing mate.
Lance sighs, wraps his arms around him, nibbles the thin flesh of his ears.
“Mph. Lance…” Keith flaps the offended ear. “Tired…”
The attentions cease, replaced instead by a forehead against his shoulder. It’s been a little while, Keith knows, and he feels bad. They’ve been neglecting each other, and each other’s needs. They haven’t really had much choice in the matter, but it still sucks for both of them.
“Let’s see how I’m feeling tomorrow morning, okay? I’m hoping these pills work.”
“Okay.” Lance presses a kiss to his cheek. “In the meantime, you need to rest, and so do I.”
Keith follows his mate without argument, tail curling first around Lance’s ankle, then around his waist as he cuddles up against him, nuzzling into his chest.
“How much longer do you think we’ll be able to cuddle like this?” he asks, realizing that their time just them is limited.
“Hmm… I guess another few phoebs, and then we might have to rearrange things for you, and then later have a baby with us.”
“Yeah.”
“But we’ll have nights just us, and we can cuddle like this,” Lance promises. He’s already thought about it, that their child will immediately begin competing with Keith for Lance’s affections. They’ll both need the same things. “Parenthood is not an identity, remember?”
“Mhm. I remember. We promised.” Keith inhales, breathes in Lance’s scent, concentrated in a collection of pores between his pectorals. It’s like Keith’s own scent glands, except he’s pretty sure the Altean doesn’t know they’re there. Lance smells like warmth, imminent sleep, a snap of desire that burns in his nose. If he weren’t so fucking sleepy…
“Love you.”
“And I love you, beloved.”