aicosuAnonymous asked:
“Just let her know that while I am here, I plan not to leave the west wings at all. If I can help it. Perhaps I should move supplies in here to avoid contact by way of mealtime or calls…“ He trails, unclasping his bracers. “Yes, let her know everywhere else is game, as it were.”
“I will.”
Lotor tossed his waistcoat and armor to the ground, looking about the quarters with a bit of bitter nostalgia. It was nice to be back after everything, but being shut up one room with… his specified company also present, didn’t sound appealing.
He clasped his fists, stretching his arms, and cracking his neck. The trip had been absolutely excruciating. He closed his eyes.
And then opened them, sensing the weight behind him and turning to see Keith still there, and much closer than before.
He blinked.
“You are free to be dismissed Keith, I don’t expect–”
“Emperor Lotor, can I say something?”
Lotor stiffens, his expression falling into a firm look. The title hits something automatic in him, a reliable instinct that helps when his surprise still lingers at hearing the young Blade address him that way. Patience. The young need room to grow, as it were.
“Speak your mind.” Lotor says, eyes on Keith’s hand, where a scar peeks out from the shadows.
“I wanted to say–” The boy began. “I wanted to ask–” He struggled. “I, this is a request, is that…?”
Lotor waited.
“Okay.” The blade breathed, Mamora shoulder pads wrinkling the suit underneath. “I, I just wanted to say thank you. For… telling me things. Teaching me things. And–and I know that the Galra aren’t, I’m not, supposed to say thank you. But we do on earth and I think that it’s important to say it because I’m… both.”
He lifts his head, taking in the words like he might a hot drink. It warms him from the inside out.
He keeps waiting.
“But I also wanted to say thanks for doing what you’re doing. It would be easy not to marry Allura, and make peace.”
It would not be easy to not marry Allura, in fact. Lotor grins, but luckily the gesture only seems to relax Keith.
“But I can tell that you also want to be both, want everyone to be both, and I respect that. I understand that.”
He sighed. Lotor shifted his head.
“And your request?”
“What?”
“You said this was a request.” He reminded.
Keith stares at the ground. “Yeah, right, that, yeah–”
“Anything you need, Keith, if it’s within my power,”
“I just wanted to say–ask, that if we could, be, or, if I could call you–consider you,” The measured slowness with which he corrects himself leaves Lotor on an edge he doesn’t particularly appreciate, but he holds out for the boy.
It’s worth it.
“If we could be Prat Vel,”
Brothers.
By fury.
“Brothers.” Lotor says it out loud. He has too. The word is about as foreign to himself as it must be to Keith.
“Friends.” Keith clarified.
He shook his head.
“It means blood brothers.”
“Oh, I didn’t, it was–” Keith’s face is red now. “I didn’t mean it as,”
“Yes.”
The agreement surprises them both. Maybe Lotor less so. Perhaps it’s something manipulative. It’s been… thousands, of decaphoebs since he’d ever heard the words, let alone considered them. And it’s useful. A given ally, a reliable pact, especially with a member of Voltron and a representative of a foreign planet.
Or maybe he’s soft. The weak-sentimental mush the Galra had always accused him of. Especially now, with gold on his hands from his own wedding, by fury, a domesticated beast umbrella-ed under the pathetic happiness this entire affair had introduced into his life.
He’d take what they’d give him until it inevitably ran out, as it always did.
So he bowed, low enough that his height met with the small human’s.
“You honor me, Keith. I accept.”
“T-thanks, that’s, yeah, your welcome,” The blade hurries, putting out an arm to shake, a gesture of trade procedures the earthlings seemed to favor over bowing.
Lotor takes the hand as he straightens, feeling the cut on the boy’s palm with a swell of gratitude in his chest rather than wariness.
And then Keith hugs him.
It’s faster than anything Lotor can anticipate, and it’s gone before he can return or dwell on it. A rush of warmth and then coldness.
He stares at the boy, calculating when the last time he’d ever had an embrace. Never, maybe.
Keith finishes shaking his hand with a hefty gesture.
“Great, I’ll go talk to Allura like you asked. Enjoy your vacation.”
Lotor doesn’t know the word, but nods.
“Later.”
Indeed.
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