The section in italics between [***] by the end represents a special bonus drabble.

LOVE VERSUS

1

The skin over Shiro's temples is so sensitive from incessant rubbing that he wouldn't be able to differentiate his fingertips from sandpaper if his life depended on it. He treads from one end of the room to the other, sometimes drawing his fingers from his face to his hair, and scratching and pulling and trying not to look too much like a wreck, while forcing himself to accept the fact that he does.

"How…" he begins for what's probably the eleventh time, "How did… this, happen?"

"This" being the metaphorical elephant in the room, which is in fact an actual pink alien cat-plant-bug-monster-hybrid.

It wouldn't be half as bad if it were an actual elephant.

"It's all Lance's fault!" Hunk exclaims, pointing accusingly at the blue paladin while trying to get baby-pink fur off his pants. "He's the one who took it in!"

Lance gasps with the intensity and dramaticity of a playwright. "How could you, Hunk! We were supposed to share the guilt! I took it in and you fed it!"

"I wouldn't have fed it if you hadn't brought it in!"

"You wouldn't?! What about that one time on Earth you fed a bee and the whole hive came after us?!"

"That was a different scenario! We weren't in outer space!"

"They stung me in the butt!"

"Enough," Shiro interrupts, pausing his temples-massaging in favor of gesticulating to show just how over he is with the whole thing. "I don't care who did it. I want to know how we ended up with a wild alien animal clinging to Keith."

The red paladin blinks innocently, and glances at the furred thing in his arms. The thing, in turn, continues to glare viciously at Shiro like it has been doing for the last full ten minutes.

"I guess it just… likes me?" Keith quietly theorizes.

Well, if the captain currently knows one thing it's that the alien likes Keith a lot, and not so much him, if hissing and glaring ever since they first laid eyes upon each other was any indication.

And the thing, it looks so evil that it's a wonder the paladins even brought it inside at all. Its soft pink fur must release hallucinogenic spores or something - or maybe they're expelled from its leaf-like, evil purple tail. And its big, purplish eyes, they're surely hypnotic. Evilly so. The cat-like ears? The whisker-like strings coming from behind its cheeks? Evil too.

Shiro evidently isn't upset that the beast doesn't like him. It's really just evil incarnated in the form of an alien cat-plant-bug-monster-hybrid that's the size of a cat who sat on top of another cat's head and made a nest there.

Not that cats make nests.

...his point stands.

"I know it seems to like you, but it could be a facade. You do see how it's glaring at me, right? Non-stop?"

"Maybe it's scared because you're big," Keith tries.

"It wasn't scared of Hunk."

"Hey!" the yellow paladin interjects, "I'm not big, I'm a gentle giant."

"Yeah wow, thanks for clearing that up," Lance says from the side, staring at Hunk like he's been betrayed. If their story's anything to go by, he really was, in a way.

The two begin bickering again, and Shiro takes the moment to breathe in, breathe out, and approach the red paladin. The alien tenses up in Keith's arms and begins hissing again - and the black paladin gives it a chance, he really does, by not hissing back really loud. Instead, he continues his slow approach, until they're but a few feet apart.

Oh, if looks could kill, Shiro would be buried under a thousand daggers by now. The alien visibly hates him. It curls up around Keith's arms and spikes its fur to look double its size - something akin to four cats - and shows off an impressive set of razor-sharp teeth. If anything, it looks ready to kill the captain. Shiro only glares in response - he can't risk Keith's safety by picking a fight with a… a...

"Is it," Shiro begins, then pauses, frowning, "Is it wearing a sweater?"

A red sweater. Very fitting.

"Yeah, I couldn't have him running around naked. It could catch a cold."

With that much fur, Keith, no, it wouldn't catch a cold. But Shiro keeps his thoughts to himself and, instead, asks, "It's a he?"

"Yes."

"Do I want to know how you know that?"

"Probably not."

Shiro leaves it at that. Hunk, apparently done fighting with Lance, approaches the two of them while tapping his fingertips over his chin. "Maybe Jude's like this because he's hungry."

Keith begins answering, but Shiro promptly interrupts by raising his hands. "Hold on a second - Jude? You named it Jude?"

"Keith chose it," Lance explains, "I suggested Legend of Mana but he didn't like it."

"That's not even a name!" Keith complains, and the alien mewls in response. "He looks like a Jude, which is why I named him that."

"We have an unknown, potentially dangerous galactic animal on board and you're giving it a sweater and calling it Jude?" Shiro asks, deadpan.

Keith looks at the thing cradled in his arms with the face of someone who doesn't understand what the fuss is about, then looks back up at Shiro with a cocked eyebrow.

"I don't get what the fuss is about."

"Of course you don't," Shiro mumbles while massaging his temples - the little monster hasn't been anything but a sweet cinnamon roll to Keith, and a regular non-threatening alien animal to everyone else.

"We should quarantine it, just to be safe."

Jude - and Shiro only accepts calling it like that because there's no other known term, and because alien cat-plant-bug-monster-hybrid is too many syllables long - curls into a ball on Keith's arms and looks as defenseless as a lost child in a firework festival. The red paladin tightens his grip on Jude protectively and attacks Shiro with the pleading look of a small puppy whose personal chewing bone is being stolen.

"Why quarantine it? I can take care of it. It's safe." Jude does a half mewl, half chirp in response, but Shiro thoroughly ignores it.

"We don't know that, Keith."

"He waited on my bed while I ripped apart an old sweater and sewed it back together for him."

Shiro waits for the rest of the argument, but with how Keith continues to stare at him with silent seriousness, that's as far as it goes. "How does that prove it's safe?"

"If it wanted to kill me I would be dead by now...? Or, I- I don't know..." Keith half sigh, half huffs. "I just… I just feel it. It won't hurt us."

Shiro wants to grab Keith's cheeks and pull on them like modelling clay until he understands just what trouble he's getting into, and he wants to take Jude by the sweater and fling him as quickly as he can into a safe vault slash cage somewhere in the castle, but… Shiro is either vulnerable to Keith's pleading looks or the red paladin is just very convincing. Not exactly argumentative, but convincing.

"Alright. But you two will be monitored at all times." He'll make sure of that. Because he'll monitor them himself. "And if I think, for just one second, that it's a threat…"

"I understand. Don't worry."

Jude seems to calm down, or at least that's what his current body language says - pinkish fur laid down in small waves, tail slowly swishing left and right, and eyes closed. He… doesn't really look that bad, Shiro guesses, and he decides it's worth giving him a chance. Carefully, the black paladin stretches out his arm towards the alien and-

HISS!

The response is immediate and quite unsurprising. Shiro sighs and tries to ignore the hateful way the alien looks at him. What did he do? He didn't do anything, is what. His first reaction to Jude was actually quite neutral, if not positive - he saw them coming over, placed a hand on Keith's shoulder and he barely had the time to ask what was the furry thing in his arms before being turned away by angry hissing and growling mixed with confused chirping.

"Well, either Hunk was right and Jude's hungry, or he hates me. And something tells me it's the latter."

"No way. I think it just needs some time to get to know you. It's impossible not to like you, Shiro," Keith says with a small, genuine smile.

The black paladin lets out an awkward, slightly embarrassed grin, and scratches the back of his head.

Jude very loudly disagrees.

[***]

"Shiro," Pidge calls, "Have you seen the engine I was working on? I can't remember where I left it."

The black paladin grunts, rubbing his sore eyes with his coffee mug before changing to the right, free hand. "The one that's five cats tall or the one that's seven cats and a half?"

"...remind me not to ask you difficult things in the early morning."

[***]