A/N: Hi, everyone! So, I'm super new to Voltron, but the characters are so cute, I couldn't resist writing a little fic.
Summary: While out on a mission, Lance steps on something owie. The team removes said owie, with quite a bit of difficulty, a lot of arguing, and no shortage of complaining from the patient. Who would have thought a little cactus could do this much damage?
Warnings: None, really, unless you're, like, RIDICULOUSLY squeamish about needles. A little language because of who I am as a person.
The paladins were tired. All five of them, bone-weary and exhausted. They'd been walking through the mud on this desolate, windy, cold planet for hours, and so far had seen no sign of their target.
"I can't believe Princess Allura has us walking through this wasteland just to find a stupid rock," Lance complained. While he was likely voicing what everyone else was thinking and he knew it, the whine was still met with a synchronized group eye-roll.
"It's not a rock," Keith argued, not for the first time since their search began. "It's a powerful, ancient… something."
"Powerful, ancient rock," Hunk chimed in. That was the great thing about Hunk, Lance thought with a smile. Always willing to find a middle ground. No wonder the Yellow Lion chose him.
Keith grumbled something under his breath, but didn't argue further, so Lance chalked it up as a half-victory. Lance was always more cheerful on these sorts of missions, even if he was tired, too. He might voice his complaints more, even sometimes verging on whiney, but overall, he was a lot less grumpy than Keith or Pidge, at least. The "old man duo," as he liked to refer to them in his mind, became curt and sometimes downright mean when they were tired and hangry. Lance just used jokes.
However, his still somewhat jovial mood was interrupted when he took a wrong step, tired eyes not really looking down at where he was going, and felt a white-hot, searing pain in his ankle. Immediately and instinctively collapsing backward to take his weight off it, he cried out in surprise.
"What happened?" Shiro was suddenly right by his side, kneeling next to him.
"Ow," was all Lance could manage. He was trying his best not to show how much it had really hurt. When he pried open his eyes to look at his ankle, the nature of the injury surprised him. He'd not sprained or broken it like he'd anticipated, but had simply stepped on a cactus-like plant. Just Lance's luck, he'd gotten probably the only angle that could have possibly allowed for several of the long barbs on the plant's surface to pierce through the gap in his armor that allowed his ankle joint to move.
"Gross," Pidge remarked, "that looks bad." The plant itself was a deep green, nearly black, and the spines that protruded off it were long and purple, with white, shiny tips.
"It really got you good," Shiro commented, gingerly poking at one of the spines and not flinching when it caused Lance to wince in increased pain. "They're in deep." From what Lance could tell, there were only three spines… six? No, no; definitely three… Nine? His vision was doing strange things. He closed his eyes once more.
"Well, get them out," he bit. His voice was tense and pained, and though he was trying to hide it, since the injury really didn't look like much in his opinion, goddamn did it burn.
"I need you to stop moving, first," Shiro told him. Lance hadn't even realized that he'd been squirming until Hunk's large, warm hands were pressed against his shoulders to steady him. He felt another set of hands on his leg, holding it still, and he weighed his reluctance to open his eyes against his curiosity to see who was touching him.
He decided to just assume it was Keith, based on how mercilessly he was pushing. As Shiro pulled tentatively on one of the spines, Lance bit down on a cry of pain. He was sweating, he realized, even though he wasn't exerting any physical energy.
"Stop, Shiro," Pidge instructed from behind him. So it was Keith's hands on his calf. Bastard. "There are barbs on the other side, too, facing the other way. Look at this one, right up close." Of course, while the procedure was occurring, Pidge was examining the freaking plant.
"Lance?" Pidge began, and he grunted affirmatively to let her know he was listening. He didn't want to open his eyes-he was tired. "Hey, so removing these suckers is going to be more difficult than we might have thought," she explained. "There's little spines going the other way on each barb, to prevent you from pulling them out, like a bee's stinger."
"As much as I appreciate the botany lesson," Lance interrupted impatiently, "I don't care how you get them out, just do it. They burn."
"It burns?" Hunk repeated. "Should we be worried about that?" he asked, softer this time, to Pidge.
"Get his armor off," Shiro instructed, "Just the left leg. It'll give us a better angle." Lance felt Keith's hands begin to pull the armour away from his lower leg, then his foot, leaving only the under armour. He shivered with his foot now exposed to the elements.
"Uh… Pidge?" Shiro called, "What now?"
"The way you get a bee stinger out is to scratch at it," she supplied, but it didn't seem like that would work with these. They were much thicker and longer than a bee's stinger. "Uh… I guess you're just going to have to pull it."
"Sorry, Lance," Shiro said, and before Lance could even ask him what he was apologizing for, he felt pain ripping through his ankle. He let out a surprised, pained yelp.
"Jesus, Shiro!" Lance shouted, "Can you-GAH!" He was cut off from his complaint as another needle was pulled mercilessly from his muscle. "Son of a-FFFFFFFFUUUUUU-!"
Shiro patted the kid's knee gently. "All done," he promised, his tone sounding sympathetic but slightly amused. Lance opened his eyes to see a small, neat pile of three barbs on the ground. They were tinged with his blood-so was his whole ankle, now that he looked at it. And it was still gushing. Shiro pressed tightly down on the wound for a moment, earning another pained hiss from Lance, who was at this point too exhausted to really do anything more than that.
"Sorry, buddy," Shiro apologized, "but I've got to stop the bleeding. Just a few seconds of pressure should be enough. You're doing great." Lance didn't reply-he was focusing on trying to steady the feeling that he was rocking back and forth. Based on the fact that he could still feel Hunk's secure grip on his shoulders, he could tell that he wasn't, but an overwhelming vertigo made him feel as if he were sailing.
"You okay?" Hunk asked, but Lance didn't quite trust the looming nausea in his gut to stay calm if he spoke, so he opted for nodding instead. Hunk's hold on him tightened. Lance felt a cloth mop the sweat from his forehead and neck, gently tracing his jaw bone and removing the dripping perspiration. Pidge, he realized, would have the only free set of hands for this task, but he was a bit surprised by her tenderness, if he was being honest.
Shiro let Lance's leg go, but after a few seconds, clamped down on the wound once more with his hands, tighter this time.
"It's not closing," he explained.
Keith scoffed. "Even your blood is annoying and stubborn." Lance smirked a bit.
"Cuban blood is tenacious, what can I say," he shot back. However, despite the joke, he was still fighting with the pain quite a bit. Everything in him wanted him to sleep, and the wound seemed a siren, lulling the rocking boat of his thready consciousness closer to certain demise.
"Stay awake, Lance," Shiro commanded. He was using his dad voice, and Lance didn't have a choice but to obey. "Why's he so tired?" he asked Pidge.
"Dunno," she responded. "We've been walking all day," she suggested, "Maybe this is just the final straw."
That explanation didn't feel right to Lance, nor did the fact that he could still feel the stinging, burning ache of the needles in his ankle with every heartbeat. It had gotten more intense the longer they'd remained in his body without removal, and now the pain was starting to dissipate, but not really losing intensity-just spreading. The migration was inky, and the way the pain traveled through him was almost liquid. It reminded him of what happened when he poured cream into black coffee, how the white would spread its little tendrils out over the darkness before it claimed the whole mug in a milky cloud.
Shiro released his leg once more, checking to ensure that the bleeding had stopped before deciding he was happy with the result.
"It's just a trickle, now," he informed. "Should stop on its own." He released Lance's leg and began putting the armor back on. While he was sure Lance would protest, in as much pain as he was clearly in, Shiro was surprised to find that Lance seemed to be trying very hard to grit his teeth against it and not show his discomfort. Shiro smiled a bit. Lance was a tough kid.
Still, despite that, the black paladin did feel guilty for hurting him, and put the armor in place as gently as he could.
"That should help stabilize your ankle," he explained once the leg piece was back in place.
Lance opened his eyes a crack and smiled.
"Thanks, everyone," he said. His voice was weaker than he would have liked, but the others didn't seem to notice.
"We'll rest for a bit, have lunch," Shiro instructed, "Then see if you're in any condition to walk."
"I can walk," Lance protested, shuffling with intentions to show them all, but found that his muscles were not cooperating. He briefly wondered if this was truly just exhaustion, or if that weird goddamn space cactus had done something stupid to his muscles. Some kind of temporary paralytic or something. It would be just his luck.
"No," Shiro argued in a tone that suggested that he would have the final word on this issue. "I know you can, but you shouldn't. Not yet. Give yourself half an hour to recover, huh? It's lunch time, anyway."
"Did Allura send us with those weird energy bars?" Lance turned his nose up in anticipated disgust.
"You bet she did," Pidge replied with fake enthusiasm.
Lance's nausea made itself known again. "I think I'll pass," he said.
"You should eat," Hunk argued, pointing an energy bar toward the blue paladin, but Lance turned away from the offering.
"Later," he promised. "I, uh, want to give my stomach a little time to settle." Worry took up residence in Hunk's features, but he didn't say anything. He'd give it half an hour, he told himself, then reassess how his best friend was doing. Lance turned onto his side, facing away from the group.
"I'm just going to take a little cat nap," he explained, exhaustion clinging thickly to his words.
"Wait," someone protested. "You should drink water before you sleep. You were sweating a lot." Lance opened his eyes a crack to find that it was Keith who held out a bottle of water toward him. "You're still sweating," Keith observed.
Lance took the water bottle without a word, gulped down a few mouthfuls, and handed it back.
"Come on, more than that," Keith persisted, but Lance was already asleep.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Should be one more chapter, however, I'm really bad about updating. I'm awesome at starting fanfic and leaving them to die. Reviews help my motivation, though! I'm totally not fishing for compliments. I would never. The nerve of you to insinuate such a thing.