Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron!
A/N: Thank y'all for all the kind comments and likes and what-not! Comments give me serious fuel and make me want to write more, so yeah, here's some more Rebel Matt and his Rebel Fam with Lost-in-Space Shiro!
In Which Space Skunk Gets a Nice Hug and Matt Cries 'Cause "BRO"
"Wait, wait, waaaait, so this is the Shiro? The psycho crazy one?"
"That's not— It's— He did it to protect me."
"Yeah, well, that was a hell of a way to show someone how much he cares."
"Shut up, Zyrill."
Shiro felt a hand tapping gently against his face, rousing him to consciousness again. Maybe if all the voices would stop bickering with each other, he would be more inclined to pay attention.
"Shiro? Shiro, please wake up…"
"Matt, don't startle him," said the deeper voice, "He might lash out."
Shiro groaned and leaned away from the hand then forced his eyes to open. He was surrounded by people but kneeling next to him was one extremely familiar person.
Pidge was going to totally lose her mind once he brought this guy back to the Castle.
"Matt?" Was he still scared of him? The last time he had seen Matt, the younger man had been trembling, terrified out of his mind, and in pain, which Shiro had been the cause of. Maybe he didn't even want Shiro to be here, not that he had a choice.
Shiro didn't even know where 'here' was.
Apparently all his worrying was pointless. The air was nearly crushed out of his lungs as Matt grabbed him and yanked him into a hug. After a while, Matt pushed him away and held him at arm's length, a watery crooked smile on his face.
"Nice hair, bro."
Shiro let out a relieved, surprised laugh. "You, too, Shaggy." He hugged Matt fiercely, grateful to be accepted instead of feared. He had no idea what was going on or how he had gotten here, but at least wherever he was, Matt was here too. That was a plus.
The owl-lemur alien let out a huff. "Humans are too weird."
"I think it's sweet," an amused female voice said.
"Oh, you would."
Matt pulled away and shook his head, disbelief written all over his face. "What're you doing here? I've been looking for you and dad for the past year, and now you just show up? Not that I'm complaining, but, man..."
"I don't know," Shiro replied honestly, "I was in my lion, and then I was here, wherever here is."
"'Here' is a kickass spaceship, but lion?" Matt asked, his eyebrows coming together in a curious expression.
"It's a long story."
"Matt, are you going to introduce us to your friend?"
Shiro remembered the other people who had been standing around, and he finally looked up at them. There were four of them including the owl-lemur alien, and all of them were looking at him with varying degrees of suspicion.
"Oh, yeah." Matt stood up and held out a hand to him, which Shiro gratefully took, allowing Matt to pull him to his feet.
Matt looked different. He wasn't the same scrawny guy that Shiro remembered. Now there was a wiry muscled look to him, and he seemed to have gotten rid of the glasses altogether. Plus he was taller? Definitely taller. He also just seemed more confident.
"Guys, this is my friend Shiro," Matt said, "Be nicer to him than you are to me. Shiro, this is the crew of the Outcast, minus one. They took me in a while back."
"After we stole you from the Galra," said the one with the deep voice. That voice belonged to a tall, bulky alien with light gray skin and dark brown markings on his face and arms. Spikes ran down along the backs of his arms, and there were two rows of spikes that ran backwards across his skull.
His arms were crossed and he was watching Shiro closely with eyes that had square black irises and bright purple pupils. The lemur-owl alien was sitting on his shoulder, looking like that was a regular perch for it.
"That's Nevan, and you've sort of met Zyrill," Matt said, pointing toward the gray alien and the little lemur-owl, "And Iwari's right beside him. She's our captain."
On the gray guy's right side stood an equally tall, female alien. She looked sort of like a dragon, if Shiro had to pick something she reminded him of. With sharp slitted green eyes, she was covered in deep, emerald green scales, and she had bright blue frilled ears.
She nodded to him, but her eyes flicked toward Matt. He had no doubt that if it looked like he might hurt Matt in the slightest, she would put him down before he could try. Not that he would. It seemed that Matt had found people who cared about him. Shiro knew how that felt.
"And this is Era," Matt said with a certain soft affectionate note in his voice that Shiro didn't fail to notice. He tried not to grin as his babbles-when-talks-to-girls friend extended a hand toward the dark blue young woman with wings and pulled her closer, looping his arm around her waist.
"Hi." She gave him an uncertain wave, her silver eyes wary. She stood right beside Matt, leaning toward him. He saw how short she was now, probably around the same height as Pidge.
Pidge.
"We have a lot to talk about," Shiro said, hardly knowing where he should begin. Did he start right after they were separated? Maybe he should start with Pidge? Or would that be too overwhelming?
"No kidding," Matt said with a half-smile.
"Are you hungry, Shiro?" asked Iwari, "It's almost lunch time, if you'd like something to eat while we all talk."
It was surreal. It almost felt like he was going to spend the night at one of his friend's houses back when he was a kid. Except they were in space, and this was a spaceship. He had just been in a gigantic robot cat fighting an evil alien overlord who was threatening to destroy all freedom in the universe in an all-out space battle that rivaled anything in Star Wars and Star Trek combined.
But yeah, sure, he could eat a sandwich.
